Parole board recommends Van Houten, 72, for release but Gavin Newsom says she’s still a ‘danger to society’The California governor, Gavin Newsom, on Tuesday blocked parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, reversing a panel’s recommendation that she be freed after spending a half-century in prison.Van Houten, 72, “currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison at this time”, Newsom said in his parole review. It was the fifth time that a California governor has rejected her release. Continue reading...
Ukraine has slipped down the news agenda, when so recently it was all we could talk about. But the media has to move on – and that has always troubled meFor more than a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, there was almost nothing else in the news. It was all we talked about on the radio, which felt right. Then I was on holiday for a week and off with Covid for a further week.When I was back presenting my programme on BBC Radio 5 live after this fortnight away, subjects other than Ukraine were in our running order. This was inevitable, I suppose, even though the situation in Ukraine was by then considerably more dire than it had been. Our coverage still dominated airtime, but, somehow, Ukraine could no longer have our undivided attention, because the story was no longer new. One atrocity followed another and steadily, appallingly, they lost the power to shock.news (n)late 14c, “new things”, plural of new (n) “new thing” … after French nouvelles, which was used in Bible translations to render medieval Latin nova “news”, literally “new things”. Continue reading...
Autopsy determined the man suffered a crushed skull as well as injuries to a large vein and died within minutesA bodyboarder was attacked by a great white shark in central California on Christmas Eve and died within minutes, official reports have concluded.Tomas Butterfield, 42, was bitten in the head, chest and shoulder in the Morro Bay attack and died from “complications of multiple penetrating blunt force traumatic injuries,” according to a coroner’s report, the Tribune of San Luis Obispo County reported on Tuesday. Continue reading...
For all their posturing about defending children from abuse, their record tells another storyRepublicans have kids on the brain. Over the course of the last year, conservative activists and Republican state lawmakers have been whipping up a set of interrelated moral panics over the supposed indoctrination of children in our schools and child abuse – from the notion that elementary school teachers are raising up junior divisions of the Black Panthers with critical race theory to the insistence that trans people, who today comprise less than half a percent of high-school athletes in the United States, might soon bring an end to girls’ sports. The word “grooming” is now in wide circulation on the right – a dogwhistle that implies basic education on LGBT identity and sex is priming kids for predation, perhaps at the hands of the Satanic sex traffickers at the heart of QAnon’s conspiracy theories.All of this spilled into last week’s confirmation hearings for US supreme court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, which Senate Republicans did their best to derail by mischaracterizing her sentencing on cases on child sexual abuse images. As has been widely reported, those sentences had been entirely in keeping with sentences delivered by most federal judges in comparable cases, including sentences delivered by Trump judicial appointees with broad Republican support. But that mattered not a whit to Republicans on the Hill. “Every judge who does what you’re doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited,” Lindsey Graham told Jackson in a heated exchange. Ted Cruz accused Jackson of “a record of activism and advocacy as it concerns sexual predators that stems back decades”.Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Revelation from former national security adviser raises pressure on Trump as lawmakers investigate gaps in January 6 call logsJohn Bolton, the former national security adviser, has revealed that he heard Donald Trump use the term “burner phones” several times and that they discussed how the disposable devices were deployed by people as a way of avoiding scrutiny of their calls.Bolton’s intervention compounds Trump’s difficulties amid a billowing controversy relating to seven hours and 37 minutes that are missing in official call logs. The gap occurs in records made for 6 January last year – the day of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol. Continue reading...
Jones found liable for damages after victims said he defamed them by claiming 2012 mass shooting in Connecticut never happenedRelatives of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims have rejected an offer from Alex Jones, host of the conspiracy theory and rightwing disinformation website Infowars, to pay $120,000 per plaintiff to resolve their lawsuit. The families said he defamed them by asserting the massacre never happened.A Connecticut judge found Jones liable for damages in November, and a trial is planned to determine how much he should pay the families. Continue reading...
I was a fit 30-year-old, and long Covid has destroyed my life. It’s frustrating how little action there has beenHi. My name is Charlie, and long Covid has destroyed my life.Before my “mild infection”, I was a healthy, fit 30-year-old, biking 10 miles a day with no prior health issues, the type of person the CDC says should bounce back after two weeks. Well, it’s been two years and I’ve yet to bounce back. I can’t work or leave the house, and I rely on my partner as a full-time caretaker. I still can’t breathe right. It is a living nightmare. Writing this piece would have taken me an evening before I was sick, but now this level of cognitive exertion takes an entire week to complete.Charlie McCone is a 32-year-old long Covid patient and advocate based in San Francisco Continue reading...
