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US manufacturer forced to close Michigan plant after reports of illness and death that prompted federal investigationA major US manufacturer of baby food has said that it could take six to eight weeks for its products to reach shelves following a widespread recall, exacerbating a shortage of baby formula.Abbott Laboratories, which makes baby food and formula, shut its manufacturing facility in Sturgis, Michigan, in February following a federal investigation after it recalled three baby-formula products amid reports of infant illness, including two infants who died. Continue reading...

Jalen Randle was shot as he exited a vehicle and was being pursued because he was wanted on three felony warrants, police sayAn attorney for the family of a 29-year-old Black man who was fatally shot last month by a Houston police officer said an independent autopsy shows he was shot in the back of his neck.Jalen Randle was shot on 27 April as he exited a vehicle, police said. Police said he was being pursued because he was wanted on three felony warrants. Continue reading...

The Argentinian has a strong record of linking up with oppressive monarchies. He is fast becoming the posterboy for sportswashingLess than a year after signing with Paris Saint-Germain – one of Qatar’s most prominent sportswashing projects – Lionel Messi is now the face of yet another oppressive Middle Eastern monarchy.The Argentinian was unveiled as the latest tourism ambassador for Saudi Arabia during a trip to Jeddah, a port city along the Red Sea, on Monday. Continue reading...

Soaring commodity prices swell oil giant’s profits as tech stock slide pegs back iPhone makerApple has lost its crown as the world’s most valuable company to the oil giant Saudi Aramco, as soaring commodity prices swell profits at energy companies and technology stocks continue to slide.In a sign that the old economy is reasserting itself over the new this year, Aramco eclipsed Apple on Wednesday night amid the ongoing rout on Wall Street. Continue reading...

Congressional investigation reveals the lengths meat industry went to downplay risks to workers and lobby receptive Trump officialsTrump officials “collaborated” with the meatpacking industry to downplay the threat of Covid to plant workers and block public health measures which could have saved lives, a damning new investigation has found.Internal documents reviewed by the congressional select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis reveal how industry representatives lobbied government officials to stifle “pesky” health departments from imposing evidence-based safety measures to curtail the virus spreading – and tried to obscure worker deaths from these authorities. Continue reading...

A court in Texas must reconsider its decision to sentence Mason to five years for a voting error – how does she feel?Hello Fight to Vote readers,Every Tuesday night for the last year or so, Crystal Mason has had trouble sleeping. Continue reading...

Labor leader and fired Amazon worker Chris Smalls says workers at 100 Amazon facilities have contacted him to set up a union. They need supportIn recent days, Americans have witnessed developments on the labor front that could have scarcely been imagined just a few years ago. There was the landmark union victory at Amazon’s 8,300-employee fulfillment center on Staten Island – at a corporation that many thought impossible to unionize. Then there’s the flood of union wins at another iconic company, Starbucks, with the union victorious in 57 of 64 elections at Starbucks cafes, an extraordinarily high winning percentage. What’s more, baristas have petitioned for union votes at nearly 200 more Starbucks, notwithstanding CEO Howard Schultz’s fierce efforts to squelch the union drive.At Grinnell College in Iowa, undergraduate workers voted overwhelmingly, 327 to 6, to form the nation’s first wall-to-wall undergraduate workers union, representing everyone from dining hall workers to research assistants to library aides. At Dartmouth, student dining hall workers voted 52-0 to unionize. Workers at an REI store in Manhattan voted in favor of unionizing in an 88-14 landslide, becoming the first unionize REI vote. And now tech giant Apple is facing the first-ever union drive at its retail stores.Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer. A former labor reporter for The New York Times, he has covered unions for over 25 years Continue reading...

