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Those killed were all in a home in the town of Bowdoin, and the others were randomly fired upon 20 miles away on a highwayA Maine man killed four people in a home and then shot three others randomly on a busy highway, state police said, detailing the latest in a string of mass shootings across the US.The shootings in Maine began in the small town of Bowdoin, where four people were killed on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Recently unsealed indictments come almost six years after gathering that resulted in violent clashes with counter-protestersNearly six years after a gathering of white nationalists in Charlottesville erupted in violent clashes with counter-protesters, a grand jury in Virginia indicted multiple people on felony charges for carrying flaming torches with the intent to intimidate.The Albemarle county commonwealth’s attorney said in a news release that the indictments relate to events on 11 August 2017, when white nationalists carrying torches marched through the campus of the University of Virginia. Continue reading...

AI music is going mainstream with high profile fakes of Drake, the Weeknd and Kanye West – but the tech will be used in more profound, insidious and even poetic waysWe’re at an inflection point for AI, where it goes from nerdish fixation to general talking point, like the metaverse and NFTs before it. More and more workers in various industries are fretting about it impinging on their livelihoods, and ChatGPT, Bard, Midjourney and other AI applications are creeping into our awareness.In music, this tech has been percolating since the 1950s when programmer-composer Lejaren Hiller’s algorithm allowed a University of Illinois computer to compose its own music, but has really grabbed the popular imagination this month with a number of high-profile fakes. A “collaboration” between convincing AI-derived imitations of Drake and the Weeknd earned hundreds of thousands of streams before being scrubbed from streaming services; Drake was also made to imitate fellow rapper Ice Spice via AI, prompting him to respond: “this is the final straw”. An AI version of Kanye West has atoned for his antisemitism in witless verse, and AIsis released an album of all-too-human indie rock with software doing bad Liam Gallagher karaoke over the top of it. Continue reading...

Making men share responsibility for preventing unwanted pregnancy would have big implications – if it ever happensThe arrival of a male contraceptive pill is imminent. Scientists at Washington State University have identified the gene responsible for normal sperm production, and a way to block it. Meanwhile, at Weill Cornell Medicine earlier this year, a separate team closed in on a short-term, two-hour sperm blocker that met the same criteria: that it was reversible, and that it didn’t work by hormonal interference.It’s a bit like the unveiling of a hoverboard: yes, sure, amazing, what a frontier technology, how wonderful to see the future airborne. On the other hand, guys, you’ve been talking about this for so long that it feels dated before it’s even hit the market.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The Defender was built by millionaire Simon Lake and visited by Amelia Earhart before it was scuttled in the Long Island SoundDivers in Connecticut have discovered the wreckage of an experimental submarine built in 1907 and later scuttled in the Long Island Sound.The Defender, a 92ft boat, was found on Sunday by a team led by Richard Simon, a commercial diver from Coventry, Connecticut. Continue reading...

Voting equipment firm was seeking $1.6bn. Plus, mother of Black teenager shot after going to wrong address speaks

News comes amid reports that governor’s team has pressured representatives from his state not to endorse TrumpIn a blow to Ron DeSantis, a prominent ally of the rightwing governor was on Tuesday one of two Florida Republicans in Congress to back Donald Trump for president, the latest in a string of defections.The news came amid reports that DeSantis’s team has pressured US representatives from his state not to endorse Trump. Continue reading...

Journalists under threat send their research to our team of reporters to make sure it can never be buriedIn the days leading up to his killing, the Colombian journalist Rafael Moreno made contact with us at Forbidden Stories. The threats he was receiving were becoming more and more disquieting. This is why Moreno had decided to share the information he was working on with us: so that in case anything happened to him, we could pursue his work.At 7.10pm on 16 October 2022, Moreno was shot dead in the city of Montelíbano, in the north of Colombia – a dangerous region dominated by the Gulf Clan, one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world. Continue reading...

