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An encounter with an AI-generated image of his holiness has changed me: I now have sympathy for credulous baby boomersIt happened to me: I thought the image of the pope in a big coat was real. Here’s my first excuse: I don’t really know much about popes. His holiness can be out there doing his things, and I can be over here doing mine, and our ecosystems never really cross. I think I just idly assumed: this one is the cool pope, right? We had the really popey pope, and then the German pope who looked a bit like he might be in Star Wars, and now we have the cool pope. Right? He’s always doing tweets and saying something very slightly liberal. He’s cool! So I thought wearing a really big coat and looking like a Metal Gear Solid 2 boss battle might have been part of his ongoing cool guy shtick. Lord, forgive me.As it turns out, the image of the pope in a big coat, which was doing the rounds on social media this weekend, was generated by AI. The i reliably informs me that it was created using a program called Midjourney and was seemingly first shared on a Reddit page dedicated to AI art, before going viral on Twitter.Joel Golby is a writer for the Guardian and Vice, and the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant Continue reading...

I’m proud to be part of Third Act, a climate activist organization for people over the age of 60The brutal truth is that last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report didn’t have the effect it should have had, or that its authors clearly intended. Produced by thousands of scientists who synthesized the work of tens of thousands of their peers over the last decade, and meticulously drafted by teams of careful communicators, it landed in the world with a gentle plop, not the resounding thud that’s required.In China, the world’s biggest emitter, official attention was focused instead on Moscow, where Xi Jinping was off to do a little male bonding with fellow autocrat Vladimir Putin, incidentally the world’s second largest producer of hydrocarbons. In America, the historical emissions champ, we were riveted by the possibility that would-be autocrat Donald Trump might be indicted. In the New York Times, our planet’s closest thing to a paper of record, the IPCC report was the fourth story on the website. Continue reading...

Low-income residents face rough recovery after tornado walloped two counties with poverty rates of 35% and 33%A giant tornado obliterated the modest one-story home that Kimberly Berry shared with her two daughters in the Mississippi Delta flatlands, leaving only a foundation and some random belongings: a toppled refrigerator, a dresser and matching nightstand, a bag of Christmas decorations, some clothing.During the storm Friday, Berry and her 12-year-old daughter huddled and prayed at a nearby church that was barely damaged, while her 25-year-old daughter survived in the hard-hit town of Rolling Fork, about 15 miles (24km) away. Continue reading...

My granddaughters got red blotches and their eyes burned. I’ve been having headaches and coughing fitsOn the evening of 3 February I was at home in East Palestine, Ohio, watching a movie with my granddaughters, when my daughter Adyson called and asked, “Dad, what’s going on downtown?” I looked out the window and there was an orange glow in the sky. I turned the movie down to talk to my daughter but she’d hung up. Ten minutes later she called back and said, “We’re coming to get you.”We went to try to figure out what had happened and it was like driving into a cloud – smoke was billowing overhead. A Norfolk Southern freight train had derailed. You could see the flames over the tops of nearby houses and feel the heat from several hundred feet away. Huge clouds of smoke were spreading from the crash site over our town.Greg Mascher is a grandfather and concerned resident of East Palestine, Ohio Continue reading...

California immigrant farm workers bore the brunt of this winter’s extreme weather – yet have scant resources to put their lives back togetherTheresa Barajas hadn’t been able to bring herself to the police barricade at the edge of Pajaro, or look at the devastation that lay beyond. Even if the flood waters had spared her apartment, the life she and her family had built there would be gone.“It will not be like before,” she said. Continue reading...

