The rapper’s creations are unlikely to pass muster with adherents of modern design, even if they do ‘push the boundaries’The news that the rapper A$AP Rocky is launching a “decor studio” will be startling to believers in the high-minded principles of modern design, and its antecedents in the arts and crafts movement, especially when they see that his main idea is to add some primary-coloured mushrooms to a cactus-shaped hatstand created 50 years ago by the Italian designers Guido Drocco and Franco Mello. “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” said the Victorian socialist and designer William Morris, words that don’t have much traction in this case. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away,” said the author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Nope, also not much use here. Rocky’s explanation is that he has long advocated for psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms, so “it was only right that we made a cactus with them”. This might sound like a flimsy argument to justify what looks like a marketing gimmick. But maybe legacy objections don’t apply when, as Rocky says of himself, you’re trying to “push the boundaries of the home decor space”. Continue reading...

A tool to stop non-consensual distribution of intimate images has been successful – but there’s still the problem that collecting digital trophies is part of being a manWould you send your nudes to Facebook? Would you trust a company famous for its somewhat loose approach to data privacy with intimate photos of yourself? The answer, for a lot of people, is “hell no, are you out of your mind?” Five years ago Facebook (which is now Meta) asked Australians for their nudes in a pilot effort to develop a tool to stop the non-consensual distribution of intimate images; the response was sceptical to say the least. In a surprising twist, though, it looks like Meta’s tactics to stop revenge porn are actually working. Continue reading...

Senate hopefuls Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker’s contrasting beliefs will influence how voters turn outAs senator Raphael Warnock faces off against Republican challenger Herschel Walker in the most expensive race of the 2022 midterms, they also encounter a historic moment: it’s the first time in modern Georgia history that two Black candidates were nominated by both party’s voters to vie for a US Senate seat in the deep south state.Warnock and Walker both had experiences with poverty and Christianity during their upbringings yet their views on race and racism in society are now in stark contrast. Continue reading...

Ray J Garcia is charged with abusing at least three female prisoners from 2019 to 2021 in prison areas out of view of camerasFirst, the prison’s male warden would flatter the incarcerated women under his charge who attracted him, shower them with compliments and promise them early releases or transfers to lower-security facilities, according to authorities.Eventually, he would allegedly take them to places in his lockup that he knew weren’t watched by surveillance cameras, force sex on them and take nude photos of them. Continue reading...

Former speaker who led charge against Bill Clinton raises eyebrows with column heralding Democrat’s first-term successRepublicans must “quit underestimating” Joe Biden, the former US House speaker Newt Gingrich said, because the president is winning the fight.Writing on his own website, Gingrich said: “Conservatives’ hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms. Continue reading...

Authorities announce that member of Migos, who was shot at a bowling alley last month, was ‘an innocent bystander’A suspect has been arrested and charged with murder in the killing of Takeoff, the rapper and member of Migos, at a bowling alley in Houston last month.Announcing the news on Friday, Houston police said Takeoff, who was 28 and whose birth name was Kirshnik Khari Ball, was “an innocent bystander”. Continue reading...

Biden alludes to Republican politicians, saying ‘our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides’It looks like Florida’s legislature will press ahead with a plan to allow Ron DeSantis to continue serving as the state’s governor, while he pursues his expected run for the White House.An Associated Press report Friday adds credence to the idea floated by Republicans last month, and reported in this blog, to repeal Florida’s so-called “resign to run” rule. Continue reading...

For many, the lava flow is a time to pray, sing, dance and make offerings to Pele, the Hawaiian deity of volcanoes and fireFor many Hawaiians, lava flows are a time to honor, reflect.Glowing lava from the world’s largest volcano is a sight to behold, but for some, Mauna Loa’s eruption is a time to pray, make offerings and honor both the natural and spiritual worlds. Continue reading...

The US manager credits the Dutch for helping him with his soccer education as his team look to upset the odds and book a place in the World Cup quarter-finalsLouis van Gaal says he doesn’t recall the last time he faced Gregg Berhalter in a competitive match.Berhalter, whose United States team will play Van Gaal’s Netherlands on Saturday in the last 16 of the World Cup, doesn’t believe him for a second. Continue reading...

