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As a child in communist Albania, I yearned to play with her. But as soon as she was within reach, I didn’t want her any moreWhen I was a child in communist Albania, happiness was called Aniushka. Aniushka was a large Czechoslovak doll that belonged to my neighbours. They were party members who had been allowed to travel to Prague at one point, and brought Aniushka back to decorate their bedroom. She was not on sale in any Albanian shop.She had thick, black hair done up in a chignon, and wore an imperial-looking, orange satin dress adorned with lace. Her lips were bright red, and she had deep blue eyes, and long, dark eyelashes that gave her a dreamy expression. She sat majestically on the bed with the sides of her dress unfolded over the mattress, giving the plain, communist furniture a solemn, Habsburg air. I would stare for hours, longing to touch her. Sometimes, I sat on a chair by the bedroom doorstep – which was as close to her as I was allowed to get – and we talked about whether she might like, one day, to become a toy rather than an ornament.Lea Ypi is a professor in political theory in the government department at the London School of EconomicsDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

William Leslie Arnold killed his parents aged 16 in 1957 and escaped prison ten years later, mystifying authorities until nowWilliam Leslie Arnold was just 16 years old in 1958 when he killed his parents and buried them in the backyard after they refused to let him borrow the family car to take his girlfriend to a drive-in movie showing of The Undead.Arnold went about his life in and around Omaha, Nebraska, telling everyone – even family members – that his parents had taken a trip. Two weeks later he was arrested, confessed to the killings and led investigators to his parents’ makeshift gravesite. Continue reading...

Experts say party’s ‘tough-on-crime’ approach for 2024 could spark rise in violence and worsen US mass incarcerationRepublican and rightwing rhetoric over the state of crime in the US could spark a rise in violent incidents and worsen the country’s mass incarceration problem, experts say, as “tough-on-crime” political ads and messaging seem set to play a large role in the 2024 election.Violent crime was a huge focus for Republican candidates during the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans spent about $50m on crime ads in the two months leading up to those elections, the ads pushing a dystopian vision of cities ridden by murder, robbery and assault, and of Democratic politicians unwilling to act. Continue reading...

A novel approach to holding Russia accountable for atrocities in Ukraine could ensure that lies and mass murder do not go unpunishedThe powerful were meant to be afraid of the truth. Journalists were meant to “hold truth to power”. Evidence was meant to destroy wrongdoers as sunlight does a vampire. Find the evidence, the logic went, and the powerful could be shamed and brought to justice.Historically, the powerful would try to censor and suppress the facts. The Nazis tried to keep the truth about their atrocities hidden. The Soviet leadership would howl with embarrassment when dissidents passed information about conditions in the gulag to the outside world. Richard Nixon was brought down after the facts of his bugging his political opponents, and his ensuing cover-up, were brought to light. Continue reading...

Network’s own reporters criticise decision to give ex-president platform in ‘town hall’ format that allowed him to spout freelyDonald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president’s hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a “town hall” with Republican voters, was a triumph.“America was served very well by what we did last night,” CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network’s daily news conference the following morning. Continue reading...

The return to the Arab fold of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is deeply shameful, and that shame should be shared by the US and its alliesThe grotesque rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad’s regime – Syria’s criminal president has been cordially invited to this week’s Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia – makes sense to cynical Arab governments. They hope to reduce Damascus’s dependence on Iran, encourage refugees to return, halt state-sponsored drug rackets and cash in on reconstruction.But from a human perspective, their decision is utterly shameful. More than 300,000 civilians have died since Assad turned his guns on Syria’s 2011 Arab spring pro-democracy uprising. About 14 million people, half Syria’s population, have fled their homes. Most who remain are short of food. Then came February’s earthquakes. Continue reading...

Investigations are mounting, making it harder for the former president to spin his troubles as persecution by liberal elitesIf the outcome of Donald Trump’s sexual assault trial wasn’t a foregone conclusion, his response to a jury finding he attacked the writer E Jean Carroll was all too predictable.The former president lashed out at the judge as biased and the jurors as “from an anti-Trump area”, meaning liberal New York, after they believed Carroll’s account of the millionaire businessman attacking her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. The jury ordered him to pay $5m in damages for “sexual abuse” and for defaming Carroll by accusing her of “a made-up SCAM” for political ends. Continue reading...