Prime minister is due to address the nation after mass protests overnight. Plus, meet the hairdressers trained to talk about climate actionGood morning.Israel’s embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected to address the nation about his far-right government’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary, after a decision to sack his defence minister for opposing the plans sparked mass protests across the country overnight.Why are people against the changes? Critics say they will give politicians too much power over the judiciary by allowing a simple majority in the Knesset to overrule almost all of the court’s decisions, and give politicians a decisive say on appointments to the bench. It has also been pointed out the move could help Netanyahu evade prosecution in his corruption trial, in which he denies all charges.What has Israel’s president said? President Isaac Herzog, writing on Twitter in the early hours of Monday morning, said: “For the sake of the unity of the people of Israel, for the sake of responsibility, I call on [Netanyahu] to stop the legislative process immediately.”Do we know anything about the victims? Stories are beginning to emerge. In Carroll county, fatalities included three members of the same family living in a mobile home park near the community of Summerfield. Danny Munford, 51, his wife, Helen Munford, 54, and their son JaDarrion Murphy, 14, died after winds picked up their mobile home and tore it apart, the local paper reports. Continue reading...

Billionaire is thought to have remained outside country after state crackdown on tech sectorThe Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, has visited a school in mainland China after months during which he made no public appearances in the country because of a government crackdown on the powerful tech sector.He is thought to have remained outside China for more than a year from late 2021 after regulators in the country tightened oversight of his businesses due to outspoken criticism from the tech entrepreneur. Continue reading...

Paintings and sculptures are easier to transport and hide than yachts and private jets. Don’t let them slip through the netRené Magritte, one of Belgium’s most famous artists, was a leading member of the 1920s movement called surrealism, which sought revolution against the constraints of the rational mind. When describing his paintings, Magritte said they “evoke mystery” and strived to ask beholders: “What does that mean? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing, it is unknowable.” I sometimes feel as if I am looking at a Magritte painting when examining Russians’ ability to evade western sanctions policies.Arkady Rotenberg, worth a reported $3.5bn (£2.9bn), is a childhood friend of Vladimir Putin. He used to be the Russian president’s judo sparring partner, before progressing to become a rich businessman. Rotenberg has publicly claimed to own the $1bn so-called “Putin’s Palace”, a huge Italianate complex on the Black Sea coast said to be secretly owned by the Russian president. Continue reading...

The 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers only won nine of their 82 games. Their best player that season says he wants their record to stay standingFifty years ago this month, the Philadelphia 76ers meekly lost by 19 points to the Detroit Pistons before a grand total of 1,937 fans at Pittsburgh Civic Arena to finish the 82-game 1972-73 season with 73 losses, an NBA record for futility that somehow still stands.“The best part of this game was the end,” Kevin Loughery, the guard who had replaced Roy Rubin as coach in the middle of the season, told the Philadelphia Daily News that day. Continue reading...

Collapse of tech sector lender will cost about $20bn in deposit insurance payouts, say US regulatorsThe failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will be mostly taken over by First Citizens, a North Carolina lender, and its collapse will cost $20bn (£16bn) in deposit insurance payouts, US regulators have said.First Citizens will take on all $119bn in deposits and loans from the entity set up after SVB’s collapse earlier this month. Continue reading...

The Republican extremist high-fived and shook defendants’ hands, calling them ‘political prisoners’A jail in Washington DC has become the latest focal point of the US culture wars after a congressional delegation led by the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene visited defendants charged in 2021’s deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and championed them as “political prisoners”.Greene high-fived the detainees and shook their hands, according to the Associated Press. As the tour group was leaving, the defendants chanted “Let’s go Brandon!”, an offensive phrase denigrating Democratic president Joe Biden. Continue reading...

The recently elected senator has spent the past five weeks in the Walter Reed hospital receiving inpatient care for depressionJohn Fetterman is expected to return to office soon after spending the last five-plus weeks in a hospital receiving treatment for mental depression, a spokesperson has said, though the staffer stopped short of offering an exact timeline.“John will be out soon. Over a week but soon,” Joe Calvello, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania senator, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in an article published on Friday. Saying that the team caring for Fetterman at Washington DC’s Walter Reed hospital was “amazing”, Calvello added: “Recovery is going really well.” Continue reading...

