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Hard-drinking weekenders, Airbnb and noisy suitcases are no longer welcome in cities such as Venice and MarseilleTo be British is a bit embarrassing at this point and not only because of Brexit. In Amsterdam, hard-drinking British tourists are the target of a “stay away” campaign. In “saturated” Lanzarote, plans are afoot to limit the number of UK visitors. But even for the non-British, the mini-break is increasingly fraught: a political nightmare up there with recycling or driving a car.The people of Barcelona, Lisbon and Venice are sick of Airbnb and its effect on their cities. In Marseille, where activists may be both more stubborn and more chic than elsewhere, public enemy number one is not M Macron but the ubiquitous valise à roulettes (wheelie suitcase), without which no self-respecting weekender would even consider travelling in the 21st century. Continue reading...

Retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, 76, faces seven-figure legal bill after unsuccessful lawsuit over ski slope collisionThe retired optometrist who unsuccessfully sued Gwyneth Paltrow over a 2016 ski crash says taking the Oscar-winning actor to court had “absolutely not” been worth it so far, but he also had not ruled out pursuing an appeal.Terry Sanderson, 76, made the remarks after civil court jurors in Park City, Utah, on Thursday found him at fault in his collision with Paltrow at the Deer Valley ski resort. Continue reading...

Brian Dutcher helped build one of college basketball’s strongest cultures at a program that once ranked among Division I’s worst. Now it’s paid off with the first Final Four in school historyWhen San Diego State take the floor under head coach Brian Dutcher on Saturday night for the first Final Four appearance in school history, they’ll be representing a city not traditionally known for its rich basketball history. San Diego briefly hosted the NBA’s Clippers for six unmemorable seasons before they relocated to Los Angeles. And while SDSU has fielded a team for more than 100 years, on-court success has largely proven hard to come by.All of that changed when Steve Fisher arrived in 1999, taking over a lowly program that ranked among the worst in Division I. Fisher, who had led Michigan to the 1989 national title and coached the famed Fab Five a few years after, spotted potential in an unfancied program that had just built a brand-new arena, despite coming off of a four-win season and having failed to reach the NCAA tournament in the previous 15 years. Fisher re-hired Dutcher, his longtime assistant from Michigan, and the two of them got to work. Continue reading...

A new film starring Ben Affleck tells the story of how Michael Jordan’s sponsorship deal with Nike in 1984 turned a clever marketing idea into a slam dunkIn 1984, Nike was in trouble. Growth had stalled, profits were down and a misjudged move into clothing left it with piles of unsold inventory. Rivals had beaten it to new crazes for aerobics and leisure shoes. Sales fell. “Orwell was right,” Phil Knight, who was chairman and chief executive, began his annual letter to shareholders. “1984 was a tough year.”But Air, a new film set in that same year, opens this week, and shows how Nike went on to become the world’s No 1 shoe and sports brand, a company whose revenue topped £37bn in 2022. Continue reading...

You’re going to hear these basic criticisms of the charges in the New York investigation – but they don’t stand up to scrutinyYou’re going to hear three basic criticisms of Trump’s indictment. Each has some merit, but ultimately fails.Let me rebut each in turn.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, 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...

Formerly well-connected Anton ‘Tony’ Lazzaro, 32, found guilty of seven counts involving five girls aged 15 and 16A formerly well-connected Republican donor was convicted on Friday of enticing teenage girls with gifts, cash and money in exchange for sex.A federal jury found Anton “Tony” Lazzaro, 32, guilty of seven counts involving “commercial sex acts” with five girls aged 15 and 16 in 2020, when he was 30 years old. Continue reading...

What we desperately need is for lawmakers and technology companies to hold its creators and facilitators to accountThe overall economy might not be in great shape, but the nonconsensual deepfake porn economy? That’s in rude health. AI-generated imagery has been around for a long time now but it’s recently become disturbingly sophisticated. See, for example, all the people who were taken in by the viral AI-generated photo of the pope in a puffy jacket, created by AI-based image generator Midjourney. The pope in an ostentatious coat may be amusing but the dark side of this technology is no laughing matter. A recent investigation by Kat Tenbarge at NBC News shows just how disturbingly pervasive and accessible nonconsensual deepfake porn has become. Continue reading...

