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The latest Tory crusade over rip-off' degrees continues to stereotype students based on classWe must crack down on low-value university degrees." Who claimed that and when? It might have been Rishi Sunak last October. Or Sunak last July. Or Sunak the previous August. Or Nadhim Zahawi five months earlier. Or Michelle Donelan in November 2020. Or Gavin Williamson in May 2020. Or Damian Hinds the previous year. Or Sam Gyimah in 2018. Or Jo Johnson in 2017. Or even Labour's Margaret Hodge more than 20 years ago.This time, it was Sunak on the election trail last week. There are university degrees that are letting young people down," he told reporters. Around one in five students would have been financially better off" not going to college and one in three graduates are in non-graduate jobs". Sunak promised to scrap rip-off degrees", replacing them with 100,000 apprenticeships. Continue reading...

Aaron Jones smashed 10 sixes in a stunning 94 not out as the co-hosts survived a scare to beat their rivals Canada in TexasThe question of whether cricket can crack America, as per the cliche, feels unlikely to be answered (not least on a subscription channel, Willow TV), although this T20 World Cup is not a one-off moonshot, rather one shoulder to the wheel of a broader push.The match referee Richie Richardson is older than me," writes Gary Naylor. How can he look that good?" Continue reading...

Ex-president should also be made the volunteer punching bag at a women's shelter', says former actor, following guilty verdictStormy Daniels has called for Donald Trump to be jailed after he was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.The adult film star, who was paid $130,000 as legal expenses" for her silence about her affair with the former US president, warned the presidential candidate is completely and utterly out of touch with reality". Continue reading...

Pro-Palestinian students staged the walkout as school withheld degrees of four seniors pending disciplinary review over protestsDozens of students protesting Israel's ongoing military strikes in Gaza walked out of the University of Chicago's commencement on Saturday as the school withheld the diplomas of four seniors over their involvement with a pro-Palestinian encampment.The disruption to the rainy two-hour outdoor ceremony was brief, with shouts, boos and calls to stop genocide". A crowd of students walked out in between speeches and a demonstration followed the official ceremony. Some chanted as they held Palestinian flags while others donned traditional keffiyehs, black-and-white checkered scarves that represent Palestinian solidarity, over their robes. Continue reading...

Idaho case marked by Daybell and girlfriend Lori Vallow Daybell's extremist religious beliefs about doomsdayChad Daybell was sentenced to death Saturday for the murders of his wife and his girlfriend's two youngest children in Idaho in a case marked by his and his girlfriend's extremist religious beliefs about doomsday.The sentence was handed down after an Idaho jury unanimously agreed that imposing the death penalty would be a just resolution to the triple-murder case. The sentence marks the end of a grim investigation that began with a search for two missing children in 2019. The next year, their bodies were found buried in Daybell's eastern Idaho yard. Continue reading...

Teflon Don has become Felon Don, but the US constitution has no objection to him holding the highest officeIt was the moment America, or at least America's politicians and media, had been waiting for. It was the day justice finally caught up with Donald Trump. The former president's manipulation of the 2016 election, by hushing up a sex scandal that threatened his chances, and his attempts to discredit a criminal justice system intent on punishing him, was famously thwarted. It was an all-time presidential and judicial first, a historic result that transformed Teflon Don into Felon Don, thanks to a jury of 12 ordinary men and women and a brave prosecutor, Alvin Bragg.Looked at another way, however, last week's much anticipated dramatic denouement of the criminal trial of the New York playboy, billionaire and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate may turn out to be less pivotal than anticipated. According to the US networks, most Americans tuned out weeks ago, not least because cameras were barred from the Manhattan courtroom. One not untypical public survey found that 67% of respondents said a conviction would make no difference to how they voted this autumn. The 34 guilty verdicts were an overnight sensation. But they may not significantly shift the political dial. Continue reading...