Despite the formation of various intervention programs, police continue to kill people in the throes of mental health episodesIt was just after 6.30 one evening last April when Las Cruces police officer Jared Cosper responded to a mental health call. The family of Amelia Baca, a 75-year-old grandmother with dementia, had called 911, saying she appeared to be off her medication and was threatening them. They needed help.Cosper, trained in crisis intervention, according to a subsequent lawsuit, arrived at the Bacas’ front door and instructed family members to step outside. Police body camera video shows Baca’s granddaughter thanking the officer and asking him to “be very careful with her”. Continue reading...

Covid accelerated a decline in vaccinations in England. We have to make a stronger case for them, and ensure everyone can get themIn 1959, at the age of 29, the promising England footballer Jeff Hall died of polio. His death sent shock waves across Britain, and caused an immediate change in attitudes towards vaccination, from complacency to a sudden rush to clinics. A polio vaccine had been available for three years, but takeup was low. After Hall’s death, the demand was so high that vaccines had to be flown in from the US. As the Daily Express put it: “In the past 10 years over 3,000 people have died of polio in England and Wales. But it took the death of one footballer to get [people] pouring into the clinics.” More than half a century later, we may be returning to complacency when it comes to getting children vaccinated.The past decade has seen a decline in the uptake of almost all routine vaccinations for children in England. Currently, no childhood vaccinations meet the 95% target set by the World Health Organization. The US has a similar shortfall, and the WHO warns that the long-term decline in childhood vaccination rates is a global phenomenon. Here, the consequences have been increased cases of vaccine-preventable diseases such as whooping cough in nurseries and schools, as well as a rising number of polio samples found in sewage in London. Continue reading...

Finland’s tourist board is running a competition to win a happiness masterclass. Sadly, the prize doesn’t involve drinking in your underwearI’m loth to share this, because I want to win myself, but Visit Finland is running a competition to take part in a “happiness masterclass”. It’s not as good as last year’s Icelandic tourist board initiative where you could get their shaggy little horses to write you an out-of-office email by walking on a giant keyboard, but having recently described myself as having “no talent for happiness”, I’m keen.Confirmed this month as the happiest place in the world for the sixth year running, Finland, the country with a word for getting drunk alone in your underwear (päntsdrunk, or kalsarikännit), is offering the rest of us a chance to learn the secrets of highly contented Finns. Continue reading...

More people injured in blast at West Reading plant known for manufacturing chocolate bunniesA powerful explosion at a Pennsylvania chocolate factory known for making chocolate Easter bunnies killed a total of seven people, authorities said, as emergency workers retrieved the last of the bodies.The deadly blast obliterated the facility 60 miles north-west of Philadelphia a little more than two weeks before Easter. The cause of the explosion remained under investigation on Saturday morning, but officials said they believed it may have resulted from a gas leak, WPVI reported. Continue reading...

Trump’s prediction last week was a bust, but Manhattan grand jury could reconvene on Monday with an arraignment by end of dayDonald Trump’s lawyer has admitted that the former president based his incendiary and unfounded remarks about his imminent arrest last week on mere speculation prompted by “rumours”.Trump ignited a week of political, media and law enforcement frenzy when he announced on his social media platform Truth Social that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday in the New York criminal investigation relating to hush money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. Security was stepped up at the Manhattan courthouse and around the district attorney leading the case, Alvin Bragg, amid fears of renewed protests by Trump supporters, some of whom staged the deadly attack at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...

The Pine Mountain Animal Safari lost two of its big cats after it sustained weather damage, but found them a few hours laterTwo tigers briefly went missing from a Georgia zoo after a tornado struck the state on Saturday night and damaged the facility’s infrastructure.In a Facebook post on Sunday morning, the Troup county’s sheriff’s office announced that it received a report from the Pine Mountain Animal Safari that a “tiger … is unaccounted for inside the park”. Continue reading...

Search and recovery efforts continue after twister hit hardest in some of the most economically deprived areas of US’s poorest stateJoe Biden declared a federal emergency for swathes of Mississippi hit by a devastating tornado, as rescue workers continued to search for survivors on Sunday morning with a death toll of at least 26 people caused by catastrophic storms in parts of the US’s deep south.Twenty-five people were killed and dozens injured in Mississippi, throughout the state’s low-lying Delta region and around its north-east portion, with another man dying in the neighboring state of Alabama. Continue reading...

