US news | The Guardian

I've previously shunned self-improvement, because it is not fun, but while tending for a garden, I am able to work on myselfHow do you go about being good? I ask because I've been hung up recently on trying to be, well... better. It's a bit ridiculous and embarrassing; also, if asked to corroborate, my family would definitely say they haven't noticed. I'm not aiming for saintly. I haven't started believing some celestial bouncer will decide whether I get to live on a cloud with Captain Tom, or send me downstairs to change king-sized duvet covers and parallel park for all eternity watched by Hitler and Stalin while listening to HMRC hold music. It's more that I'm increasingly conscious of how far I still am from being a decent human, able to do what a person should: have healthy relationships, be compassionate, floss regularly, live within planetary boundaries, that sort of thing.It's a mini-midlife crisis, I guess. Wouldn't it have been more fun to try ayahuasca or get radicalised on Facebook and start attacking 5G masts (which seems to be a middle-aged thing round my way)? It's certainly new. Continue reading...

If the tech bros' fight challenge proves one thing, it's that social media is an atrocious place to have any kind of discussionLast week - in the ever-growing sector of the news cycle called Did I dream it?" - Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, suggested to the Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg that they settle their, essentially trifling, differences in a cage fight. Zuckerberg, rather than saying, Elon, that's insane, you're 51 years old and the richest person in human history, and I'm not far behind", ostensibly replied: Sure. Where and when?"For those of us old enough to remember, the circus rivalled the one that accompanied the 2002, celebrity-adjacent, boxing-adjacent contest between Ricky Gervais and Grant Bovey. Dana White, the bombastic president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, revealing a surprising ignorance of the historic beef between the animal-loving comedian and Anthea Turner's wrong 'un ex-husband, predicted the Musk-Zuckerberg clash would break all records. This would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the world," he cooed. Continue reading...

While the US and China vie for supremacy, smaller countries, championed by Barbados PM Mia Mottley, are speaking out on key challenges of climate, poverty and migrationCompetition for pole position in the race to boss the 21st century's fast-evolving new world order is hotting up. US president Joe Biden sought a winning strategic partnership with Narendra Modi's India. The EU unveiled an economic security strategy to fend off Chinese and Russian predators. In Beijing, Xi Jinping told America's top US diplomat who's in charge: China.In Paris, meanwhile, leaders of the global north and south planned a new beginning. The aim: to deliver billions in funding, promised at last year's Cop27, to help vulnerable countries fight the climate crisis and related poverty, inequality and debt. Poorer nations urge radical reform of the global institutional framework, which they say has failed. Continue reading...

Nicotine is a drug that shouldn't be dressed up in cartoon packaging and sweet shop flavoursBlueberry bubblegum. Lemon pie. Caramel cheesecake. Sickly-sweet concoctions that are just a fraction of the dessert-flavoured nicotine vapes available to buy in newsagents for not much more than a high-end chocolate bar, in bright packaging often adorned with cartoon illustrations designed to appeal to children. It is a huge red flag that something has gone seriously amiss in the rules that govern e-cigarette marketing and sales in the UK.What makes the question of how to regulate vaping more complex than cigarettes or alcohol is that, unlike with the latter two substances - where a collective fall in consumption would be an unambiguously good thing for the nation's health - public health experts want to encourage smokers to switch from cigarettes to vapes while keeping non-smokers, particularly children and young people, well away from vaping. Continue reading...

Former president says he considers the two indictments a great badge of courage' during a speech at the Road to Majority conferenceDonald Trump has derided the substantial federal charges against him, downplaying the numerous legal threats he faces while attacking Joe Biden for allegedly having weaponized" the department of justice for political gain.Speaking on Saturday at the Road to Majority conference in Washington, hosted by the right-wing evangelical Faith and Freedom Coalition, Trump said he considered each of the two indictments he has received so far to be a great badge of courage". Continue reading...

The annual contest celebrates pets' imperfections, such as Scooter's backwards-facing hind legs and sparse hairLinda Elmquist, of Tucson, Arizona, smiled broadly as she held her little dog aloft. Finally, Scooter was being recognized for his best qualities on Friday as he was given the title of the world's ugliest dog.The competition, held as part of the Sonoma-Marin fair in Petaluma, California, for the past 50 years, is a world-renowned event that promotes dog adoption and showcases extraordinary canines that have defied adversity - and celebrates their imperfections. Continue reading...