It’s hard to imagine someone being shot for knocking on a stranger’s door in Finland, Spain or CanadaIn the past week, two people have been shot, in separate incidents, for making an innocent mistake. In Kansas City, Missouri, Ralph Yarl, 16, was shot in the head and critically wounded by 84-year-old Andrew Lester, whose door Yarl knocked on, in error. Yarl had come to pick up his younger brothers, who turned out to have been with friends at another house with a similar address. In rural upstate New York, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed when she and her friends, having lost their way, drove up Kevin Monahan’s driveway. The car was turning around to leave when Monahan, 65, fired two bullets through the car window.I live in the country. It’s easy to lose your way. Mailbox numbers flake off. Satellite signals vanish. Our packages have been delivered to the raccoons in the empty house down the road. I can’t count the times we’ve gotten lost en route to a friend’s, taken the wrong turns, stayed on the wrong dirt road until we could turn around. What would have happened if one of those driveways had belonged to Kevin Monahan, who, according to neighbors, had a “short fuse” and was enraged about trespassers?Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Continue reading...

Anthony Comstock’s crusade against women gained him the moniker of ‘moral eunuch’. Today’s anti-choice zealots are following in his footstepsAnthony Comstock thought that his fellow soldiers in the civil war talked about sex too much. When he signed up to serve for the Union in 1863, he saw soldiers behaving the way soldiers tend to do: they drank, and cursed, and made dirty jokes. This spectacle so scandalized Comstock’s Christian morality that he devoted the rest of his life – both in public crusades and in his position as inspector of the US Postal Service – to performing what he called “weeding in God’s garden”.He rallied against women’s suffrage, secured the arrest and prosecution of his political enemies, and toured colleges and churches, giving speeches meant to whip his audience into a censorial frenzy. One of his targets, a New York abortion provider called Madame Restell, committed suicide after being entrapped and arrested by Comstock, who had posed as a husband seeking birth control pills. He sent others to jail for selling sex toys, or marketing abortion medications, or preaching free love. In short, Comstock became an anti-“obscenity” advocate: one of the most ideological and extreme enforcers of public morality in the nation’s history. Continue reading...

Experts say proposals are to ‘create political theater’ that will help lawmakers’ bids for re-electionIn 2018, Tomas Ramirez III, a lawyer in the small town of Devine, Texas, ran as a Republican for justice of the peace and was elected to serve Medina county.Two years later, the Texas attorney general’s office charged him with one count of engaging in organized election fraud, 17 counts of unlawful possession of a ballot, and 17 counts of unlawfully assisting voting by mail. The indictment accused 57-year-old Ramirez of illegally harvesting the ballots during the 2018 GOP primary. Continue reading...

The settlement, though disappointing, provides at least a measure of accountabilityAs opening arguments neared on Tuesday afternoon, even the most hardened skeptics might have found themselves thinking the impossible was actually going to happen: the corrosive lies of Fox News would go on trial, Rupert Murdoch would be forced to the witness stand, and positive societal change might result.American democracy, which has been teetering on the brink in recent years – would be pulled back from the precipice, at least by a few crucial feet.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

New research shows how species boost the amount of carbon stored in their ecosystems – and why protecting them is vitalWhat do elephants, otters and whales have in common? They all increase the amount of carbon that can be stored in their ecosystems. Elephants disperse seeds and trample low vegetation, enabling taller trees to grow. Sea otters eat sea urchins, allowing kelp to flourish. Whales feed at depth and release nutrients as they breathe and rest at the surface, stimulating phytoplankton production.It isn’t just these three. We are beginning to learn that many species have complex effects on their environments that change the amount of carbon stored by their surrounding ecosystems – ultimately affecting climate change. When the population of wildebeest in the Serengeti plummeted due to disease, they no longer grazed as much, and the uneaten grass caused more frequent and more intense fires. Bringing back the numbers of wildebeest through disease management has meant fewer and smaller fires. And the Serengeti has gone from releasing carbon back to storing it.Matthew Gould is the chief executive officer of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) Continue reading...

The league has been making slow but steady progress in recruiting more women. And teams know a larger talent pool will produce resultsAn enthusiastic Brian Daboll walks into an invitation-only room at the JW Marriott in Indianapolis, during February’s NFL Combine. The New York Giants head coach looks around and beams, declaring how thrilled he is to be there and offer his advice to the young collegiate hopefuls in the room. But there are no draft prospects here. The room is full of another group hoping to get a crack at the NFL: women.This year marked the seventh iteration of the NFL’s Women’s Forum, a program designed to put women with aspirations for a career in the league in the same room with NFL rainmakers. Continue reading...

