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The bloody conflict in my birth country has its roots in a power struggle that began with the Darfur genocide 20 years agoThe speed with which Sudan unravelled was the first indication that it had all been building up for a long time. The country’s collapse is the result of a series of failures, complicities and complacencies that have been rumbling away in the background for so long that those living with them assumed they would continue on for ever. That was until a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and the country’s army went to war over who runs the country – and trapped the Sudanese people between them.The country’s capital, Khartoum, has become a war zone, with surreal scenes of tanks, missile strikes and plumes of smoke rising throughout the city. The conflict erupted exactly four years after a colossal revolution succeeded, against all odds, in removing President Omar al-Bashir after almost 30 years of dictatorship, economic pillage and genocide – and in doing so, created a power vacuum over which the two forces are fighting. Continue reading...

Company which shot to popularity in the 1990s has seen demand drop off as a strategy to sell more store-branded products floppedBed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, after failing to secure funds to stay afloat, and began a liquidation sale.The home goods retailer, which shot to popularity in the 1990s as a go-to for couples making wedding registries and planning babies, has seen demand drop off as a strategy to sell more store-branded products flopped. Continue reading...

Our rivers run with poo, we have hundreds of food banks and it is virtually impossible to get a doctor’s appointment. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to appreciate how bad things areMy in-laws came to stay recently, prompting a crisis of what some DIY chain has forced me to think of as “housebarassment”. We don’t have many guests, because I get funny when people use my mugs, and offer a welcome along the lines of the peregrine falcon nest boxes I watch on webcams: a few strewn pebbles, dismembered pigeon corpses, me hunched and glaring in a corner, covered in viscera. But some visits are welcome – we hardly ever see my in-laws, since they’re fairly elderly and live in France, but I like them! It’s a miracle. I hardly like anyone.But it’s shaming to suddenly see your home through other eyes. Before they arrived, we surveyed the squalor we’d got used to, each secretly blaming the other. The shoe and pizza box mountain in the hall, an insanitary trip hazard. A pair of socks left on the radiator since last summer. A mummified – what? Apple? Lemon? Mouse? – in the fruit bowl, an unconscionable amount of hair everywhere, the sofa smelling of old dog and surrounded by crisp packets and coconut water cartons.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Lieutenant governor has achieved national notoriety over views on LGBTQ+ rights, guns, abortion and moreThe Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, formally entered the race for governor at a rally on Saturday.The sharp-spoken social conservative, who has made controversial remarks about LGBTQ+ rights, guns and abortion, said North Carolina needed a leader like him who can relate to the challenges and desires of working people. Continue reading...

Kevin McCarthy kickstarted talks with the White House, but his proposal may not even have the Republican votes to move forwardAs hundreds of millions of Americans faced a deadline on Tuesday to file their annual tax returns, Congress continued to squabble over paying its own bills.Tax Day came and went this week without lawmakers reaching an agreement on lifting the debt ceiling, the US government’s borrowing limit to cover all of its financial obligations. Experts have warned that failure to lift or suspend the debt ceiling could have catastrophic consequences for the US economy, which would be felt in every American household. Continue reading...

Currently, workers receive wages only for 13 hours of work on their 24-hour shifts, with the rest 11 hours amounting to unpaid laborZhu Nu Jun has worked as a home care aide in New York City for eight years, working three 24-hour shifts a week. That increased to four 24-hour shifts a week last year.It can be brutal and intense work. Continue reading...

Undocumented workers play a crucial role in California’s labor force, but are forced to take exploitative jobsWhen Irma Mejia moved into a garage with her three children, she was hoping it would be temporary. Then, on the very first payday after pandemic lockdowns went into effect, she says her new manager told her she was only going to get paid half of what she was owed.“[I thought] if you couldn’t pay me, you should have asked me,” Mejia recalls. “Because I get to decide if I’m working here or not, right? If you’re only gonna pay me these hours, then I’m only working those hours.” Continue reading...