A spectacular lightning display illuminated the night sky over Wichita, Kansas, during a thunderstorm on Tuesday. The national weather service issued a tornado warning over the Kansas City area as hail and gusty winds moved into the region Continue reading...
As Joe Biden pushes to ‘fund the police’, data from Mapping Police Violence shows high rates of deaths at the hands of law enforcement persistPolice officers in America continue to kill people at an alarming rate, according to a data analysis that has raised concerns about the Biden administration’s push to expand police investments amid growing concerns about crime.Law enforcement in the US have killed 249 people this year as of 24 March, averaging about three deaths per day and mirroring the deadly force trends of recent years, according to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group. The data, experts say, suggests in the nearly two years since George Floyd’s murder, the US has made little progress in preventing deaths at the hands of law enforcement, and that the 2020 promises of systemic reforms have fallen short. Continue reading...
More than half of pregnancies worldwide are unintended, with stigma and misinformation leading factors in lack of family planning, says UNFPAMyths and misinformation surrounding the use of contraception are putting women off using modern family planning methods, the UN population fund has warned, as figures showed that nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended.With more than 250 million women estimated to be not using effective contraception despite wanting to avoid getting pregnant, the UNFPA said that lack of access to family planning was no longer a leading reason for it not being taken up. Continue reading...
The Blue Devils and Tar Heels play each other in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a century-long rivalry. And a storm is gatheringOn Saturday, Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke will face the University of North Carolina in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for both the first and the last time. It sounds improbable but it’s taken until the final season of Coach K’s illustrious career for these two bitter rivals to face each other on college basketball’s biggest stage.It doesn’t feel that way because the two schools – separated by a mere 10 miles – have played each other 257 times, with every game treated as an epic clash between two giants. Duke-North Carolina has been called the biggest rivalry in college sports and has a genuine claim to being one of the most storied in all of US sports. The accompanying hype can become quite overwhelming, particularly when the athletes who decide it are largely unpaid teenagers. Continue reading...
by Hallie Golden with photographs by Jovelle Tamayo on (#5XNAF)
The Lummi Nation, on the US west coast, has faced addiction issues for decades. Now they are utilizing a combination of culturally-based healing and western approachesHarold Plaster had been awake for nine days when he noticed his face in the mirror. It was January 2017, and he was on his latest heroin binge inside a red house on the Lummi Reservation in north-western Washington state. The windows were covered in garbage bags and there were rats scurrying around.As he looked at himself, dangerously thin, he said he began thinking about his six children, all either adults or in foster care, and about his mother, who he had promised his late father he would look after. Continue reading...
Americans who rarely, if ever, smoked marijuana before the pandemic now say they’re turning to weed to help them copeThree years ago, Ricardo Capuano, 32, didn’t know how much a gram of marijuana cost. Now, after years of lockdown and an extended period of overwhelming anxiety, he has become something of a weed connoisseur.Capuano was never a stoner; sure, he dabbled in high school, but beer and mezcal were always his “weapon of choice”. It wasn’t until the summer of 2020, in the pits of Covid despair, that he found himself reformed as a proud, regular toker. In fact, Capuano found himself actually proselytizing about the splendor of cannabis to his friends during their weekly online poker games. “I was starting to become an advocate,” he laughs. Continue reading...
Student workers often earn ‘below the minimum living wage’ for helping teach courses and assisting with researchThousands of graduate student workers around the US at private and public universities have gone on strike over the past few years, from Ivy League institutions like Harvard University and Columbia University to public state universities in California.Graduate workers at even more colleges have organized unions in spite of staunch opposition from their administrations. Among the most pressing unifying themes among graduate student workers organizing unions and holding protest actions and strikes is the low pay, an issue plaguing graduate student workers around the US. Continue reading...
