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Move follows a series of hardline measures by Republicans in the state to alter teaching in schools as governor welcomes newsFlorida’s education department has rejected 54 mathematics textbooks from next year’s school curriculum, citing alleged references to critical race theory among a range of reasoning for some of the rejections, officials announced.The department said in a news release Friday that some of the books had been rejected for failure to comply with the state’s content standards, Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking [Best], but that 21% of the books were disallowed “because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT”. Continue reading...

The new report into vaping, which resulted in calls to ban vaping entirely for younger Australians, still leaves a great number of questions

Two teenage boys killed in Pittsburgh in one of at least three shootings over the weekend, including two in South CarolinaTwo teenage boys were killed and eight other people were wounded after gunfire erupted at a party in a short-term rental home in Pittsburgh early Sunday, one of at least three mass shootings across the US on Easter weekend.The other two shootings – both in South Carolina – left a total of 18 people with bullet wounds, once again reigniting calls among advocates for meaningful gun control legislation. Continue reading...

Ship freed from muddy bottom of the Chesapeake Bay at third attempt is owned by same company as ship stuck in Suez canal last yearA container ship called the Ever Forward was finally pried free on Sunday from the muddy bottom of the Chesapeake Bay more than a month after it ran aground.The Ever Forward is owned by the Evergreen Marine Corporation, the same company that owns the Ever Given, which famously ran aground and blocked the Suez canal for a week, disrupting the global supply chain.The Associated Press contributed to this report Continue reading...

Baby clothing and maternity wear retailer grew from kitchen table startupThe baby clothing and maternity wear retailer JoJo Maman Bébé – whose high-profile customers include the Duchess of Cambridge – has been snapped up by the high street company Next and a group of investment firms.Laura Tenison, who started the business in 1993 from her flatshare kitchen table and turned it into one of the UK’s leading mother and baby retailers, said the new owners had “exciting plans to expand and grow the brand much faster than we ever could, giving us the opportunity to open in new markets”. Continue reading...

Frank James, who allegedly shot 10 people on a subway train, openly talked about struggling with mental illnessDays after a man who openly talked about struggling with mental illness allegedly shot up a subway train in Brooklyn, the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, called for his state to continue prioritizing an increase in the number of available psychiatric hospital beds.Adams on Sunday said he understood the medical community’s shifting its focus to fighting the deadly coronavirus during the last two years, but at this point in the pandemic, it needed to pivot to addressing shortages in psychiatric services. Continue reading...

Fresno considered itself a success story in the fight against homelessness. By 2019, things had changed drasticallyJesus Ramirez has spent years searching for housing he can afford in Fresno, California. He jokes that he’ll remain on the streets until he’s old enough for a retirement home.For the last two years, the 47-year-old spent most nights sleeping in front of closed businesses in the heart of California’s Central Valley. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he receives $950 a month in government assistance, but he hasn’t been able to find a place in his budget in Fresno, which had the greatest rent increases of any US city last year. Continue reading...

Indigenous women are underrepresented in the US Congress and other elected offices. The Native Action Network wants to change thatOn a picturesque island just a 30-minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle, Juanita Perez described losing a recent race for a delegate seat for the Tlingit and Haida tribes:“I didn’t have all the tools to do it the right way,” she said. Continue reading...

The government’s catalogue of embarrassments found a perfect symbol last week in a 500-tonne mountain of rotting beetrootLike a bald man masturbating alone into an open pedal bin, Boris Johnson’s Brexit Britain disgusts itself. And yet, despite being observed on the gents’ toilet’s security camera that is the modern world stage, it continues its abasement unabashed. After the second world war, the German volk were described as experiencing kollektivschuld, a national shame. But the capacity for shame has been surgically removed from our leaders. And it pulses only weakly, like some underactive perineal muscle, in the electorate that endorses them. Could it be possible instead for the physical mass of a nation, rather than the citizens it comprises, to display the attributes of shame?Brexiter culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, who didn’t know what the customs union was, has called publicly for the removal of public funding for a TV channel that isn’t publicly funded; Brexiter Dominic Raab, who had not appreciated the importance of Calais, went paddleboarding in Crete while Kabul rescue cats fought to get on British planes; and Brexiter Rishi Sunak, who has all his different breads in all his different houses, took lucrative advantage of tax loopholes that the EU he sought to exit had hoped to close.Rescheduled national 2022 dates of Stewart’s 2020 tour, Snowflake Tornado, Edinburgh fringe shows, and dates for the 2022-23 show, Basic Lee, are all on sale now. A DVD and soundtrack of the hit rockumentary King Rocker are available here Continue reading...

