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Like others ashamed by the invasion of Ukraine, I have left Russia, my home. We feel like leaves, scattered by a hurricane“Ukrainians don’t have to pay!” I am trying to buy three shawarmas in a market in Tbilisi, Georgia, but the street vendor emphatically refuses to take my money. I try to explain, even though I was warned not to say this: “I am sorry, I am not Ukrainian, I am Russian.” The vendor looks at the Ukrainian flag pin on my lapel; he doesn’t believe me.Before 24 February, I never thought about what it means to be Russian. Now it’s all I think about. Continue reading...

I was so excited when eBay started, until I realised no one wanted my stuff – so why do I feel so emotional about this sudden flood of unexpected interest?It was so exciting when eBay first started, a final reckoning with the fact that we all, between us, had enough stuff. We just had to keep it moving around so that it felt new to someone, and life’s defining itch-scratch-itch cycle – earn-spend-earn – would be broken. All that would be left to destroy was private property, and wham, we would reach Arcadia (the state of simple pleasure, not the doomed fashion business).Then, it turned out that no one wanted my stupid stuff. I’d end up with a closing bid of £1.28, having gifted myself administrative posting tasks that would reach into the following month. My reputation was soon scorched as a seller, and I took to using the site only for buying vintage dog cufflinks, which never arrived. At least I wasn’t banned from selling, unlike my Mr, who had his card marked early on as a potential money launderer. I have been round these traps a lot, and scoured Breaking Bad and Ozark many times to find out how money laundering works. I can find no reasonable explanation for the suspicion, except that the quality of his goods was too low for the possibility of honest exchange.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Brooklyn diocese calls it ‘a crime of disrespect and hate’ and says gold relic is irreplaceable because of its historical and artistic valuePolice say someone has broken into the altar at a New York City church, stole a $2m gold relic and removed the head from a statue of an angel.The incident happened between 6.30pm last Thursday and 4pm on Saturday, the police said on Monday, at St Augustine’s Roman Catholic church, known as the “Notre Dame” of Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. Continue reading...

Former president intensifies attacks on Liz Cheney at Wyoming rally and endorses her Republican primary challenger in midterm electionsAs the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump prepares to start public hearings next week, the former president called the insurrection on January 6, 2021, a hoax.Trump spoke at a rally in Wyoming on Saturday night in support of the Republican primary challenger in the midterm elections to congresswoman Liz Cheney. Cheney sits on the committee and has been vilified by Trump since she voted in favor of his historic second impeachment over the insurrection. Continue reading...

Massacre in Uvalde began on Tuesday 24 May with a single shotThe mass shooting at Robb elementary school in the small city of Uvalde, south Texas, began on Tuesday 24 May with a single shot.An 18-year-old local man, who just a few weeks before had reached the age where he could legally buy a military-style assault rifle, sent ominous social media messages pre-dawn, including telling someone he was going to shoot his grandmother. Continue reading...

Far from compelling Russia to exit Ukraine, they are causing great suffering worldwide as food and energy prices soarSix million households in Britain face the possibility of morning and evening blackouts this winter to maintain sanctions against Russia, as do consumers across Europe. This is despite Europe pouring about $1bn a day into Russia to pay for the gas and oil it continues to consume. This seems crazy. Proposals by the EU to halt the payments are understandably being opposed by countries close to Russia and heavily dependent on its fossil fuels; Germany buys 12% of its oil and 35% of its gas from Russia, figures that are much higher in Hungary.The EU in Brussels seems not to know what to do. A diplomatic compromise has been raised – exempting sanctions on imports via pipeline, which would spare Hungary and Germany – but no practical plan has been agreed. The real reason is that arguments over the sanctions weapon have been reduced to macho rhetoric. They are supposed to induce a foreign regime to change some unacceptable policy. This rarely if ever happens, and in Russia’s case it has blatantly failed. Apologists now claim that sanctions are merely a deterrent, intended to work in the medium to long term. As war in Ukraine shifts into a different gear, that term could be long indeed. Continue reading...

President returns to White House after visiting small south Texas city and says he will continue to push for gun controlThe first memorial services for the 19 children and two teachers killed in a mass shooting at their elementary school in Uvalde began on Monday, a day after Joe Biden visited the small south Texas city and was urged by residents to take action on gun safety laws.Returning to Washington on Monday morning, the US president, wearing a black suit, talked about the “palpable” pain in Uvalde. Continue reading...