The 38-year-old was largely unfamiliar with weightlifting five years ago. Now she is one of the strongest people on the planetThe Chiseled Life gym in Columbia, Maryland, is buzzing with a soundtrack of weights clanging and lifters grunting. Then Tamara Walcott paces in front of the deadlift bar and the room stills. The men by the bench bar stop and turn, ready to see a world-record holder in action.Walcott faces the bar and sets one foot in position, kicks back the other and places it a hip’s width apart. She flicks one wrist out in front of her, and then the other, showing off her long nails, painted yellow, a different design on each finger. Holding a squat briefly, she then stands up straight and bends over to take a grip on the bar. She starts pulling. “Let’s go!” the men shout. “Come on!” yells a woman leaning on the squat rack. Walcott pauses with the 455lbs load by her shins before lifting it up to the level of her hips. She sets the bar back down … then repeats the motion five more times. Continue reading...
Our own crisis of truth is responsible for some of the world’s biggest problemsTo the Syrians who have suffered its attacks, the Kremlin’s lies about Ukraine must sound horribly familiar. Insisting that the victims of bombings are “crisis actors”, spreading falsehoods about chemical weapons, justifying the mass murder of civilians by claiming that anyone who resists is a “Nazi” (in Ukraine) or a “head-chopper” (in Syria): its disinformation tactics have been tested and honed.This organised lying has more or less destroyed the US left, and severely damaged the European left. As the activist Terry Burke documented in 2019, effective leftwing opposition to Donald Trump collapsed amid furious internal disputes about Syria and Russian interference in US politics, triggered by prominent figures reciting Kremlin falsehoods. Some of them turned out to be paid by the Russian government.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist. He will discuss Regenesis at a Guardian Live event on Monday 30 May. Book tickets in-person or online here Continue reading...
The former president’s daughter has announced she helped deliver more than a million meals to Ukrainian refugees in Poland. How things have changed since the Abramovich party daysIs it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Ivanka Trump swooping in to save Ukraine. Nato may not be giving Volodymyr Zelenskiy the no-fly zone he wants, but he can at least take solace in the fact that he has the full force of Saint Ivanka by his side.If you haven’t heard about the former first daughter’s latest selfless humanitarian exertions, it’s not because she has been modest about them. Ivanka has kept a low profile since her father lost the 2020 election, but has recently stepped back into the spotlight to ensure her good deeds don’t go unnoticed. On Friday, Ivanka updated her Instagram account for the first time since January with a post trumpeting the fact that she has helped deliver more than a million meals to Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Fox News also published a long puff piece full of adoring quotes from anonymous sources and a Florida pastor she is working with about how a plane full of food destined for refugees would never have got off the ground “if it weren’t for [Ivanka’s] immediate involvement”. Continue reading...
The photographer’s seminal Redheads explored his fascination with the hair colour – and a forthcoming edition features new and previously unseen images Continue reading...
Landmark group votes to base compensation plan on lineage rather than race after day of debateCalifornia’s first-in-the-nation taskforce on reparations for African Americans has voted to direct state compensation to the descendants of enslaved and free Black people who were in the US in the 19th century.The group said that a compensation and restitution plan based on lineage – as opposed to one based on race, which would have opened the possibility of reparations to a broader group – had the best change of surviving a legal challenge. They also said that Black immigrants who had chosen to migrate to the US in the 20th and 21st centuries did not share the trauma of people who had been kidnapped and enslaved. Continue reading...
Kamala Harris and relatives of Ida B Wells and Emmett Till attend ceremony marking Emmett Till Antilynching ActThe first federal legislation making lynching a hate crime, addressing a history of racist killings in the United States, became law on Tuesday.The bill, passed by the Senate this month, is named for Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Joe Biden signed the bill surrounded by Kamala Harris, members of Congress and top justice department officials. He was also joined by a descendant of Ida B Wells, a Black journalist who reported on lynchings, and the Rev Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till. Continue reading...
Prime minister Manasseh Sogavare’s proposed agreement with Beijing would affect regional security and may jeopardise relationships with existing partnersThe proposed security deal between Solomon Islands and China may appear to be all about security, but it is in fact counterproductive to the security interests of Solomon Islands and the Pacific Islands region. Prime minister Manasseh Sogavare seems to be oblivious to the issues surrounding the draft deal and may see it as a move that would cement his grip on political power.The Solomons has never been threatened by external forces, nor does it expect any such threats in the foreseeable future. Its security interests are predominantly domestic. And in that respect there is already an agreement with China on policing support. This new deal therefore has to be seen in light of China’s reach into this part of the Pacific. Continue reading...