UK attitudes to migration and asylum are mixed but, in the round, they are softening. The left should not join the Tories in thinking the worst of votersIt is 50 years since the most principled decision about refugees in postwar Britain was taken. The then prime minister Ted Heath’s insistence on upholding Britain’s duty to protect the 28,000 Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin showed political courage. Doing the right thing by them was broadly unpopular in 1972. Indeed, Whitehall panic in the face of Enoch Powell’s pressure saw the Foreign Office ask Bermuda and then the Falklands if they might provide an “island asylum” to limit the numbers who may come to Britain.Ugandan Asian migrants have contributed much to Britain. Their British-born children have enjoyed opportunities in professional life beyond their parents’ hopes. It could even be an indicator of integration that it is Priti Patel, the first British Asian woman to occupy a great office of state, who leads this government’s search for an asylum island for our times. On Thursday, the home secretary proudly unveiled her plan to send asylum seekers who reach Britain to Africa instead. Continue reading...

Britain’s ‘lion in Kyiv’ can roar all he likes but the tragedy will not end until the west swaps gesture politics for real action

The president remains favourite to carry the election, but his task will become no easierAlthough Emmanuel Macron did a little better than expected in the first round of the French presidential election last Sunday, the results were not a huge surprise. The second round next Sunday will be between Macron and the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, exactly as it was five years ago. But the results confirmed two worrying trends in French politics that were already apparent – and which are also evident to some extent across much of the rest of continental Europe.The first is the realignment of politics away from a fault line between left and right, to one between “radical” centrism and populism. The centre-left Socialist and centre-right Les Républicains candidates both received less than 5% of the vote, a lower share of the vote than either of these parties had ever received before. Both Macron and Le Pen see themselves as being “beyond left and right” – that is, though they both want us to think of them as being opposites, they actually mirror each other. From a democratic point of view, this realignment is disastrous. Continue reading...

In new book, Republican and former undercover CIA officer rejects political extremesIt was a plot twist worthy of Homeland.Will Hurd got home one night and told his fiancee that he was in fact an undercover officer in the CIA. And there was more. They would have to move to Pakistan. Continue reading...

Inflation hit 8.5% in March as a mix of post-pandemic demand, price gouging and the Ukraine war dragged down Biden’s ratingsIn the days leading up to the release of the US labor department’s latest inflation report, the White House tried to deflate expectations. White House officials said they expected the March inflation rate to be “extraordinarily elevated” because of rising gas prices, driven largely by war in Ukraine.Unfortunately for Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, they were proven right. The inflation report, released on Tuesday, showed US prices increased by 8.5% between March 2021 and March 2022 – the highest level of US inflation since 1981. Continue reading...

Police said five other people were hurt while trying to escape the shooting, which arose from a personal disputeA 22-year-old man has been arrested in connection with a shooting at a South Carolina shopping mall in which 14 people were either shot or injured during a stampede to escape, police said on Saturday night.The man was one of three people to be detained immediately after the incident, which happened just outside South Carolina’s capital of Colombia, and he will be charged with unlawfully carrying a pistol. Continue reading...

Griselda Verduzco Armenta was trying to get over the barrier with the help of coyotes to find a more secure future for her daughters

I don’t have a community here yet. I’m attempting to build one by picking through my new neighbours’ rubbish

Greg Abbott hit brakes on policy after a week of backlash and fears of deepening economic losses as food supplies held in protestTexas governor Greg Abbott has made an about-face on his policy of tighter inspections of trucks entering Texas from Mexico, a week after he implemented the policy which led to Mexican truckers blockading border bridges in protest and holding up food supplies to the US as a result.He reversed course on Friday night after a week of intensifying backlash and fears of deepening economic losses. Continue reading...

The Ockenden report revealed fatal myths in maternity care. But their potent allure remainsFor Grantly Dick-Read, the Victorian originator of the UK’s natural childbirth movement, birthing women in Britain should emulate those, as he phrased it, “of more primitive types”. In Natural Childbirth, 1933, he pictured one of these individuals disappearing into a “thicket” – it sounded plausible enough from Woking – to await her pain-free labour.“Natural birth is all that she looks for; there are no fears in her mind; no midwives spoiling the natural process; she has no knowledge of the tragedies of sepsis, infection and haemorrhage.” Continue reading...