This is just the latest attempt to distract with a meaningless policy, but why would you want to bring back something no one under 70 understands?Have we reached the apex of national division? Or do these terrible chasms open up so fast that, as you hurl yourself towards the next, you forget the last – like an 80s video game? Half the country is wondering how much public contempt a government can survive before it perishes; the other half is rejoicing over a return to imperial measurements – and not a moment too soon. How else could the Queen go gladly into her platinum jubilee, if she weren’t confident of a return to the standards of [checks Wikipedia] 1826, a full 100 years before her birth? Where else would we reasonably find a spirit of national optimism and modernity, except in the late Regency era?Personally, I have no problem with imperial measures. I learned to cook from a 1940s oven manual, full of very detailed, thrifty and complicated recipes, all in ounces – intended to get women out of the factories and back into the kitchen. It became one of my few party tricks, being able to multiply almost anything by 28 to get it in grams, to which I added being able to multiply anything by 2.2, then divide it by 14, to get kilos in stones and pounds. It’s only fun because it makes no sense; otherwise it would just be arithmetic. Continue reading...

House leaders’ support for Henry Cuellar over Jessica Cisneros in Texas elections has left progressives seethingTexas officials have still not declared a winner in the state’s 28th congressional district, where incumbent Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar currently leads progressive lawyer Jessica Cisneros by 175 votes out of roughly 45,000 ballots cast.But as progressives wait to see who will win the runoff race, they cannot help but think of what might have been if House Democratic leaders had not come to Cuellar’s assistance. Cuellar secured the endorsements of the top three House Democrats, and the congressman’s campaign was also propped up by millions of dollars in super Pac spending aimed at attacking Cisneros. Continue reading...

Guns symbolize the power of a minority over the majority, and they’ve become the icons of a party that has become a cult seeking minority powerThe dots are easy to connect, because they’re so close together, and because they’re the entry and exit wounds inflicted on US society by the subculture whose sacrament is the gun. Texas, while tightening restrictions on abortion, has steadily loosened them on guns. These weapons are symbols of a peculiar version of masculinity made up of unlimited freedom, power, domination, of a soldier identity in which every gunslinger is the commander and anyone is a potential target, in which fear drives belligerence, and the gun owners rights extend so far no one has the right to be safe from him. Right now it’s part of a white-supremacist war cult.Anyplace its weapons are wielded is a war zone, and so this can be racked up as another way the United States is in the grip of a war that hardly deserves to be called civil. The rest of us are supposed to accommodate more and more high-powered weapons of war never intended for civilian use but used over and over against civilians in mass shootings across the country, including earlier this week when 19 fourth-graders and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, were murdered by someone whose 18th birthday made him eligible to buy the semiautomatic and hundreds of rounds of ammunition he used.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses Continue reading...

The Miami star sealed his team’s fate in the NBA Eastern Conference finals, but they wouldn’t have gotten that far without himThe game was in Jimmy Butler’s hands, as it should have been, when he made a decision that will forever be second-guessed. With less than 17 seconds remaining in the Miami Heat season, Butler quickly went for the win and attempted a three-pointer that would have given his team their first lead of the game. It rimmed out, and the Boston Celtics held on to win Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals 100-96. In doing so, they clinched their first NBA finals appearance since 2010, leaving Butler and the Heat with plenty of what ifs.Butler was philosophical about a play that may well follow him for the rest of his career. “Thought process was to go for the win, which I did,” he said. “Missed the shot but I’m taking that shot. My teammates liked the shot I took so I’m living with it.” Continue reading...

People waiting for basic, often urgent, care are trying medieval-sounding alternatives as NHS dental treatment disappearsOn a bracing winter morning in early December 2018, I’d taken the train from London to Winchester. The Hampshire cathedral city isn’t somewhere I know all that well, though what I’d heard – genteel, stolidly middle class, relentless topper of “best places to live” lists – certainly didn’t have much to do with poverty.It wasn’t long until a more complex picture emerged. I’d arrived to shadow the dental charity Dentaid, whose helpers had parked their mobile treatment van outside a local homelessness centre, where a steady queue of people had already formed. Some of those I spoke to confessed to being so desperate for treatment that they’d resorted to their own brand of “DIY dentistry”. That meant precisely what it sounds like. Self-administered dental care – including extractions and fillings – applied without proper anaesthetic or professional training. This was simply reality for the rapidly growing number of people across the country who had found themselves locked out of affordable dental healthcare.Francisco Garcia is a London-based writer and journalist Continue reading...