Chris Gloninger says he developed post-traumatic stress disorder and will resign from job after 18 years at Des Moines's KCCIAn Iowa meteorologist says he is resigning from the television station where he works because he developed post-traumatic stress disorder after threats over his climate change coverage.On Wednesday, Chris Gloninger, the chief meteorologist at Des Moines's CBS TV station affiliate KCCI, announced that he will be stepping down from his position and leaving his broadcast career in July. Continue reading...

Officials shut down drinking water intakes downstream after train cars carrying asphalt and sulfur submerged in Yellowstone RiverA bridge that crosses Yellowstone River in Montana collapsed early on Saturday morning, causing portions of a freight train carrying hazardous materials to plunge into the flooded river below, officials said.The train cars were carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur, said David Stamey, Stillwater county's chief of emergency services. Officials shut down drinking water intakes downstream while they evaluated the danger. An Associated Press reporter witnessed a yellow liquid pouring out of tank cars. Continue reading...

Child actor known as America's little brother' for his role on the hit family show died in Los Angeles home on 7 January at age 54The effects of fentanyl are considered the cause of death for Adam Rich, the child actor known as America's little brother" for his role on the hit family dramedy Eight is Enough.The former television star's death this January has been ruled an accident by the Los Angeles county medical-examiner coroner's office, according to an autopsy report. Continue reading...

Ethan Crumbley, 17, who pleaded guilty awaiting sentencing to determine if he gets life in prison for 2021 shooting that killed fourA teenager awaiting sentencing for killing four students at a Michigan high school has been exhibiting sporadic, disturbing behavior" in jail, prosecutors said, just a month before a key hearing to determine if he will serve a life prison term.The disclosure about Ethan Crumbley, 17, was made in a court document this week and at a routine monthly hearing Friday in Oakland county court. Continue reading...

States have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans,' says President Biden while Vice-President Harris gives fiery speechAs the US on Saturday marked one year since the country's supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion rights supporters and politicians issued a call to action - and prepared for reproductive health to be a flashpoint of the 2024 presidential election.The supreme court's decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health reversed the landmark 1973 decision that had enshrined a federal right to abortion. In the wake of its overturning, more than one dozen states have green-lighted abortion bans, and many others have passed laws dramatically restricting access to the procedure. Continue reading...

Democrats pledge to protect reproductive rights as US marks one year since supreme court overturned federal right to abortionIn a recent interview, actor and comedian Natalie Morales spoke to the Guardian about her fight for reproductive rights, her own coming out journey and her film Plan B.The Guardian's Andrew Lawrence reports:One of the main things in it is the conscience clause, a law that already exists in many states and is growing in others where a pharmacist can deny a prescription to anybody based on their personal beliefs, even if that prescription is legal," Morales said of the film during a Zoom call earlier this month...Not only that, but many places are trying to outlaw the Plan B pill - which is not even an abortifacient! I've never understood why, if you're against abortion, you would also be against contraceptives. That has never made sense to me." Continue reading...

An old childhood favourite reopens its doors this week. A revamp was long overdue, says its directorHere is a curious tension. This month, the government announced an extra 77m to support new creative clusters" across film, fashion, TV and gaming. With the creative industries supporting more than 2m jobs and bringing in 108bn a year to the British economy, it makes sense.Yet at the same time, we are throttling the pipeline. The last 12 years have witnessed a 60% collapse in the number of young people taking art and design GCSE - alongside equally terrible falls in music, drama and other creative subjects. To no one's great surprise, this is accelerating the longer-term trend of shuttering arts, languages and humanities departments across British universities. Continue reading...

Group advocate for Georgia summer baseball team to be renamed Macon Facon Bacon' to promote vegetarian food choicesA Georgia summer baseball team named the Macon Bacon has found itself at the center of a porcine polemic as a group of doctors is urging this outfit to change its name and promote vegetarian alternatives".The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which promotes plant-based eating, is advocating for the team to be renamed Macon Facon Bacon", according to a local CBS affiliate. This medical organization has posted a new billboard urging Macon Bacon fans to keep bacon off your plate" to prevent cancer, and committee leadership has written to team management requesting a name change. Continue reading...

Melissa Perez, 46, was having what appeared to be a mental health crisis when officers encountered her and shot her in San AntonioThree police officers in San Antonio, Texas, are facing murder charges after fatally shooting a woman in her apartment during a confrontation early Friday.The woman, 46-year-old Melissa Perez, was having what appeared to be a mental health crisis" when officers encountered her and shot her dead, San Antonio police department (SAPD) chief William McManus said on Friday at a news conference. Continue reading...