The reaction to the Northern Ireland manager blaming a 5-0 defeat on women being ‘emotional’ shows progress of sortsIt was a bad day at the office for Northern Ireland manager, Kenny Shiels. Discussing his team’s 5-0 defeat to England on Tuesday, a loss that ended their hopes for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, he explained that “girls and women are more emotional than men, so they take a goal and then they don’t take that very well”. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue.He went on to explain his theory, using statistics about how often a second goal is conceded quickly after the first. “That’s an emotional goal,” he suggested. After a minute or so of chat about the subject, there was a telltale pause. “I shouldn’t have told you that,” he said. Continue reading...

People are confusing wealth and intelligence if they read too much into the tech entrepreneur’s cheerleading for the cryptocurrencySince powdered rhino horn has (rightly) been banned, only two aphrodisiacs remain: political power and great wealth. Of these, the second is the more interesting, partly because most humans, especially journalists, seem to be affected by it. It’s what leads them to assume that if someone is fabulously rich, then she or he must be very smart. That’s why the super-rich are invariably surrounded by fawning sycophants – and also why they eventually come to believe that they themselves are geniuses.Which brings us neatly to Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s leading contrarian. With a net worth of perhaps $5bn (£3.9bn), he is undoubtedly rich, though not in the Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or even Bill Gates league. But since he is the only public intellectual that the tech industry has produced, there is a widespread belief that he must also be a deep thinker, which is why organisations ask him to give “keynote” speeches. Continue reading...

Jacob Christian Muse, arrested Friday night, faces charges of malice murder for killing three people at a local gun rangePolice in Georgia have arrested a man accused of killing a local coroner’s parents and son during a robbery at the family’s gun range earlier this month, according to officials.Jacob Christian Muse, 21, faces three counts of malice murder in the 7 April shooting deaths of Luke Hawk, 19; Tommy Hawk, 75; and Evelyn Hawk, 75, which rattled their rural community about 50 miles south-west of Atlanta. Continue reading...

Anti-corruption campaigner Bill Browder says ‘whole class of British lawyers’ making money out of lawsuits against journalists, dissidents and whistleblowersThe anti-corruption campaigner Bill Browder is calling on the US to issue visa bans against British lawyers who he has accused of “enabling” Russian oligarchs.The US-born financier, an outspoken and longtime critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, has said that installing such a ban would strike at the heart of what he described as a persistent problem of oligarchs using the UK legal system against journalists and whistleblowers, tying them up in expensive lawsuits. Continue reading...

A latte is a powerful symbol of normality for a friend working to help Ukrainian refugees arriving in PolandI pick up the phone to an old friend who, until a few weeks ago, had a working life a bit like mine; one might grandly call it a portfolio career, but in truth it’s a matter of turning your hand to all sorts of things to make a buck. In his case, a Starbuck; he’s a coffee devotee and, as we chatted, a sad story came to light, which saw him being relieved of his takeaway latte by an officious concierge as he arrived at a swanky office building for a meeting. Honestly, he said, I could have cried, to which you might retort, well, go ahead and cry me a river.Except that the latte was a little manifestation of creature comfort and normality, a treat to power him through a whistlestop trip to London, where he normally lives, but from which he has been largely absent recently. Nowadays, you can most often find him in Jaroslaw in Poland, where he has gone to volunteer for a newly founded charity called Poland Welcomes, its mission to provide shelter and amenities to Ukrainian women and children who have been forced to leave their homes. At the last count, they had 500 guests across a series of hastily adapted sites; they’re trying to scale up to 2,000. Continue reading...

Frank James, 62, arrested in Manhattan a day after attack on subway in Brooklyn in which more than 20 were woundedFive people who provided “critical information” that helped lead to the arrest of the man charged with this week’s mass shooting in a New York subway will share a $50,000 reward, police announced.The suspect, wearing a gas mask, had filled a crowded subway car traveling through Brooklyn with thick black smoke from a canister and opened fire last Tuesday on morning rush-hour passengers, injuring more than 20, including 10 with gunshot wounds. Continue reading...

Last year the US government lifted millions of children out of poverty when it expanded the Child Tax Credit – and then the policy was simply chucked awayChild poverty is bad. I think we can all agree on that, right? Americans are divided on lots of issues but it’s reasonable to suppose that, no matter where someone sits on the political spectrum, they would want kids to have enough to eat. Right?Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...

The US presidential debate has been thrown into doubt – and the move is proof of the RNC’s eagerness to do Trump’s biddingOne of the marquee moments of any US presidential election – the televised debate – has been thrown into doubt by the Republican party’s decision on Thursday to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.The Republican National Committee (RNC) grumbled that the group that has run the debates since 1988 is biased and refuses to enact reforms. It promised to “find newer, better debate platforms” in future. Continue reading...