Those with more money are more likely to agree with policy changes than the less well-offWe aim to bring you surprising and important findings from the world of research. I fear this week’s offering may not manage the “surprising” part but it is important.In a great new study, Swedish researchers investigated how policy outcomes reflect public attitudes towards those policies. They looked across 30 European countries over 38 years on issues ranging from welfare to immigration, foreign policy to the environment. Continue reading...

Netflix’s drama about the Egyptian queen highlights how ideas of race have evolvedIn 1751, the great American polymath Benjamin Franklin worried about the small number of “purely white People in the World”. “All Africa,” he wrote, “is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny... And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also.” Only “the Saxons… [and] the English make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.”The question of “who is white?” might seem to us today as self-evident. Yet it has over the past three centuries been fiercely contested. Many groups we now think of as white were certainly not seen as such for much of that period, from the Irish to the Slavs, from Italians to Jews. It took a long process of social negotiation and conflict before they were admitted into the club of whiteness. Continue reading...

The $787m Fox News settlement was money well spent in saving the media mogul from an embarrassing ordealThere are, as F Scott Fitzgerald famously observed – and as Rupert Murdoch is now belatedly discovering, “no second acts in American lives”. Last week, just as the trial of the $1.6bn defamation action brought by Dominion against Fox News was about to start, a “settlement” was reached between the two parties. Fox, of which Murdoch is CEO, paid nearly $800m to stop the proceedings.Given how highly Murdoch values his image as a swaggering media giant, it was probably money well spent. Otherwise he would have had to testify under oath and the world would see not the robust titan of popular legend but an elderly mogul who is physically frail and, more importantly, who could not stop his TV station pandering to Donald Trump for fear of alienating the audience that had turned Fox News into such a profitable cash cow. Continue reading...

Younger people can only watch in envy as older generations are tempted into golden early retirementThe marshmallow test was invented when the boomer generation was young. It tested the ability to delay gratification. Children who could hold off eating a marshmallow placed in front of them would get two, proving they had the self-control requisite to become concert cellists, scientific geniuses or presidents of the US.But over the years, psychologists have come to doubt the marshmallow test and what it was really measuring. They found that children who had grown up around unpredictable adults – or who were primed with a broken promise ahead of the test – were most likely to grab the first sweet that came their way. This wasn’t always impulse failure, as once assumed, so much as a rational reaction to circumstance. In an uncertain world, it is much smarter not to trust in romantic promises of marshmallows tomorrow. You might end up with none at all. The first lesson – sacrifice pays off – has been drummed into boomers, and the following generation X, all their lives, but life is repeatedly teaching their children the second. We can do everything right and still not get our second marshmallow. Sometimes, even our first is whipped away right in front of us, as we are asked to please stop whining; we shouldn’t have expected so much in the first place. Continue reading...

Rebekah Vardy has made my ‘Wagatha Christie’ joke, from her case against Coleen Rooney, into intellectual property. If gags are bought up, British humour faces a bleak futureThree years, six months and 13 days ago, I tweeted the words “Coleen Rooney: Agatha Christie”. Well, that’s not quite what I tweeted. I inserted a “W” before the Agatha, creating a disposable pun that somehow went viral. To my bemusement the joke was emblazoned across countless headlines worldwide. You may be wondering why have I introduced my famous pun in such a tortured fashion. Well, I’m trying to avoid getting sued.This week the world discovered that Rebekah Vardy has trademarked the phrase-who-shall-not-be-named, meaning that she can make money from using W****** C******* as a brand or unleash cash-thirsty lawyers on anyone else who dares use it.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Jury will hear writer E Jean Carroll’s civil claim that Trump assaulted her in 1990s – could this case finally bring a reckoning?Donald Trump won’t be there to see it, but the former US president’s deeply tarnished reputation may be about to take another serious hit as a New York jury decides whether he is a rapist.E Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist and author, will finally get her day in court this week, nearly four decades after she alleges that Trump pinned her against the wall of a New York department store and sexually assaulted her. Continue reading...

