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Republican on House select committee, however, refuses to say whether Trump should be referred for criminal charges

From Sunak’s non-dom problem to Javid’s offshore trusts, will the staggering wealth gap between the government and ordinary Britons finally tell?Nearly three years into Boris Johnson’s premiership, its defining theme may at last have arrived. For all his talk of “levelling up” and the supposed wonders of life outside the EU, his government has singularly failed to come up with any kind of coherent narrative, leaving events to tell their own story. And on that score, we now have an embarrassment of riches.As much as the government would like people to view it as an irrelevance, Partygate grinds on. Johnson’s recent history is smattered not just with illicit social events, but tales of £840-a-roll wallpaper initially paid for by a Tory donor, gratis holiday accommodation in Mustique and Marbella, and suggestions that he simply cannot afford to live on his prime ministerial salary. Massively lucrative Covid contracts have been handed to companies with clear links to Conservatives. Now, the Tory backbencher David Warburton is accused of sexual assault and cocaine use, the failure to declare a loan of nearly £150,000 from a controversial Russian businessmanand lobbying the Financial Conduct Authority on the latter’s behalf: he has so far said only that he has “enormous amounts of defence”, but “can’t comment any further”. Continue reading...

Summer switch to cable news likely to sharpen perception in America that both sides are just really in it for the moneyThe routine trafficking of political personnel in America to the nation’s television networks hit a road bump last week after staffers at NBC News complained about White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s rumor-as-fact plans to join the liberal news outlet MSNBC when she leaves her West Wing post this summer.The clumsily handled move, previewed in a leak to Axios, triggered anger among journalists who said they feared Psaki’s hiring would “taint” the NBC brand and reinforce the impression, already well-established in opinion polls, that the news business in the US works hand-in-glove with political factions. Continue reading...

Working Americans – many of whom voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 – are being shafted. Biden needs to deliver for them now or risk losingAs America slouches toward the midterm elections, you need an economic message that celebrates your accomplishments to date – job creation and higher wages – yet also takes aim at the major abuses of economic power that remain in the system, fueling inflation and widening inequality.You should put these 10 indisputable facts center stage:Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

For the first major of the year we take a look back at some of our favourite images from AugustaCheck back later for images from the final day’s action Continue reading...

Trump’s legal jeopardy about the January 6 insurrection is growing but experts say attorney general must move carefullyThe attorney general, Merrick Garland, is facing more political pressure to move faster and expand the US Department of Justice’s investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack and charge Donald Trump and some of his former top aides.With mounting evidence from the January 6 House panel, court rulings and news reports that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy in his aggressive drive to thwart Joe Biden’s election win in 2020, Garland and his staff face an almost unique decision: whether to charge a former US president. Continue reading...

Emmanuel Macron faces the fight of his political life as the presidential election opens today. His fate has lessons for parties continent-wideToday’s Brexit Conservatives will hate the comparison, but there are inconvenient parallels between their domestic agenda and Hungary’s newly elected, self-confessed apostle of democratic illiberalism, Viktor Orbán, French uber-nationalist and anti-immigrant Marine Le Pen and Poland’s murky Law and Justice party. All trumpet a boastful nationalism and disregard international law, all aim to create a hostile climate for immigrants, all believe the electoral system should be manipulated for their advantage, all distrust a pluralist media, all want to limit dissent and expand summary policing powers, all incline to traditional views about sexuality and the family and, to varying degrees, all are climate change deniers.All habitually dissimulate and even lie; criticism is fake news. The Johnson government’s police, nationality and borders and election bills come from these same rightwing, anti-Enlightenment, illiberal roots, as does its assault on public service broadcasting and, of course, the big beast of them all, Brexit. Paradoxically, Brexit Toryism is very European – if Europe at its worst. Continue reading...