It was supposed to be a financial revolution. Instead, crypto has become an environmentally disastrous gift to con artistsCryptocurrencies, according to their most ardent supporters, are supposed to supplant nations’ existing currencies and end central banks’ control over the money supply. Instead, individuals will be able to trade with each other in a decentralised, digital financial ecosystem. This is a good thing, they promise, because unlike states and their central banks, technology is incorruptible. Crypto-evangelists imagine technology as a replacement for social and political institutions.But technology never replaces social and political behaviour; it merely alters the rules and norms we follow. To see this in action, one need only look at the plummeting value of Terra Luna, a crypto token that crashed by 98% in a day, causing some investors to lose their life savings; the plunging value of Bitcoin and Ethereum; or the countless scam victims whose non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been stolen. NFTs use the same blockchain technology as cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to trade algorithmically generated illustrations that riff on a theme. On offer are cartoony Bored Apes, Lazy Lions and “CryptoDickButts”. Although NFTs are aesthetically uninspiring, they can sell for as much as $91.8m – and as they have grown in value, scams involving stolen NFTs have abounded. Just last month the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Instagram account was hacked, and the perpetrators stole about $3m worth of NFTs by directing followers to a fraudulent site.David A Banks is the director of globalisation studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and is the author of the forthcoming book The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America

Ethics group and Democrats say questions remain, even as workers remove Trump’s name from Old Post Office buildingWorkers took Donald Trump’s name off his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC on Wednesday, after the completion of the $375m sale of the lease to investors from Florida.House Democrats estimate the former president, under legal and financial pressure on multiple fronts, will reportedly gain $100m from the sale, once a loan for the renovations is paid off. Continue reading...

In a 49-51 vote, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting against the measure, majority leader Chuck Schumer warns that ‘it will be open season’ on people’s freedoms

Veterans like me have been waiting to know the source of our Gulf war syndrome. New research may finally give us answersI was very fit and healthy when I was deployed for the Gulf war. I ran to work every morning and led the military fitness training. I was also into motocross and used to play rugby. Now, after 30 years of suffering from “Gulf war syndrome”, I still struggle to breathe and just a month ago I had to have an injection in my spine to block the pain from my damaged nerves.For decades since the Gulf war, thousands of veterans have suffered from mystery illnesses. Part of that suffering has been not knowing the cause of that illness and not knowing what was really happening to my body.Kevin Muldoon is a Gulf war veteran Continue reading...

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu … there’s hardly anything to watch on any of them, but there’s always a reason not to cancelThe first streaming service I subscribed to was Hulu, back in 2009. It was free, with very little content, so the effort-to-reward ratio of setting up a password was almost too extravagant to bother with. I guess Netflix came next – the first subscription service I paid for. Netflix had nothing much on it, either, back in 2011, but at $8 a month, the price point was so tempting it somehow seemed cheaper than free.Then came Amazon Prime Video, included in the annual Prime package. At the time, my monthly cable bill was about $140 a month, and this new model offered a startling promise: not only to slash my bills, but to obviate the need to deal with Time Warner Cable ever, ever again.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The MyPillow chief and Trump ally has become a popular figure on the right, spending lavishly on lawsuits to ban voting machines and endorsing candidatesAmong the rightwing crusaders promoting Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, wealthy pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell occupies a key niche, spending lavishly on lawsuits to ban voting machines in some states, endorsing big lie advocates for top offices in 2022 and financing an anti-voting machine film, plus related projects.In some respects, Lindell is an unlikely figure to emerge in the hotbed of US politics and the conservative ecosystem. As the chief executive of MyPillow he was once better known for his TV adverts than his extremist politics. But Lindell has become an ally of a still-powerful Trump who is eying a 2024 bid to return to the White House. Lindell has also become a popular figure on the right himself, making several appearances at recent Trump rallies. Continue reading...