Some say his bets on extreme candidates are risky, as losses could threaten his role as king and kingmaker in the Republican partyHe has long held that the true measure of a man is his TV ratings. So perhaps it came as no surprise when Donald Trump endorsed a celebrity doctor for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania.“They liked him for a long time,” Trump said of Mehmet Oz at a rally in Pennsylvania last week. “That’s like a poll. You know, when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll. That means people like you.” Continue reading...

Santa Ana residents were awakened from their sleep as police played loud music to prevent themselves from being recordedA California police department has launched an investigation into its own officers who were filmed blaring copyrighted Disney music in attempts to prevent residents from recording them.The incident in question occurred during a vehicle search on the night of 4 April, when residents in Santa Ana, a city near Los Angeles, woke up to a series of Disney songs being blasted outside their windows. The songs included Toy Story’s You Got a Friend in Me, Encanto’s We Don’t Talk About Bruno, Mulan’s Reflection and Coco’s Un Poco Loco. Continue reading...

State party members had reportedly called on the ex-president to not back any candidate, pointing to Vance’s past statementsDonald Trump has picked a side in the contentious Republican primary for US Senate in Ohio, backing JD Vance, the bestselling author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy.In doing so on Friday, the former president chose to forgive Vance’s previous opposition to him and caustic comments about Trump. Continue reading...

The vice-president and her husband reported a gross income of $1.7m while the Bidens made $611,000Kamala Harris and her husband earned more than twice as much as Joe Biden and his wife did last year, according to copies of their income tax returns released on Friday.Harris and the so-called second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, reported a federal adjusted gross income of about $1.7m in 2021, which was about the same they claimed to have earned the prior year. Continue reading...

Former EPA administrator is seeking seat being vacated by Republican senator Jim Inhofe in OklahomaScott Pruitt, who had a scandal-ridden spell in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency under Donald Trump, filed on Friday to run for an open US Senate seat in Oklahoma.Pruitt, 53, a former state senator and Oklahoma attorney general, is seeking the seat being vacated by the longtime Republican senator Jim Inhofe. Continue reading...

Subpoenaed former White House adviser gives virtual deposition on whether Trump encouraged supporters to march on CapitolFormer White House aide Stephen Miller testified on Thursday to the House select committee investigating January 6 about whether Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol, according to a source familiar with the matter.The virtual deposition, which lasted for roughly eight hours and was earlier reported by the New York Times, also touched on Miller’s role in the former president’s schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election and return him to office, the source said. Continue reading...

A Black man face-down on the ground was fatally shot in the back of the head by a Michigan police officer, the violent climax of a traffic stop, foot chase and fight over a stun gun, according to videos of the 4 April incident released by police. Patrick Lyoya, 26, came to the US fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2014.

Richard Moore, 57, convicted of 1999 killing of convenience store clerk, to be first prisoner put to death in South Carolina since 2011A South Carolina prisoner scheduled to be the first man executed in the state in more than a decade has decided to die by firing squad rather than in the electric chair later this month, according to court documents filed on Friday.Richard Moore, 57, is the also first state prisoner to face the choice of execution methods after a law went into effect last year making electrocution the default and giving inmates the option to face three prison workers with rifles instead. Continue reading...

Mount Vernon’s crumbling sewage infrastructure has for years caused unsanitary backups in homes and pollution of local riversAfter decades struggling with failing sewage infrastructure, the majority-Black city of Mount Vernon, New York, is getting a significant funding package aimed at preventing unsanitary backups in homes and stopping pollution from leaking into local rivers.New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, announced on Friday that the state will dedicate $150m toward projects that include repairing and replacing the city’s collapsing sewage pipes. Some of the funding is set aside for families affected by the sewage failures. It would also help bring the city into compliance with federal court orders to stop raw sewage from pouring into the Bronx and Hutchinson rivers, which flow south into New York City’s Bronx borough, as the Guardian reported last year. Continue reading...

The family’s lawyer says Grand Rapid police officer broke protocol by using the Taser too close to LyoyaThe grief-stricken parents of the Black man shot in the back of the head by a white Michigan police officer have described their son’s death as an “execution”.Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old Congolese refugee, was killed after a traffic stop in Grand Rapids on 4 April. Continue reading...