Ellen Isaacs is intent on holding Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family to account – for the deaths of her son and many thousands of othersA cottage outside Floyd, Virginia, is a tranquil stage-set for Ellen Isaacs to wage one of the longest-running wars of the opioid epidemic: the battle to hold OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, its owners and executives, to just account.It’s battle that Isaacs, a former mortgage fraud expert at Citigroup, has been fighting since she and her son Ryan became dependent on OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s “non-addictive” painkiller that has played a central role in an epidemic that has cost 500,000 lives over two decades. Continue reading...

Grassroots methods to woo coworkers to join the ‘revolution’ worked even as the company came for him with all its might“The revolution is here,” said an exuberant Chris Smalls on a cloudy morning via a Google Meet call last week.Clad in a black baseball cap and air pods, Smalls spoke with the Guardian less than a week after winning a historic victory over Amazon, the second largest US employer – and establishing the company’s first ever union. Continue reading...

Brian Schatz from Hawaii, who denounced Josh Hawley on the Senate floor over Ukraine, tells own side to make more noiseDemocrats need to make more noise when taking on Republicans, a US senator said, after angry remarks on the Senate floor in which he denounced the Missouri senator Josh Hawley for delaying Pentagon appointments and voting against aid to Ukraine, among other flashpoints.“Democrats need to make more noise,” Brian Schatz, from Hawaii, told the Washington Post. “We have to scream from the rooftops, because this is a battle for the free world now.” Continue reading...

Cameron Smith was the main beneficiary of Moving Day as his 68 took him closer to runaway leader Scottie SchefflerRory rolls another one in! He curls a right-to-left 25-footer into the cup for birdie on 7. All good, except it follows a heavy handed chip from the fringe at 6 that left a six-footer he couldn’t make. Two bogeys and two birdies, and he can get no higher than +2.Victor Hovland only just made the cut after opening rounds of 72 and 76. He needs something really special today - plus a Scottie Scheffler stumble - if he’s to contest tomorrow. That didn’t look on the cards when he went out this morning in 37, but he’s caught alight since turning, with birdies at 10, 11 and now 13. Some way to breeze around Amen Corner. He’s +2. Continue reading...

Northern Irishman still attracts galleries at Augusta but has now adjusted his sights to a top-10 finish going into final day“I feel like I’m right there,” said Rory McIlroy on Friday night, as he weighed his chances after back‑to‑back rounds of 73 on Thursday and Friday. “You go out tomorrow and you play a decent front nine, and all of a sudden you’re right in the thick of things.” Seventeen hours later, he stepped out on to the 1st tee and, thwack, dumped his opening drive right into a fairway bunker, then, crack, whacked his second shot into the lip where it rebounded and fell back down by his feet. His third made it on to the green, where he took two putts from 20ft. So McIlroy started his charge to the top by dropping a shot.From there, it was off to long downhill dog-leg 2nd, which has been the easiest hole on the course this week. The field have made more than a hundred birdies there. Just the place to get that run up the leaderboard going, then. This time there was a long, loud cry of “Right!” as McIlroy’s drive whizzed overhead into the gallery, after that he fizzed his second into the front bunker, and scrambled his way out in even par. On to the stiff uphill 3rd then, a trickier proposition this, but McIlroy earned a birdie chance with a brilliant approach that landed 7ft from the pin. Then he missed the putt. Oh, Rory. Continue reading...

Law enforcement official confirms arrest and charge but police do not say under which law Lizelle Herrera chargedA 26-year-old woman has been charged with murder in Texas after authorities said she caused “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion”, in a state that has the most restrictive abortion laws in the US.It was unclear whether Lizelle Herrera was accused of having an abortion or whether she helped someone else get an abortion. Continue reading...

Measures’ constitutionality brought into question amid flurry of abortion restrictions passed in US states

Charles Donohoe will co-operate, giving prosecutors a boost in pursuit of high-ranking members of the far-right group

CNN reports Trump’s eldest son texted chief of staff two days after 2020 election to say ‘we have multiple paths … we control them all’Two days after the 2020 election, Donald Trump Jr texted the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with strategies for overturning the result, CNN reported.“This is what we need to do please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it,” Trump Jr reportedly wrote, adding: “It’s very simple … We have multiple paths[.] We control them all.” Continue reading...