Ex-president insisted he wasn’t afraid of the investigation into hush money payments even as he lashed out at the caseDonald Trump repeatedly insisted on Saturday night he was not upset by expected criminal charges that might arise from the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels as he returned from a campaign rally in Waco, Texas.But the manner of Trump’s responses to questions suggested worries about potential damage to his image, and he came across as someone angry that his good vibrations with his “Make American great again” base in Texas could be interrupted by the reality of a possible indictment as soon as this week. Continue reading...

Platform has drawn close congressional scrutiny because the data of users could be available to the government of ChinaOne of the authors of a Senate bill that would enable the federal commerce department to ban technologies with links to foreign governments has said that the Joe Biden White House is “very in favor” of the measure, but he stopped short of saying whether the president’s administration has discussed possibly prohibiting the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok in particular.Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said that the proposed legislation has also picked up support in his congressional chamber from 11 Democrats – of which he is one – as well as 11 Republicans. Continue reading...

Footage shows the aftermath of a deadly tornado that left at least 25 people dead and dozens injured after it tore through the US state on 24 March.Four people are missing, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said on Saturday in its latest update on Twitter. 'Multiple state agencies and partners are working together to help in the response and recovery efforts,' it said.The agency warned of severe storms for counties across rural Mississippi on the evening of 26 March and expected damaging gusts of wind

A new study shows more than half of teens spend their free time in their bedroom. But we are offering them nothing away from their screensOn the rack of magazines by the supermarket tills, I’m always brought up short by Teen Breathe magazine. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great – well-designed and full of positive, interesting features. But I’m always momentarily incredulous: teenagers need to be reminded to breathe, spend time in nature, journal or mindfully colour mandalas? How did we get here – shouldn’t they be getting their heads stuck in swings or setting fire to bins?It’s stupid, because of course teenagers need all the help they can get. We are, as a data-heavy transatlantic dossier in the Financial Times explored recently, in a teen mental health crisis. The report highlighted a marked rise in depressive symptoms, worry, negative feelings about life and poor self-image. Meanwhile, a UK report last week showed a 22% increase in self-harm hospital admissions in 8- to 17-year-olds. Continue reading...

Donald Trump used his first election rally in Waco, Texas, to rail against the prosecutors investigating him, employing conspiratorial language to fire up his base ahead of next year's Republican primary elections.The former president told supporters gathered at Waco's airport on 25 March that the investigations swirling around him were 'something straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show'.The choice of location for the rally was striking: Waco, a city in Texas, was the scene 30 years ago of a 51-day standoff and deadly siege between law enforcement and the Branch Davidians that resulted in the deaths of more than 80 members of the religious cult and four federal agents. Trump described the 2024 election campaign as the 'final battle'

New approach is needed to get UK through looming credit crunch after failure of recovery from crashCrashing financial markets, depositors rushing to withdraw their money, and fears over the next domino to fall. Not since the 2008 financial crisis has the global banking system appeared so fragile, as the rapid increase in interest rates used to tackle soaring inflation sends shock waves through the City.In the turmoil of the past fortnight, the Swiss government-brokered rescue of Credit Suisse by UBS and the failure of Silicon Valley Bank has led investors on both sides of the Atlantic to ask the same question: is this 2008 all over again? How bad can it get? Continue reading...

Yes, there were some scary moments, it was poorly regulated and your bank failed to protect your money – but you got it backIf your business banked with Silicon Valley Bank then count yourself as very, very lucky.Yes, your bank failed to protect your money. Its managers made unwise investment decisions, it was poorly supervised and poorly regulated. But you still got your money back. Continue reading...