The race could serve as a litmus test for police reform – and Brandon Johnson’s policies on crime could leave him vulnerable in the general electionBrandon Johnson was in his element at Kenwood Academy high school.The bespectacled former social studies teacher and candidate for Chicago mayor sat at a table next to his opponent, former Chicago public schools CEO Paul Vallas, during a recent afternoon debate. In an exhausting series of mayoral debates, Johnson had a home field advantage at Kenwood, where his son attends school. Continue reading...

White conservative Christians drawn to the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan have long accepted that the former president is not an ethical paragonAs Donald Trump blustered his way through his one-term presidency, dogged by accusations of sexual assault, tainted by a fascination with authoritarian leaders, and widely reviled for his apparent fondness for racists, America’s white evangelical Christians largely stood firmly by his side.Evangelical leaders justified their support for Trump by comparing him to King Cyrus, who in the biblical telling liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity, despite himself being a Persian ruler who did not believe in the god of Israel. Continue reading...

State’s attorney general faces backlash after releasing report saying LGBTQ+ voices might be silenced in librariesLouisiana’s attorney general – a Republican gubernatorial candidate – is receiving backlash from LGBTQ+ activists after releasing a report recently that they say might silence LGBTQ+ voices in libraries.The brewing fight over censorship in Louisiana’s libraries has opened a new front in the culture war pitting political conservatives and the LGBTQ+ community. Far rightwingers across the US tried hundreds of times last year alone to ban more than 1,600 books with themes of gender or sexuality from public libraries, schools and universities, saying they wish to protect children from accessing them. But LGBTQ+ activists say there is no evidence that such material is readily available for children without the bans or that it primes minors to be harmed, and they are instead a tactic for conservatives to silence voices which offend their cultural values. Continue reading...

US district judge Thomas Parker grants temporary injunction, finding the law clashes with first amendment on free speechA federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Tennessee law that placed strict limits on drag shows just hours before it was set to go into effect, siding with a group that filed a lawsuit claiming the statute violates the first amendment.The decision on Friday comes after Memphis-based LGBTQ+ theatre company Friends of George’s filed the lawsuit on Monday against the Shelby county district attorney, Steve Mulroy, and the state. Continue reading...

Pennsylvania lawmaker will return to Senate by mid-April after spending six weeks in treatment, saying care ‘changed my life’John Fetterman has left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after six weeks of inpatient treatment for clinical depression, with plans to return to the Senate when the chamber resumes session in mid-April, his office said on Friday.In a statement, Fetterman’s office said he is back home in Braddock, in western Pennsylvania, with his depression “in remission”, and gave details on his treatment – including that his depression was treated with medication and that he is wearing hearing aids for hearing loss. Continue reading...

Details of charges not known as indictment remains under seal, while lawyer says former president will not be placed in handcuffsDonald Trump and his legal team were preparing for the unprecedented spectacle of an appearance in court on Tuesday of a former US president facing criminal charges.The indictment of Trump remained under court seal on Friday, with details of the charges awaited. He was braced at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, for the forthcoming trip to surrender to the authorities in New York after the surprise news on Thursday night that a grand jury had voted to charge him. Continue reading...

In the topsy-turvy world he has created, criminal charges against the former president may be just the boost he needs“I actually don’t even know why I did it,” porn star Stormy Daniels once reflected of the “textbook generic” sex she claimed to have had with Donald Trump after some cursed-sounding Nevada golf tournament. “But I do remember while we were having sex I was like: ‘Please don’t try to pay me.’”Well, quite. If ONLY Trump had stuck to the non-payment he presumably agreed in the heat of passion in that Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006, instead of allegedly getting his lawyer to hand hush money to Daniels when he was running for president a decade later. He is now facing an estimated 34 charges of falsification of business records, believed to relate to payments to both Stormy and the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. As the former president once observed, vaginas are “potential landmines … There’s some real danger there.”Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Loved ones described Evelyn as a ‘shining light’ and invited guests to wear joyful hues in tribute to her ‘love of color’The first funeral service was held on Friday afternoon for the victims of the recent mass shooting at an elementary school in Nashville, as the shocked and grieving city continued to mourn the dead after the horrific attack.Friends and family gathered to memorialize nine-year-old Evelyn Dieckhaus who will be laid to rest on Saturday in a private burial. Her loved ones described the sporty girl who loved art, music, animals and snuggling with her older sister, and invited guests to the funeral service to wear pink or other joyful hues in tribute to her “love of color”. Continue reading...