People being sent unsolicited sexual images via social media or Bluetooth drops should be entitled to justice, tooI was travelling home on the London Underground when more than 100 unsolicited images of an erect penis, sent over Apple’s AirDrop, appeared on my phone. The Bluetooth-enabled feature only works between iPhones that are within 10m (30 feet) of each other – around half the length of a tube carriage. I knew the sender was nearby, but I didn’t know who he was.Should I get off the train? Would I be safe to walk home if I did? Did he single me out from my fellow passengers to be his victim, or was I just a random female target picked from a list of nearby devices? What was his intent in sending the images: to threaten? To get sexual gratification? To feel powerful in his anonymity? Or just to amuse himself?Sophie Gallagher is deputy features editor at i and the author of How Men Can HelpDo 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...

Brazilian butt lifts have the highest mortality rate of any cosmetic procedure – and now surgeons are profiting, once again, from their removalNever let it be said that I don’t have range. Earlier this year I brought you the latest hard-hitting news on cleavage trends (sideboobs are out, circumboobs are in). This week I’m briefing you on butts. More specifically, the Brazilian butt lift (BBL), a procedure in which fat is taken from one part of the body and injected into the buttocks.The BBL surged in popularity in recent years despite the fact that it is problematic for a variety of reasons, not least because it boasts the highest mortality rate of any cosmetic surgery. A 2017 study found one in 3,000 BBLs ended in death. By comparison, another study found that cosmetic breast surgery was associated with a mortality rate of 1 in 72,000 procedures.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The subject matter may differ but the US government has been relentless in pursuing those accused of national security leaksJack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Massachusetts air national guard member who was charged on Friday with leaking classified Pentagon documents, has joined a long list of individuals who have been prosecuted for allegedly disclosing sensitive US national security intelligence.Previous leaks have ranged from information about US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to details of Russian interference in American elections. Despite the diversity of the subject matter, the treatment of the leakers has shared a common relentlessness on the part of the US government in pursuing those it accuses of breaching its trust. Continue reading...

Surgeons view Lasik as routine, but patient advocates and some experts say the complication rate is far higher than reportedUntil last year, Robin Kyle Reeves lived an active life in Laurel Hill, Florida. She made lace gowns for children to wear during baptisms or family portraits. It was intricate work that requires precision, and Reeves’ glasses kept getting in the way. So her doctor recommended Lasik.The procedure, which uses lasers to cut in and reshape a patient’s eye, was billed as simple and quick, usually done in under 30 minutes. “It was supposed to be zip, zap, and within a couple of weeks you’re healed and life goes on,” Reeves said. “But my life has stood still since July 12th of last year.” Continue reading...

Three-story New York City apartment used in series features five bedrooms, four bathrooms and 3,500 sq ft of outdoor spaceIf you have been looking for a New York City condominium to pensively contemplate the fraught state of your wealthy family’s affairs – and maybe bust out a few rap verses – there is a $29m penthouse on the Upper East Side waiting for you.The triplex used by Succession’s Kendall Roy, played by Jeremy Strong, in HBO’s hit series is up for sale with a price tag befitting the Roy dynasty. The three-story apartment penthouse complex of 180 East 88th Street was featured in the latest season of the show and clocks in at 5,508 sq ft. It features five bedrooms and four bathrooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and panoramic skyline and Central Park views, a huge spiral staircase and a private elevator. Continue reading...

The shooting of Ralph Yarl, the Black teen who rang the wrong doorbell, revives concerns about expanding self defense lawsThe shooting of a Black teenager who rang the wrong doorbell in Kansas City, Missouri, has renewed scrutiny of “stand your ground” and other self-defense laws, which have proliferated in the US and been used to justify the killings of Black Americans.Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old high school junior, was going to pick up his younger twin brothers from a friend’s house on Thursday when he approached an incorrect address. The white homeowner, 84-year-old Andrew Lester, came to the door and shot Yarl in the head, before shooting him a second time, according to authorities. Yarl suffered a traumatic brain injury, but survived and was recovering, his family said. Continue reading...

The news corporation will have to shell out $787.5m but, for them, it’s just ‘the cost of doing business’The staggering $787.5m settlement between Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion marked the end of one of the most aggressive efforts to hold someone accountable for spreading misinformation after the 2020 election.Dominion sued Fox for $1.6bn in damages for knowingly broadcasting false information about the company after the election. The money from the settlement, one of the largest libel payouts in media history, was just the icing on a cake Dominion had, in many ways, already won. Continue reading...