The crowds at LIV Golf in Adelaide this week are proof Australians are so beguiled by Greg Norman they will buy into his Saudi-backed slogan that ‘golf is a force for good’In a late 19th-century issue of Vanity Fair a caricature of famous big-bearded cricketer WG Grace carried a caption that read simply ‘Cricket’. In Australia, from about 1980, a Greg Norman version might have read ‘Golf’. The man was Australian golf. He didn’t have to sky-dive from planes to promote tournaments (though he did), his presence was enough. And it still is.This weekend Norman has brought LIV Golf to The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide, and Australian sports fans, as ever, appear powerless against his siren song. The golf course is heaving with over 35,000 fans daily. Admission has been sold out for all three rounds. A ticket into the ‘Cellar Door’ marquee back of the 12th green – known as the ‘Watering Hole’ and styled like the PGA Tour’s ‘Party Hole’ in Arizona – is $1200. The hole is surrounded by similar marquees and ‘sky boxes’. After a golfer’s shot, good or bad, plastic beer cups rain onto the tee like frothy white mortars. Continue reading...

She called it my ‘therapy time’. Apparently, I was a vastly different style of driving instructor to her friends’ parentsAt the end of our street is a mostly empty car park dotted with bags of dumped McDonald’s rubbish, dying pot plants and graffiti. The council recently installed a bank of charging stations for electric vehicles, so sometimes a line of Teslas is now parked, strangely out-of-place in this mess.This car park has been home to many firsts in my family. The first time my son road a bike without training wheels. The first time we carried our cat on a late-night walk in a shopping bag. And the first time my daughter drove a car. Continue reading...

Tributes pour in for Freeway, who was named after his rescue from a busy freeway last yearFreeway, the beloved Californian rescue sea lion that would roam around San Diego, has died, SeaWorld San Diego has announced.“It is with heavy hearts that we share ‘Freeway’, the rescued sea lion, passed away yesterday – surrounded with love from his devoted care and rescue teams. His adventurous spirit won the hearts of all San Diegans and he will be remembered for that and so much more,” the park said in a Facebook post on Friday. Continue reading...

Doni Chamberlain’s been a journalist in Shasta county for nearly 30 years. Now she’s targeted by the extremists who are looking to reshape the regionIn a seemingly long gone era – before the Trump presidency, and Covid, and the 2020 election – Doni Chamberlain would get the occasional call from a displeased reader who had taken issue with one of her columns. They would sometimes call her stupid and use profanities.Today, when people don’t like her pieces, Chamberlain said, they tell her she’s a communist who doesn’t deserve to live. One local conservative radio host said she should be hanged. Continue reading...

Italy depends on tourism but despairs at the hordes who descend on its beauty spots. Its solutions are being watched around the globeLast week Italy was, again, struggling with the conundrum of mass tourism. One of the country’s most charming seaside towns, Portofino, has just introduced legislation to dissuade tourists lingering for selfies: there will be fines of up to €275 (£243) if they block traffic or pedestrians in two “red zones” of the beautiful bay.It’s the latest in a series of draconian measures adopted by Italian councils to deal with herds of holidaymakers: there are fines of up to €2,500 for walking the paths above the Cinque Terre (five villages in Liguria) in flip-flops or sandals; you are no longer allowed to eat snacks outside in the centre of Venice or in four central streets in Florence; you can be fined €250 just for sitting down on Rome’s Spanish Steps; and one beach, in Eraclea, has even banned the building of sandcastles (maximum fine €250) because they’re considered unnecessary obstructions. Continue reading...

Rasheeda Williams, who performed as Koko Da Doll, killed in third fatal shooting of trans woman in the city this yearRasheeda Williams, an Atlanta-based transgender woman who features in a forthcoming documentary that highlights the stories of four Black transgender sex workers in New York City and Georgia, was fatally shot in this week, the film’s publicist said on Friday.Williams, 35, who performed under the name Koko Da Doll, was killed on Tuesday evening at a shopping center in the south-west of the city. It was the third fatal shooting of a transgender woman in the city since the beginning of the year, Atlanta police said in a statement. Continue reading...