Court officials confirm arraignment while Manhattan district attorney rejects House Republicans’ demands

Former heavyweight champion is back in action on Saturday knowing a third straight loss would signal the end of his careerAs Anthony Joshua walks to the ring at the 0 in London on Saturday night, to face the relatively limited American Jermaine Franklin, it will be more than two years and three months since he last had his hand raised in victory. In December 2020, on a bleak winter night in the midst of Covid and in front of a sparse crowd of a thousand socially distanced fans, Joshua bludgeoned Kubrat Pulev to earn a ninth-round stoppage win.Despite lockdown restrictions, Joshua left Wembley Arena on a high as he retained his IBF, WBA and WBO world heavyweight titles. It seemed certain, then, that he would soon fight Tyson Fury, the WBC belt-holder, for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world. Continue reading...

Patricia Borges, who was burned and broke several bones in the explosion, is angry RM Palmer didn’t evacuate the buildingA woman pulled alive from the rubble of a Pennsylvania chocolate factory after an explosion that killed seven co-workers says her arm caught fire as flames engulfed the building – and then she fell through the floor into a vat of liquid chocolate.The dark liquid extinguished her blazing arm, but Patricia Borges wound up breaking her collarbone and both of her heels. She would spend the next nine hours screaming for help and waiting for rescue as firefighters battled the inferno and choppers thumped overhead at the RM Palmer factory. Continue reading...

Jacob Chansley was sentenced to three years and five months in November 2021 but it is now due to be freed 25 MayThe US Capitol attacker who infamously wore a horned headdress and was nicknamed the “QAnon Shaman” is no longer in federal prison over the deadly January 6 uprising.Jacob Chansley, 35, was sentenced to three years and five months in prison on 17 November 2021 after pleading guilty to helping a mob of Donald Trump supporters try to prevent the congressional certification of the former president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Continue reading...

Court-enforceable agreement passes city council with 11-0 vote as members harshly criticize police and previous city leadersThe Minneapolis city council on Friday approved an agreement with the state to revamp policing, nearly three years after a city officer murdered George Floyd.The Minnesota department of human rights issued a blistering report last year that said the police department had engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade. City leaders subsequently agreed to negotiate a settlement with the agency. Continue reading...

Dave Halls given six-month suspended sentence after pleading no contest to gun charge as part of agreement with prosecutorsA Santa Fe judge on Friday accepted a plea deal, bringing the first conviction for the 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during filming of the western movie Rust in New Mexico.Dave Halls, first assistant director on Rust, pleaded no contest as part of an agreement with prosecutors to the misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon for his role in Hutchins’ death. Continue reading...

The former president faces far more serious allegations than paying hush money to an adult film star. This is only the beginningDonald Trump has built his career on brazenness. A man without shame, he has hurtled on apparently unstoppably, through serial scandals, two impeachments, electoral rejection and an armed insurrection by his supporters. Now he is setting another grim precedent, as the first former US president in history to be charged with a criminal offence. Half a century after the first investigation into his business dealings, a New York grand jury has voted to indict him. But even if he cannot bluster or bully his way out, he will keep fighting the law, and the law may not win.That the case relates to paying hush money to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels is at once apt and disconcerting. Apt, in that its tawdriness and banality encapsulate the man. Disconcerting, in that it appears almost inconsequential beside the damage he has wrought upon the nation. He still faces multiple other civil and criminal cases: on the latter score alone, he is being investigated in relation to potential mishandling of classified documents; attempts to overturn his loss in Georgia in the 2020 election; and obstructing the transfer of power, as part of the justice department’s probe of the January 6 insurrection. Many would rather have seen charges brought against him on one of these grounds. Continue reading...