Speaking after Dominion Voting Systems reached a US$787.5m settlement in its defamation lawsuit against Fox, the company's attorney Justin Nelson says the outcome "represents vindication and accountability". Dominion CEO John Poulos says Fox 'has admitted to telling lies' about the voting equipment company that caused 'enormous damage'. The settlement ends a dispute over whether Fox and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election. Neither party disclosed the terms of the settlement other than the dollar amount, and attorneys for Dominion declined to answer questions about whether it requires Fox to issue a retraction or a formal apology

Cleo Nagbe speaks out after white man charged with Missouri’s equivalent for attempted murder for shooting Ralph YarlThe mother of Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager who was shot by a white man after ringing the man’s doorbell, says that her son has been mentally replaying the shooting “over and over”.Cleo Nagbe says that her son is still facing physical challenges from last week’s attack, when Andrew Lester, a white Kansas City resident, shot Yarl twice, once in the head and once in the arm, after the 16-year-old went to a mistaken address to pick up his siblings. Continue reading...

Admission reveals potentially major fracture in the group as prosecutors near the end of their investigationA new legal filing has exposed a potentially major fracture among a group of so-called “fake electors” in Georgia, who sought to aid Donald Trump in overturning the 2020 election results in a scheme now under criminal investigation.According to a court document filed on Tuesday, a group of people involved in the scheme recently told state prosecutors that another one of the fake electors committed crimes that they were not involved in. Continue reading...

Residents demand resignations after sheriff and officials recorded discussing desire to murder journalists and lynch Black citizensA sheriff and several officials of a rural Oklahoma county are under pressure to resign after a local newspaper recorded their racist and expletive-laden conversation about their desire to murder journalists and lynch Black citizens.Dozens of residents of McCurtain county protested at the sheriff’s office in Idabel on Monday, echoing calls from the Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, and the city’s mayor, Craig Young, for the officials to step down. Continue reading...

Five were injured, according to the New York City mayor, in the partial collapse near city hall and the Brooklyn BridgeA parking garage collapsed on Tuesday in the Financial District in lower Manhattan, killing one worker, injuring five and crushing cars as concrete floors fell on top of each other like a stack of pancakes, officials said.Police said they had no reason to believe the incident was anything other than a structural collapse. Continue reading...

Leaked Pentagon files appear to show US was closely monitoring António Guterres’s conversations, Washington Post reportedThe United Nations has raised concerns with the United States over reports that it eavesdropped on the private conversations of the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and other senior officials.“We have made it clear that such actions are inconsistent with the obligations of the United States as enumerated in the Charter of the United Nations and the convention on the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” said a UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Agreement reached after the jury was sworn in on Tuesday morning after lengthy delay to start of opening statementsFox and the voting equipment company Dominion reached a US$787.5m settlement in a closely watched defamation lawsuit, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election.The settlement came before scheduled opening statements and after an unexpected lengthy delay Tuesday afternoon just after the jury was sworn in. Neither party immediately disclosed the terms of the settlement other than the dollar amount, and attorneys for Dominion declined to answer questions about whether it requires Fox to issue a retraction or a formal apology. Continue reading...

Federal judge has ordered Jamie Dimon to set aside two days for questioning with regards to the sex offender and former clientA federal judge on Tuesday ordered the JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO, Jamie Dimon, to set aside two days for depositions for what he knew about the bank’s relationship with the sex offender and former client Jeffrey Epstein.The largest US bank faces lawsuits seeking damages by women who claim that Epstein sexually abused them, and by the US Virgin Islands, where the late financier had a home. Continue reading...

In a move meant to combat a labor shortage, children under age 16 can now work six hours a dayIn a pre-dawn session on Tuesday, the Iowa state senate voted to allow children to work longer hours and serve alcohol, the latest move by Republican-controlled statehouses to combat a labor shortage by loosening child labor laws.The Iowa bill would expand the number of hours that children under 16 can work from four to six a day, allow minors to work in previously prohibited industries if they are part of a training program, and allow 16- and 17-year–olds to serve alcohol with a parent’s permission. Continue reading...