Social media platforms are laying off their trust and safety' teams. Brace yourself for a new wave of unfettered misinformation and abuseRobert F Kennedy Jr is a flake of Cadbury proportions with a famous name. He's the son of Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination (and therefore also JFK's nephew). Let's call him Junior. For years - even pre-Covid-19 - he's been running a vigorous anti-vaccine campaign and peddling conspiracy theories. In 2021, for example, he was claiming that Dr Anthony Fauci was in cahoots with Bill Gates and the big pharma companies to run a powerful vaccination cartel" that would prolong the pandemic and exaggerate its deadly effects with the aim of promoting expensive vaccinations. And it went without saying (of course) that the mainstream media and big tech companies were also in on the racket and busily suppressing any critical reporting of it.Like most conspiracists, Junior was big on social media, but then in 2021 his Instagram account was removed for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines", and in August last year his anti-vaccination Children's Health Defense group was removed by Facebook and Instagram on the grounds that it had repeatedly violated Meta's medical-misinformation policies. Continue reading...

Officials approve petition that allows organizers to move forward with a historic referendum on huge police training complexVolunteers are fanning out across Atlanta looking to get tens of thousands of voters to sign a petition that would put the fate of the controversial police and fire department training center known as Cop City" on a November ballot, even as organisers have accused the city of unfairly delaying the start of the effort.Cop City came to global attention after police shot dead Manuel Paez Teran, an environmental protester, in a January raid on the forest - the first incident of its kind in US history. The state says Paez Teran shot first. A special prosecutor is evaluating the case. Continue reading...

Toraze Davis collapsed outside the church in which he married Johnnie Mae Dennis and died of a blood clotA Nebraska community is rallying around a bride whose groom died unexpectedly less than an hour after the couple exchanged their wedding vows earlier this week.Toraze Davis and Johnnie Mae Dennis wed on Monday in Omaha. Shortly after saying I do" to Dennis and stepping outside the church to take pictures with her, the 48-year-old Davis suddenly fell to the ground, according to what a friend of his told the local television station KETV. Continue reading...

After the Musk-Zuckerberg challenge, the billionaire brawl-fest has inexplicably ramped up this weekThe tech bros are brawlingOh no, it's escalating. I thought the cage match news would be the end of it. I thought we'd all spend a few minutes laughing about Elon Musk challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight and then swiftly move on. After all, the odds of this cage match actually happening are almost nil: Musk has a history of making wild promises and not following through. He also has a history of asking people who would almost certainly slaughter him in a fight to get into fights. Remember when he challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat? The stakes, he announced grandly at the time, were Ukraine. Continue reading...

A look back on the year since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade with the Dobbs decision, and the advocates who aren't giving upWhile the supreme court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade sent shockwaves around the country, many activists, physicians and advocacy groups closely engaged in the fight over abortion in the US were not surprised.Since Roe's establishment of the federal right to abortion in 1973, anti-abortion advocates and conservative lawmakers have been chipping away at it. Restrictions on abortion increased over the last decade, and by the mid-2010s, seven states had just one abortion clinic left. In Mississippi, where the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization case that ultimately ended Roe originated, the state's one clinic did not provide abortions beyond 16 weeks of pregnancy, meaning many people already had to travel to find care. Continue reading...

The insurrection won't stop the war: Prigozhin shares Putin's aims in Ukraine. But a distracted Russia is good for the world

Supreme court's overturning of Roe v Wade sparked a slew of state-level restrictions but anti-abortion stance has proved a vote-loserIn the months since the supreme court voted to overturn Roe v Wade last year, the effects of the court's decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization have become clear. Over a dozen states across the country have passed legislation limiting or outright banning access to abortions, severely restricting reproductive rights for millions of people and threatening to imprison abortion providers.But as Republicans have pushed through these bills, voters have also taken every opportunity to rebuke them in elections - leading to defeats in midterms and emerging as one of the GOP's largest vulnerabilities. Continue reading...

The patchwork of federal, state and company protections remains hard to navigate a year after the Dobbs decisionThe supreme court's decision to overturn federal abortion protections last year sent shock waves throughout the US. Suddenly, an individual choice that was once legally sanctioned was at risk of becoming the subject of criminal investigations in many states across the country.As public attention turned to such prosecutions, major tech companies faced questions over the ways they collect and store users' data amid concerns it could be used in abortion-related investigations. In August 2022, Facebook came under scrutiny after it was revealed law enforcement in Nebraska was prosecuting a mother and daughter for seeking and aiding an unlawful abortion in a case that was partly based on Facebook messages. Continue reading...