The full uniformed flummery of the state opening of parliament belies the fragile state of the nationYou had only to watch a few minutes of the state opening of parliament to know that, in Britain, an old order is passing. Most comment has focused, naturally enough, on the enforced absence of the Queen, and on Prince Charles deputising for her. But the process of change we are witnessing is not just about individuals, it’s about our governance too. It’s about our politics – and it’s even about the nation itself.The rituals and robes of a state opening appear familiar. But they are an invented tradition from the imperial age, like the building in which they take place. What we saw on Tuesday dates from 1852, during the reign of Queen Victoria, who only intermittently opened parliament herself. Most of the current uniformed flummery was created for Edward VII in 1902.Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Warning from reproductive rights advocate comes as US states pass or debate legislation that would give full rights to embryosIn vitro fertilization treatment is facing a “clear and present danger” and could be a “casualty” of some of the proposed anti-abortion laws that are emerging across the US, according to a key advocate of reproductive medicine.The warning comes as US states, including Louisiana, have passed or are debating new proposed legislation that would give full rights to embryos, which in some cases means fertilized eggs, created in the process of IVF and not implanted in a woman, would have the same legal rights as children. Continue reading...

The 76ers star lost out to Nikola Jokić for the award for the NBA’s best player but many in Philadelphia believe he was robbed of the top prizeThe Philadelphia 76ers’ slim chances of winning their first NBA title in 39 years pretty much cratered Tuesday when they were blown out by the Miami Heat in the fifth game of their second-round playoff series. The Sixers need to beat the Heat two in a row just to survive.Then the Sixers would need to win eight more games over two series for the title. That hardly seems likely, given the way they wobbled in the dismal 35-point loss to Miami, even with Joel Embiid, the banged-up superstar center who has had the best season in his career. Continue reading...

For a new show it was just me and my camera. Given my past interviews, I am too terrified to watch the resultsI have just done a TV programme called Winter Walks for BBC Four. Every week someone takes a walk somewhere nice, talking to themselves. It is filmed on a clever little 360-degree camera on a stick you hold in front of you. There’s another camera filming from a distance, and a drone buzzing overhead some of the time, but essentially you are all alone. It’s a beautiful but dangerous programme. Dangerous in that, when it comes to interviewing, there’s safety in numbers. And, here, the number is one.If you are interviewing someone in a studio, or out and about, for radio or television, you invariably have colleagues around you. They are there for technical or editorial reasons, but they are also a kind of comfort blanket. I didn’t realise this until the blanket wasn’t there. A long time ago, I did this thing for radio where I invited people around to my place, cooked, and interviewed them over dinner. I made spinach soup in British racing green for Stirling Moss, lambs’ testicles for Vinny Jones, and chicken bonne femme for Jenny Agutter. I don’t recall what I made for David Mellor, but I do remember his response when I asked him something about the demise of his first marriage. He glared at me and said: “Let’s leave that, shall we?” Silence.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Toby Price, an assistant principal who plans to pursue an appeal with the chancery courts of Mississippi, was fired in MarchThe firing of a Mississippi assistant principal for reading pupils a humorous children’s book, I Need A New Butt!, has been upheld by his school district.The book describes a boy who tries to find a new bottom after he sees a “crack” in his current bottom which makes him afraid it is broken. Continue reading...

The hardy root crop could be part of the solution to the grain supply challenges aggravated by the Ukraine warGrowing up in Nigeria, a staple of our family dinner table was a doughy dish called fufu. In the US or Europe, fufu would be called a dumpling. The difference is that dumplings, typically made with wheat flour in the northern hemisphere, in Nigeria are made from cassava flour.I think about this crucial difference as the escalating food crisis in Ukraine exposes a dangerous global dependence on a single commodity: wheat. Nigeria, for example, is the world’s sixth largest wheat importer, with a significant portion coming from Ukraine and Russia. Like many African countries, Nigeria is bracing for the impact of surging wheat prices. Continue reading...

Black labrador Max attracted volunteers who had been searching for Sherry Noppe, who had been missing for three daysA Texas woman who suffers from dementia and was missing for three days was found in the early hours of last Friday, bruised and dehydrated but safe, after her dog’s barking helped rescuers track her down.Sherry Noppe, 63, left her home in Houston, Texas last week, to take her black labrador, Max, for a stroll. The pair never returned. Continue reading...