‘Curious young visitor’ wriggled through fencing on north side of the building, prompting brief security shutdownSecret Service agents acted fast on Tuesday to capture a fast-moving White House intruder: a two-year-old boy who wriggled through fencing on the north side of the building, prompting a brief security shutdown.The Secret Service chief of communications, Anthony Guglielmi, said the “curious young visitor” gained entry “along the … north fence line [and] briefly entered White House grounds. Continue reading...

Ex-president promoted the second edition of his digital playing cards on the platform after Meta lifted his ban in JanuaryDonald Trump returned to Instagram on Tuesday, posting for the first time since 5 January 2021, the day before the former US president incited the deadly attack on Congress which led to his suspension from major social media platforms.Trump, who is now running to regain the White House, used his return to Instagram to promote a second edition of his digital trading cards, a project widely mocked when he announced it in December but which sold out an edition of 44,000 in less than a day, netting $4.5m. Continue reading...

Amnesty urges president to grant clemency to Peltier, convicted of killing two FBI agents in trial rife with due process violationsAmnesty International has launched a new campaign calling on Joe Biden to grant clemency for Leonard Peltier, the Indigenous rights activist whose health is deteriorating after almost five decades in maximum security prison for crimes he has always denied.The international human rights group is urging Biden to release Peltier on humanitarian grounds – exactly 46 years after he was convicted for killing two FBI agents in a trial rife with irregularities and due process violations including evidence that the agency coerced witnesses and withheld and falsified evidence. Continue reading...

Florida governor’s campaign against entertainment giant shows he is no conservative, says former New Jersey governorRon DeSantis’s attacks on Disney and his struggles to bend the entertainment giant to his will show the Florida governor is both not a true conservative and should not be trusted to lead talks with the leaders of China and Russia, a potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination said on Tuesday.“I’ll tell you this much,” Chris Christie told Semafor. “That’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi [Jinping] and negotiating our next agreement with China. Continue reading...

Four-year-old’s father dropped off the stuffed bear at a Tennessee Goodwill, after which it was quickly soldA heartbroken four-year-old girl’s lost teddy bear, containing a recording of her late mother’s heartbeat, has sparked a desperate search in Tennessee after it was mistakenly donated to a thrift shop.The tie-dyed bear was dropped off by the girl’s father among other donations at the Goodwill Industries store in New Tazewell about 50 miles (80km) north-west of Knoxville, company officials say, and was quickly sold. Continue reading...

Eight police officers who fired dozens of rounds at Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man, after a car and foot chase will not face criminal charges in his death because a US grand jury declined to indict them, Ohio’s attorney general announced on Monday. Akron's mayor and police chief urged residents to protest peacefully, acknowledging that many are angry because of the shooting last June that Walker’s family has called brutal and senseless. A small group of people held a demonstration outside the church afterwards, chanting Walker's name and anti-police slogans

The jury’s still out on whether vapes are better for us than smoking. So why is the UK government handing them out?I am vaping right now. It’s a watermelon one, which I bought from Sainsbury’s rather than from the vape shop that, unfortunately, is the nearest shop of any kind to where I live. The ones I normally buy are Triple Mango. “Oh, is one mango not enough?” people reliably joke when I tell them what flavour it is. No amount of mango could apparently be enough. If they brought out Quadruple Mango I’d be there banging my debit card on the counter. Earlier this week, the man who runs the vape shop took me through the new flavours he’d just got in, like I am a connoisseur of fine whisky. I’m not that. I am a silly little girl who likes her dummy.I have had my brain well and truly fried over the past nine months or so by vapes. Not the old-style vapes: unflavoured, nerdy-looking objects that were for a long time the preserve of morose ex-smokers. The dumb fruity ones you’ve seen everywhere, littering the pavements, clutched in the mitts of pub-goers and people waiting for the bus, called things like Blappleberry Blast or Dr Maniac’s Pinacoloco. Continue reading...

Alexis Dowdell pays tribute to older brother Phil, 18, who was shot dead on Saturday night along with three other teenagersA teenage boy who was killed in a mass shooting that erupted at his sister’s 16th party in Alabama over the weekend died as he pushed the birthday girl to safety, his sister said.In an interview with CNN, Alexis Dowdell described her final words to her 18-year-old brother, Philstavious “Phil” Dowdell, as he died on Saturday night along with three other teens. Continue reading...

Officials braced for nuclear threats and cyber-attacks as part of Russian response to predicted counteroffensive. Plus, what’s behind the disgusting food of TikTok?