Proponents hope a sleek inter-city service between the two US cities will revolutionize public transportation in the region and reduce the amount of cars on the roadThe last time someone tried to run an eye-catching passenger train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, in the early 1970s, it was more like a cruise ship than a regular rail service, a rollicking ride along an old freight line with booze, gambling and live music nicknamed the Crapshooters Express. It left California on a Friday and returned its passengers – drunker, poorer and not always happier – in time for work on Monday morning.The idea did not catch on, largely because the journey took seven-and-a-half hours each way, almost twice as long as crossing the Mojave desert by car and more than seven times as long as flying. On the train’s star-studded inaugural run, the scotch, bourbon, gin and vodka all ran out within an hour. Amtrak agreed to run the service only because the Las Vegas hamber of commerce agreed to cover any losses and then only on weekends during the winter months. Passenger numbers fell off precipitously and after going through a few different iterations, the venture collapsed. Continue reading...

Florida governor lands in crucial early-voting state in Republican nomination process after weeks of lagging behind TrumpFlorida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has rolled out a hefty list of endorsements from Iowa lawmakers as he visited the crucial early-voting state on Saturday in an attempt to garner support for his potential Republican presidential campaign.The pro-DeSantis Super Pac Never Back Down announced endorsements from 37 Republican Iowa state senators and representatives, including the Iowa senate president, Amy Sinclair, and the state house majority leader, Matt Windschitl. Continue reading...

The allure of digital relationships that can be curated and controlled comes at the expense of mutual vulnerabilityThe western drift away from seeking moral instruction from the church is understandable; the morality plays staged every day on Reddit’s infamous “Am I the Asshole?” threads are far more entertaining.A few weeks ago, a post went viral in which the author seeks a public verdict on the question “AITA for asking my roommates to remove their dildos from the bathroom mirror in a way that was not kind?” The young poster had responded to the presence of newly washed sex toys in a shared space with a disgusted hostility and the dildo-owning flatmate complained the poster should have requested the removal more politely. Continue reading...

Daniel Penny was charged on Friday with second-degree manslaughter in death of fellow passenger on New York subwayAn online fundraiser for Daniel Penny, who placed fellow subway rider Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold in a case that has come to symbolize fears over crime, racism and vigilantism, has raised more than $1m for his legal defense.The fundraiser for Daniel Penny, a white former marine, who was charged on Friday with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Neely, who is Black, is on GiveSendGo. The Christian fundraising website has also hosted drives for rightwing vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse and far-right groups, including January 6 insurrectionists. Continue reading...

Situation at the border stands in contrast to Republican fear-mongering as Biden officials establish strict new policiesThe US-Mexico border saw surprising calm one full day after pandemic-era immigration restrictions known as Title 42 were lifted and replaced by new Biden administration policies intending to block unlawful crossings while establishing a legal means of entering the US, according to reports.The seeming quiet stands in stark contrast to fear-mongering promoted by many conservatives including the Texas governor, Greg Abbott. The Republican politician accused Biden of “laying down the welcome mat to people across the entire world” and deployed “specially trained soldiers” to the border. Continue reading...

We’re shamed if we make ‘bad’ choices on diet, but Big Food and an overwork culture are the real culpritsWe live in a toxic food environment, and Big Food has extremely clever marketers and food scientists. That all of us eat a lot of Big Food’s produce means those people are very good at their jobs. It doesn’t mean we have failed if we eat what the industry makes.In the UK, about 50% of the average adult’s diet, and 65% of a child’s, is ultra-processed. As Dr Chris Van Tulleken’s latest book, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food... and Why Can’t We Stop?, points out, that means much of what we eat includes newly invented substances that humans haven’t eaten before and we know very little about how they interact with us, or each other. Continue reading...