Unlike some series, the hugely popular gangs of Birmingham saga knew when to stop and just how to do itLast Sunday night, almost four million people tuned in to witness Cillian Murphy signing off as Tommy Shelby – for now, at least.The finale of Peaky Blinders, which had spent much of the season hinting that it might do away with our antihero for good, instead opted to keep matters open, with a masterful twist that might as well have been an apology for all of the meandering routes it took to get there. (I can’t have been the only one wondering why the gangster-turned-MP, who remained handy with a firearm and loose with the law, still appeared to have more scruples and ethics than most of the bunch currently in charge of the country.) The final episode was a deserved reward for those of us who stuck with the show, during what I found to be a confusing last season. Continue reading...

Intelligence believes Russia’s president may see US backing of Ukraine as direct affront, giving him further incentive to meddle

Tech giant wants to redo election, arguing in legal filing that National Labor Relations Board acted in way that tainted results

I got gay-married last year and naively thought I wouldn’t have to worry about the government nullifying my nuptialsAn adult marrying another adult of the same sex? Outrageous; the Lord will smite thee. An adult marrying a child of the opposite sex, on the other hand? Totally fine with God, apparently.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order Continue reading...

Florida governor and potential Republican presidential contender says, ‘I can’t have Castro to my south and Abrams to my north’

Truth Social seems to be going the way of Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka as it sees low engagement weeks after its release and resignations from executivesBy any measure, Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social media platform, has had a rough start.Engagement is low, the initial flood of downloads of the app have withered to a trickle and the first resignations of its top staff have begun. It’s too soon to tell if it’s a stiff, but as with many Trump businesses that fail to take off, the former US president appears to be washing his hands of it: he has barely used it. Continue reading...

Nicola Sturgeon recently made clear that Flower of Scotland is not a shoo-in, despite its popularityOf the many things to be worked out were Scotland to become independent, the national anthem is low down on the list. The Corries’ 1960s folk song Flower of Scotland, which has been sung at football and rugby matches for decades, has everything a decent anthem needs. From its defiant tale of triumph over the auld enemy at Bannockburn (“And sent him homeward / Tae think again”) to its eulogy for absent heroism (“Autumn leaves lie thick and still / O’er land that is lost now”), it is imbued with what the Australian poet and literary critic Christopher Kelen calls “anthem quality”. This, Kelen argues, is the ability of a song to raise a special type of goosebump – not only through the feelings that words and tune stir in the individual singer, but also “the knowledge that these feelings are shared by one’s compatriots”.Yet Flower of Scotland elicits a murmur of embarrassment in some circles, even among nationalists – indeed, this goes all the way to the top. In a recent interview on The Cultural Coven podcast, Nicola Sturgeon was asked about a hypothetical new anthem for an independent Scotland. “Nothing beats belting out Flower of Scotland at Hampden or Murrayfield,” the first minister said, but she confessed that: “The words are not the most uplifting and forward-looking.” She offered two alternatives: Highland Cathedral – a popular bagpipe tune that haunts Edinburgh’s tourist traps – and Dougie MacLean’s 1977 song Caledonia, a homesick lament best known for its starring role in an early-1990s advert for Tennent’s lager.Rory Scothorne is a historian and writer based in Edinburgh Continue reading...

Florida’s governor is unhappy that Disney has opposed his ‘don’t say gay’ bill – and is threatening to revoke its privilegesIt took a single stroke of Ron DeSantis’s pen, passing Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill into law, to transform the self-proclaimed happiest place on earth into a scene of bitter conflict.Disney’s theme parks have become the latest battlefront in the pugnacious rightwing Republican governor’s culture war on what he calls “wokeness”, and on the state’s LBGTQ+ community. DeSantis, a close Trump ally, and perhaps rival, is threatening sanctions on the corporate behemoth after it dared to challenge the controversial law banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms. Continue reading...

