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The deaths, the atrocities - all were predicted. Those who ignored all the warnings should be held responsible tooAs the international criminal court's prosecutor, Karim Khan, officially seeks arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, a question must be asked of the politicians and media outlets that legitimised Israel's western-backed destruction of Gaza, which is one of the great crimes of our age: what were you thinking?The arrest warrant requests detail, firstly, how three Hamas leaders should be held criminally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination, murder and hostage-taking. Their guilt is incontrovertible, and no cause justifies such depraved crimes against civilians.Owen Jones 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...

From first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out and from loss to connection. For the last 25 years, retired schoolteacher Arden Eversmeyer travelled from Houston across the US to record hundreds of oral 'herstories' from a rapidly disappearing population. Old Lesbians honours Arden's legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project - a powerful reminder of the strength, resilience and unwavering spirit of these remarkable women Continue reading...

In what a professor calls an intellectual embarrassment', the school is requiring students to complete a bizarre trainingLike many other campuses around the world, New York University has seen its students protest the university's ties to weapon manufacturers and other institutions that are profiting off the slaughter in Gaza or enabling it. Like many other campuses, NYU has been doing its best to curtail these protests and punish the students involved.Unlike many other campuses, however, punishments include being told to watch The Simpsons and write what the NYU law professor Liam Murphy recently described in an open letter to leadership as coerced confessions of wrongdoing". Continue reading...

Joshua Gutierrez was hired after his predecessor, Pete Arredondo, was fired following his inaction to the shooting at Robb elementary schoolThe chief of police for Uvalde schools has resigned, a year after he replaced the previous chief who held the role during the 2022 school shooting in the Texas city.Joshua Gutierrez, former police chief of Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD), was hired in November 2022 as interim police chief before officially being named to the job in March 2023. His predecessor, Pete Arredondo, was fired following his inaction to the shooting at Robb elementary school on 24 May 2022. Continue reading...

State becomes 25th to restrict or ban care for transgender children as LGBTQ+ rights groups consider legal challengeThe governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, on Tuesday signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.When the ink dried, South Carolina became the 25th state to restrict or ban such care for minors. The governor announced the signing on social media and said he would hold a ceremonial bill signing next week. Continue reading...

UK regulators fine bank 61.6m over 2022 trader blunder that prompted flash crash in European stocksCitigroup has been fined 61.6m by financial regulators after its internal systems failed to prevent a fat-fingered banker causing a flash crash by erroneously placing more than 1bn of orders.The trader had intended to sell equities to the value of $58m (46m) on 2 May 2022. However, the banker made an inputting error while entering the transaction into Citigroup's order management system, so a giant equities basket of $444bn was created - and $1.4bn was then sold into the market. Continue reading...

The Bay Area has always been a hotbed for women's soccer talent. Its newest team have had a rocky start but believe they are built on solid foundationsSitting in front of the media earlier this month, every statement from Bay FC's players sounded like a plea.We can't wait to give [fans] the results they deserve," says the team's No 10, Deyna Castellanos. Continue reading...

Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts love women's autonomy if it avoids awkward conflict-of-interest questionsAt the start of her rallies, Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who defeated the equal rights amendment, always thanked her husband, Fred, for letting her out of the house.Ah, those were the days.Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept, and the author of five books Continue reading...

The economy is doing well - far better than under Trump - but Democrats must ask voters if they want a sociopathic infant with fascist tendenciesThe new Harris poll, conducted for The Guardian is troubling, not only because it shows Americans are still pessimistic about the economy but also because - with election day just five and a half months away - so many Americans believe the economy is bad when in fact it's damn good.In the Harris poll, 55% think the economy is shrinking and 56% believe the US is in a recession. In fact, the economy is growing.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a 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 newest 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...

The closer Ivanka Trump is to her father, the closer Donald Trump is to the White House. And lately, the former first daughter seems to be testing the political watersForget polls or statistical modelling - if you want to know what is going to happen in the US elections, may I suggest consulting the Ivank-a-MeterTM? Much complex analysis has gone into the development of my proprietary prediction tool, but the premise is this: the closer Ivanka Trump is to her father, the closer Donald Trump is to the White House.Both Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, always seem to know which way the wind is blowing: the pair made out like bandits when they were unelected members of the Trump administration. Then, when it felt like the grift may be up, the Saudis gave Kushner billions to invest. Over the last couple of years, Jared has been managing those billions while Ivanka has been walking her extremely white dog, Winter, on the beach and going surfing. Both of them seem to have made sure that there are frequent quotes in the press from people familiar with their thinking", insisting that the pair don't want anything to do with politics ever again. Continue reading...