We are paying £6bn more just to eat. After years of abstract debate, the human consequences of our exit become clearer by the dayEnveloped in Westminster silence it may be, but every day and in every way Brexit is getting more real. For so long, this was an argument made through the medium of abstract nouns: “freedom”, “sovereignty”, “control”. But now reality is intruding. This week came word that Brexit added almost £6bn to Britons’ food bills over a two-year period, and that it was the households with least that were affected most. There’s a reason politicians refer to “bread-and-butter issues”: because there is nothing abstract about food and what it costs.Looking back, it was always a tell that leave campaigners sought to avoid the realm of the concrete, preferring to stick with intangible talk of “independence” or a regained mastery of our national destiny. They knew reality was a hostile environment for the Brexit project, one that would expose its folly. Remainers tried to resist, hoping not to fight on the battlefield of dreams but on the terrain of facts and figures, yet it never worked. It just made them sound boring, casting them as spoilsport bean-counters and, besides, all their numbers were themselves abstractions – projections of a hypothetical future. The forecasts of gloom could be, and were, swatted aside as “project fear”.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

As the Sussexes unveil a slick Netflix series, the Windsors are struggling with accusations of racism at a palace receptionIf ever there were a love story for the Instagram age, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s beautifully chronicled romance is the one. Here they are, in a series of pictures from their private album released to promote next week’s six-part Netflix documentary on their relationship, sitting atop a Jeep on what looks like their first holiday together. Here he is, serenading her on the guitar. Then the two of them, impossibly glamorous, spinning joyously around the dancefloor at their wedding; and her on a beach, pregnant and delightedly cradling the bump, against an almost too perfect sunset.Couple goals, luxury travel, a baby: that’s all the influencer boxes ticked. But perhaps the most telling image shows them late at night in their kitchen, just in from an official engagement. Harry has stripped off his dress jacket and is kissing Meghan, who is perched on the counter in an evening gown; it’s sexy, dishevelled and achingly intimate, at least until you ask yourself how precisely there came to be a photographer handy to capture it. Continue reading...

Predominantly white New Hampshire reportedly could be scheduled later with South Carolina tipped to move up to firstDemocrats are poised to shake up the way in which they nominate presidential candidates, after Joe Biden said the primary process should better represent the party’s non-white voters.Biden has reportedly told Democrats that Iowa, the state that has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976, should be moved down the calendar, with South Carolina instead going first. Continue reading...

Whistleblower is ‘happy and thankful to the Russian Federation’ for his citizenship, lawyer saysEdward Snowden has received a Russian passport after swearing an oath of allegiance to the country that has sheltered him from US authorities since 2013, his lawyer has said.Snowden, 39, a former intelligence contractor who leaked secret files that were reported on by the Guardian, was granted Russian citizenship in an order signed by Vladimir Putin in September. Continue reading...

Infowars host and conspiracy theorist ordered to pay $473m in damages on top of nearly $1bn verdict handed down in OctoberRightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones filed for personal chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas on Friday, according to a court filing, as he faces nearly $1.5bn in court judgments over conspiracy theories he spread about the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.Jones was ordered by a Connecticut court last month to pay $473m in punitive damages on top of a nearly $1bn verdict handed down in October for his defamatory lies that the shooting was faked. Continue reading...

Coach’s Oranje can be scintillating but going into the last-16 tie with the USA they are yet to dazzle for a full 90 minutesWhat is cute game management and what is boring football? This has become the existential question of Louis van Gaal’s third Netherlands tenure as he plots a route to the World Cup final.It was the narrative before and after Tuesday’s 2-0 victory over Qatar that sealed a serene passage to Saturday’s last-16 showdown with the USA and, frankly, it is annoying him. When one inquisitor wondered if fans deserved more sparkling fare the man known as the Iron Tulip showed his metal. “Why don’t you write it’s boring? I don’t think things are as bad as you say,” he countered. Continue reading...

The Out Loud Men’s Chorus, queer-affirming clergy and LGBTQ+ spaces have provided support after the Club Q shootingBelow the vaulted dome and dark wood beams of a church in Colorado Springs, a gay men’s choir rehearsed for a concert that’s taken on new meaning after an LGBTQ+ nightclub became the site of a gruesome shooting that killed five and wounded 17 last month.“There is no peace on earth, I said,” the chorus sang. “For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth.” Continue reading...