US representative and failed contender for president says Kathy Hochul should grant pardon for the good of the country'The outgoing Democratic US representative who failed in his presidential primary challenge against Joe Biden called on the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, to pardon Donald Trump over his criminal conviction for hush-money payments to influence the 2016 election for the good of the country".Minnesota representative Dean Phillips, who was the first Democrat to call on fellow party member Henry Cuellar to resign following bribery charges against the Texas representative, urged for the pardon on Friday in a post on X. Continue reading...

The company that shaped the development of search engines is banking on chatbot-style summaries. But so far, its suggestions are pretty wildOnce upon a time, Google was great. For those who were online in 1998, history's timeline bifurcated into two eras: BG (Before Google), and AG. It was elegant and clean: elegant because it was driven by a semi-objective algorithm called PageRank, which ranked websites according to how many other websites linked to them; and clean because it had no advertising, which of course also meant that it had no business model and accordingly was burning its way through its investors' money.It was too good to last, and of course it didn't. Two of its biggest investors showed up one day, demanding a return on their investments. The company's co-founders had an idea. One of the reasons theirs was such a good search engine was that they intensively monitored what people searched for, and then used that information continually to improve the engine's performance. Their big idea was that the information thus derived had a commercial value; it indicated what people were interested in and might therefore be of value to advertisers who wanted to sell them stuff. Thus was born what Shoshana Zuboff christened surveillance capitalism", the dominant money machine of the networked world. Continue reading...

Narrow decision says lower court failed to identify fundamental right to vote', drawing fiery dissent from three of seven justicesIn a bizarre mixed ruling combining several challenges to a 2021 election law, Kansas's supreme court has ruled that its residents have no right to vote enshrined in the state's constitution.The opinion centering on a ballot signature-verification measure elicited fiery dissent from three of the court's seven justices. But the majority held that the court failed to identify a fundamental right to vote" within the state. Continue reading...

Eddie Duran shot Roger Fortson within two seconds after the airman opened his door with his legally owned gun pointed downA Florida sheriff's deputy who fatally shot a Black US air force airman in the military member's own home has been fired from his job, officials said on Friday.The Okaloosa county sheriff's office said it dismissed the deputy, Eddie Duran, after investigators found that his use of deadly force was not objectively reasonable and therefore violated agency policy" in the killing of senior airman Roger Fortson on 3 May 2024. Continue reading...

Whether he ends up in prison or the White House - or both - the former president and felon will remain a malign hero to populists everywhereAs Americans stared at their TV screens early on Thursday evening, listening to the 34 Donald Trump guilty" court verdicts rolling out one by one amid the former president's histrionic cries that the trial was rigged", the immediate thought was: what on earth happens now?To which the only honest reply is: no one knows. Anyone pretending they do is just as big a liar as Trump, dramatically convicted by a jury of his New York peers for fiddling the books to help him win the 2016 election. Continue reading...

From roughing up suspects to revoking bail, the 34-count felon has suggested harsh treatment for his fellow criminalsDonald Trump has spent years complaining that American police and the criminal legal system should be very much tougher", arguing that some criminals should not be protected by civil liberties, police should rough up suspects and a much wider range of people should face the death penalty for breaking the law.Now that the former president has been convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, Trump is arguing that the US legal system is out of control. If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone," he said on Friday. Continue reading...

The comedian's remarks on a podcast join his cheerleading of genocidal violence and jokes about suffering children in GazaThere are few things certain in life except death, taxes and the knowledge that every single goddamn day you can look at the news and find a rich man complaining about how feminism and wokeness have ruined the world. Continue reading...

Dillon McCormick, an air force veteran, had been supporting himself by pushing carts in Louisiana's triple-digit temperaturesThousands of people have donated about a quarter of a million dollars to a 90-year-old US air force veteran who has been financially supporting himself by pushing shopping carts at a grocery store in sweltering Louisiana - and now has the option of retiring if he wants thanks to the strangers' generosity.The story centers on Dillon McCormick, who is among a growing number of Americans to extend their working careers well past the average retirement age as the cost of living in the US has soared and most employees' wages have stagnated over the years, preventing many from being able to save. Continue reading...