With government taking a wild west approach to law-breaking, Labour chose to focus instead on Evgeny Lebedev’s peerageThe denial was near total. You’d have thought that Boris Johnson would have had plenty of time to prepare a response to the Metropolitan police’s decision to issue the first bang-to-rights 20 fixed-penalty notices. After all, they can hardly have come as a surprise. Only it seems that everything is a surprise to the Suspect – or the Criminal as we may soon have to call him – these days.So much so that he’s still not sure if he actually went to a party during lockdown even though the police have concluded that loads of people did. Even now he’s swearing blind that no one did anything wrong in No 10. The police must have made a mistake. If it wasn’t already before, it really is now one rule for him and another for the rest of us. Continue reading...
A series exploring how the pandemic has supercharged the use of artificial intelligence tools at work and schoolThis content is supported in part through philanthropic funding to theguardian.org from the Open Society Foundations, which works to build vibrant and inclusive democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. All content is editorially independent and overseen by Guardian editors.All our journalism follows GNM’s published editorial code. The Guardian is committed to open journalism, recognizing that the best understanding of the world is achieved when we collaborate, share knowledge, encourage debate, welcome challenge, and harness the expertise of specialists and their communities. You can read more about content funding at the Guardian here. Continue reading...
A series exploring how the pandemic has supercharged the use of artificial intelligence tools at work and schoolThis content is supported in part through philanthropic funding to theguardian.org from the Open Society Foundations, which works to build vibrant and inclusive democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. All content is editorially independent and overseen by Guardian editors.All our journalism follows GNM’s published editorial code. The Guardian is committed to open journalism, recognizing that the best understanding of the world is achieved when we collaborate, share knowledge, encourage debate, welcome challenge, and harness the expertise of specialists and their communities. You can read more about content funding at the Guardian here. Continue reading...
The US president has said it remains to be seen if Russia will follow through on its pledge to scale down its military operations in northern Ukraine, saying Washington and its allies will maintain sanctions and continue providing aid to Ukraine in the meantime. 'I don’t read anything into it until we see what their actions are,' Biden said of Russia at a White House press conference following his meeting with Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong
State attorney general Letitia James says her office has every right to question Trump and his two oldest children over possible fraudThe attorney general of New York state is asking an appeals court to uphold a lower-court ruling requiring Donald Trump to answer questions under oath, after a civil investigation uncovered evidence he may have misstated the value of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers on financial statements for more than a decade.In papers filed late on Monday, the office of Letitia James said it had every right to question Trump, who is appealing against the lower-court ruling, as it seeks to determine whether the misrepresented values shown to lenders, taxing authorities and other business interests constituted fraud and, if so, who committed that fraud. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Grand Rapids, Michigan on (#5XMGF)
Prosecutors show jurors social media posts which defense says do not show plot to snatch Michigan governorJurors on Tuesday saw provocative social media posts written by a key figure charged in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, including a photo of a noose and a question: which governor would be “dragged off and hung for treason first?”Federal prosecutors were close to finishing their case after 12 days of trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They are trying to show that four men charged with conspiring to kidnap the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in 2020 were committed to a plan without influence by informants or undercover FBI agents. Continue reading...
Panel reportedly investigating ‘possible coverup’ of records, with unexplained gap of seven hours as Capitol insurrection took placeThe House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is reportedly looking at a “possible cover-up” of White House records focusing on Donald Trump’s phone logs from that fateful day, which bear an unexplained gap of seven hours and 37 minutes covering the period when the violence was unfolding.Documents obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News put flesh on the bones of one of the great mysteries of January 6: why White House phone logs contain holes in the record despite evidence the then president busily made calls at the height of the insurrection. Continue reading...
Nebraska’s Bruce Bostelman apologises for repeating rumor that schools accommodating children who self-identify as catsA Nebraska state lawmaker apologized on Monday after he publicly cited a persistent but debunked rumor alleging that schools are placing litter boxes in school bathrooms to accommodate children who self-identify as cats.State senator Bruce Bostelman, a conservative Republican, repeated the false claim during a public, televised debate on a bill intended to help school children who have behavioral problems. His comments quickly went viral, with one Twitter video garnering more than 300,000 views as of Monday afternoon, and drew an onslaught of online criticism and ridicule. Continue reading...