Jobs market remains strong even as Fed imposes biggest series of rate rises in decades in effort to tame inflationThe US added 263,000 jobs in November, the labor department announced on Friday, another strong month of jobs growth. The unemployment rate remained at 3.7%, close to a 50-year low.Employers hired 284,000 new positions in October and 269,000 in September and the latest figures show hiring has remained resilient despite rising interest rates and the announcement of a series of layoffs at technology and real estate companies. Continue reading...

Irreverent job posting seeks candidate to lead long-running battle against rats, which have increased in number post-pandemicHate rats? Are you a “somewhat bloodthirsty” New Yorker with excellent communication skills and “a general aura of bad assery”? Then you might have what it takes to be the city’s new rat tsar.Mayor Eric Adams’s administration posted a job listing this week seeking someone to lead the city’s long-running battle against rats. The official job title is “director of rodent mitigation”, although it was promptly dubbed the rat tsar. Salary range is $120,000 to $170,000. Continue reading...

Amid zero-Covid protests, crackdown on VPNs used for banned social media. Plus, Senate rejects paid sick leave for rail workersGood morning.Chinese authorities have initiated the highest “emergency response” level of censorship, according to leaked directives. It includes a crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs) and other methods of bypassing online censorship after unprecedented protests demonstrated widespread public frustration with the zero-Covid policy.“Freedom in China is precious”: Tiananmen Square protest veteran salutes new generation. Activists have despaired for decades as Beijing has hardened its grip. Now they see a turning tide.Winnie the Pooh joins Chinese Covid lockdown protests. Disney stores in Japan are selling a line of merchandise featuring a frowning Pooh looking at a blank sheet of white paper – a symbol of ongoing protests in China.Biden defends contract deal. He noted the wage increases it contains. “I negotiated a contract no one else could negotiate,” Joe Biden said. “What was negotiated was so much better than anything they ever had.” Continue reading...

Former tax collector Joel Greenberg apologizes in court for ‘shameful conduct’ after pleading guilty to six federal crimesA former Florida tax collector whose arrest led to a federal investigation into US congressman Matt Gaetz has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for sex trafficking of a minor and other offenses.Joel Greenberg, former tax collector for Seminole county, was accused of stalking a political opponent, public corruption, making fake licenses and scheming to submit false claims for a federal loan. Continue reading...

University of California campuses come to a standstill as 48,000 student workers strike for better payThree weeks of strikes by university academics has brought campuses across California to standstill. Labs are closed, assignments go ungraded. Graduate students have walked off the job, professors have cancelled class, and even construction staff have put down their tools in solidarity.The strike is groundbreaking – the largest in the history of US higher education and part of a wave of organizing at college campuses across the country. It has brought together 48,000 graduate workers, academic researchers and postdoctoral scholars within the nine-campus University of California system who say the low wages they are paid make it impossible to live in the cities where they work. The most common salary for graduate workers is $23,247, according to the academic workers unions. Continue reading...

LeBron James has questioned the media over their failure to ask him about a controversial photo featuring Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. The Washington Post recently unearthed a photo from 1957 in which a teenaged Jones is in the crowd while a mob of white boys blocks six Black students from entering Arkansas’ North Little Rock High. The photo was taken in a period when schools had started to desegregate in the United States. 'It seems like to me that the whole Jerry Jones situation, the photo, and I know it was years and years ago, and we all make mistakes, I get it. It seems like it's just been buried under,' he said.

I grew up loving Dutch football but from what I’ve seen so far in Qatar, the US are more than capable of making the last eightThe first time I realized that soccer was the world’s game was in 1978. I came home one day from playing soccer and I saw my father standing on the living room table and screaming at the television. He was wearing an orange shirt, drinking a bottle of something and eating what looked like herring in a jar. I realized he was watching the World Cup final, Argentina against his beloved Netherlands (we have Dutch roots). My father wasn’t a big drinker, but he was intoxicated both with what he was drinking and watching. My mother was in the other room shaking her head, as if to say, “I can’t condone this.”In the course of the game, my father’s demeanor went from elation to sorrow to depression to “get away from me.” It wasn’t until a month later at dinner that my mother finally slammed her hand down on the table and said to my father: “David, talk to your son”, meaning my brother. See, the problem was my brother’s name is Brandt. And Ernie Brandts was the Dutch center-back responsible for one of Argentina’s goals. My father has not spoken to my brother for the entirety of that summer until my mother finally begged him. My brother smiled, my father realized his behavior was completely outlandish, he hugged my brother and it was over. But in that moment, I realized that this sport can touch people deeply, beyond reason and comprehension. Continue reading...