There is scientific evidence that reading with your children has positive chemical effects for both parent and childOne evening when my kindergartner was about two years old, a friend came over and read her Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, part of Mo Willems’ charming series about a spunky, wisecracking bird. About halfway through, the protagonist, unsuccessfully trying to convince the reader that he’s so totally not tired, opens up his beak and lets loose a huge, two-page-spanning, all-caps YAWN! which my friend – childless and accustomed to reading silently – dispassionately read as a word. My daughter looked at him like something had moved in the wastebasket, then demonstrated a properly theatrical interpretation, its force so strong it straight up tipped her over.“Dat how da pigeon yawns,” she scolded, as she righted herself and waited for him to continue.Sophie Brickman is a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, and the author of Baby, Unplugged: One Mother’s Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age Continue reading...

President and first lady seek to comfort community as DoJ launches investigation into the police’s response. Plus, how the side hustle ate the hobby

Good communication during and after birth can help the many women who experience PTSDJessica Cornwell was silent in labour. During the forceps and ventouse delivery of her twins she haemorrhaged, and her life was saved by a doctor who inserted their hand into her womb to remove her placenta. One of her sons was rushed to the newborn intensive care unit. “I couldn’t talk,” she writes in Birth Notes, her memoir of recovery from the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) she developed. “I couldn’t say anything at all.”

With the league now up to 28 teams, there are plenty of games to choose from each week. We select the ones worth watchingThe MLS Watchability Rankings are back for a third time. The league has gained a team (welcome, Charlotte FC!) and this season has been fun, fast and chaotic.There are a lot of games in MLS. So these highly subjective, very unscientific rankings, based on the elusive, nebulous “watchability” factor, can help the decision-making process when a handful of games overlap on a Saturday. One important note: this list is not based exclusively on quality – a team can be watchable while not actually being competent. Continue reading...

The mental trials that come from trying to make it as a professional tennis player are often severely underrated by fans“You get depressed for the first two days returning home and the first two days on the road, too?”I thought I was the only tennis player who struggled with this part of tour life. I’m talking with one of my best friends in professional tennis, Taylor Ng, a Dartmouth University graduate who worked on Wall Street for two years before pursuing a professional career. Today, she ranks around No 650 in the world.This article was originally published by Global Sport Matters, a project of the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University. For more stories like this, visit the Global Sport Matters website. Continue reading...

Over the past six years, Matthew Bogdanos, a retired Marine colonel who has run the Manhattan DA’s antiquities unit, has convicted a dozen people of antiquities traffickingA Roman marble portrait head of the Greek philosopher Antisthenes was sold at the Chicago salesroom Hindman Auctions last week despite claims by a leading forensic archaeologist that the valuable artifact may have links to a disgraced antiquities dealer.The sale, which made $100,000, had been opposed by Christos Tsirogiannis, head of the working group illicit antiquities trafficking, who said the head may have been linked to Robin Symes, a dealer who has been linked to looted antiquities. Continue reading...

Inquiry comes amid anger over why officers waited over an hour outside the classroom where the gunman killed 21 peopleThe US government on Sunday announced a federal investigation into the police response to the mass shooting at a Texas school five days ago as anger mounted over why armed officers waited more than one hour in the hall outside the classroom where the gunman killed 19 children and two teachers and wounded others.The US Department of Justice said it will conduct a “critical incident review” of the law enforcement action in the small south Texas city of Uvalde last Tuesday. Continue reading...

President and first lady seek to comfort community as DoJ launches investigation into police response to school shootingJoe Biden on Sunday visited Uvalde, Texas, seeking to comfort a community devastated by the latest American mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 19 elementary school children and two teachers.The visit marked the second presidential visit related to a massacre within two weeks following a racist attack in Buffalo, New York, as Democrats in Washington offered tentative hope of bipartisan gun reform legislation in Congress. Continue reading...

New York governor seeks to ban people under 21 from buying assault rifles, while California governor intends to sign restrictions, including the right to sue gun manufacturersWith Republicans stonewalling for years on any significant federal gun safety legislation, some states are now rushing to take steps themselves following large-scale shootings in New York and Texas this month.Democrats in some blue states are making fresh efforts to reinvigorate proposals toward what gun control advocates call “evidence-based policy interventions”. Continue reading...