The 12-story Champlain Towers South building in Surfside had collapsed abruptly in June 2021, killing 98 peopleA nearly $1bn tentative settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit brought by families of victims and survivors of last June’s condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, an attorney said Wednesday.Harley S Tropin announced the $997m settlement during a hearing before Miami-Dade circuit court judge Michael Hanzman. Still pending final approval, the settlement involves insurance companies, developers of an adjacent building and other defendants. Continue reading...

Final tally was 49-51, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting against the measureThe US Senate on Wednesday failed to advance legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law, after it was blocked by Republicans.It was a largely symbolic vote by Democrats to mobilize Americans around the issue ahead of a likely supreme court decision striking down the protections enshrined by Roe v Wade. Continue reading...

The supreme court overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that protects women's rights to abortion in the US would create an open season on Americans' freedoms, majority leader Chuck Schumer has said.Schumer was speaking before a vote in which the US Senate rejected legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law 51-49.On 2 May, a draft decision by the United States supreme court to overturn Roe was published by Politico, which has been verified as genuine by the justices but it 'does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.'

Clarence Dixon died by lethal injection for killing Deana Bowdoin, making him the sixth person to be executed in the US in 2022An Arizona man convicted of killing a college student in 1978 was killed by the state on Wednesday after a nearly eight-year hiatus in its use of the death penalty, brought on by an execution critics say was botched and difficulty in finding lethal drugs.Clarence Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his conviction in the killing of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin. He was the sixth person to be executed in the US in 2022. Continue reading...

Blow to Ron DeSantis as judge says new congressional districts made it harder for Black voters to elect their preferred candidatesA state judge struck down new congressional districts in north Florida on Wednesday, saying that Governor Ron DeSantis, who drew the lines, had made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.“I am finding the enacted map is unconstitutional because it diminishes African Americans’ ability to elect candidates of their choice,” circuit judge Layne Smith said on Wednesday, according to the Tributary. Lawyers for the state of Florida are expected to immediately appeal the ruling, and the Florida supreme court will probably ultimately decide the case. Continue reading...

Judge says $10,000-a-day fine stopped accruing Friday when ex-president and his lawyers filed new affidavitsDonald Trump must pay a $110,000 fine to the New York state attorney and meet other conditions to purge a contempt of court order for his failure to comply with a subpoena in a civil investigation into his business practices, a judge said on Wednesday.The judge, Arthur Engoron, told a virtual hearing a $10,000-a-day fine imposed on the former president in late April stopped accruing on Friday, when Trump and his lawyers filed new affidavits detailing steps they said they took to find documents relevant to the investigation by Letitia James, the New York attorney general. Continue reading...

The quarterback has the knowledge to make a good analyst. But it’s his fame and branding the network is most interested inFear not, Tom Brady will remain the face of Sundays for the foreseeable future.Fox announced on Tuesday that Brady is set to join the network as its lead NFL analyst whenever it is that he decides to retire – which could be in 2023 … or 2063. The New York Post reported that Brady is in line to receive $375m across 10 years. Continue reading...

First-of-its-kind study establishes 408 federal schools as officials say number of children who died could be in the tens of thousandsA first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for more than a century sought to assimilate indigenous children into white society has identified more than 400 such schools that were supported by the US government and more than 50 associated burial sites, a figure that could grow substantially.The report released on Wednesday by the US interior department expands the number of schools that were known to have operated for 150 years, starting in the early 19th century and coinciding with the removal of tribes from ancestral lands. Continue reading...

Crystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 electionA Texas appeals court must reconsider its decision to uphold a five-year conviction for Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election, the state’s highest criminal court ruled on Wednesday.Mason showed up to the polls to vote in 2016, while on supervised release – which is similar to probation – for a federal tax felony. She cast a provisional ballot at the urging of election workers, which was ultimately rejected because people with felony convictions in Texas cannot vote while they are serving any part of a federal sentence. Continue reading...