As the state’s longest serving senator prepares to retire, the new leadership will determine the trajectory for the Democratic partyWhen Dianne Feinstein arrived in Washington in 1992, her home state of California was solidly purple and Republican Pete Wilson occupied the governor’s office.More than 40 years later, as the oldest member of Congress and California’s longest serving senator prepares to retire, her state is arguably the most reliably blue in the US. Continue reading...

With the old media order losing ground, a new cadre of extreme voices has emerged, precipitating a GOP shift to Maga populismHe has a platform that most politicians would envy. But Jack Posobiec is not to be found on America’s major TV networks or in its newspapers. He is among a cadre of online influencers who now shape the far right – and could help decide the Republican presidential primary race in 2024.“Two operatives made the very same prediction, that Posobiec will matter as much to future GOP voters as Washington Post columnist George Will did to Republicans a generation ago,” political journalist David Weigel wrote in a Semafor newsletter last week. Continue reading...

Fears for data security lie behind recent government bans on the Chinese-owned app, but zombie scrolling has health dangers tooAs of this moment, government officials in 11 countries are forbidden to run TikTok on their government-issued phones. The countries include the US, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, the UK, New Zealand, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Poland. In addition, European Commission and European parliament staff were required to delete the app. This raises two questions.First, why were politicians and senior officials in democracies scrolling like zombies through dance crazes, daft pet videos, feeling “bonita” and things you can do with smudged lipstick? Continue reading...

The likes of The White Lotus and The Menu allow us to indulge our fantasies of revoltSuccession is back, sweeping portentously over New York’s skyline, reeking of money and menace. Like the very best seasons of The Real Housewives, it has everything: fabulous couture, looming mansions, smashing mini-breaks and the generous invitation to pity or despise almost all the characters in it.Succession led the way, but since we last left the Roys in late 2021 there has been an explosion of “eat the rich” on screen. The rich have been skewered figuratively in The White Lotus and literally in The Menu. In Triangle of Sadness, the capsize of a super-yacht tumbled influencers and moguls to the bottom of the social hierarchy; in Glass Onion, a tech bro billionaire figure was dramatically relieved of his priceless art collection. There has perhaps never been a worse time to be a fictional oligarch. If you’re lucky, you’ll be merely miserable (your riches, you see, will have robbed you of everything that truly matters in life). At worst, you’ll be elaborately dead. Continue reading...

City leaders rethink strategy after hundreds of arrests and two deaths during this year’s student vacation marred by mayhemCity leaders in Miami Beach are to rethink their approach to the annual student right of passage known as spring break after successive weekends of violence left two people dead, hundreds arrested and dozens of guns confiscated by law enforcement officers.The mayor of Miami Beach, Dan Gelber, told the Guardian the mayhem was akin to a giant, unruly street party, with authorities struggling to control tens of thousands of unwanted guests and a business community blocking measures to try to control it. Continue reading...

The song’n’dance genre is everywhere, David Hare has bemoaned. He needs to watch more of these joyous showsSnobbery is back. After the catastrophic, industry-savaging closures of Covid, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the theatre along comes playwright David Hare to tell us what we should and, most particularly, shouldn’t be seeing.Writing last week in the Spectator, he bemoaned the state of, in every sense, play. He recalled a walk last summer past London’s Royal Court, traditionally seen as the country’s leading home for new plays, and where, at the beginning of the 1970s, Hare made his name. Indeed, until The Vertical Hour in 2008, it produced several of his plays. Continue reading...

America’s record at keeping global order is deeply flawed, but the only winners from its drift towards isolationism will be Xi Jinping and Vladimir PutinAmerican global leadership took a serious kicking last week. Politicians and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic queued up to condemn George W Bush’s and Tony Blair’s disastrous invasion of Iraq 20 years ago this month. At the same time, Congress moved to repeal the war powers act that enables a US president to launch military interventions abroad.In Moscow, meanwhile, Xi Jinping, stringing along his Russian puppet, Vladimir Putin, proposed a new global order to replace the post-1945 US-led model. China’s de facto dictator is generously offering to “stand guard” over the planet. In Xi’s brave new world, subservience and surveillance replace shock and awe. Democracy takes a back seat. Continue reading...