Talented teenager has been a remarkable success story but needs to make adjustments on and off court to reach next levelHalfway through her third-round tussle with Paula Badosa in Madrid this month, Coco Gauff’s mind was elsewhere. Errors sprayed from her racket and she could barely land a forehand inside the court. Gauff haemorrhaged game after game, sharing grim expressions with her team. She was dismantled 6-3, 6-0.“I mentally wasn’t engaged in that second set. I let something happen in the first, maybe one or two bad points. I just stayed down,” said Gauff this week in Rome. Continue reading...

Record-breaking temperatures expected as National Weather Service issues heat advisory for parts of Oregon and WashingtonAn unusually early heatwave is set to sweep through the Pacific north-west of the US this weekend as the region braces for potentially record-breaking temperatures.On Saturday, the National Weather Service warned that “much above average to record heat building [will occur] across the Pacific north-west” as temperatures reach the high 80s and 90s degrees Fahrenheit, with the warmth expected to spread into the Rockies and Great Plains by early next week. Continue reading...

Purported investigation after screening of Disney animated movie comes amid governor Ron DeSantis’s attacks on educatorsFlorida education officials allegedly told a school teacher that she was under a misconduct investigation after, her friend claimed, she showed students the Disney animated film Strange World.The purported investigation following this alleged showing of Strange World comes amid rightwing Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s attacks on educators that include book censorship and limitations on discussions of race and sex as he jockeys for his party’s presidential nomination with “anti-woke” talking points. Continue reading...

President pledged as a candidate to dismantle Trump’s hardline immigration agenda but new rules are more restrictiveAs the Title 42 pandemic-era rule ended at midnight on Thursday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security and a former Cuban refugee, issued a stern warning to would-be migrants, saying: “People who arrive at the border without using a lawful pathway will be presumed ineligible for asylum.”In many ways, Mayorkas’s statement directly contradicted some of the promises Joe Biden made as a candidate during the 2020 presidential election. Then Biden had pledged to dismantle Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, calling the numerous restrictions his rival enacted to shut off access to the US asylum system “cruel”. Continue reading...

The average age for new parents in the US is on the rise but the stigma attached to ‘geriatric’ mothers in their 30s is ridiculousIn a world where US birth rates were declining, one man decided to embark on a heroic journey to father as many children as he could. That man is called Robert De Niro and he has just had his seventh child at the grand old age of 79. His new daughter is around half a century younger than his oldest kids.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...

LeBron v Steph has been the defining rivalry of my basketball life. Their latest chapter did not disappoint, but it’s clear their special rivalry is nearer to the end than the beginningThere are certain constants in our lives: north stars by which we can measure and trace the changes that occur around them as time passes us by. For the better part of the last decade, the steady fulcrum around which the NBA has revolved has been the special ongoing rivalry between future first-ballot Hall of Famers LeBron James and Stephen Curry.Some basketball fans grew up at a time when they watched Magic Johnson and Larry Bird duke it out year after year, and other fandoms were formed during the swath of time in which extraordinary players, like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, dominated the league and had no singular, definitive rival to speak of. Personally, basketball didn’t come into my life in a meaningful way until early adulthood, so for basically as long as I’ve been paying attention, an NBA centered around LeBron and Steph has represented the permanent blueprint. Any aspirant to the throne inevitably had to go through one or the other to reach the mountaintop, and for the four straight years Steph’s Warriors and LeBron’s Cavaliers met in the NBA finals (from 2015 to 2018), no one successfully did. Continue reading...

Teachers say they’re feeling more disrespected, unappreciated and under attack than ever before by new laws championed by Governor Ron DeSantisAdam Tritt, a high school English teacher in Palm Bay, Florida, was shocked when his school’s librarian – eager to comply with Florida’s new law restricting “inappropriate” books in schools – removed one-third of the books on his classroom shelves, including a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that was not on her list of approved books.Vivian Taylor, a seventh-grade teacher in Miami, says she was told to hardly discuss Emmett Till – the 14-year-old victim of one of the US’s most notorious lynchings – in her civics classes because under Florida’s year-old “stop woke” law, “people say you’re not supposed to talk about that because it will make children uncomfortable”. Continue reading...