Quite a few observers, including liberals, are anxious that a victory for Dominion could backfire. Those worries are misplacedOn Tuesday begins one of the most closely watched trials about press freedom in decades. Dominion, maker of voting machines, is suing Fox News for defaming the company during its coverage of the 2020 election. Fox hosts and plenty of more or less deranged guests had suggested that the election was stolen, spreading increasingly absurd theories about how the machines could flip votes from Trump to Biden.Quite a few observers, including liberals, are anxious that a victory for Dominion could backfire: if the case reaches the US supreme court, the latter’s radical right-wing majority, evidently willing to overturn precedents like Roe v Wade, could use the occasion to hollow out protections for news organizations (a category to which Fox evidently does not belong). Ron DeSantis is already busy tightening libel laws, explicitly targeting “legacy media.”. So, while Fox having to pay $1.6bn dollars to Dominion might be deeply satisfying for critics of a Republican party propaganda channel, democracy as a whole could turn out to be the loser. Yet this handwringing is misplaced.Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University. He is also a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Government aid programs, set up to favor corporate farms, are out of reach to those who supply farmers markets and restaurantsThe water came in a rush – tearing through planted rows of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower before crashing into the tractors and farm equipment. Within hours, much of María Inés Catalán’s 41-acre (17-hectare) organic farm in Hollister, California, had disappeared under several feet of water.She had escaped just in time, as the flood waters gurgled into her trailer home. Now, three months after a series of storms, Catalán and her family are still counting their losses. Their dog, Flor, didn’t make it, nor did the bees that Catalán had been tending for two years. Continue reading...

Kevin Monahan charged with second-degree murder of Kaylin Gillis after opening fire on carA woman looking for a friend’s house in upstate New York was shot dead after the car she was riding in mistakenly went to the wrong address and was met with gunfire in the driveway, authorities have said.Kaylin Gillis, 20, was travelling through the rural town of Hebron with three people on Saturday night when the group made a wrong turn on to the property. Continue reading...

Along with the arrival of Babe Ruth, the Yankees’ move from Manhattan to the Bronx started a journey that would turn them into world-famous winnersA century ago on Tuesday, the New York Yankees came out of the shadow of their Manhattan landlords to christen the ballpark that would be known as “The House That Ruth Built” in the Bronx.On 18 April 1923, 60,000 fans jammed into “The Yankee Stadium,” as it was originally called, to see the American League defending champions take on their rival Boston Red Sox. Batting third for the Yankees and playing right field on the historic Opening Day was their star slugger, Babe Ruth, just a few years after New York had acquired him from Boston in December 1919. Continue reading...

Growing up near the border there was no physical barrier. Now war has forced citizens of both sides to choose their identitiesWhere do you call home? I’ve travelled and lived in so many places that the question sometimes confused me. Being eastern Ukrainian doesn’t make it easy to look for your roots, either.Two world wars, the Holodomor, Stalin’s red terror, the collapse of the USSR, decades of isolation from the outside world. But I know from tracing my family tree – as best I could – back to the 18th century that the place I was born into is my ancestral home. A small town called Dvorichna and the villages around it in Kharkiv Oblast, only 19 miles from the Russian border. Since the war, that home has become a frontline, my parents’ house has become a lair for the occupiers, my school has become a shooting range and my entire village has become a battlefield.Artem Mazhulin is a Ukrainian journalist based in KyivDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The Chinese government used the pandemic to accumulate ever more power. The result was a totalitarian, anti-scientific humanitarian catastropheIn one week last December, five members of Guan Yao’s family in Beijing died, including his father, his father-in-law and his grandmother. In an interview with a journalist, Guan, who lives in California, appeared powerless and dejected. Yet – for reasons that anyone from China understands – he chose his words carefully. Avoiding directly mentioning the Chinese government, he referred only to an ambiguous “them”. “It is difficult to understand,” Guan said, “why they abruptly lifted all restrictions.”If you choose to believe official Chinese government documents, the deaths of Guan’s five relatives had nothing to do with Covid. They may have been infected with Covid, but government rules – rules that can’t be made public and can’t be questioned – required that doctors who issue death certificates come up with other causes of death. Guan’s uncle died of Parkinson’s, his grandmother of kidney failure. Continue reading...