Even if there are fewer home buyers and prices have been falling slightly, they're still much higher than pre-pandemic and for many, more unaffordable than everAfter an intense two-year buying frenzy during the pandemic, the once-hot US housing market has started to cool.The US Federal Reserve set interest rates to its highest level in over a decade, and mortgage rates are sitting well above 6% for a 30-year fixed rate. The effect on the housing market has already started to show: the National Association of Realtors reports existing home sales in May were down 20% compared with a year earlier. And the median home sales price in May was $419,103, according to real estate company Redfin, a 3.1% drop compared to last year. Continue reading...

Unionized workers at delivery service partner in California fight company's intent to terminate contractAmazon is embroiled in a fight with workers at one of its delivery service partners in what union activists say is part of a longstanding anti-union drive by the retail giant which is now facing scrutiny in the US Senate for its anti-labor rights practices.At Battle Tested Strategies, an Amazon delivery service partner in Palmdale, California, workers are currently fighting Amazon's intent to terminate the delivery service partner's contract on Saturday. Continue reading...

Emmanuel Macron's government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis - and putting the UK to shameWhile we remain transfixed by a handful of needy egotists in Westminster and the crises they manufacture, across the Channel a revolution is happening. It's a quiet, sober, thoughtful revolution, but a revolution nonetheless. France is seeking to turn itself into an ecological civilisation.Like every government, the French administration should be going further and faster to address the greatest predicament humankind has faced: the gathering collapse of Earth systems. But you can measure the seriousness of the government's plan by its institutional commitment. France now has a ministry for ecological transition. By the end of next year, the nation's 25,000 most senior civil servants will have been trained in the principles behind this transition. By the next presidential election, in 2027, every public sector worker will have had this training, tailored to their sector. Think about that: 5.6 million people will be taught about the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis and the natural resources crisis - how these phenomena relate to the public services they supply and how public sector workers can use this knowledge to change the way they work. Continue reading...

Joseph James O'Connor, 24, pleaded guilty to cybercrime charges last month for hijacking famous accounts in a bitcoin scamA British man who took part in schemes to hack the Twitter accounts of celebrities, including Joe Biden and Elon Musk, was sentenced to five years in prison, the US attorney's office announced on Friday.Joseph James O'Connor, 24, pleaded guilty to cybercrime charges last month, nearly three years after he and others in his hacking group hijacked more than 130 Twitter accounts as part of a Bitcoin scam, including those of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates and Barack Obama. He also pleaded guilty to stealing $794,000 in virtual currency from a New York cryptocurrency company. Continue reading...

You are in an excellent position to push back on stereotypes, says Sisonke Msimang. Racism isn't just offensive to people of colour, it's offensive period

Raymond Mattia, 58, shot dead in remote corner of Tohono O'odham Nation in southern Arizona last monthFederal US officials have released body camera footage that shows border patrol agents were concerned that a tribal member they fatally shot last month may have been carrying a handgun during an encounter in a remote corner of the Tohono O'odham Nation in southern Arizona.The man, Raymond Mattia, 58, died shortly after the shooting the night of 18 May outside a home in the reservation's Menagers Dam community near the US-Mexico border. Continue reading...

President announces executive order to boost access to contraception as Republicans call for national restrictionsJoe Biden on Friday put reproductive rights squarely in the middle of his 2024 re-election campaign as the US president hosted a rally based around defending abortion rights, notched three high-profile endorsements from groups dedicated to the issue, and announced an executive order aimed at boosting access to contraception.The moves came in stark contrast to the Republican field of candidates, many of whom were attending the Faith & Freedom Coalition annual conference in Washington DC. Continue reading...

America's national pastime briefly heads to the UK, with St Louis facing the Chicago Cubs in front of an unusual audienceOne novel import to the playing fields of England has suffered an intellectual setback this week: the concept of Test cricket as an exercise in fun, joy and innovation. Now here comes another alien.This weekend America's national pastime stages a brief incursion onto these shores to see if it might be fertile ground for expansion. Forget Bazball for a moment, here comes baseball. Continue reading...

Former vice-president calls for federal 15-week minimum' ban in contrast to Trump who suggested issue cost party votesSpeaking one year since the US supreme court removed the federal right to abortion, Mike Pence said candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination should stand firm on the electorally unpopular issue and take a hard line on bringing in national limits.For me, for our campaign, we're going to stand where we've always stood, and that is without apology for the right to life," the former congressman, Indiana governor and vice-president to Donald Trump told Politico. Continue reading...