Kamala Harris calls for ban on assault weapons after attending last funeral of those killed in Buffalo attackJoe Biden lamented “too much violence, too much fear, too much grief” after the latest US mass shooting as he prepared to visit Uvalde, where police face intensifying scrutiny for waiting outside the classroom where a teenage gunman with an assault rifle killed 19 children and two teachers.The US president and first lady, Jill Biden, arrived in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday morning, both dressed in black. They visited the informal memorial of flowers and notes that has accumulated outside Robb elementary school, where the carnage took place last Tuesday. Continue reading...

Outrage after Parkland went nowhere – children are still dying. After the horrors of Texas, US politicians must introduce gun controlsWhen I was a sophomore at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, in Parkland, Florida, a gunman entered my school and murdered 17 people. I hid in a closet, terrified that I was next. As a survivor of a mass shooting, whenever another shooting happens and gets broadcast in the media, your own trauma begins to haunt you again. And so it was recently, when a gunman entered Robb elementary school in Texas last week, and killed 21 people: 19 children and two teachers.After the shooting at Parkland, we heard a lot of chants like “never again” and “enough is enough”. Sometimes, it felt like we were on the brink of change, like this senseless tragedy might be the catalyst for gun reform. There was no shortage of protesters or outrage.Dara Rosen is a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida Continue reading...

Despite 14 years of work and about $5bn spent, the 2008 promise of quick transport between Los Angeles and San Francisco has not materializedIn the depths of the 2008 recession, Californians were sold on a beautiful dream: a bullet train that would whisk them between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours.The project was to be the start of a new era of high-speed rail that would eventually stretch the full length of the west coast, from San Diego to Vancouver, across the desert to Las Vegas, and, eventually, all across the continental United States. Continue reading...

Local law enforcement under scrutiny over delay in entering Uvalde classroomNew details on the apparent failure of local law enforcement to respond swiftly to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, are increasingly raising questions about police procedures introduced after the 1999 Columbine shooting in Colorado and how they were followed, or not.After three days of contradictory accounts of the police response tothe attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead in the small south Texas city, it emerged that the decision by police to wait outside the classroom where the 18-year-old gunman was barricaded appears to contravene federal and state guidelines, developed over two decades, that prioritize police disabling the gunman. Continue reading...

More details have emerged about those who were killed on Tuesday when a gunman attacked Robb elementary school in Uvalde, TexasAs the United States lamented the nation’s latest mass school shooting, in which a gunman killed 19 children and two adults after storming into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, more details emerged of those who died.A law enforcement official said all victims were in the same fourth-grade classroom. Continue reading...

From Afghanistan to North Korea, Joe Biden is running short of time to repair the damage done by his predecessor in the White HouseEven by Donald Trump’s chaotic standards, the “comprehensive peace agreement” for Afghanistan signed by the US in Doha in February 2020 was a huge own goal.The pact posited no binding ceasefire, no power-sharing requirements, and no political roadmap. In return for some mumbo-jumbo about al-Qaida, Trump pledged total, unconditional US and Nato withdrawal within 14 months. Continue reading...

Sue Gray’s investigation into Partygate underlines how much will have to be done to disinfect our government institutions when Mr Johnson is finally thrown outPicture the squalid scene that confronted the cleaning staff on the morning after a night before of drunken delinquency by the denizens of Downing Street. Wine stains on walls. Pools of sick. Empties spilling out of bins. Mounds of party detritus on the floor. The heart of government, the place where you’d most hope for sobriety in the middle of a pandemic, turned into a vomit-splattered nightclub. The only heroes in Sue Gray’s investigation into Partygate are the security staff who suffered abuse when they tried to break up illegal gatherings and the cleaners who had to mop up.Now try to picture scenes of all-night boozing, puking, punch-ups, vandalism and law-breaking at Number 10 under any other prime minister. You can’t. Nothing like this happened under any of Boris Johnson’s predecessors. The character of organisations is immensely influenced by the example set by the person at the top. When that person is Mr Johnson, you get a culture of selfish, arrogant, entitled, amoral, narcissistic rule-breaking that combines, in the true spirit of the Bullingdon Club, snobbery with yobbery. Continue reading...

2000 Mules has been resoundingly debunked by factcheckers, but the film has earned praise from Trump and other RepublicansThe atrium of Cinemark Fairfax Corner could not be described as characterful. The yellow walls, arcade games and rows of snacks and popcorn might be any bland multiplex cinema anywhere. But the digital dashboard of films currently playing merits a second glance.Along with Bad Guys, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once, there is the title 2000 Mules. Anyone hoping for a superhero blockbuster about an army of horse-donkey hybrids will be disappointed. Continue reading...