The fiery tactics of the women’s vote movement were in a different league from Just Stop Oil’s interventionMy mother’s aunt, Kathleen Brown, was a suffragette. She was imprisoned for throwing stones in Whitehall, and then received a hero’s welcome when she returned to her home city of Newcastle. She and her friends commandeered a horse-drawn fire engine in Tottenham Court Road and drove it to Parliament Square. She pursued Winston Churchill in a dinghy down the River Thames, and on another occasion climbed on to his carriage.These actions could have had harmful effects on the general public. Perhaps a house burned down or a cat remained stuck in a tree while that fire engine was otherwise engaged. More famous suffragette protests included the slashing of Velásquez’s Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, Mary Malony’s use of a hand bell to drown out Churchill’s speeches and Emily Davison’s fatal throwing of herself under the king’s horse at the Derby. Continue reading...

US supreme court has preserved access to mifepristone for now, but blue states announce plans to safeguard abortion rightsDespite a reprieve by the US supreme court, a growing number of Democratic states are stockpiling abortion pills as the legal fight for access to the abortion drug mifepristone is set to continue.On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication. Continue reading...

When the Chinese embraced capitalism, the west predicted it would crumble. Then that the web would break it. We may be proved wrong againIt is often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Something similar applies to western thinking about the People’s Republic of China. When that country’s rulers embarked on their astonishing programme of industrialisation, we said that if they wanted capitalism (and they clearly did) then they would have to have democracy. Their response: we’ll have the capitalism but we’ll give the democracy stuff a miss.Then, in the 1990s, when they decided that they wanted the internet, Bill Clinton and co opined that if they wanted the net then they would also have to have openness (and, therefore, ultimately, democracy). As before, they went for the internet but passed on the openness bit. And then they went on to build the only technological sector that rivals that of the US and could, conceivably, surpass it in due course. Continue reading...

Bank’s links to sex offender financier deeper than previously known, as it faces lawsuit brought by US Virgin IslandsSenior executives with the global banking giant JP Morgan maintained contact with disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for years after dropping him as a client in 2013, six years after he was charged with solicitation of a minor, according to a new report.The allegation, reported in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, comes as JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank by assets, is being sued by an unidentified Epstein accuser and the US Virgin Islands – where Epstein owned a private island – for benefiting from human trafficking by ignoring internal red flags about his behavior. Continue reading...

New research suggests people who are childfree by choice are pretty happy with their decisions, while some parents are notYou’ll be lonely. Nobody will look after you when you get old. You’ll miss out on life’s greatest joy. You won’t ever be truly fulfilled. Your life will be meaningless and shallow. Everyone will pity you. If you choose not to have children then you’ll end up regretting it forever. Continue reading...

The two-time World’s Strongest Man from Scotland discusses his bid for a history-making treble, his life as a skinny, gym-avoiding teenager and why autism is his ‘superpower’In contrast to many of the other athletes at this year’s World’s Strongest Man competition, two-time reigning champion Tom Stoltman presents as unflappable, almost stoic, during the tournament’s qualifying stages. His rivals often seem keen to maximize their adrenaline in the leadup to each event – they fist pump at the crowd, scream into the sky, have a training partner slap them on the back and so on. Stoltman, on the other hand, stares calmly into the middle distance, outwardly oblivious to the crowds and television cameras just feet away from him. Such measured behavior is a learned trait and, in Stoltman’s view, is a competitive advantage.“The first few years, I used to go mental in the qualifiers and jump up and down … I would have been showing my emotions more, being aggressive more, hyping up the crowd and stuff,” he says. This is no longer the case. “If I got really angry today, or if got really hyped up, it’s going to just drain me … [My] tank is going to be empty by the time the final comes … That’s why I don’t really go out of first gear in the qualifiers.” Continue reading...