The former president’s meeting with a porn star at a golf event in Utah kicked off a scandal that has led to a criminal indictmentThe Stormy Daniels affair, which this week made Donald Trump the first US president ever to be criminally indicted, first reached the White House in February 2017.“So picture this scene,” Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, said in congressional testimony two years later. “One month into his presidency, I’m visiting President Trump in the Oval Office for the first time. Continue reading...

Speaking to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America, the former US president's lawyer Joe Tacopina also said Trump would not be put in handcuffs for a court date after a New York grand jury voted to indict him over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election campaign

Republicans line up to support ex-president as Democrats hope for more charges – and one man’s one-word judgmentFor Democrats, Donald Trump’s indictment was proof that no one, not even a former president, was above the law. For Republicans, it was the culmination of a years-long political witch-hunt designed to take down a polarizing former president as he stands again for re-election.The unprecedented move by a Manhattan grand jury triggered a wave of predictably partisan responses, reflecting a nation deeply divided over Trump and his presidency, which ended after his failed attempts to cling to power culminated in a deadly assault on the US Capitol. News on Thursday that Trump had become the first ever former US president to face criminal charges drew an audible gasp on Fox News, as broadcasters and viewers processed the extraordinary development. Continue reading...

Attorney Joe Tacopina says ‘I feel the rule of law died yesterday’ but says client will not be handcuffed for New York arraignmentDonald Trump’s lawyer insists the former president will not be put in handcuffs after a New York grand jury voted on Thursday to indict him over hush money payments made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.Speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday, a lawyer representing Trump, Joe Tacopina, said the indictment was shocking to Trump and his team. Continue reading...

Thunderstorms forecast across portions of Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee valleys with tornadoes the most noteworthy threatAn immense spring storm emerging from the western US was expected to form a 1,000-mile front of extreme weather from the Great Lakes to Texas on Friday, spawning blizzards, freezing rain, tornadoes and torrential showers, forecasters said.Severe, widespread thunderstorms were forecast for Friday afternoon into early Saturday across portions of the middle Mississippi valley and eastward to the lower Ohio and Tennessee valleys, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Continue reading...

Lawsuit reportedly seeks damages for alleged Clean Water Act violations following crash of train carrying hazardous materialsThe US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against freight train giant Norfolk Southern over its 3 February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, seeking to ensure the company pays the full cost of cleanup and any long-term effects.The lawsuit filed in the US district court in Ohio on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeks penalties and injunctive relief for the unlawful discharge of pollutants under the Clean Water Act and an order addressing liability for past and future costs. Continue reading...

Gwyneth Paltrow has been found not at fault over a 2016 ski collision. The actor and wellness entrepreneur was sued by the retired optometrist Terry Sanderson for injuries he allegedly sustained in the crash. Sanders, 76, claimed Paltrow, 50, skied out of control and crashed into him, leaving him with four broken ribs and a concussion. He sought 'more than $300,000', a threshold that provides the opportunity to introduce the most evidence and depose the most witnesses allowed in civil court. Paltrow countersued for a symbolic $1 and legal fees

My decision to come out as a trans man was lifechanging. What’s so scary about the possibility of choice when it comes to gender?I’ve quit jobs, relationships, and even some religious beliefs – but by far the most important thing I ever quit was trying to be a woman.Four years ago I came out as a trans man. After 28 years of attempting to be a woman and wondering why things had never felt quite right, the mist cleared: the issue was that I’d been trying to be someone I wasn’t. And not just that, but someone I didn’t want to be – playing a role I felt compelled to adhere to by society.Jackson King is a freelance journalistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The news that Donald Trump had become the first former US president to face criminal charges drew an audible gasp on Fox News, as broadcasters and viewers processed the extraordinary development. 'We have just gotten word that former president Donald Trump has been indicted,' the host begins, while a stunned gasp is audible from off-camera. 'What?' asks another incredulous voice, as the presenter explains to Fox News’s afternoon audience that Trump will be charged in relation to an alleged 'hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels'

It’s time to retire the offensive, outdated idea that having only one child is somehow selfish or unfair“Aren’t you worried they’ll be lonely?” This is the question that the parents of only children are probably asked the most, and the one that is mentioned again and again when I asked for “one and done” parents to get in touch. Although “one and done” parenting is on the rise, and in some countries only children are becoming the norm, the stigma against single-child families is real. Stereotypes about only children being spoilt, obnoxious or lonely persist.What my callout on social media revealed is that there are many persuasive economic and social reasons for deciding to only have only one child, and though they can be as diverse and complex as families themselves, there are some common threads.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author Continue reading...