The Dutch boast youth and experience along with a few exceptional individual talents. The Americans will need to be at their best to make the quarter-finalsThe Dutch were comfortable Group A winners in Qatar courtesy of 2-0 wins over Senegal and Qatar and a 1-1 tie with Ecuador. They have reached the tournament 11 times, though shockingly didn’t qualify for Russia 2018 (sounds familiar). The nation lost on penalties to Argentina in the 2014 semi-finals and were runners-up in 1974 and 1978 during the Johan Cruyff Total Football era (though Cruyff didn’t play in ’78, when he was nearly kidnapped, lost his fortune investing in a pig farm then joined the NASL), and in 2010 during the Nigel de Jong Kung Fu era. Continue reading...

House judiciary committee account contained cryptic post - ‘Kanye. Elon. Trump’ – that seemingly expressed support for YeLeading Republicans in the US Congress have deleted a tweet that seemingly expressed support for Ye, a rapper formerly known as Kanye West, after he praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.Since October, a Twitter account run by Republicans on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee has contained a cryptic post that said: “Kanye. Elon. Trump” – apparently claiming Ye, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump as their own. Continue reading...

The city is looking for ‘somewhat bloodthirsty’ applicants to a new role designed to tackle its very old rodent problemHate rats? Are you a “somewhat bloodthirsty” New Yorker with excellent communication skills and “a general aura of badassery”? Then you might have what it takes to be the city’s new rat czar.Mayor Eric Adams’s administration posted a job listing this week seeking someone to lead the city’s long-running battle against rats. The official job title is “director of rodent mitigation”, although it was promptly dubbed the rat czar. Salary range is $120,000 to $170,000. Continue reading...

Investigation says personal information of nearly 200,000 people was released as officials didn’t understand their websiteCalifornia’s department of justice mistakenly posted the names, addresses and birthdays of nearly 200,000 gun owners on the internet because officials didn’t follow policies or understand how to operate their website, according to an investigation released Wednesday.The investigation, conducted by an outside law firm hired by the California department of justice, found that personal information for 192,000 people was downloaded 2,734 times by 507 unique IP addresses during a roughly 12-hour period in late June. All of those people had applied for a permit to carry a concealed gun. Continue reading...

The Cochise county board of supervisors voted 2-0 to approve the results after threat of lawsuitsA rural Arizona county finally certified its election results on Thursday after a judge ordered the county’s board of supervisors to do their jobs just a couple of hours earlier.The Cochise county board of supervisors voted 2-0 to approve the midterm results, allowing the statewide canvass of the election to continue as planned on 5 December. A third member of the board who had spearheaded the effort to delay certification, Tom Crosby, did not attend the vote. Continue reading...

Decision marks decisive defeat as judges opine the request should never have been granted in the first placeA federal appeals court on Thursday terminated the special master review of documents seized from Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property, paving the way for the justice department to regain access to the entirety of the materials for use in the criminal investigation surrounding the former president.The decision by the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit marked a decisive defeat for Trump in a ruling that said a lower-court judge should never have granted his request for an independent arbiter in the first place and is unlikely to be overturned in the event of appeal. Continue reading...

Bill goes to Biden’s desk for his signature after legislation that binds rail firms and workers to settlement plan passes 80-15The Senate moved quickly on Thursday to avert a rail strike that the Biden administration and business leaders warned would have had devastating consequences for the nation’s economy.The Senate passed a bill to bind rail companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached between the rail companies and union leaders in September. That settlement had been rejected by some of the 12 unions involved, creating the possibility of a strike beginning 9 December. Continue reading...

US president promises ‘tweaks’ to Inflation Reduction Act that has led to French and European concern over state subsidiesJoe Biden has sought to heal a rift with France’s President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders over trade, admitting there are “glitches” in $739bn legislation that he says can be fixed.The US president was speaking on Thursday while hosting Macron for the first state visit of his presidency. The leaders expressed unity on support for Ukraine’s war against Russia but faced questions about their differences on trade. Continue reading...