Pedestrians and human motorists in San Francisco are learning to interact with ‘robot drivers’. Here’s how my experience wentWhen I lived in the Outer Sunset, San Francisco’s foggy beachside neighborhood, I grew accustomed to seeing camera and sensor-fitted vehicles roaming through the surfer and pastel home-lined streets. The quiet neighborhood made an obvious testing ground for Google-owned Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise. At the time, company staff still sat in the driver’s seat, ready to take over at a moment’s notice if the self-driving car didn’t behave the way it was supposed to.Fast forward a year later, on a recent trip back to the city, it suddenly hit me. Continue reading...

While stores like Whole Foods and Nordstrom are closing, La Cocina’s entrepreneurs are building community in a neighborhood facing homelessness and addictionFrom her coffee counter in La Cocina Municipal Marketplace, Santana Tapia has a clear line of sight into every gloomy prediction that has hit San Francisco since the rise of the Covid pandemic.From the marketplace’s windows in the heart of the city’s troubled Tenderloin District, she notices the decline of foot traffic that has come from employees choosing to work at home rather than travel to their downtown offices, spawning some dire predictions of an economic “doom loop”. And she can see the ravages of the fentanyl epidemic happening all around her, with its record numbers of overdose deaths and scenes of homeless desperation. Continue reading...

A year after the shooting at a supermarket that left 10 dead, residents say that when the cameras left, so did the potential for investment in the communityA year ago, a white supremacist gunman committed a mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets on Buffalo’s East Side that left 10 people dead, several more injured, and a community forever changed.The predominantly Black East Side neighborhood lost its only grocery store for two months and a day, once again making the area into a food desert. In the gunman’s wake came national and international media – and, with them, widespread attention from charitable organizations and people. Continue reading...

Three activists protesting the planned facility were charged under a little-known Georgia law, raising first amendment concernsThree activists have been arrested in confusing circumstances and charged under a little-known Georgia law – an apparent tightening of the state’s criminal justice system in response to a movement opposing the building of a huge police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” near Atlanta.“Cop City” has sparked a broad-based protest movement in Atlanta and elsewhere, drawing global headlines when one environmental activist was shot and killed by police. Continue reading...

That Republican elders dare not alienate the ex-president’s fanbase shows how fully he has shaped the party in his imageOne day he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The next he was on prime-time television pushing election lies, defending his own coup attempt and refusing to back Ukraine.To his millions of critics, it was another week that proved Donald Trump is unfit for office and dangerous to democracy. But to the top leaders of Trump’s Republican party, it was another week to keep heads down and say nothing. Continue reading...

Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio were convicted – but experts worry what role the groups may or not play in the future path of violent extremismThe recent convictions of the Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has raised questions about the future of both extremist groups and what role they may or not play in the future path of violent extremism in the US.Researchers who monitor American far-right organizations said the Oath Keepers have in effect been decimated, with only a handful of chapters remaining, while the Proud Boys are ramping up efforts to protest at LGBTQ events and taking cues from larger national conservative conversations about hostility to transgender rights. Continue reading...

Texas alone has suffered 17 mass shootings this year and now lawmakers propose ‘battlefield trauma care’ facilities in schoolsHB 1147, a bill pending in the Texas house of representatives, is strikingly graphic. It proposes that schools across the state should provide “bleeding control stations” equipped with “tourniquets approved for use in battlefield trauma care by the armed forces of the United States”.Under the terms of the bill, the bleeding stations would deal with “traumatic injury involving blood loss” – in other words, casualties from a mass shooting. School staff would be trained to use the equipment, in turn passing on such battlefield skills to pupils in third grade upwards. Continue reading...