John Carney says stop and search of bus carrying lacrosse team from Delaware State University ‘upsetting and concerning’The governor of Delaware has publicly condemned authorities in Georgia who searched a bus carrying a lacrosse team from a historically Black college, in what many called an instance of racial profiling.John Carney, a Democrat, released a statement about the incident, in which police officers searched the bus carrying the Delaware State University women’s lacrosse team after stopping the driver for a traffic violation. Continue reading...

2021 was a record year for overdose deaths with an estimated 107,622, CDC says, an increase of 15% from the previous yearTrevor Foster, 26, loved the Cowboys, the Yankees, fishing, animals and above all his daughter.Jarod Galloway, 21, wanted people to be the best version of themselves, and his niece was his favorite human. Continue reading...

Air traffic controller guided descent to Boca Raton airport in Florida after passenger radioed: ‘I’ve got a serious situation here’A passenger without any flying experience safely landed a plane at a Florida airport after the pilot became incapacitated.The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating the incident, which happened on Tuesday afternoon. It was believed the pilot may have suffered a medical emergency. Continue reading...

Charles Herbster’s loss was a setback for Donald Trump, in his effort to bend the GOP in his direction ahead of possible 2024 runRepublicans in Nebraska picked Jim Pillen as their nominee for governor on Tuesday, over a rival supported by Donald Trump and accused of groping multiple women.Charles Herbster’s loss was a setback for Trump, who has issued hundreds of endorsements and staged rallies in support of candidates including Herbster in an effort to bend the GOP in his direction ahead of a possible presidential run in 2024. Continue reading...

Republican senator and Trump loyalist made comments in wake of January 6 US Capitol attack to authors of new bookDemocrat Joe Biden is “the best person” to lead the US, the Republican senator and fervent Donald Trump supporter Lindsey Graham said in tapes released on Monday by the authors of a bestselling political book.The South Carolina senator was speaking on and shortly after 6 January 2021 to Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, now authors of This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future. Continue reading...

Republican leader says ‘I think it’s safe to say there aren’t 60 votes’ to pass ban should Republicans take control in midterm electionsA day before Democrats staged a vote in the Senate to codify into law the right to abortion, a right under threat from the supreme court, the Republican leader in the chamber said his party would not be able to pass an abortion ban should it take control in midterm elections in November.“Historically, there have been abortion votes on the floor of the Senate. None of them have achieved 60 votes,” Mitch McConnell told reporters. Continue reading...

President says military gradually pushing Russian troops away from key city. Plus, robot recruiters might be to blame if you are struggling to get a new job

His stand-in role to deliver the Queen’s speech is the clearest sign yet that the Elizabeth II era is drawing to a closeThis moment was always going to come.Due to her failing health, Queen Elizabeth II was not present at yesterday’s state opening of parliament – arguably her most important ceremonial performance in the calendar year. Last night’s palace press release explaining that Prince Charles would stand in for his mother follows a pattern of recent similar announcements, the subtext of which is clear: the Queen is not well enough to fulfil the role expected of her. Continue reading...

America will still be America. But it is fast becoming two versions of itself. The open question is: how will the two be civil toward each other?The US supreme court’s upcoming decision to reverse Roe v Wade (an early draft of which was leaked last week) doesn’t ban abortions; it leaves the issue to the states. As a result, it will put another large brick in the growing wall separating blue and red America.The second American civil war is already occurring, but it is less of a war than a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Critics say an MLS team playing on a baseball field is symbolic of soccer’s place in US sports’ pecking order. But many love the unique atmosphere in the BronxBrooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten, from the Battery to the top of Manhattan, New York City FC has long searched for a permanent home within the five boroughs, but has so far struggled to make it happen.Since joining Major League Soccer in 2015, NYC FC has played the majority of its home games in the Bronx-based Yankee Stadium, home to Major League Baseball’s Yankees whose owners, Yankee Global Enterprises, also have a 20% stake in the soccer club. It was supposed to be a temporary measure while NYC FC worked on finding a site for a permanent, soccer-specific home, but eight seasons later the club is still there, playing on a baseball field. Continue reading...