As San Diego becomes the busiest arrivals sector along the US-Mexico border, organizers warn the election's immigration focus will bring more instabilityJacqueline Arellano is driving up and down the 15 freeway in southern San Diego county on a recent morning in mid-April, boxes of donated clothing and safety gloves in her trunk.She stops in a Home Depot parking lot and hands a man the spare stroller she grabbed from her house. He'd mentioned to her earlier that day how tiring it was to move around the city with his toddler in his arms. Continue reading...

In Peach county, where Trump narrowly won in 2020, voters say they're struggling with rising prices ahead of the presidential election

The Dallas forward, who joined his hometown team in a deadline trade after five years with the moribund Hornets, has been an unlikely playoff hero. Could a first NBA finals appearance be next?I was in a restaurant with my wife when I found out," PJ Washington tells me. We were just happy and screaming." This is surely not the typical NBA player's recounting of the moment he finds out he's been traded. But the Dallas Mavericks forward isn't on the typical NBA player's trajectory. Five years after he was drafted in the first round by the longtime cellar-dwelling Charlotte Hornets, Washington got a call at the trade deadline in February that was life-changing: he was headed home to Texas.We sat down with Washington ahead of the Mavericks' opening game against the red-hot Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night in the Western Conference finals, a best-of-seven-games battle for a place in the NBA's championship round. The 25-year-old Washington is actually a Dallas native, who says he grew up going to Mavericks games as a kid all the time" and watching present-day coach Jason Kidd run the point alongside Dirk Nowitzki. Looking back on those formative years on Tuesday morning, shortly before boarding a plane to Minneapolis, Washington acknowledges that circuitously finding his way back to DFW - especially on a team with championship potential - is immensely fortunate. It's a full-circle moment," he tells the Guardian. Being able to come back home, play for the home team. Not a lot of guys get that opportunity." Continue reading...

Of course social media IS terrible and there are a lot of people who should be banned from it ESPECIALLY cartoonists please ban me please

After 20 months of relative peace, the homes and lives my charity has been helping rebuild are on the frontline once moreThe Russian offensive on the Kharkiv region this month has, after 20 months of relative peace, again placed many of the villages where my charity works, repairing homes destroyed by bombs, at the forefront of the war.I began volunteering in Kharkiv two years ago, having dropped out of my master's degree in Russian literature and set up the charity to support Ukrainians. After the region's liberation in September 2022, hundreds of thousands of people had started to return to Kharkiv city and the wider region from other parts of Ukraine, and countries that had taken them in as refugees. The villages where I work were reawakening, the craters that lined the streets had been filled, shops were reopening, electricity was back on. People's return was mostly driven by a desire to be at home.Ada Wordsworth is the co-founder of KHARPP, a grassroots project repairing homes in eastern UkraineDo 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...

Special election replaces speaker who was first ever voted out of the job, with election for next full term to take place in NovemberVince Fong, backed by Donald Trump, has won a special election to finish the term of the former US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who also lent his endorsement.Fong, a California state assembly member, defeated fellow Republican and Tulare county sheriff Mike Boudreaux in the 20th congressional district, in the Central Valley farm belt. Continue reading...

Fulton county district attorney overseeing election case against ex-president wins with nearly 90% percent of the voteFani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney overseeing Georgia's expansive criminal case against Donald Trump and his allies for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, has won her Democratic primary bid for re-election with nearly 90% of the vote.Willis and Judge Scott McAfee - who won his primary election on Tuesday - are central figures in the prosecution against the former president and associates in his orbit accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Continue reading...

Republicans seek help from secretary of state after prosecutor Karim Khan requests arrest warrant for Israeli PM NetanyahuThe Biden administration is willing to work with Congress to potentially impose sanctions against international criminal court officials over the prosecutor's request for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over the Gaza war, Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, said on Tuesday.At a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing, Republican Lindsey Graham told Blinken he wanted to see renewed US sanctions on the court in response to the move announced by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan on Monday. Continue reading...

On Tuesday, both sides finished their questioning of the final witness. The testimony part of the trial is officially over.On Tuesday, more than a month after former president Donald Trump's criminal hush-money trial began, both sides wrapped up their questioning of the final witness. The testimony part of the trial is officially over. Continue reading...