Consultants hired by – and staying at – Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa to suppress workers’ union organizing driveIn the heart of California’s wine country, the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa offers guests access to on-site geothermal mineral pools, an exclusive golf club and farm-to-table dining.“Like the Native Americans who revered the site as a sacred healing ground, you’ll live in harmony with nature through vast open spaces, beautifully landscaped grounds, majestic redwood trees and inspiring sunsets,” boasts the resort’s website. Continue reading...

Florida governor’s recent moves see him lose political capital – and support – as he prepares for likely presidential runOne of the most entertaining Ron DeSantis stories of the week was only a parody, although he might wish it was not so. The satirical website The Onion had Florida’s rightwing governor settling his ongoing feud with Disney by taking a guest role in its hit Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian.Behind the mocking comedy was hard truth for a vain politician embroiled in the energy-sapping scrap with Florida’s biggest private employer over LBGTQ+ rights. Continue reading...

Unbeaten super-lightweight says he is ‘pushing for a higher purpose’ before Las Vegas clash with undefeated Gervonta DavisRyan García rolls out of bed in the middle of the morning in Los Angeles. He is shirtless, his hair is tousled and he is very sleepy as he logs on for our interview. García, of course, still looks like a multi-million dollar pin-up and, as he smiles and says hello with a lazy wave, it is easy to understand why the 24-year-old has 9.6m followers on Instagram.His bare chest is covered in tattoos and his voice is husky with sleep as he says, “I’m pretty dazed right now. But I’m here.” Continue reading...

Network’s $787.5m settlement with Dominion over election lies is barely mentioned as hosts pick up where they left offWith Fox News humbled into a $787.5m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over election lies this week, it might be expected that the conservative TV channel’s outspoken hosts would tone down the misinformation a bit, soften their rhetoric – basically, just chill out.None of that has happened. Continue reading...

Thirty years on, my child’s killers still walk free and the Met is resisting reform – that is why I’m still fighting for justiceI try not to remember the day Stephen died. Even 30 years on, the pain of losing your firstborn never goes away. I remember watching him leave the house that morning for the last time and turn down the alleyway up to the main road where he used to catch the bus. I remember the neighbour banging on the door telling us Stephen had been attacked by a group of boys.Later in the hospital, when the doctors told me Stephen had died, I asked to go and see him, but they said he needed cleaning up first. I remember going into the room and looking at him but I don’t know what I did, how I felt, or even if I touched him. The next morning, I woke up at home thinking it was all a bad dream. I went into his bedroom and saw his bed hadn’t been slept in – that’s when I realised it was real.Neville Lawrence OBE is an anti-racism campaigner and the father of Stephen Lawrence. As told to Lucy Pasha-RobinsonDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Samantha Conover and her companions were on a boat and took action to locate a man and his teen whose jet ski had sunkA woman, her fiancé and her friends were heading back from dinner on a boat last weekend when they ended up helping save the lives of a father and daughter whose personal watercraft had sunk near Tampa, Florida.The Tampa news channel WFTS hailed Samantha Conover and her companions as heroes after they helped a local sheriff’s office deputy search for the missing man and girl and pull them out of the water, but the group has resisted the label. Continue reading...

The supreme court on Friday blocked restrictions ordered by lower courts on mifepristoneThe supreme court on Friday blocked restrictions on mifepristone while a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion groups targeting the pill proceeds.In an unsigned order, the justices granted an emergency request by the Biden administration to prevent a lower court ruling targeting the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of the pill. As a result of the supreme court’s order, access to the drug will remain unchanged for now. Continue reading...

Federal judge in Texas ruled in early April to suspend FDA-approved mifepristone used in more than half of abortions in USThe supreme court decided on Friday to temporarily block a lower court ruling that had placed significant restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone.The justices granted emergency requests by the justice department and the pill’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, to halt a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in Texas. The judge’s order would significantly limit the availability of the medication as litigation proceeds in a challenge by anti-abortion groups. Continue reading...