The ex-president gaslights and diminishes his victims, and was given a platform by CNN. We can ensure he isn’t elected againSince the beginning of the trial between E Jean Carroll and Donald Trump, I have been seriously triggered. I am not alone. I am hearing from women all across America and the world. Sleepless nights, unbearable anxiety, shortness of breath, unexplained rage, depression. Survivors have a kind of collective nervous system, a central body where our stories and trauma live in a timeless and interwoven continuum. When one of us goes on public trial, it is all of us on trial, our histories charged, our past memories made frighteningly present. We are what I would call “sister-triggered”.Triggers are cues that signal potential threats around us. As survivors, we are constantly on alert as we swim in these volatile misogynist waters, knowing a wave can come any minute to swallow us whole, or at the very least remind us that although we may have one-off victories we are still swimming in their rigged and violent sea. And this is particularly true each time a sister survivor bravely goes on trial, willingly stands up and publicly tells the truth, sheds her anonymity for the greater good, faces an onslaught of hate, and inevitably has her privacy, being and body reinvaded. Continue reading...

Shania Muhammad earned bachelor of arts degree from Langston University in Oklahoma and plans career in public speakingAmong the millions who are celebrating having received their university diplomas in the US this spring is a 15-year-old girl from Oklahoma, one of the youngest ever American college graduates.Shania Muhammad graduated from Oklahoma’s Langston University with a bachelor of arts degree as well as a 4.0 grade-point average that was the highest in her class, according to a recent report from the local news media outlet KOCO-TV. She said she plans to pursue a career in public speaking and publish a book about her experience in school titled Read, Write, Listen: 13 in College. Continue reading...

Gabriella Gonzalez, 26, was shot in the head in a parking lot by Harold Thompson, 22, shortly after she ‘shrugs off’ his chokeholdA 26-year-old woman from Texas was shot and killed by her boyfriend after getting an abortion in another state, Dallas police said.He was jailed on a murder charge as of Friday. Continue reading...

Title 42 carried no legal consequences, but now migrants will face being barred from entering the US for five yearsThe US late on Thursday ended pandemic-era restrictions at the US-Mexico border that blocked many migrants from their right to claim asylum in the US – but immediately replaced the so-called Title 42 restrictions with sweeping new policies designed to deter or even physically prevent people from crossing the border without permission.In an increasingly hard line from the Biden administration, the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Thursday evening that 24,000 border patrol agents and officers had been sent to the border to enforce US laws, adding: “The border is not open. Continue reading...

Chris Sununu said the audience’s conduct ‘doesn’t shine a positive light’ on the state, which will hold the first Republican primaryThe governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, said it was “embarrassing” that Republican voters from his state laughed and applauded when Donald Trump mocked E Jean Carroll during a CNN town hall this week.Sununu may yet have to court such voters in a presidential run of his own. Continue reading...

Walkout lasting more than a week has thrown statehouse into disarray and jeopardized Democrats’ legislative agendaOregon Republicans boycotted the statehouse for a ninth day on Thursday, denying lawmakers the quorum necessary to pass legislation, in a protest that could derail hundreds of bills, including proposals on gun control and abortion rights.While Democrats control the capital in the Pacific north-west state, Republicans have leveraged rules requiring two-thirds of lawmakers be present to pass legislation, which means Democrats need a certain number of Republicans to be there too. Continue reading...

Investigators trying to determine cause for teen’s death, which occurred in a Florida shelter on WednesdayAn unaccompanied 17-year-old migrant from Honduras died in a shelter in Florida on Wednesday, according to authorities.Investigators on Friday were still trying to determine a cause for the teen’s death, which came as the US lifted immigration restrictions stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading...

Officials stress hardline approach as American Civil Liberties Union files lawsuit, saying new rules close off safe routes for people seeking asylumIn El Paso, the Texas city this home to one of the major crossing points from Mexico, the Associated Press reports on how the city’s faith leaders are navigating an influx of migrants that’s expected to grow in the days to come.Here’s more from their story:As changing policies, rampant misinformation and exasperated, fearful crowds converge in this desert city, faith leaders are striving to provide shelter and uplift.Along with prayers, they are counseling migrants about the daunting challenges that await them on U.S. soil, with enormous backlogs in asylum hearings and the Biden administration’s newly announced measures that many consider stricter than the existing ones known as Title 42. Continue reading...