Putin aimed to reset the world order when his forces invaded. Russians must be persuaded he can’t – maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger can helpRussia needs to stop being a threat: to its neighbours, to its own people, to the world. Minimising that threat should be the goal of our policies and the only way to face up to the reality of the Kremlin’s boot stamping on so many faces. The hope that the current iteration of Russia is ready to recognise that other states have rights is gone. Putin’s Russia is not an ordinary country seeking some rational security guarantees. It’s a predator that works according to its own logic of internal oppression and external aggression. With such a state there is no going back to “normal”. No clever “deal” that can be cut to restore previous relations.As we work out what minimising Russia’s threat means in practice, we may also get to something bigger: a set of security, humanitarian and economic interconnections that redefine how we reduce aggression in an interconnected age. Russia’s aim in its invasion of Ukraine was to reset the world order, tilt it towards dictatorships, impunity and the right of great powers to crush the small. Instead, it may produce a desire to strengthen rights, sovereignty and democracy. In pushing for the worst, it might produce something better. Continue reading...

It was a very steep learning curve for the Instagram-shy judgeMy jaw is aching slightly, from clenching through the bits of the Wagatha Christie trial that involved educating the judge in matters of Instagram. Whole days in an oak-panelled room turned on nuance previously reserved for teenagers at bus stops. What it means when someone unfollows you, for your ego, for your social standing, for who you are as a human. Who follows whom and why, the shade when someone messages you and you know they’re only pretending to be a mate and on and on, millions of pounds turning to dust as the internet is explained piece by piece, like grandchildren giving a lesson in how to use the new telly remote at Christmas.It’s funny, but it’s also shocking, the fact that the next generation lives in a new and different world, with its own language, laws and rules of beauty. And that, for all the mapping of said world, for all the Duolingo lessons in its grammar, dialect and phrasing, those who have not grown up there are destined to forever remain tourists, squinting at the view. Continue reading...

Joe Biden welcomes ‘good news’ as Bubs Australia increases production and reassures local customersAn Australian company is planning to ship at least 1.25m cans of its baby formula to the US to help ease a nationwide shortage.The US Food and Drug Administration said some of it was now in stock for transport and more would be produced by Bubs Australia in the coming weeks and months. Continue reading...

The industry has been ‘OK looking away’ from tragedies, says an ex-insider. Change will only come with huge pressureEven the murder of 19 elementary school children in Texas could not deter America’s gun industry from enjoying its annual celebration of the weapons that slaughtered them.Ahead of its three-day convention in Houston this weekend, the National Rifle Association offered its “deepest sympathies” to the families of the eight- to 11-year-old students, and two of their teachers, killed in a “horrific and evil crime” in the small town of Uvalde on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Teenager displayed worrying behavior in the months before the Uvalde attack, schoolmates tell news outletsWarning signs were reportedly mounting in the months before the 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas, opened fire on a classroom of young children and their teachers four days ago in what would become America’s deadliest school shooting in a decade.The teenager had used the social media app Yubo to threaten school shootings and rape, as well as to show off a rifle he had bought, CNN reported on Saturday. Continue reading...

Vice-president demands action after speaking at funeral for Ruth Whitfield, oldest person killed in Buffalo shootingKamala Harris called for a ban on assault weapons in the US and the passage of much-delayed gun control legislation after speaking on Saturday at a funeral for the oldest victim of the Buffalo mass shooting earlier this month.After giving remarks at the service for Ruth Whitfield, the oldest person killed during the grocery store shooting two weeks ago, Harris called upon lawmakers to pass an assault weapons ban, while speaking with reporters. Continue reading...

Al Sharpton calls on ‘all good people’ to stand up for justice at last funeral for victims of racist attackThe last funeral for victims of a gunman’s racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, two weeks ago took place on Saturday afternoon, as the oldest person to die in the mass shooting was laid to rest.Ruth Whitfield, 86, was shot and killed along with nine other people, all of them Black, when a white supremacist and self-declared “eco-fascist” extremist allegedly traveled far from his home to wreak violence and tragedy. Continue reading...

Timeline suggests about 78 minutes passed from when the gunman entered school to when officers breached the classroomJoe Biden lamented “too much violence, too much fear, too much grief” in the latest US mass shooting as he prepared to visit Uvalde, where authorities said police had made “the wrong decision” not to storm a classroom where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.The US president and first lady, Jill Biden, will travel to the small southern Texas city on Sunday, five days after it was plunged into horror when an 18-year-old with a military-style rifle attacked an elementary school. Continue reading...