Businessman expected to face arraignment on Tuesday with New York police warned they may face ‘unusual disorder’. Plus, Tokitae, the oldest orca in captivity, to be set free

‘Evan,’ I said out loud in my hotel room. In that moment, this news story moved out of the realm of professional dismay and into the intensely personalHis face stared out from news stories on Thursday morning, accompanied by headlines like this one in the Guardian: “Russia arrests reporter and accuses him of espionage.”Oh, that’s awful, I thought at first, reflecting that we really are involved in some kind of new cold war, and there is no end to the toll that authoritarian governments will take on journalists. The imprisonment of journalists is at a historic high worldwide; I’ve written columns about that. And I know that there are close to 20 journalists in Russian jails and that Vladimir Putin’s administration has instituted harsh consequences for what it considers “fake” news, a highly subjective judgment.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

Supporters of Donald Trump gathered outside his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to show their support for the former US president after he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. The case is centred on a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls

Child labor violations – including kids working night-shifts and with dangerous equipment – are rising in the US. Republicans want even fewer protectionsWhen I was secretary of labor 30 years ago, one major goal was to crack down on companies that employed children, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. I remember being horrified to discover that even in the early 1990s, children who should have been in school were working, often in dangerous jobs.We made progress. Child labor declined in the United States. But it was a hard slog. By law, the highest fines I could levy against companies that put children to work were relatively small. Some firms treated them as costs of business. Continue reading...

This isn’t the Trump indictment we wanted, but it might be the one we deserveStormy Daniels didn’t seem to know what she had. In 2011, when The Apprentice was still getting decent ratings and Trump had drawn attention to himself for racist claims about the birthplace of Barack Obama, Daniels – also known as Stephanie Clifford – started asking around to see who she could sell her story to. Daniels, for years a successful porn performer, had met Donald Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. According to her, he invited her to his hotel room, offered her work on his TV show and then had sex with her. The two remained friendly afterwards; Trump invited Daniels to the launch of his Trump Vodka brand the following year. It’s the kind of thing you suspect that these two people would have written off as a funny story. Instead, it’s the impetus for one of the most politically volatile prosecutions in the nation’s history: the first criminal indictment of a former president, which was issued on Thursday by a federal grand jury in New York.Stormy Daniels and the illegal, fraudulent machinations that the Trump campaign allegedly undertook to pay her off during the height of the presidential campaign in 2016 have always struck me as the most quintessential of Trump’s many scandals. Trump denies Daniels’ allegations, but in retrospect, with the hindsight of what we’ve come to learn of him, the scene she recounts is almost unbearably true to his character: the gathering of low-rent celebrities, the paltry quid pro quo offer, the golf and the sad, adolescent fantasy of sex with a porn star. The whole story drips with Trump’s defining attribute: the desperate and insatiable need to have his ego gratified. Which is why to me, at least, it seems obvious that Daniels is telling the truth. Continue reading...

Stakes are high as these judges often have the last word on major policy decisions in their states, from reproductive rights to voting policy and redistricting.While the 4 April Wisconsin race is technically non-partisan, the two candidates have not shied away from taking positions on policies that align with political parties. The Democratic party has spent heavily on liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz, while conservative candidate Dan Kelly has the backing of Republicans and top conservative donors.The race is already the most expensive state supreme court election in US history, with over $37m in spending. The unprecedented spending and political debate begs the question of why partisan groups are permitted to get involved in the selection of supposedly nonpartisan judges, and why judges are directly elected at all? Continue reading...