It is said that compared to the crisis in Ukraine, N0 10’s offences were trivial. But the PM must pay for this abuse of powerNow that the Metropolitan police have issued 20 fines to government officials for violating the Covid rules they were tasked with drawing up, there are two things we can conclude about Boris Johnson. Either, when he declared less than four months ago that “all the guidelines were observed”, he was completely ignorant about the laws he was directly responsible for – or he repeatedly and shamelessly lied. There is a third possibility – he had no idea what was going on in the prime minister’s official residence – that is too insulting to anyone’s intelligence to even bother indulging.Which of the two options is true is interesting as an academic debate, but both provide the same answer to the basic question: “Regardless of your political standpoint, is this person fit for high office?” Let’s indulge it anyway. Johnson is, notoriously, not known as a details man. If the phrase “educated beyond his intelligence” could sprout arms, legs and a contrived untidy mop, it would be him. Oxbridge does not, unfortunately, lack his type: mediocre youngsters ensconced in privilege, whose pretentious vocabulary and unnecessary use of Latin disguises a lack of depth and knowledge. Continue reading...
‘It is absolutely essential for our democracy that we win,’ speaker of the House says in interviewThe Democratic speaker of the US House, Nancy Pelosi, said she “fears for democracy” if Republicans retake the chamber in November.“It is absolutely essential for our democracy that we win,” Pelosi said in an interview during the 2022 Toner Prizes for political journalism on Monday night. Continue reading...
If you’re going to make fun of sensitive subjects, you’d better be clever about it. ‘Ha ha, she’s bald and looks like GI Jane’ just won’t cut itIt was the slap that launched a thousand hot takes. Here’s what Will Smith hitting Chris Rock at the Oscars tells us about the actor’s early childhood. Here’s what Smith’s violent outburst can teach us about the war in Ukraine. Here’s why the whole thing felt staged. Here’s the history of public slapping in 10 gifs. Here’s why the Academy is hypocritical for saying it doesn’t condone violence, when Michael Moore got booed during the 2003 Oscars for criticising the Iraq war – and you don’t get any more violent than war, do you?Look, you’ve probably had enough of people talking smackgate by now. I’m sure you’re over this whole thing. I get it. The sensible little voice in my head is telling me: “Arwa, don’t get involved. You don’t need to wade into this sordid story and turn a celebrity fracas into a lesson about life, the universe, and everything.” Alas, like Will Smith, I’m afraid I just can’t control myself. Just as he couldn’t repress his urge to slap, I can’t repress my urge to pundit. So I’d like to take a minute; just sit right there, and I’ll tell you why Chris Rock should never have made that stupid joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith’s, hair. Continue reading...
Viewing figures for the Academy Awards have been in decline for years and 2022’s ceremony looked like yet another snoozefest … until Smith slapped Chris RockWithout question, Sunday night’s Oscars were the ugliest in history. By physically assaulting a performer onstage, Will Smith managed to cause irreparable damage to the ceremony. And the outright failure of the show’s producers and guests to chastise Smith, or even fully acknowledge his attack, has thrown the entire Academy into disrepute. However, if you squint hard enough and look at it from just the right angle, it might have been just the thing that the Oscars needed.First, some perspective. This year’s Oscars needed to be a hit. Last year’s Covid ceremony was watched, by some degree, by far fewer people than any other Oscars in history. This was in part due to circumstance – no big films had been released due to Covid, and the big stars were understandably reluctant to all go and breathe on each other in an enclosed space – but also due to the event itself. Held in a train station, it was brisk and brief and shorn of all clips and jokes. It was not in any way fun to watch, so nobody watched it. Continue reading...
Ex-president issues lengthy statement after a judge says Trump likely committed felonies during his attempts to overturn electionDonald Trump has claimed to have hit a hole-in-one at his golf course in Florida while playing with a former world No 1, Ernie Els.The former president released a lengthy statement about the shot, which was said to have happened on Saturday, late on Monday. Continue reading...