After the horrific school shooting in Texas, some Republicans are choosing to channel their energy towards door control to deflect from gun reformIt can be hard to get your head around what rightwingers in the US actually believe. On the one hand, they claim to love babies; on the other hand, they’re against government funds going towards helping to feed babies. They claim to love freedom and hate government meddling, but then they’re frenetically trying to pass bills that would take away a woman’s freedom over her own body and allow the government to meddle in intimate reproductive choices. Like I said, they’re a complex bunch! Still, I’ve mapped their moral compass as best I can, and compiled this handy cheatsheet to help understand where conservatives stand on various issues. Here you go.ViagraGunsUterusesBooksLeggingsDisneyThe word “gay”Trans peopleCritical race theoryBirth controlDoorsArwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...

Speaking at the gun lobby’s convention, the former US president repeated his call to arm teachersDonald Trump has said the recent US school shooting is a reason to arm law-abiding citizens, not disarm them.The former US president was a guest speaker at the National Rifle Association (NRA), which held its annual convention in Houston on Friday. Continue reading...

The president has long fought for restrictions but deep divisions have often left him hamstrungLess than two hours after returning from a five-day trip to Asia, a visit meant to signal American strength, Joe Biden walked slowly into the Roosevelt Room of the White House, visibly shaken, to address one of the nation’s greatest weaknesses.Another bloody mass shooting in America. This time in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, making it the deadliest shooting at an elementary school since the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Continue reading...

Schoolchildren, teachers and family members offer graphic details of day gunman killed 19 children and two adultsSurvivors of the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers are beginning to share their stories, painting a graphic and horrifying picture of the tragedy that unfolded that day.Miah Cerrillo, 11, told a CNN producer her fourth-grade class was watching Disney’s Lilo & Stitch when the gunman entered the classroom and made eye contact with her teacher and shot her dead, as well as some of her other classmates. Continue reading...

As we reach Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee, my mind is drawn to another ageing monarch’s pomp and ceremonyWhen the machine begins to break down, nobody is spared: even in the most majestic corporeality, bones ache, muscles weaken, tendons hurt, joints creak. Walking, previously a thoughtless activity, now needs deliberation and strategy. Longer lives and longer reigns merely postpone the process. Aged 96, and with “episodic mobility issues”, the Queen this week used a motor buggy to get around the Chelsea flower show; her arthritic great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, aged 78 at the time of the diamond jubilee in 1897, toured her own garden party in a horse-drawn carriage, literally talking down to everyone she met. “Drove about my guests, to many of whom I spoke,” she wrote in her diary, “but I could not see many whom I wished to.”An even bolder innovation had been planned for her. The diamond jubilee had at its heart a magnificent procession of 50,000 imperial troops, who marched or rode from Buckingham Palace by two separate routes converging at St Paul’s for a thanksgiving ceremony that praised the Lord and blessed the Queen. The procession was spectacular. Britain had seen nothing as dazzling in its grandeur and variety before, and never saw it to quite the same extent again. This was peak empire. Hussars from Canada, Hong Kong policemen in conical hats, Indian lancers, Dyaks, Maoris, cavalrymen from New South Wales: it was said to be the largest military force ever assembled in London, and behind it in her carriage rode a little old woman, bowing and smiling and dressed modestly in grey and black. Mark Twain, there to write about it, thought that “she was the procession herself” and all the rest, spurs, men, rifles, gleaming helmets and trotting horses, “mere embroidery”.Ian Jack is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

The year before Roe, Michigan voters defeated a referendum to legalize abortion. Now activists are compelled to try againBeth Morris is a 63-year-old homemaker whose pink Planned Parenthood shirt and clipboard would hardly betray her as a moderate Republican.But here she is, in the middle of an abortion rights rally on the University of Michigan’s campus in Ann Arbor, collecting signatures to support a constitutional amendment to keep abortion legal in one of America’s swingy “purple” states. Continue reading...

The ex-president suffered some humiliation when his candidates lost in the Georgia primaries – but the hard-right strain of Republican politics will surviveIn his campaign heyday, Donald Trump would declare it the greatest movement in the history of politics and promise: “We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning.”What never occurred to him was that the “Make America Great Again” movement – or Maga – might get sick and tired of him first. Continue reading...