Shooter Patrick Crusius was sentenced to life in prison without parole for 2019 massacre near US-Mexico borderThe gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas - one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history - pleaded guilty on Monday to capital murder in a state district court.Patrick Crusius was automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole for the massacre near the US-Mexico border. The change of plea comes after local prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. Continue reading...
Coaching has brought me into close and uncomfortable contact with aspects of my own character that had been hitherto concealed - much like parentingKarma may not be instant, but it is invariably ironic. So it is that, after four decades of remaining steadfastly opposed to competitive sport, I now spend early mornings, late afternoons, occasional evenings and every weekend driving my children to an ever-expanding range of sporting activities.The sharpest twist of the irony blade is that, having spent my own childhood as the player no wise coach would want on his team, I am now the coach of four separate floorball teams. (Yes, I know you haven't heard of floorball, look it up.) To coach one team may be regarded as an accident; four looks like a weird addiction. But here I am.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...
A study shows that toxic flame retardants used in mattresses can seep into air and be absorbed by childrenAlarming levels of highly toxic phthalates, flame retardants and UV filters in the air in small children's bedrooms likely stems from kids' mattresses off-gassing the chemicals, new research suggests.The peer-reviewed study measured air in the rooms of children under four years old, and the highest volumes were detected around the kids' beds. An accompanying study checked for the same chemicals in 16 common kids mattress brands, and found them at concerning levels in each. Continue reading...
Price hikes worry restaurants and online markets as uncertainty stymies their ability to plan for the futureChang Chang, a Sichuan restaurant in Washington DC, was already noticing that some of its business had dropped off after tens of thousands of federal workers living in the area lost their jobs. But the recent tariff rate hikes mark an even greater blow for the restaurant.Sichuan peppercorns, which create the signature numbing spice of the regional Chinese cuisine, along with other ingredients, face an at least 145% tariff after last week's tit-for-tat trade battle between China and the United States. The steep rate is an existential threat for restaurants across the country that rely on specialty ingredients imported from China to craft the authentic flavors of their dishes, said operators who were blindsided. Continue reading...
by Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans on (#6WRK7)
Barry Davis says Joseph Fitzgerald Hall molested him in the 90s, yet Hall kept working for the church nearly unimpededA US man serving in various administrative roles for the Jehovah's Witnesses sexually molested a child whom he met while working for the Christian religious sect in New Orleans - then continued his career virtually unimpeded and moved to North Carolina after completing a disciplinary suspension of less than a year, he has admitted in writing and in a sworn deposition.The stunning revelations about Joseph Fitzgerald Hall and how he has been managed by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York that runs the Jehovah's Witnesses are contained in a lawsuit that the abuse survivor has been pursuing against both the group and the administrator. Continue reading...
At least 11 state colleges enroll in program that trains officers for limited' involvement in immigration operationsFears of a new wave of deportations and student visa cancellations are rising at a number of Florida's most diverse universities after administrators signed agreements recasting campus police as federal immigration agents.Miami's Florida International University (FIU) is one of at least 11 state colleges to enroll in the top tier of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) 287(g) program that trains local police departments for limited" involvement in immigration operations. Continue reading...
What Did I Miss? features a smarmy host quizzing sequestered contestants on the headlines. But politics is not funny any moreThe classic television gameshow is one of the simplest pleasures available to the sedentary, socially maladjusted people we used to call couch potatoes". An average Joe is required to perform a task - ranging from answering a trivia question or spinning a large, colorful wheel to keeping a hand on a Toyota Land Cruiser for as long as possible - in exchange for the possibility of winning a cash prize (or a truck). For the viewer, there is the satisfaction of believing, perhaps falsely, that you could win the prize if you were in the contestant's place. Maybe you identify with that contestant and actively root for their success. Or perhaps you just want to see some poor bastard shot out of a cannon, like on TBS's dearly departed series Wipeout. Whatever your pleasure might be, it's not an uncommon or esoteric one.We watch gameshows because they are basic human drama distilled into an easily repeatable format. TV development executives have tried to modernize it with the fancy graphics of something like NBC's The Wall or the gratuitous flesh-baring of the 2000s disasterpiece Are You Hot, in which a panel of celebrity" judges such as Lorenzo Lamas critiqued people on the number of visible abs on their bodies. The simpler a gameshow premise - guessing the cost of basic household items, answering multiple choice questions in a spooky room, or doing menial tasks for a man who combs his hair forward - the better. Perhaps this is why my initial reaction to the press release for the forthcoming mini-series Greg Gutfeld's What Did I Miss?, on the Fox Nation streaming service, was so immediately negative. Continue reading...
Concerns raised address would be inappropriate because of president's comments about UK, Nato and UkraineA number of MPs and peers have called for Donald Trump to be blocked from addressing parliament when he visits the UK.The US president has suggested Buckingham Palace is setting a date for September" for him to come to Britain. Continue reading...