Logan says network ‘does not want independent thinkers’ as Fox stays quiet on reports it dropped her after November remarkThe former CBS reporter Lara Logan, who compared Dr Anthony Fauci to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, has claimed she was “pushed out” at Fox News because the conservative network does not want “independent thinkers”.“I was definitely pushed out,” Logan told Eric Metaxas, a conservative radio host, this week. “I mean, there is no doubt about that. They don’t want independent thinkers. They don’t want people who follow the facts regardless of the politics.” Continue reading...

Attorney says Ali Alexander, organizer of ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, will work with DoJ after he was subpoenaedAli Alexander, the prominent pro-Trump activist, will cooperate with the justice department investigation into the Capitol attack, making him the first high-profile political figure to agree to assist the government’s criminal inquiry into the events of January 6.The move is likely to give initial momentum to the newly expanded justice department investigation running in parallel to the House select committee investigation examining Donald Trump and the Capitol attack. Continue reading...

The expectations around relationships have never been so lax, but what are the new rules?There’s a lot of information about society in relationship advice writing.The first thing you can safely deduce doesn’t even come from the content, just the sheer amount of advice columns that are produced: we love it. We are all hungry little advice piggies, desperate for rules and guidance, squealing and oinking with fear and displeasure about the almost total freedom we’ve been given to conduct our affairs.Contractarianism, which stems from the Hobbesian line of social contract thought, holds that persons are primarily self-interested, and that a rational assessment of the best strategy for attaining the maximisation of their self-interest will lead them to act morally...After getting back from a trip, a friend of mine learned that her boyfriend had gone to a strip club and gotten a lap dance, which felt like a clear crossing of her boundaries within their relationship. […] After asking her about her relationship rules in their monogamous partnership, I realised that while this was a dilemma needing work, the real issue was that they had never had a conversation about what their boundaries even were. Continue reading...

World No1 Scottie Scheffler shoots 67 to take a five-stroke lead going into the weekendDJ doesn’t hit his birdie putt on 1, but par will always work. He remains at -3. Morikawa makes no mistake, though, rolling confidently into the back of the cup for a birdie that takes him to level par for the tournament. Meanwhile up on 3, Im restores his lead by rolling in a 25-footer for birdie.-5: Im (3)

Quest for win that would give him career grand slam has taken on many forms and this year’s version is more conservativeEight years Rory McIlroy has been coming here to try to win the major he needs to complete the grand slam, and it feels as if he has gone about it in eight different ways. There was the McIlroy who had discovered meditation, and the McIlroy who fixated on his method, the McIlroy who had been reading self-help books, the McIlroy who was studying the swing science, and the McIlroy who was muscled up because he was spending so much time in the gym; there was McIlroy who talked up how much the Masters meant and the McIlroy who played it down. None of them got it done. So this year he has brought boring Rory.At the start of the week McIlroy kept talking about being conservative, disciplined and patient. His plan was to play for the middle of the green, pick off the birdie putts when they came and make sure he stayed away from the kind of trouble that ends up in the big numbers that leave him too much to do come Sunday. Which was not a bad strategy so far as they go. The only trouble with it is, as he said himself, is it is not a style of play that comes naturally to him.McIlroy is a risk-taker, a shot-maker, a heart-breaker: he sees too many possibilities in the game to take it slow and steady. “It goes against my nature.” Continue reading...

One criminalizes medical care for trans youth and another requires students to use bathrooms that match birth certificatesThe governor of Alabama on Friday signed into law two controversial bills: one that criminalizes healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth and another that requires students to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates.Kay Ivey, a Republican, said she “believed very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl”. Continue reading...

Los Angeles sheriff’s department accused of hours-long group strip-search as court report adds to string of scandalsLos Angeles jail guards have frequently punched incarcerated people in the head and subjected them to a “humiliating” group strip-search where they were forced to wait undressed for hours, according to a new report from court-appointed monitors documenting a range of abuses.The Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD), which oversees the largest local jail system in the country, appears to be routinely violating use-of-force policies, with supervisors failing to hold guards accountable and declining to provide information to the monitors tasked with reviewing the treatment of incarcerated people. Continue reading...