Lawsuit says state law punishing undocumented immigrants with prison terms of up to two years is unconstitutionalThe US Department of Justice sued Oklahoma on Tuesday over a state law that seeks to impose criminal penalties on those living in the state illegally.The lawsuit in federal court in Oklahoma City challenges an Oklahoma law that makes it a state crime - punishable by up to two years in prison - to live in the state without legal immigration status. Similar laws passed in Texas and Iowa are already facing challenges from the justice department. Oklahoma is among several GOP states jockeying to push deeper into immigration enforcement as both Republicans and Democrats seize on the issue. Other bills targeting undocumented immigrants have been passed this year in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Continue reading...

Former New York mayor one of 12 defendants charged with illegally trying to keep Trump in power after 2020 election defeatRudy Giuliani denied charges of illegally trying to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat as he was arraigned to appear before a court in Arizona along with 10 other defendants on Tuesday.Giuliani's not guilty plea to nine felony charges came days after he was served an indictment as he left a party to celebrate his 80th birthday last Friday. Continue reading...

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Catch up on the latest news from Donald Trump's historic criminal trial Continue reading...

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Steve MacLaughlin of WTVJ in Miami urges viewers to vote - because there are candidates that believe in climate change'A TV meteorologist condemned the Florida governor Ron DeSantis's so-called don't say climate change" law on air and urged viewers to vote.Steve MacLaughlin of WTVJ in Miami addressed viewers on Saturday amid rising heat records across the state, saying: On Thursday, we reported ... that the government of Florida was beginning to roll back really important climate-change legislation and really important climate-change language." Continue reading...

The US and others have criticised the chief prosecutor for seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. The ICC needs supportThe international criminal court was born more than two decades ago, largely from the genocides of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and the contradictory impulses that they inspired: the grim recognition of the worst of human nature and the optimistic determination to address it. More than 120 countries ratified its founding treaty. But the world's superpower - and other major players including Russia, China and India - refused.The result, almost inevitably, was that it became regarded - in the reported words of one elected official to the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan - as built for Africa and thugs like Putin". In fact, Vladimir Putin's indictment a year ago, applauded by the US and others, was regarded as a gear change for a body that had overwhelmingly charged African leaders and officials.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Animal spotted in Griffith Park, where Brad Pitt of mountain lions' P-22 lived, bringing excitement at possibility of a new cat in areaIt's been more than a year since the death of P-22, a beloved Los Angeles cougar known as the Brad Pitt of mountain lions" whose passing inspired murals, songs and celebrations across the city.P-22, who was euthanized in December 2022 due to health issues, was the only known big cat living in the city's famed Griffith Park. So when residents spied an unidentified mountain lion in the park last week, people were abuzz with excitement at the possibility of another cat, probably a young male, making a home in the area. Continue reading...

Storms will hit in the midwest and western Great Lakes after eight people died following severe weather in Texas over the weekendAfter a deadly storm in Houston over the weekend in which eight people died, 25 million Americans are bracing for more severe weather across the country.A National Weather Service notice said that an outbreak of severe thunderstorms was predicted on Tuesday over large swaths of the midwest and western Great Lakes, with the greatest threat expected over Iowa and certain parts of nearby states. Continue reading...

It is disappointing, if not surprising, that the west's response to the ICC accusations was to defend Israel despite its war crimesThe Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, responded with predictable vitriol to international criminal court (ICC) accusations against him and the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Yet his arguments are all spin, designed to divert attention from their devastating conduct in Gaza. The American, British and German governments were little better.On Monday, the court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced that he would seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant as well as three senior Hamas officials. He proposed charges against the Hamas leadership for atrocities on 7 October as well as the mistreatment of the hostages since then. He proposed charges against the Israeli officials primarily for their efforts to starve the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza. These important proposed charges offer the possibility of breaking through the wall of impunity" that victims of Israeli and Palestinian abuses have long suffered, as Human Rights Watch put it.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs Continue reading...

Peter Navarro says first acts of Trump presidency would be firing Fed chair and intensifying China trade war in prison interviewThe first 100 days of a second Donald Trump presidency would see the sacking of the Federal Reserve head, Jerome Powell, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and higher tariffs on Chinese imports, the ex-president's former trade adviser Peter Navarro has said.Navarro, the maverick former head of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in Trump's first administration and a key loyalist, made the forecasts in an interview conducted from prison - where he is serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. Continue reading...