Four companies and eight individuals charged with shipping enough precursor chemicals into US to kill 25m Americans'The US justice department has filed criminal charges against four Chinese chemical manufacturing companies and eight individuals over allegations they illegally trafficked the chemicals used to make fentanyl, a highly addictive painkiller that has fueled the opioid crisis in the United States.It is the first time the United States has charged Chinese companies for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals inside the United States, rather than shipping them to Mexico, the origin of most of the fentanyl found in the country. Continue reading...

Biden hails proud union workers' for speedy reopening after stretch of I-95 collapsed following tanker fire earlier in JunePennsylvania's road to hell" reopened on Friday less than two weeks after a tanker fire caused traffic misery for millions.Joe Biden praised engineers, laborers and many other proud union workers" for fulfilling his promise to move heaven and earth" to reopen a busy stretch of the I-95 east coast interstate artery that had been closed since it collapsed in the incident earlier this month. Continue reading...

Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty - non-profit condemned as extremist' by anti-hate watchdog - used quote from 1935 rallyAn Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty, a non-profit that advocates for parental rights" in education and was recently labeled as extremist" by an anti-hate watchdog, is apologizing and condemning Adolf Hitler after using a quotation attributed to the Nazi leader in its inaugural newsletter.The group's Hamilton County chapter on Thursday posted a revised version of its newly launched newsletter, The Parent Brigade, on Facebook after it had previously shared a version that featured the Hitler quote on its front cover. Continue reading...

It seems only a matter of time before we reverse this national act of self-harm. Especially if we learn from Nigel FarageLet Nigel Farage be our inspiration, let John Redwood be our role model. Not the way they would want, revered as the founding fathers of Brexit, toasted on this day every year as the men who led us to glorious independence from the hated empire of Brussels. Of course not that. On the contrary, 23 June 2016 is a milestone in our national story that evokes sadness and regret rather than celebration.We don't need to rehearse on this seventh anniversary all the ways in which Brexit has disappointed even those who voted for it. Farage and Redwood, along with Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rest, promised increased prosperity, cheaper food, flourishing trade and a flush NHS. They said we'd be free of all that tedious European red tape and would take back control of our borders, encouraging anyone agitated by immigration to believe that fewer people would come in. There would be no downside, only upsides. As David Davis pledged soon after the vote, our exit deal would deliver the exact same benefits" as EU membership.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Many states have passed restrictions, and inequalities along racial and economic lines have widened - but there is hopeThe day the constitutional right to abortion ended in the US, Americans faced an unusual moment of regression. The current generation now has fewer constitutional rights than their parents and their grandparents.What has happened since then has been almost unfathomable. Continue reading...

The budget committee hearing looked into alleged misinformation from big oil that covered up massive' risks of the climate crisisThe Senate budget committee held a hearing on Wednesday morning to scrutinize the role of oil- and gas-linked dark money" in delaying climate action - and tearing through local and federal budgets.The hearing was led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has held 10 climate crisis-focused hearings since he took the helm of the budget committee this past February. Continue reading...

What happens when the chill of our seas turns to a soupy stew? Fragile ecosystems will be destroyed and food sources for wildlife will disappearLast weekend, at the very easternmost edge of England, tens of thousands of people of all ages gathered at a beach festival in Lowestoft to celebrate the sea joyously. To dance to trance music and listen to Linton Kwesi Johnson recite his poetry, and to hear marine scientists explain to seven-year-olds exactly why the sea smells the way it does. It was an idyllic scene. From dusk to dawn and back again, everyone was drawn to the vast and glorious element that connects us to the rest of the world.But then, amid the revelry, a solemn procession appeared. Two dozen festivalgoers carried a series of blown-up photographs into the sea. They were portraits by the artist Gideon Mendel of people, many of them from the global south, standing amid the floods that had overturned their lives. Suddenly, in the face of their fates, the sea seemed not so benign after all. It was a reminder that sea levels are rising around the world; and that here in the UK we face our own potential disaster - the drastic sudden warming of the sea off Britain and Ireland. Continue reading...