After 232 years, a Black woman is on the supreme court – and the atmosphere on a sunny Washington day was celebratoryThey could all feel the weight of history. Yet the mood was as light as spring air when Ketanji Brown Jackson looked out at the crowd of smiling faces.“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the supreme court of the United States,” the judge said in bright sunshine. “But we’ve made it!” Continue reading...

Jury in Grand Rapids acquits two of conspiracy to kidnap Michigan governor and unable to agree on verdicts for other two men on trialTwo of four men on trial were acquitted on Friday of conspiracy to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, in a plot prosecutors said was motivated by fury at the Democrat’s tough Covid-19 restrictions in the early stages of the pandemic.The verdicts regarding Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were read in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, US district judge Robert Jonker presiding. Continue reading...

Richard Bernard Moore is set to die on 29 April in state that has been unable to obtain lethal injections drugs for yearsA man who is set to die either by a firing squad or in the electric chair later this month is asking the South Carolina state supreme court to halt his execution until judges can determine if either method represents cruel and unusual punishment.Richard Bernard Moore is set to die 29 April unless a court steps in. He has until next Friday to choose between South Carolina’s electric chair, which has been used twice in the past 30 years, or being shot by three volunteers who are prison workers in rules the state finalized last month. Continue reading...

Former champion, struggling now with distance, suggests that 2023 could be his last year at Augusta NationalSandy Lyle can still remember the first time. The 2023 Masters is likely to be the last time. Lyle created a little piece of history at Augusta National this week, having teed up in a major for the 100th time. He thereby becomes the first golfer from Scotland to achieve that not inconsequential feat. Not that the 64-year-old was aware of his milestone. “Nobody has ever mentioned that to me,” he said. “Does it make me feel better? Yes, a little bit. Something to tell the grandkids in years to come.” Lyle’s mood had been influenced by another missed Masters cut. “It’s not easy when you are making bogey after bogey,” he conceded.The 1988 champion last survived for the weekend in Georgia in 2014, with his latest halfway exit coming after rounds of 82 and 76. These are not embarrassing scores – Augusta, already a tricky venue, is especially formidable this year – but Lyle’s scenario lends itself to the narrative of when enough becomes enough for invitees. Unlike in other majors, winners of the Masters are entitled to play for as long as they so choose. Continue reading...

Several dozen tested positive after a dinner hosted by the Gridiron Club, where proof of vaccine was requiredGrowing numbers of prominent members of Congress and senior staffers in Washington DC are contracting Covid-19, sparking concerns about the risk to Joe Biden as unmasked events increase at the White House.Celebrations were being held on Friday at the White House for the Senate confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson for the supreme court and the event was happening out of doors, said the press secretary, Jen Psaki, who missed the US president’s trip to Europe last month after testing positive for coronavirus. Continue reading...

Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, accused of posing as homeland security officials and cultivating Secret Service accessOne of two American men arrested in Washington for posing as US federal security officials and cultivating access to the Secret Service, which protects Joe Biden, claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence, a federal prosecutor told a judge.Justice department assistant attorney Joshua Rothstein asked a judge not to release Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, the men arrested on Wednesday for posing as Department of Homeland Security investigators. Continue reading...

The race for the Elysée could end up as a horror story for anyone who cares about the wellbeing of France or EuropeThe French election is straying from the script. It was meant to be a predictable remake. It has turned into a thriller. It could end up as a horror story.A month ago, Emmanuel Macron seemed certain to be the first French president to win a second term in 20 years. After Russia invaded Ukraine, his poll ratings soared. He built a 12-point lead in a probable second-round match-up with the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, and a 15-point lead over all other candidates in the first round. Continue reading...