Robert Singletary will not resist being transferred back to home state of North Carolina to face four attempted murder chargesThe North Carolina man who is accused of shooting a six-year-old girl along with her parents after a basketball with which the child was playing rolled into his yard is not resisting being transferred to his home state after being arrested in Florida.After his arrest on Thursday in Tampa, Florida, 24-year-old Robert Louis Singletary made a court appearance on Friday during which he was asked whether he would sign the extradition waiver that would allow officials to transport him back to North Carolina, where the shooting occurred two days earlier. Continue reading...

Greg Guidry gave the New Orleans church thousands of dollars and now refuses to step down from a case involving 500 victimsA federal judge donated tens of thousands of dollars to New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church amid a contentious bankruptcy involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims, an Associated Press investigation has found, but the judge won’t step down from the case.Confronted with AP’s findings, which had not been previously reported, US district judge Greg Guidry abruptly convened attorneys on a call last week to tell them his charitable giving “has been brought to my attention” and he would consider recusal from the high-profile bankruptcy he oversees in an appellate role. Continue reading...

Justices consider appeal by White House following lower court order reimposing restrictions on drug mifepristone

South Carolina retirement community’s failure to ‘ensure against natural hazards’ led to death of Nancy Becker, 88, suit claimsThe family of an 88-year-old South Carolina woman killed by an alligator in a lagoon near her home sued the owners and managers of her retirement community, alleging “manmade ponds and ponding basins” drew the animal to the area.The lawsuit says Nancy Becker “endured excruciating pain and suffering, including severed limbs”, the Washington Post reported. Continue reading...

Law signed in 1931 is rarely enforced but carries penalty of prison time and $1,000 fineAn attempt to repeal a Michigan law that punishes unmarried couples who live together is being thwarted by Republicans in the state legislature.The law, which dates to 1931, targets “any man or woman, not being married to each other, who lewdly and lasciviously associates and cohabits together”. Continue reading...

Elders moved to tears as members of tribe and archaeologists recover canoe discovered in Lake Waccamaw two years agoTribal elders were moved to tears by the retrieval of a 1,000-year-old Native American canoe from Lake Waccamaw in North Carolina.The Waccamaw Siouan chief, Michael Jacobs, told CBC it was emotional to watch the elders “sit on the bank and cry tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of a future for our youth – how this is going to impact them and help them overcome some of the trauma they’ve experienced through being excluded at times, and even counted as not worthy”. Continue reading...

Legal challenge to FDA approval of mifepristone could have implications for women’s reproductive health across the countryThe supreme court is poised to decide whether to preserve access to a widely used abortion medication, after extending its deadline to act until at least Friday.Less than a year after the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade and eliminated a constitutional right to an abortion, the justices are now reviewing new legal questions raised by an escalating case in Texas with potentially sweeping implications for women’s reproductive health and the federal drug approval process. Continue reading...

Despite the death toll, there is little indication of federal policy changes, but some states have tried to impose more gun controlThe US is setting a record yearly pace for mass killings, with around one each week. According to a database tracking such events, the death toll from 17 mass killings in 111 days is 88. All were shot. Only 2009 saw as many such killings in the same period.At a Nashville elementary school, three children and three adults were killed. In northern California, farm workers died over a workplace grudge. At a ballroom outside Los Angeles, dancers were massacred as they celebrated the Lunar New Year. Continue reading...

State senators advance bill for consideration by house in what critics say is basic violation of separation of church and stateEvery classroom in Texas could be made to display the Ten Commandments prominently, after lawmakers advanced a proposal to push more religion into schools.A parallel bill also approved by the Republican-controlled Texas senate on Thursday would require educational establishments to set aside time every day for students and employees to read the Bible or other religious manuscripts, or to pray. Continue reading...