I witnessed the racist remarks, but blaming one person alone distracts from the depth and breadth of racism in that institutionI generally avoid news about the royals. So it was a real eye-opener to find myself at the centre of a royal story. At a reception on Tuesday to honour those working to end violence against women and girls, I witnessed racist remarks from a member of the royal household directed at my friend and fellow activist, Ngozi Fulani. Lady Hussey’s prolonged interrogation about where Ngozi was really from, what her nationality was and where her people were from, was not – as many people have insisted to me over the past 24 hours – the kind of well-meaning curiosity that all of us experience from time to time (though it’s possible that Hussey believed that it was).“Hackney” was Ngozi’s answer, but Hussey refused to accept this. Her response implied that Black and brown people couldn’t really be British. It implied that we were trespassing – and it made me reflect on the increasingly hostile environment of this disunited kingdom.Mandu Reid is leader of the Women’s Equality party Continue reading...

Democratic-led House ways and means committee does not have long to decide what to do, with majority to change in JanuaryA US House of Representatives committee has a little more than a month to decide what to do with six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, after a years-long court fight ended late on Wednesday with the records handed to Congress.The supreme court ordered the release of Trump’s returns to the House ways and means committee last week, rejecting the former president’s plea. Trump has consistently accused the Democratic-led committee of being politically motivated. Continue reading...

Worry after agency spreadsheet was erroneously posted online ‘while performing routine updates’ and was up for about five hoursUS Immigration and Customs Enforcement said on Wednesday that it had inadvertently posted to its website the personal information of more than 6,000 people in its custody.The information included names, nationalities, detention centers where the people were held and unique numbers used to identify them in government records, according to Human Rights First, an advocacy group that discovered the leak on Monday. Continue reading...

Thirty-three states maintain laws tied to exposure or transmission, many developed long before the illness was understood

Mass starvation killed millions in the Holodomor 90 years ago. Now Russia has again chosen the path of terror

Through Fleetwood Mac’s most turbulent times, she held the line – and wrote some of their most beautiful, bittersweet songs. We pay tribute to Christine McVieAccording to a handwritten note Stevie Nicks posted on social media on Wednesday, Christine McVie’s bandmates in Fleetwood Mac hadn’t even known she was ill until a few days before her death. “I wanted to be in London; I wanted to get to London,” Nicks lamented. “But I was told to wait.”It’s a sad story, but it somehow seems very Christine McVie. She gave every impression of being unfailingly modest and understated while playing a vital role in one of the most successful rock bands in history, maintaining a remarkably clear-eyed view of their strengths and failings: she bluntly dismissed the last two albums she made with the band, 1990’s Behind the Mask and 1995’s Time, as “terrible”. She appeared to sail through the soap opera that was Fleetwood Mac in the mid- to late 70s – a broiling mass of failed personal relationships, cocaine-fulled egotism and excess – with such a degree of equanimity that Nicks took to calling her Mother Earth. Somehow, she pulled off the not-inconsiderable feat of seeming to be at one remove from the band’s madness while in reality being in the thick of it. Continue reading...

Former president to rally for Raphael Warnock against Trump-backed Republican as early voting closes in Senate runoffBarack Obama will campaign for Raphael Warnock in Georgia on Thursday night, as early voting in the US Senate runoff closes and as Herschel Walker, the Republican challenger to the Democratic incumbent, faces yet more controversy.On Thursday, a former girlfriend told the Daily Beast that in 2005, when she caught Walker with another woman, he “grew enraged, put his hands on her chest and neck, and swung his fist at her”. Continue reading...

The youngest skipper at the Qatar World Cup has starred in midfield for the Americans while winning praise for his wisdom and leadership off the pitchAs the youngest United States men’s national team in generations plotted their return to soccer’s biggest stage after an eight-year absence, manager Gregg Berhalter relied on a captaincy-by-committee approach. More than a dozen different American players took on the role of captain over the past three and a half years as Berhalter rotated the armband across a leadership collective drawn from the team’s senior players.But when the time finally arrived to select a World Cup captain, the question was put to a player vote. To no one’s surprise, Tyler Adams got the call from his peers. Continue reading...

US president and first lady to treat French counterparts with Oregon blue cheese and American sparkling wine at lavish dinnerIt’s a bold gambit by the Americans, to meet the French in an arena over which they have long been masters par excellence: wine and cheese.But such is Jill Biden’s sang-froid that she will offer America’s best to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, his wife, Brigitte Macron, and their entourage at a lavish White House dinner on Thursday – just one of the elaborate details and valuable gifts forming part of the diplomatic dance surrounding this state visit. Continue reading...