Faced with fading empires' petulance, the global south must draw a red line under its relationship with them and forge new ties based on mutual respectAs Donald Trump rains chaos down upon the US - dismantling the rule of law trading in rage-fuelled nationalism and bullying the rest of the world - his ideology is now being eagerly imitated not just by the expected rogues of global politics, but by supposed bastions of democracy.These democracies now wear only a mask of civility over that old colonial impulses: control, divide, exploit. Continue reading...
With estimated $55m price set to balloon by 125%, 737 Max returns to Seattle production hub still wearing the colours of Xiamen AirlinesA Boeing jet intended for a Chinese airline landed back at the planemaker's US production hub on Sunday, a victim of the tit-for-tat bilateral tariffs launched by Donald Trump.The 737 MAX, which was meant for China's Xiamen Airlines, landed at Seattle's Boeing Field at 6.11pm, according to a Reuters witness. It was painted with Xiamen livery. Continue reading...
A perverse information ecosystem is being mined by big tech for profit, fooling the unwary and sending algorithms crazyThere are two parallel image channels that dominate our daily visual consumption. In one, there are real pictures and footage of the world as it is: politics, sport, news and entertainment. In the other is AI slop, low-quality content with minimal human input. Some of it is banal and pointless - cartoonish images of celebrities, fantasy landscapes, anthropomorphised animals. And some is a sort of pornified display of women just simply ... being, like a virtual girlfriend you cannot truly interact with. The range and scale of the content is staggering, and infiltrates everything from social media timelines to messages circulated on WhatsApp. The result is not just a blurring of reality, but a distortion of it.A new genre of AI slop is rightwing political fantasy. There are entire YouTube videos of made-up scenarios in which Trump officials prevail against liberal forces. The White House account on X jumped on a trend of creating images in Studio Ghibli style and posted an image of a Dominican woman in tears as she is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). AI political memefare has, in fact, gone global. Chinese AI videos mocking overweight US workers on assembly lines after the tariff announcement raised a question for, and response from, the White House spokesperson last week. The videos, she said, were made by those who do not see the potential of the American worker". And to prove how pervasive AI slop is, I had to triple-check that even that response was not itself quickly cobbled-together AI content fabricating another dunk on Trump's enemies. Continue reading...
The EU, the world's biggest single market, can reposition itself and become less reliant on exporting goods to the US and ChinaThis is why America first doesn't have to mean Europe last.Europeans have had plenty to mope about since Donald Trump entered the White House not quite three months ago. The US president has said that the EU was created to screw the United States" and slapped punitive tariffs on European goods. He has cast doubt on the US commitment to defend Nato allies. He has cosied up to Vladimir Putin, insulted Volodymyr Zelenskyy and tried to settle Russia's war in Ukraine on terms that would undermine European security. His vice-president has denigrated European democratic values, and his national security team has spewed venom in a Signal chat at pathetic" Europe.Finally complete the European capital markets union and banking union to unleash the cross-border investment power of some 3tn in European savingsStrike trade deals with countries and regions around the world, seeking a reliable partner committed to cutting tariffs rather than weaponising themJointly develop common defence capabilities to strengthen the European wing of Nato and be able to defend European interests if the US withdraws or steps asideProvide Ukraine with greater military assistance, including medium-range missiles to fill the US gap and strengthen its position before any negotiationBuild international coalitions to defend liberal democracy, and uphold a rules-based order with like-minded partners from Canada to Japan, India and AustraliaExpand economic partnerships with middle- and low-income countries in Asia, Africa and South America that consider the EU a more reliable partner than a protectionist US or a predatory Russia, and a valuable hedge against excessive dependence on ChinaOffer a special visa programme to attract US scientists and tech workers fleeing Trump's university crackdownPaul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...
Defence secretary reportedly sent the group flight schedules for strikes on Houthis; draft order calls for drastic restructure of state department - key US politics stories from 20 AprilDefence secretary Pete Hegseth is in the spotlight for a communications blunder in which he reportedly created his own Signal group chat that included his wife and brother, in which he shared confidential details of a US strike on Yemen this March.The chat on Signal, a commercially available app not authorized as a means to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information, allegedly included more than a dozen people. Continue reading...
US defense secretary texted strike information to his family in group chat he created, sources tell the New York TimesBefore the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth's own private group chat. Continue reading...
Senator warns of US getting closer to a constitutional crisis' as Samuel Alito's dissent signals deference to TrumpMinnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis", but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off.I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold," Klobuchar told CNN's State of the Union, adding but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis." Continue reading...
Tessa Janecke scored the winning goal in overtime as the United States beat Canada to win goldCanada 0-0 USA, 14:25 left, 1st period: It's all Canada at the moment. They've taken the shots lead 6-3. So far, nothing has troubled Frankel too much, but let them shoot a lot" is never a good game plan.Social media alert: USA Hockey and Hockey Canada are both on BlueSky, but neither organization has posted. That's no fun. Continue reading...