Mayor Eric Adams promised to build more shelters – but advocates are slamming his tactics as retreading old policies that have failed to address the underlying problemsSinthia Vee is not sure where her art supplies went.“That’s a big old question mark,” she said, sitting outside Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood, on a recent sunny afternoon. It will rain soon. Continue reading...

More recruiting companies are using AI technology to review applications. But does it make mistakes – and can you boost your chances?Martin Burch had been working for the Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones for a few years and was looking for new opportunities. One Sunday in May 2021, he applied for a data analyst position at Bloomberg in London that looked like the perfect fit. He received an immediate response, asking him to take a digital assessment.It was strange. The assessment showed him different shapes and asked him to figure out the pattern. He started feeling incredulous. “Shouldn’t we be testing my abilities on the job?” he asked himself.Instead of trying to stand out, make your resume machine-readable: no images, no special characters such as ampersands or tildes. Use the most common template. Use short, crisp sentences – declarative and quantitative, said Ian Siegel, CEO of the job platform ZipRecruiterList licenses and certifications on your resumeMake sure your resume matches the keywords in the job description and compare your resume to the job description using online resume scanners to see if you are a match for the roleFor entry-level and administrative jobs, consider stating that you are competent in Microsoft office suite applications even if it’s not in the job description, said Harvard business professor Joe Fuller. Continue reading...

Screaming fans have spread deranged rumours and mocked accusations of abuse that should be taken seriouslySay what you like about Amber Heard – no, seriously, do. You can say that the actor took a bump of cocaine while on the stand during one of the most high-profile defamation cases of the century. You can say she stole lines from The Talented Mr Ripley and recited them in court while testifying about her relationship with fellow actor Johnny Depp. On social media, you can say both of these baseless, untrue things, and many others besides.In the past week, both of these unfounded claims have been spreading faster than wildfire. For those of you unfamiliar with the saga of Depp and Heard, bear with me: in June 2018, Depp sued News Group Newspapers – the company that publishes the Sun – after the paper alleged he was a “wife beater”. Later that year, Heard published an op-ed about sexual violence in the Washington Post (Depp wasn’t mentioned in the piece). Depp lost his libel battle against the Sun in London’s high court in November 2020, after the judge found the majority of alleged assaults made by Depp against Heard were “proved to the civil standard” (on the balance of probabilities). He is now suing the Washington Post in Fairfax, Virginia, for defamation over Heard’s op-ed.Amelia Tait is a writer on tech and internet phenomenaDo 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...

Tuesday’s races in West Virginia and Nebraska seen as a measure of the former president’s grip on Republican votersA Trump-endorsed congressional candidate has won the Republican primary in West Virginia, while the former president’s favored candidate fell short in Nebraska’s primary election for governor.Alex Mooney on Tuesday beat fellow incumbent David McKinley in West Virginia’s second congressional district Republican primary on Tuesday. Continue reading...

State findings come despite plea from governor to use less, and as Los Angeles brings in drastic new watering restrictionsCalifornia’s drought is worsening yet new figures show that in March, water usage jumped nearly 19% compared to 2020, during one of the driest months on record.The startling figures come despite pleas from the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and other authorities who have urged residents to curb their water usages. They also come the same day that the Los Angeles mayor ordered residents and businesses to restrict outdoor watering to just two days a week in an effort to conserve. Continue reading...

Former president also wanted to know if it would constitute an act of war and if hurricanes could be nuked to stop themAs president, Donald Trump repeatedly asked aides if China could be manufacturing hurricanes and sending them to damage the United States, three unnamed former senior officials told Rolling Stone on Tuesday.Trump also reportedly wanted to know if using such a “hurricane gun” would constitute an act of war, and if so, whether the US could retaliate militarily. Continue reading...