The absence, to date, of mass death from hunger doesn’t mean that Russian forces are innocent of the war crime of starvationThe deputy mayor of Mariupol, Sergiy Orlov, describes people sheltering in basements trying to survive without food, medicine or a power supply, and drinking melted snow because the water has been cut off. In Chernihiv, March 16, a line of 10 civilians queuing for bread outside a grocery shop were killed by Russian troops. Ukrainian intelligence reports indiscriminate shelling and targeting of agricultural machinery, fields and grain stores; and civilians are being blocked from leaving besieged towns and cities or killed whilst fleeing. This is a playbook familiar to any monitoring similar starvation crimes in Syria, Yemen, Tigray or South Sudan.A few very elderly Ukrainians will remember the forced starvation of the Holodomor of 1932-33, when a combination of brutally enforced collectivization and punitive confiscation of food killed about three million Ukrainians through the resulting famine. It was the occasion for Stalin’s infamous remark ‘if only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy; if millions die, that’s only statistics.’ He was wrong: every Ukrainian knows the story, deeply carved into their collective memory. After Ukrainian independence, monuments to the victims of famine were constructed in Kiev and Kharkhiv.Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, Boston MassachusettsCatriona Murdoch is a partner at Global Rights Compliance, an international foundation specialising in international criminal, humanitarian, and human rights law Continue reading...
Putin’s lies, and the lies coming from America’s extreme right, are mutually supporting. There’s a reason for thatIn a speech delivered last Friday from his office in the Kremlin, Putin criticized the west’s “cancel culture”, which, he charged, is “canceling” Russia – “an entire thousand-year-old country, our people”. It was the third time in recent months Putin has blasted the so-called “cancel culture”.Which is exactly what Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the Republican party have blasted for several years. Continue reading...
by Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer on (#5XM26)
The jurisdictions that help kleptocrats live in luxury on stolen assets must stop shielding corrupt elitesSeven years ago, an anonymous source who went by the name “John Doe” provided us with the data that became the Panama Papers – 2.6 terabytes of leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The leak turned out to have quite an impressive Russian component. We found shell companies connected to Vladimir Putin’s judo friends, Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, to the oligarch Alisher Usmanov and the wife of the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. But, most significantly, we stumbled across Sergej Roldugin, a professional cellist and godfather of Putin’s eldest daughter, who had a central role in a network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth $2bn, described at the time as the key to tracing Putin’s hidden fortune.All this hidden wealth mattered when we published the Panama Papers in 2016, two years after Russia had annexed the Crimean peninsula. Now, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it matters more than ever. Lawmakers in the UK, the EU, the US and Canada have sanctioned Russian banks, Russian companies and individuals close to Putin. This includes Russian oligarchs, as well as Putin’s friends, supporters and admirers who have helped facilitate his kleptocracy by hiding his wealth in accounts under their own names or just championing his kleptocracy for their own illicit enrichment. Individuals like the cellist Sergej Roldugin, the Rotenberg brothers and Usmanov.Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer are investigative journalists with the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung. They initiated the 2016 Panama Papers as well as 2017 Paradise Papers revelations and the 2022 Suisse Secrets. Obermaier is co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (https://acdatacollective.org), Obermayer on the board of Forbidden Stories (https://forbiddenstories.org). Continue reading...
Congressional groups have drawn up lists of executive actions to further the Biden agenda while not giving up on legislationWhen Senator Joe Manchin announced in December that he would not support the Build Back Better Act, House progressives immediately got to work. As the Congressional Progressive Caucus continued to lobby for passing a social spending package, its members also started crafting a list of potential executive orders that Biden could sign to advance Democrats’ policy agenda.That list was released in mid-March after months of deliberations, and it outlines a specific strategy for Biden to combat the climate crisis and lower costs for American families with the flick of his pen. Continue reading...
Called ‘constitutional carry’ or ‘permitless carry’, the bills have been criticized by police and activists who say removing permits poses a safety riskAmerica’s relationship with guns will probably never be peaceful, but as a rash of new pro-gun laws spread across the country some fear it could soon be legal in as many as 25 US states to carry a concealed gun without a permit.To gun control advocates and law enforcement it’s a dangerous new development in America’s enduring, historic and highly politicized infatuation with personal firearms. Continue reading...
Companies will need to find a new model that works for them and their employees – many of whom prefer to work at home some daysIt can be hard to remember what work at the office was like before the pandemic forced millions of Americans to start working from home. That shift was monumental and seemingly implausible, until it happened. But people soon adapted to saying “sorry, you’re on mute” on Zoom calls and wearing sweatpants all day.This spring, workers are finally heading back to the office en masse and into another untested and ambitious experiment in work life: hybrid working. Continue reading...
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