Veteran middleweight champion ready for one last run at the top, fighting Ryōta Murata this weekend before potential rematch with old foe Canelo ÁlvarezFor years Gennady Golovkin was considered too good to get a big fight. Like Marvin Hagler before him, the crowd-pleasing Kazakh known as Triple G tore through the middleweight division with an unsettling blend of patience, technique and bone-crunching power in both hands, knocking out 23 opponents in a row over one blistering eight-year stretch, unifying three of the four major belts and matching Bernard Hopkins’ division record with 20 successive title defenses.Golovkin was feared, avoided and marginalized during his decade-long ascent from YouTube curiosity to bona fide 160lb bogeyman, finding himself on the raw end of the risk-versus-reward calculus that governs boxing’s matchmaking process. Denied opportunities by the brand-name stars and their promoters, he instead took as many as four fights a year against all-comers to stay in the public eye on the promise that if he kept knocking them over they couldn’t ignore him for ever. Continue reading...

Indoctrinated by my mother, who used to visit ‘Mr Trevor’, I find myself speculating to my own children about ‘energies’When my mother was in her 20s and living in London, she visited a psychic at his home in the suburbs. He had done some healing work for her friend Carla, a basketball player, who after an injury had had some success with Mr Trevor where traditional physio had failed. That was his name – Mr Trevor – and as my mother would tell me every time the story was wheeled out, he was a “retired postmaster” and a “very humble man”. In other words, not a charlatan. I recall looking through her address book after her death, and there he still was, under the Ts. He must have been long dead by then too.It was the story of Mr Trevor that softened me up for a lifetime of susceptibility to woo-woo spiritual nonsense, something I can apparently disparage without ever quite letting go. The psychic world is 99% baloney, and approaching a medium the last resort of the desperate. These people exploit the grief-stricken and clog up police investigations with false leads. I know this, as all rational people do. Yet, while in my own 20s, I went recreationally with friends to a medium, and I can’t remember a thing about it save for how much we laughed afterwards. There is Mr Trevor, telling my mother she would have one child, a girl, with “long fingers, like a starfish”, then coming over all funny and croaking out a phrase her dead father used to say to her as a child. I have nowhere to put this, except under the heading Things I Know to Be True That I Know Not to Be True.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist based in New York. She is the author of She Left Me the Gun: My Mother’s Life Before Me Continue reading...

The bill – which makes abortion a felony – indicates that the state, like most legal observers, expects the US supreme court to overturn RoeThe Oklahoma state legislature has been busy. This week, in a surprise move, the state house passed a bill criminalizing all abortions. The bill had been passed by the state senate last year but had been largely abandoned as Oklahoma conservatives sought other, more promising, ways to restrict abortion in the state. As an outright ban on abortions, enforced by the state, the Oklahoma bill that now heads to the governor’s desk for signature would be in plain violation of Roe v Wade, and unlikely to survive a court challenge while that precedent stands.The passage of the bill – which makes abortion a felony and would imprison doctors for up to 10 years per procedure – indicates that the state, like most legal observers, expects the supreme court to overturn Roe soon. The bill, which Oklahoma Republicans voted on while many of their Democratic colleagues were away participating in an abortion and civil rights rally, provides no exceptions for rape or incest. Oklahoma’s governor, Republican Kevin Stitt, has previously stated that he will sign any anti-choice bill that is sent to him. If he signs this one, it will go into effect this summer.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

An inquiry into the pattern of discrimination revealed that Asian drivers have been pulled over at disproportionate rates to the populationLaw enforcement in a rural northern California county that’s seen a major conflict over water rights stopped Asian drivers at vastly disproportionate rates compared to the county’s white population last year, in what civil rights groups have characterized as a pattern of “intentional discrimination” in the region.The ACLU and the Asian Law Caucus, two civil rights groups, obtained traffic stop data from the Siskiyou county sheriff’s office as part of an investigation into the county’s treatment of its Asian community – particularly Hmong Americans. Continue reading...

The club was beloved by young partygoers and felt like a ‘very safe space for queer people of color’It was supposed to be a safe space for LGBTQ+ people. Then someone set the nightclub on fire while they were still inside.Rash, a five-month-old queer bar and nightclub in New York’s Bushwick, was leveled by a blaze on Sunday night, injuring two people in what police are investigating as an intentional act. Continue reading...

Donetsk governor says thousands were at station when it was struck. Plus, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to supreme court lauded as ray of hope