Republicans are seeking to restrict women and girls’ right to travel by criminalizing friends and family who would help themIdaho Republicans are seeking to restrict women and girls’ right to travel. Less than a year ago, the state banned abortion with a trigger law that went into effect after the supreme court overturned the abortion right in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. Now, Idaho is looking to stop young women from travelling out of state for their procedures – and to criminalize those that help them. A bill that sailed through the state’s house of representatives and advanced in the state senate last week would make it a crime to transport a minor for the purposes of obtaining an abortion without the consent of her parents. The bill creates a new felony crime, so-called “abortion trafficking”, that’s punishable by two to five years in prison.The bill would criminalize an aunt or grandmother who drives a teenage girl over the border for a legal abortion in Oregon. It would make a felon of the school friend who lends her money for a bus ticket, or the older sister who takes her to the post office to pick up a package with secretly mailed pills. The legislation also contains a provision giving the Idaho attorney general the ability to override the jurisdiction of local prosecutors on this charge – so if a local DA doesn’t want to prosecute those who help scared and desperate teenagers, the state can enforce its sadism anyway. Continue reading...

The college basketball stars meet in the NCAA Tournament Final Four on Friday. It could be just the start of years of exciting contests between the twoRivalries propel athletes into superstardom, transform leagues, and redefine mainstream culture. Joe v Max; Wilt v Bill; Ali v Frazier; Magic v Bird; and Serena v Venus were compelling rivalries in which the antagonists pushed each other to excel at the highest level on the world’s greatest stages.When the South Carolina Gamecocks and Iowa Hawkeyes face off in the NCAA Women’s Final Four on Friday night, fans will witness a battle that has the potential to become the next great sports rivalry of this generation. Continue reading...

The young quarterback has to follow two Packers Hall of Famers at one of the NFL’s most famed franchises. No pressure thenTwo years ago, Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams decided to run it back for one last year together at the Green Bay Packers under The Last Dance moniker, aping the Michael Jordan propaganda/documentary series.The tension at the heart of the Jordan doc was the idea that drives all great sports breakups: Who is responsible for winning championships? Organizations or players? Jordan-Krause, Belichick-Brady, LeBron-Riley, Keane-Ferguson. Across sports, dynastic runs have come unstuck as champions fight to claim the credit for winning.QB: Love, 24WR: Christian Watson, 23WR: Romeo Doubs, 22WR: Samori Toure, 25TE: Josiah Deguara, 26RB: Aaron Jones, 28 Continue reading...

Sources say former president and aides thought prosecutors were reconsidering legal action and were taken by surprise by the announcement

Support for the European Union is strong – even in post-Brexit Britain. Can it come through its external battles, too?It’s springtime in Brussels and the European Union has a spring in its step. Its leaders and institutions have been galvanised by the war in Ukraine. “The war has reminded us what Europe is really about,” people kept telling me on a recent visit to the EU’s capital.There’s a popular theory that says European integration advances through crises. The truth is that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. You’d have to be a starry-eyed Euro-optimist, for example, to claim that European unity was really advanced by the 2015-16 refugee crisis. But in its last two big ones, the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, we have seen the “challenge and response” mechanism that the historian Arnold Toynbee identified as one of the patterns of history. Continue reading...

Trump has followed a pattern since 2016 – the bigger the alleged crime, the louder he airs grievances and claims he’s being persecutedComedian Chris Rock gazed out at the audience at an awards ceremony in Washington earlier this month. “Are you guys really going to arrest Trump?” he asked bluntly. “This is only going to make him more popular!”Donald Trump has not yet been arrested but is now the first person to occupy the Oval Office to then be charged with a crime. It also raises the prospect of the Republican favorite for the 2024 presidential race to be running for the White House while also being criminally prosecuted – something likely to bring even more chaos to America’s already deeply fractured political landscape. Continue reading...

A new law will impose extra tax on sales of more than $5m starting 1 April – and sellers are desperate to unload before the deadlineAs the clock ticks down to the start of Los Angeles’ new “mansion tax”, the city’s real estate market is offering some deadline deals.On Instagram, two high-end realtors touted a $1m bonus to any agent who helped sell a $28m Bel Air mansion by 1 April. Another 260-acre Bel Air property which went up for auction this month (starting price $39m) offered buyers a $2m credit if they were able to close the deal by 31 March. Continue reading...

Ex-president is expected to appear for his arraignment on Tuesday where he will be fingerprinted, photographed and processed for arrestA grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump in New York over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls. Continue reading...

The move to indict Trump is historic as no former president has ever been criminally charged. This blog is now closed

A grand jury has voted to criminally indict Donald Trump, the first time in US history that this has happened to a former president