Sharing in a celebrity couple’s joy, an elevator hitch, and why it’s time to stop quoting David MametI hate myself for it, but as with new leads on cold cases or anything involving the House of Grimaldi, I simply can’t look away. Brooklyn Beckham, whose achievements in photography are rivalled only by those of Rocco Ritchie’s in portraiture, married Nicola Peltz in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday, and on Monday the rest of us got to share in their joy. I took away three things from my glancing exposure to the 479 pages of coverage: Brooklyn’s extraordinary gaucheness, the ongoing question of what Romeo’s deal is, and the strange ubiquity of Eva Longoria. Continue reading...

It never really made sense when Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady retired and then abruptly unretired from the NFL earlier this year. Could it have all been part of an elaborate plan?Remember a few months back when Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady retired from the NFL and then unretired? How it was all just weird and awkward, and felt like there was something else going on behind the scenes? Since then, multiple unconfirmed reports have emerged suggesting that this was indeed the case. Continue reading...

New Yorkers deserve to feel safe – and not have their fears dismissed by progressives. But heavy-handed solutions won’t solve the problemOn Wednesday, police finally arrested Frank James, the man accused of shooting up a crowded subway train in New York City, wounding 10. James, strangely, had called in the tip himself, telling police he was at a Manhattan McDonald’s. Other New Yorkers spotted the subway shooter too, assisting the police.Eric Adams, the New York City mayor, touted the arrest as another victory for the New York police department and called, once more, for increased surveillance on the subways. “We believe we have a technology that we can use in the subway system that many passengers are not even going to be aware that they are walking past a device that could detect weapons, and we are excited about the possibilities and I’m not going to leave any legal technology off the table when it comes down to keeping New Yorkers safe,” Adams said on MSNBC.Ross Barkan is a New York City-based writer Continue reading...

Male voters have been drifting right in record numbers – and Republicans are taking a viciously homophobic and sexist tack to appeal to themThe 2022 midterm elections are shaping up to be among the most deeply gender-divided elections in American history. A new poll by NBC News, measuring voters’ preferences ahead of the November elections, shows that the gap in women and men’s voting patterns has deepened considerably over the past 12 years, with Republicans holding an 18-point advantage among men, and Democrats holding a 15-point advantage among women. That 33-point gender gap is up from a 16-point divide in the 2010 midterms.Despite the large degree of analytical attention that has focused on the voting habits of suburban white women, it seems that it’s men who are changing their voting habits most dramatically. The NBC News polling shows that men with college degrees have moved dramatically to the right, lurching towards Republicans by 26 points since just 2018. Men on the whole have moved towards Republicans by 20 points.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Kremlin says it will reinforce borders including nuclear weapons if Sweden and Finland join Nato. Plus, Islamic State ‘Beatles’ member convicted

Venerable Sanathavihari is breaking down language and cultural barriers to welcome newcomers to an LA templeWhen Venerable Sanathavihari was ordained as a Buddhist monk eight years ago, it was a lonely experience. As a young Mexican American who grew up Catholic in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, he didn’t know many other monks he could relate to.But since then, he’s helped build a flourishing Latino Buddhist community at Sarathchandra Buddhist Center in North Hollywood, a temple founded by Sri Lankan Americans. The temple now has two Latino monks and another in training – thought to be the most at any temple in LA – as well as a growing number of Latino laypeople who help sustain temple life. Continue reading...

Dustin Byron Thompson, 38, claimed he was following orders when he stole a coat rack from a Senate officeAn Ohio man who claimed he was only “following presidential orders” from Donald Trump when he stormed the US Capitol has been convicted by a jury that took less than three hours to reject his novel defence for obstructing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory.The federal jury on Thursday also found Dustin Byron Thompson, 38, guilty of all five of the other charges in his indictment, including stealing a coat rack from an office inside the Capitol during the riot on 6 January 2021. The maximum sentence for the obstruction count, the lone felony, would be 20 years’ imprisonment. Continue reading...

Sexual violence will continue in war zones until commanders actually end up in the dock for overseeing such atrocitiesThey read like messages from one of the creepier dating apps, or else the sort of unwanted lechery with which many young women on social media are grimly familiar.One man suggests sharing “a large bed, we could sleep together” and then letting “what we both want happen”. Another is keen to let the recipient know she is “so beautiful”, while a third immediately asks, “Are you single?” But these aren’t just any old clumsy sexual overtures. These are messages left for women fleeing war-torn Ukraine, on a Facebook group seeking to match refugees with Britons offering sanctuary. The grotesque parody of shelter some men see fit to offer is a chance to flee the threat of rape by Russian soldiers, but only for somewhere you might want to barricade yourself into the spare bedroom at night. An undercover reporter posing as a refugee found more than half the messages sent to her came from men living alone, some explicit about the strings attached to their offers.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...