Climber was missing for several days before location device was traced and body was found in Alaska's Denali national parkA climber died on Monday after falling while trying to traverse North America's tallest peak solo.The latest fatality is one of at least two recent deaths as the summer climbing season in the US kicks off. Continue reading...

It was both moving and onerous that she trusted me with important decisions, and I treasure her observation that our relationship never felt transactionalBy the time most people read this, the funeral of my longest-living patient will probably be over.We first met when I was pregnant and she found out she had cancer. You might think that the juxtaposition of life and death discomfits patients, but children make for a happy point of connection.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Republican senator comments on report that US flag was displayed upside down outside supreme court justice's home in January 2021Lindsey Graham has said it was not good judgment" for the supreme court justice Samuel Alito to allow an upside-down American flag to be flown outside his home, marking what for him is a rare rebuke of a conservative judge.The Republican US senator's comments on Monday to HuffPost's Igor Bobic came after the New York Times' recent report that an American flag was displayed upside down outside Alito's home on 17 January 2021 - less than two weeks after supporters of Donald Trump carried out the deadly US Capitol attack and three days before Joe Biden's inauguration. Continue reading...

I was questioned for two hours about my political views on genocide and protest slogans when I flew into the USI'm an Israeli historian living in the UK, best known for my books on the history of Palestine and the Middle East, which challenge the official Israeli version of history. This month I was invited to the US by a new Arab American organization, al-Nadwa (the Discussion), to share my thoughts on the situation in the Gaza Strip. I also addressed a Jewish Voice for Peace group in Michigan and went to talk to students encamped at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.After an eight-hour flight from Heathrow I was stopped on arrival at Detroit airport by two people who I thought were agents of the FBI, though I later found out they were agents of the Department of Homeland Security. Two men approached me, flashed their badges and demanded I accompany them into a side room. Continue reading...

Trump campaign says video, which uses Nazi-era language, was posted by staffer who didn't see wording - yet it still remains on site

Encampment had been set up in late April and the school's president claimed it became a threat to safetyPolice broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment Tuesday at the University of Michigan, less than a week after demonstrators showed up at the home of a school official and placed fake body bags on her lawn.Video posted online by Detroit-area TV stations showed police moving people away from the camp on the Diag, a common site for campus protests. The encampment had been set up in late April near the end of the school year. Continue reading...

Surging gun ownership and unaddressed racial trauma have contributed to an uptick in youth firearm suicidesWhen the Covid-19 pandemic hit the US, it wasn't just a deadly virus that swept the country. It also ushered in a period of unprecedented access to firearms.New gun ownership surged, particularly in Black, Latino and Asian American communities, alongside rising anti-Asian hate crimes, police violence and a general climate of fear. In the past, spikes in gun purchases tended to occur in conservative states, in response to changes in gun policy. For the first time ever," said Paul Nestadt, a suicide researcher and co-director of the Johns Hopkins suicide prevention working group, there were more guns bought in blue states than red states." Continue reading...

From the boysober' trend in the US to the 4B movement in South Korea, more and more heterosexual women are giving up sexGet thee to a nunnery! Apparently it's the hottest place to be. While we still very much live in a sex-saturated world, voluntary celibacy is having something of a moment. Evidence of this is everywhere. TikTok, for example, is full of videos of young people extolling the virtues of abstaining from sex. Meanwhile, a new Lithuanian romcom called Slow has brought asexuality to the big screen. In South Korea there is a viral 4B" movement, which gets its name from the four types of bi or no": bihon, no heterosexual marriage; bichulsan, no childbirth; biyeonae, no dating; and bisekseu, no heterosexual sexual relationships. In the US, generation Z comedian Hope Woodward has started a boysober" trend, which involves straight young women eschewing dating. Multiple studies show that, around the world, more and more young people seem to be - quite happily - opting out of sex.Thousands of words have been written about the great sex recession. It's hardly some sort of underground trend. Nevertheless, Bumble, the dating app which once styled itself as a beacon of women's empowerment because heterosexual women had to make the first move, appears to have missed the memo. A few weeks ago the company launched a global advertising campaign the point of which seemed to be to make casual sex great again. A vow of celibacy is not the answer," one billboard read. Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun," proclaimed another.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

It's not possible for the US to prosecute Assange while claiming to be a friend of press freedom. Biden should end this nowThe UK high court decision granting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leave to appeal against his extradition shows just how far America has fallen when it comes to freedom of the press.Assange faces 18 felony charges in the United States, including 17 under the Espionage Act, based on WikiLeaks' 2010 publication of US state department cables and Iraq and Afghanistan war logs provided by the whistleblower Chelsea Manning.Seth Stern is the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press FoundationCaitlin Vogus is the deputy director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation Continue reading...