Salem Media Group says it will stop distributing 2000 Mules, a documentary and book about the 2020 election by Dinesh D'SouzaThe publisher of 2000 Mules issued a statement Friday apologizing to a Georgia man who was shown in the film and falsely accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election.The widely debunked film includes surveillance video showing Mark Andrews, his face blurred, putting five ballots in a drop box in Lawrenceville, an Atlanta suburb, as a voiceover by the conservative pundit and film-maker Dinesh D'Souza says: What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes." Continue reading...

The two teams in the opening T20 World Cup match have a long and curious history and lay claim to a sporting milestoneBack, back, back, before anyone had invented Twenty20, before the Ashes and back beyond, before basketball had even been invented, and when baseball was still a little kids' game, the 11 best cricketers in Toronto travelled south across the border to play a two-day game against the 11 best cricketers in the US.It was September 1844, seven years before the first America's Cup, 16 before the first Open championship and 33 before the first Test match. Which means Canada v USA, the opening fixture of this year's World Cup, isn't just the oldest international match in this sport, but, historians believe, the oldest in any sport. Continue reading...

Is the academic component of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel fair? We ask two scholarsThe academic boycott of Israel is part of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction campaign that started in 2005. It does not target Israeli individuals, just institutions. Under the boycott, for example, Israeli scholars can participate in academic conferences. However, one is not permitted to attend events hosted by Israeli universities. The boycott is supported by an increasing number of academic communities, which is a trend that has accelerated in the wake of the brutal Israeli war against Gaza.Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian, political scientist and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political StudiesFlora Cassen is an associate professor of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and an associate professor of history Continue reading...

Trump and his Republican allies sow distrust in US judicial system as analysts warn backlash could tear at social fabric in already volatile election yearA shameful day in American history. A sham show trial. A kangaroo court. A total witch-hunt. Worthy of a banana republic.These were the reactions from senior elected Republicans, who once claimed the mantle of the party of law and order, to the news that Donald Trump had become the first former US president convicted of a crime. Continue reading...

Managers in Washington accused of hounding staff to keep quiet over quality concerns, as employees point to union-bustingBoeing's largest factory is in panic mode", according to workers and union officials, with managers accused of hounding staff to keep quiet over quality concerns.The US plane maker has been grappling with a safety crisis sparked by a cabin panel blowout during a flight in January, and intense scrutiny of its production line as regulators launched a string of investigations. Continue reading...

Justices to address abortion, guns, social media - and whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for role in January 6 insurrectionThe US supreme court is poised to deliver a raft of politically sensitive decisions as it ends its judicial term, addressing tumultuous issues including whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his role in the January 6 insurrection in 2021, abortion access for millions of women and the basic functioning of the federal government.With the court entering its traditional June climax, observers are bracing themselves for yet another potentially seismic four weeks that could radically reshape American public life. Matters before the court include a possible loosening of gun laws in a country with already exceptionally lax controls, and new guardrails on how social media platforms deal with misinformation. Continue reading...

Relocation of the Wayfarers Chapel on the Pacific coast shows the vulnerability of cultural sites in an increasingly volatile climateFor 73 years it reigned, unique and serene, on a high plateau overlooking the Pacific Ocean: the Wayfarers Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr's midcentury reinvention of what a church could be.The photogenic, see-through sanctuary framed in a canopy of redwoods was beloved long before it became Instagram-famous. Jayne Mansfield was married there, Brian Wilson too. Last Christmas Eve, two weeks after the chapel had been designated a National Historic Landmark, it took three services to accommodate everyone who showed up to spend the holiday with chapel regulars. No one knew it would be the last one. Continue reading...