Daniel Penny, a former marine who surrendered to police in New York, could face up to 15 years in prison if found guiltyThe man who killed Jordan Neely after putting him in a chokehold while on a subway in New York City has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said on Friday.Daniel Penny, 24, could face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty under the charge. Penny surrendered himself to New York police on Friday morning. Continue reading...

Samantha Miller, 34, died in South Carolina after rental car driven by Jamie Lee Komoroski hit golf cart she and husband were inThe mother of a South Carolina bride killed by an allegedly drunk motorist just moments after her wedding has lashed out at the accused driver, saying she made “a conscious choice” that turned deadly.“It wasn’t an accident,” Lisa Miller said to Fox News of the 28 April crash that killed her daughter, Samantha Miller, and led to the arrest of Jamie Lee Komoroski. Continue reading...

Being found liable for sexual abuse hasn’t weakened the Republican’s grip on his party, while the polls are getting bleaker for BidenWe may come to remember this period as the interlude: the inter-Trump years. After the sigh of relief heard around the world when Donald Trump was defeated in November 2020, a grim realisation should be dawning: the threat of a Trump return to the White House is growing.His first task is to win the Republican party’s presidential nomination, but that hurdle is shrinking daily. Trump’s grip on his party remains firm, with none of his putative rivals coming close. Of course, the first round of primary voting is months away and much could change, but the shape of the race is already clear – and Trump is dominant. Witness the reaction to an event that would once have been terminal for any politician: this week’s civil court verdict that he had sexually abused the magazine writer E Jean Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s, and then defamed her by branding her a liar.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistJoin Jonathan Freedland and Marina Hyde for a Guardian Live event in London on Thursday 1 June. Book in-person or livestream tickets here Continue reading...

Magnitude 5.5 quake strikes in Sierra Nevada but only minor damage immediately reportedEarthquakes have rattled a large area of northern California this week, including a strong aftershock shake early on Friday. Only minor damage was immediately reported.A magnitude 5.5 quake centered in the Sierra Nevada’s Lake Almanor resort region struck at 4.19pm on Thursday and a magnitude 5.2 aftershock occurred at 3.18am on Friday, according to the US Geological Survey. Continue reading...

Daniel Penny, 24, faces second-degree manslaughter charges that could carry up to 15 years in jail, according to Manhattan DA’s officeA man who kept a chokehold around the neck of an agitated fellow passenger on a New York City subway, leading to the other rider’s death, turned himself in to authorities on Friday morning on a manslaughter charge that could send him to prison for 15 years.Daniel Penny, 24, surrendered to the authorities to be arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter. Continue reading...

Many people hoping to cross into the US expected at border with Mexico as Biden administration officially ends use of Title 42

As the US’s pandemic migration restrictions ended on Thursday, the hopes of those waiting at the border faded“My plan is to give up,” Fernando Jesús Manzano, 32, from the state of Falcón, Venezuela, said dejectedly as he gazed at the hundreds of fellow migrants waiting to turn themselves in to US migration authorities as Thursday turned into Friday and a new policy era at the US-Mexico border.Manzano arrived at “Door 42”, a gate along the border barrier in El Paso, west Texas, shortly before the expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era rule implemented during the coronavirus pandemic that allowed the US to turn away migrants at its border with Mexico without allowing them to exercise their right to seek asylum. Continue reading...

Entrepreneur alleged to have duped Hewlett-Packard into overpaying for software firm in $11bn dealThe tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been extradited to the US to face criminal fraud charges, where a court has ordered him to pay a $100m (£79m) bond and called in 24-hour armed guards to ensure he does not flee the country.Lynch, a billionaire founder once lauded as Britain’s answer to Bill Gates, is facing allegations that he duped the US firm Hewlett-Packard into overpaying when it struck an $11bn deal for his software firm Autonomy in 2011. He denies any wrongdoing. Continue reading...