The US president said there was no equivalence' between Israel and Hamas, for which arrest warrants were also requested. Plus, how big oil firms' climate pledges are failing

Cook's curvy characters are glamorous, comfortable in their skins and uncompromising. In real life, I am constantly bombarded with fatphobiaWith an exhibition of Beryl Cook's work having just opened at Studio Voltaire in London, I have been thinking about what it means to occupy a fat body. I love Cook's paintings and all their chubby glory. They are celebratory, glamorous, from the sassy half-moon of bum cheek dipping out of well-filled leopard-print shorts, to a gaggle of women, all dressed up and piling into a taxi. Cook frames the nights out we hold tight in our memories, the warmth of friends as you huddle together against the wind, heading towards the next bar and next potentially brilliant thing, perfume and hairspray following you like sparkly, scented fog.So why, when we stop looking at paintings and move into the real world, does a fat body incite such hatred? I have worked out an equation: reactions to my body operate in eight-pound fluctuations. My body can be perceived as hyper-sexualised and curvy, the type of body that men feel is OK to slide a hand down at the pub as they push past you to the bar. Yet if I put on half a stone, as people often do, I become disgusting, with the kind of body shape about which strangers feel the need to comment. People you have never met suggest better menu options in restaurants; drunk groups of men follow you shouting things that destroy you with every step. The reaction my body generates in others is inescapable. Continue reading...

The president's shedding key constituencies. If morality won't move him to end his support of this war, will self-interest?Joe Biden's re-election team is playing it cool. The Biden campaign has long been shrugging at the president's fading polls, turning down opportunities to put him in front of voters, and generally doing their best to portray an air of confident nonchalance. The campaign's apparent lack of concern seems, or perhaps is meant to seem, like an expression of certainty in the outcome: that Biden will win re-election, and that it won't be close. They want us to think that they've got it in the bag.They do not. Biden is in no way guaranteed re-election, and all available information suggests that the contest will be close. Donald Trump has been narrowly but consistently ahead in national polls. A new dataset released by the New York Times on 13 May found that Biden was trailing in five key swing states - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania - and suffering from disillusionment among young voters as well as Black and Latino ones.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Mike Johnson and other Republicans vying for Trump's approval haven't realized that they, too, will one day pay a priceWhen, in the early days, Donald Trump's diehard fans failed to show up in front of 100 Centre Street at the Manhattan courthouse to clamor about the rank injustice of the case of The People of the State of New York v Donald J Trump, the lonely defendant roused himself from his fitful slumbers to choreograph a dance of the marionettes. The political delegations that started appearing on 14 May attired for perfectly flattering cosplay in Trump matching red ties was a refrain of surrogates echoing insults and imprecations that if the former president were to mutter himself would earn him further contempt of court citations.Trump assembled around him a miniature court and hierarchy that populated a desolation row. In the front row were seated Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump, now installed as the co-chair of the Republican National Committee. There were the senators and congressmen, the failed presidential candidates and hopeful running mates who repeated Trump's scripted talking points against the judge, the prosecutors and the justice system. There were the Fox News anchors, Jeanine Pirro, who exchanged smiles and nods with Trump, and Laura Ingraham, reprimanded by court officers for staring through forbidden binoculars as though she were on safari. There was former Trump White House adviser Boris Epshteyn, indicted in the Arizona fake electors scheme. Continue reading...

Exclusive: employees at a Missouri warehouse file charges against firm alleging use of intrusive algorithms' to deter union effortsAmazon has been accused of using intrusive algorithms" as part of a sweeping surveillance program to monitor and deter union organizing activities.Workers at a warehouse run by the technology giant on the outskirts of St Louis, Missouri, are today filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. Continue reading...

Video of fetus in disembodied womb required viewing for students in two states, as classroom becomes latest front in post-Roe abortion warsAwash in soft, peach-colored light, the infant yawns, sticks her thumb in her mouth and flutters her eyes at the camera. As the camera pulls away from her, an umbilical cord and the fleshy tunnel surrounding the infant comes into focus. This isn't a newborn baby: it's a fetus in a disembodied womb.This is Olivia," a British female voice narrates. Though she has yet to greet the outside world, she has already completed an amazing journey." Continue reading...