Robinson, who moved to White House when Barack Obama won presidency, helped to care for granddaughters Malia and SashaMarian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama, who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.Robinson's death was announced in an online tribute by Michelle Obama, and included details of the time Robinson spent living in the White House, as an informal first grandmother to the Obama children. Continue reading...

The president said Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself' and no one is above the law'. This blog is now closed.While Donald Trump and his team argued for a change of venue for the New York hush money trial because Manhattan was so heavily Democrat, New York was where Trump made his name. The 58-storey Trump Tower has been a part of the skyline since 1983. His hit reality show, The Apprentice, took place here.After the verdict was read yesterday, New Yorkers reacted with both jubilation and horror. Continue reading...

Robert Burke, four-star admiral and once navy's second-highest-ranking officer, accused of trading contract for high-paying jobA retired four-star admiral who was once the US navy's second-highest-ranking officer was arrested on Friday on charges that he helped a company secure a government contract for a training program in exchange for a lucrative job with the firm.Robert Burke, who served as vice-chief of naval operations, faces federal charges including bribery and conspiracy for what prosecutors allege was a corrupt scheme that led to the company hiring him after his retirement in 2022 with a starting annual salary of $500,000. He oversaw naval operations in Europe, Russia and most of Africa. Continue reading...

Chad Daybell found guilty of murder of wife and girlfriend's two children in 2019, linked to apparent extremist religious beliefsJurors in Idaho on Friday were deciding whether to deliver the death sentence to Chad Daybell, the 55-year-old man convicted of killing his wife and his then girlfriend's two children over beliefs in the extremist religious concept of doomsday.Deliberations began a day after jurors found Daybell guilty of murdering 49-year-old Tammy Daybell, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and seven-year-old Joshua JJ" Vallow in 2019. Continue reading...

Trump Media & Technology Group's stock finishes day down 5.3% on Wall Street, as ex-president's stake falls from $6bn to $5.6bnDonald Trump's paper fortune dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars on Friday as shares in his media firm came under pressure in the wake of his conviction in his New York hush-money trial.Trump Media & Technology Group's stock finished the day down 5.3% on Wall Street, denting the value of the former president's vast stake in the business. Continue reading...

The former president's rambling tirade at Trump Tower contained a number of questionable assertionsDonald Trump delivered a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the atrium of Trump Tower, a day after the former president was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial.Here is a fact check of some of the things he said on Friday - and why they weren't true. Continue reading...

The US president has detailed a three-phase deal proposed by Israel to Hamas that he says would lead to the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza and could end the nearly eight-month-old war. In remarks from the White House, Biden described it as a truly decisive moment' and urged Hamas to accept the deal

The T20 World Cup starts in the US this weekend and, while the Caribbean is hosting more games, there is little doubt where the potential for growth liesSpread across six Caribbean countries and the United States of America, where some folks believe sits gold in them thar hills, the men's T20 World Cup that whirs into life in Dallas on Saturday night may well be cricket's most ambitious global event to date.It certainly feels the most inclusive of any format, men or women. A record 20 teams start in four groups of five - no preliminary qualifier here - and first-timers USA, Canada and Uganda are among nine associate nations. Then there are the logistics, be it the zig-zagging travel - organisers liaising with seven separate governments - or the mind-bending 34,000-seat modular stadium on Long Island, New York that has been rapidly assembled like an Ikea flat-pack on steroids. Continue reading...

President Joe Biden has criticised Donald Trump's claims that his hush-money trial was rigged, calling his predecessor's complaints 'reckless, dangerous and irresponsible'. Biden said from the White House on Friday that the jury was chosen like any other in the US, that they heard five weeks of testimony and that Trump had 'every opportunity' to defend himself. He said the verdict reaffirmed the American principle that no one is above the law

The former US president on Friday launched into a tirade against his guilty verdict, aimed at riling an already furious baseApproximately six minutes after 11am on Friday, Donald Trump entered the atrium of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City, wearing a scarlet tie. Behind the former US president, now a felon, stood the same escalator he used in 2015 to announce his presidential bid, triggering eight years of political chaos.In a long-winded address in front of five American flags, golden walls and no teleprompters, Trump spoke for more than half an hour, kicking off his first public event following his guilty verdict in his hush-money criminal trial. Continue reading...