The French teenager has been hailed as the best NBA prospect since LeBron James. Let's hope he can pursue his goals at his own paceVictor Wembanyama's rookie hazing tipped off before this week's NBA draft. After origamiing his 7ft 4in frame (some say he's taller) onto a flight from Paris to Newark, he folded himself again for a subway ride to the Bronx to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, missing well outside of home plate. (Zut alors.) All the while a frothing New York press mob gawked at him like he was something that had slipped out from under PT Barnum's tent.But by Thursday Wembanyama was standing tall again in a green kimono suit after the San Antonio Spurs tapped him with the night's first pick. It's a status that comes with significant expectation, and the pressure on Wembanyama - the surest prospect since LeBron James, it's been said - was immense; the King himself has called the Frenchman an alien," one dwarfed only in the NBA by Washington's Boban Marjanovi. Continue reading...

Regulations on deep sea submersibles are sparse', but the OceanGate submersible was not for joyrides' one of the company's founders, Guillermo Sohnlein, has said after the deaths of five people attempting to dive to the wreck of the Titanic.Their submersible was found in pieces after a catastrophic implosion' killed everyone aboard, the US Coast Guard confirmed on Thursday

Concord Fund, linked to Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, a lavish supporter of Republican Attorneys General AssociationAn influential group of 28 Republican attorneys general has benefited mightily from at least $9.5m since 2020 from the dark-money Concord Fund, public records reveal.The Concord Fund, the top donor in 2022 and the two prior years to the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga), boasts strong links to Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo. Leo helped Donald Trump pick three conservative supreme court justices and now helps spearhead a dark money network that has secured $1.6bn from a single donor. Continue reading...

Driverless cars are becoming a nuisance for the department as they appear to obstruct fire engines and block roads in emergenciesAmid a rush to get more robotaxis on the roads of California's largest cities, the fire chief in San Francisco has warned the vehicles are not ready for primetime", citing multiple recent incidents of the vehicles obstructing fire engines and blocking roads during emergencies.Driverless cars have become a growing nuisance for San Francisco's residents and officials alike. Of particular concern for police and firefighters is the unwelcome appearance of robotaxis at the scene of an emergency that hinders their work. Continue reading...

More than 3,500 employees to take part in nationwide strike, led by company's Seattle RoasteryMore than 150 Starbucks stores and 3,500 workers will be on strike next week across the US, the union representing the coffee chain's baristas said on Friday, after it claimed the company had banned gay Pride month decorations at its cafes.Starbucks Workers United union said earlier this month the company took down LGBTQ+ Pride decorations and flags at several stores, while some workers took to social media to report the same. Continue reading...

Passengers aboard the sub lost on a dive to the Titanic became characters in a tragic drama. The rest of us were spectatorsFinally, we know. The discovery of debris on the seafloor - confirming that the missing OceanGate Titan submersible probably disintegrated in an instantaneous implosion on the same day that it disappeared - brings to a bleak end the mystery that has horrified and mesmerised people across the globe.The plight of the five passengers - the British adventurer Hamish Harding, the businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Suleman, the French veteran explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate's CEO, Stockton Rush - has dominated front pages everywhere and spurred an international response that involved four countries and may have cost millions of dollars.Bryony Clarke is an assistant letters editor at the GuardianDo 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 an irresistible dystopian image, though one that seems as likely to come to pass as big tech regulating itselfCan anything make Mark Zuckerberg feel anything, unless it physically involves Mark Zuckerberg himself, perhaps being kicked in the head by choice? Or is emotion the Meta boss's phantom limb, twitching semi-regularly as a reminder of what he hacked off back in his Harvard dorm room all those years ago, as he began the long journey toward behavioural-modification, misinformation-spreading and selling the lives of billions of users to advertisers?Please: try to picture him feeling something. Conjure Zuckerberg's face as he scrolls through content he is unwilling to remove from any of his platforms, the sort of horrors that could destroy the sanity of a sweatshopped Kenyan moderator inside of six weeks, but which merely have Zuck reaching ice-bloodedly for a free speech argument. Try to imagine his reaction to whistleblower testimony before some parliament or other about Facebook's ruinous impacts on young people, while wondering inside why he ever even toyed with getting into politics, given that all politicians are merely junior personnel. Continue reading...

Complaints that people care more about rich explorers than for immigrants lost at sea miss the markThere's only one story this week and that is the story of news outlets struggling to keep the relish out of their coverage of the missing submersible. In the US, as in the UK, it feels like the only story in town. It also concerns a tiny number of rich individuals whose plight, when shared by those further down the pecking order, excites nothing like the same interest. As placement of the story swings wildly between titles, newsrooms appear in meltdown over how much of the public appetite in the stricken sub to indulge. Continue reading...