The anger on the streets sparked by raising the retirement age to 64 is the latest manifestation of dissatisfaction with the presidencyFrance’s relationship with monarchy has rarely run smooth. The guillotining of Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, in 1793 was an early attempt at levelling up. Emperors, more kings and assorted republics followed. In 1962, Charles de Gaulle created an elected presidency with regal powers. To his many critics, Emmanuel Macron, the incumbent, behaves like a latterday Sun King – le Roi Soleil – in the style of Louis XIV.It may have been the prospect of Macron hosting a sumptuous banquet for King Charles at the Sun King’s Palace of Versailles this week that finally prompted France’s embarrassing, last-minute decision to postpone the British monarch’s state visit. After weeks of furious, nationwide protests against Macron’s drive to raise the state pension age to save money, the optics would have been truly terrible. Yet still today’s sans-culottes cry: “Off with his head!” Continue reading...

When my country, Pakistan, flooded last year, women faced particular suffering. That’s true around the worldLast summer, a third of Pakistan was underwater. My country, the fifth most populous in the world, was submerged. Two million homes were destroyed, thousands of acres of agricultural land were flooded and 90% of the crops in Sindh, a food belt, were damaged. Thousands of kilometres of roads were rendered unusable, a million livestock killed, hospitals and schools obliterated, and 30 to 50 million people – a number as large as the population of Canada or Spain – were displaced and dispossessed.It was the climate crisis that brought this nightmare to Pakistan. Pakistan has the second largest number of glaciers after the Arctic poles and thanks to global heating, they are melting at unprecedented, unmanageable speeds. Glacial melt combined with another consequence of the Earth’s warming climate, erratic monsoon patterns, and together they created what was called a super-flood. Continue reading...

Former president honours January 6 rioters and delivers violent rhetoric in rally at Texas city during anniversary of Branch Davidian massacreDonald Trump, the former US president, continued to invoke retribution and violence on Saturday when he used the first rally of his 2024 election campaign to rail against prosecutors weighing a criminal charge against him.Efforts by Trump’s team to steer a more conventional, disciplined candidacy have wilted in recent days as the 76-year-old unleashed words and images that – even by his provocative standards – are unusually dehumanising, menacing and dangerous. Continue reading...

Fatalities from tornado the worst in 50 years, with more severe storms expected in the region on SundayDevastating storms and at least one large tornado which ripped through rural Mississippi on Friday night left 25 people dead in the state, dozens injured and rescue workers hauling people from rubble throughout Saturday, as the state reeled from its highest tornado-related death toll in decades.Severe weather pounded several southern states overnight as the centers of destruction emerged on Saturday morning as the small, majority Black towns of Rolling Fork and Silver City in the Mississippi delta. Continue reading...

Kathryn Marie Gallagher’s July 2022 death linked to ‘drug-facilitated theft’ after medical examiner’s findings of intoxicationThe death of a rising New York fashion designer last year could be linked to a spate of “drug-facilitated theft” crimes in the city, authorities have revealed.A mystery has surrounded the death of Kathryn Marie Gallagher, 35, since she was found dead in her apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on 24 July last year. Continue reading...

Tallahassee Classical school’s governing board heard complaints after sixth-graders were shown classical sculptureA Florida principal has resigned after students at a Christian charter school in Tallahassee were shown the statue of the biblical figure David by Michelangelo, prompting at least one parent to complain that the children had been exposed to pornography.Hope Carrasquilla resigned Monday as principal of the Tallahassee Classical school after the campus’s governing board told her to either step down or be fired over parental complaints that came in after sixth-grade students were shown the 16th-century sculpture, one of the Renaissance’s most famous pieces of art. Continue reading...

Jean Dickens Toussaint and Abigail Toussaint were reportedly abducted on a bus on 18 March while visiting ailing relativesA Florida couple visiting the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince are being held at ransom after being kidnapped, according to their family.Jean Dickens Toussaint and Abigail Toussaint were reportedly abducted on a bus on 18 March while visiting the stricken nation to see ailing relatives and attend a community festival. Continue reading...