Emily Baden says after a disagreement over political lawn signs with the US supreme court justice's wife, a black car began parking at her mother's homeNeighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger" by the supreme court justice's wife.Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC. Continue reading...

The prosecution and the guilty verdicts are unprecedented. But making history is not the same as shifting election outcomesGuilty. The New York jury's unanimous verdicts on 34counts mean that Donald Trump is not only the firstsitting or former US president to be prosecuted inacriminal trial, but the first to be convicted.Trump was found to have falsified business recordsto hide $130,000 of hush money paid to coverup a sex scandal he feared might hinder his runin2016. Before his entry into politics, it would havebeen taken for granted that such charges would kill a campaign. Yet Trump is running for the White House as a convicted criminal. If he is jailed when he issentenced in July - which most experts think unlikely - it is assumed that he would continue.Ifanything, the prospect of such asentencespurs himon. Continue reading...

Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Jannik Sinner won while there was an inspirational victory for Olga Danilovic over Donna VekicSamsonova 3-4 *Cocciaretto (*denotes next server)Better, much better from Samsonova. There is still an unforced error - she's up to 12 now, to just one for her opponent in the match. But she's also struck four aces to none, and one of those brings her to within a game at 4-3, still a break down. Continue reading...

Cleta Mitchell, a rightwing attorney tied to Trump, has joined with anti-immigrant groups to pour resources into election effortCleta Mitchell, an attorney who helped Donald Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, has joined forces with far-right anti-immigrant groups to pour resources into stoking unfounded fears of non-US citizens voting in federal elections.Launched by powerful figures on the right, the effort includes members of Trump's inner circle, rightwing nativist groups that promote restricting legal immigration and election-denying activists like Mitchell. Leaders of some of the prominent groups have become active on Capitol Hill, even appearing alongside the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to introduce a bill requiring people to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. Continue reading...

Kremlin spokesman decries elimination ... of political rivals' while Hungarian prime minister calls Trump a man of honour'

Some Republicans called the decision shameful' and Democrats celebrated while warning against Trump's re-electionDonald Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records set off a political firestorm in Washington and beyond, with Republicans furiously lambasting the verdict as a miscarriage of justice while Democrats commended New York jurors for rendering a fair judgment in one of the US's most historic trials.Republicans unsurprisingly rallied around the former president , reiterating their baseless allegations that the Biden administration had engaged in political persecution of the former US president. Continue reading...

The incumbent president is badly behind - but now he has a chance to woo disenchanted Republicans who can't bear Donald's stinkIt took little more than nine hours of deliberation for a New York jury to ensure Donald Trump a new place in history. He was already the first US president, sitting or former, to be tried for a serious crime. Now he is the first ever to be convicted.Sure, the guilty verdict did not come in any of the three much graver cases still outstanding against him. Like Al Capone - to whom Trump has, self-incriminatingly, long liked to compare himself - he got done on Thursday for the relatively small stuff. But the law got him in the end. Continue reading...

ISS is the second proxy advisory firm to recommend that shareholders vote against Musk's high salary in recent weeksISS, a top proxy advisory firm, recommended Tesla shareholders vote against ratifying CEO Elon Musk's $56bn pay package, calling the compensation excessive in a rejection of the plan set by the electric vehicle maker's board.In a report sent late on Thursday, Institutional Shareholder Services also recommended a vote against the Tesla director James Murdoch, but backed votes for director Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk's brother, and for the company's proposed move to change its state of incorporation to Texas from Delaware. Continue reading...