Joe Biden has warned Iran that the US will 'act forcefully' to protect Americans, after the US military carried out airstrikes against Iran-backed forces in retaliation for an attack in Syria.'Make no mistake: the United States does not … seek conflict with Iran, but be prepared for us to act forcefully to protect our people,' Biden told reporters during a visit to Canada.Officials said a US service member was wounded in Syria on Friday in the latest tit-for-tat strike between Iran-backed forces and US personnel

Plane did not encounter turbulence, but forces about four times stronger than gravity that caused it to swoop down before going upThe business jet flight that killed a former White House official earlier this month violently pitched up and down after pilots addressed cockpit warnings by switching off a system meant to keep the aircraft stable, but it did not encounter turbulence as was initially reported, federal investigators have said.Dana Hyde’s death on 3 March was the subject of a preliminary National Transportation Safety report Friday which described a series of mishaps before and after the Bombardier plane she was on swooped out of control. Continue reading...

Like Emma Raducanu, the Canadian has found it difficult after her breakout 2021 but the skills and fighting spirit are still thereWithin a few games of Leylah Fernandez’s second-round match against Belinda Bencic at the Miami Open on Friday, defeat already seemed inevitable. As Bencic squeezed up to the baseline, suffocating the young Canadian with her early ball-striking and sharp redirections, Fernandez could not keep up. She tried to hold her own position inside the baseline, but was easily pushed back. When she assumed more risk, forcing the ball closer to the lines, her errors piled up. After 67 minutes, the 20-year-old was thoroughly beaten 6-1, 6-1.Eighteen months on from her unforgettable run to the 2021 US Open final, Fernandez faces plenty of her own struggles as she tries to follow up her breakout performance. In New York, she showed off the full breadth of her talent. Despite standing 5ft 6in, she smote opponents with the combined force of her vicious lefty forehand, unfailingly aggressive returning, movement that allowed her to quickly flip defence to attack and her crafty resourcefulness. Continue reading...

A meteorologist in Mississippi became emotional and prayed live on air after forecasting a tornado was going to head through the town of Amory.Matt Laubhan, the chief meteorologist for local network WTVA, was giving viewers an update on what to expect. 'Oh man, north side of Amory, this is coming in,' he said. 'Oh man. Dear Jesus, please help them.'At least 23 people have died after extreme weather tore through Mississippi and other southern US states on 24 March.

A principal was fired after a Renaissance art class was shown David in the latest example of the state’s censorship crusadeAh, the Renaissance. A period that saw the growth of intellectual reason, the flowering of art and culture, and a lot of very hardcore pornography. Continue reading...

Bill aims to ban chemicals that appear in the candy, perhaps setting an example nationwideFor fans of candy – and who isn’t one? – the headlines have been alarming: a California bill would “ban Skittles”, the rainbow-colored fruity sweets, alongside treats including M&Ms, Nerds and some baked goods.It’s true a lawmaker is pushing for changes that would affect the products, but the reality is much less terrifying. Continue reading...

Militaries are racing to develop weapons that could one day directly assault or disable human minds. We ignore this broader context at our perilTranslated Chinese military reports suggest that warfare is shifting from destroying bodies to paralyzing and controlling the opponent’s mind. Making the Biden administration’s call for TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the app or face a US ban just the start of a protracted Whac-A-Mole game in a broader strategy to combat cognitive warfare – with the human mind as the battlefield.While a TikTok ban may take out the first and fattest mole, it fails to contend with the wider shift to cognitive warfare as the sixth domain of military operations under way, which includes China’s influence campaigns on TikTok, a mass collection of personal and biometric data from American citizens and their race to develop weapons that could one day directly assault or disable human minds. We ignore this broader context at our peril.Nita Farahany is the author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology (St Martin’s Press 2023) and the Robinson O Everett professor of law and philosophy at Duke University Continue reading...