If enacted changes would be one of the biggest reorganizations of department since its founding in 1789A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality.The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft. The New York Times first reported on the draft. Continue reading...
US vice-president spends few minutes with pontiff whom he has publicly disagreed with over migrationPope Francis and JD Vance, who have disagreed very publicly over the Trump administration's attitude to immigration and its migrant deportation plans, met briefly in Rome on Sunday to exchange Easter greetings.The meeting came a day after the US vice-president, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, sat down with senior Vatican officials and had an exchange of opinions" over international conflicts and immigration. Continue reading...
The idea that autism is some aberration that can be cured is typical of a movement that celebrates simplistic thinking and loathes human differenceIn the recent past, Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that Donald Trump is a terrible human being" and probably a sociopath". But in the US's new age of irrationalism and chaos, these two men are now of one voice, pursuing a strand of Trumpist politics that sometimes feels strangely overlooked. With Trump once again in the White House and Kennedy ensconced as his health and human services secretary, what they are jointly leading is becoming clearer by the day: a war on science and knowledge that aims to replace them with the modern superstitions of conspiracy theory.Nearly 2,000 members of the US's National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have warned of slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration". Even work on cancer is now under threat. But if you want to really understand the Trump regime's monstrousness, consider where Kennedy and a gang of acolytes are heading on an issue that goes to the heart of millions of lives: autism. Continue reading...
A new E4 dating show brings the lies we tell while dating into the spotlight. But is bending the truth always a bad thing when looking for love?In 1994, I went on a date. I had just arrived in a new country and I liked the guy: he seemed funny and confident. He took me to a hardware store (weird, but not a dealbreaker) and then for a Tex-Mex meal during which, at some point, I told him I drove a Land Rover.It was a truly weird, dumb, lie - I knew nothing about cars and cared even less. Maybe I thought it made me sound grown up, tougher and more capable than I was, or maybe the margaritas went to my head? I'm sure I told him other lies (I remember giving the impression that I enjoyed clubbing), but that one was memorably stupid. Continue reading...
President's attack on universities echoes efforts by Reagan and McCarthy - but experts say we're seeing much worse'The showdown between Donald Trump and Harvard University may have exploded into life this week, but the battle represents just the latest step in what has been a decades-long war waged by the right wing on American academia.It's a fight by conservatives that dates back to Ronald Reagan, the hitherto spiritual leader of the Republican party, all the way to McCarthyism and beyond, experts say, as the rightwing scraps to seize more control in a manner that is part of a standard playbook of authoritarianism". Continue reading...
Guttmacher report finds 155,000 people crossed state lines for procedure - double number who did so before Roe's fallFor the second year in a row, abortion providers performed more than 1m abortions in the United States in 2024. About 155,000 people crossed state lines for abortions - roughly double the number of patients who did so in 2020, before the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and paved the way for more than a dozen state-level abortion bans to take effect.These numbers, released earlier this week by the abortion rights-supporting Guttmacher Institute, have not changed much since 2023, when the US also performed more than 1m abortions and 169,000 people traveled for the procedure. Continue reading...
The president has made clear he wants the prestigious prize. That's just one of many honors to comeFrom the start of his first campaign for president 10 years ago, Donald Trump has incessantly presented himself as a winner, the only man in the world who had the temperament to make America great again. As he said in 2016:We're gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you'll say: Please, please. It's too much winning. We can't take it any more, Mr President, it's too much.' And I'll say: No it isn't. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!'"Ariel Dorfman, a distinguished professor emeritus of literature at Duke University, is the Chilean American author of the play Death and the Maiden and the novel The Suicide Museum and, more recently, Allegro, narrated playfully by Mozart Continue reading...
Arturo Suarez Trejo was caught up in Trump's immigration crackdown in North Carolina and sent to a notorious Salvadorian prisonIn a recording studio in downtown Santiago, where the dad she has never met once sung, a four-month-old baby girl snuggles in her mother's arms, noise-cancelling earmuffs shielding her tiny ears from the sound.Nahiara Rubi Suarez Sanchez is equally oblivious to the plight of her father, a Venezuelan musician who is thought to be languishing in a maximum-security prison thousands of miles away in El Salvador after being swept up in Donald Trump's anti-migrant crusade. Continue reading...
Massive, sustained protests led to the 2021 downfall of billionaire oligarch Andrej Babi, dubbed the Czech Trump'A former cold war communist dictatorship and component part of the Habsburg empire seems an unlikely source of hope for Donald Trump's opponents.One such country, Hungary, is often cited as the model for Trump's no-holds-barred authoritarian assault on US institutions. Viktor Orban, the central European country's prime minister, has been a guest at the president's Mar-a-Lago estate and has won Trump's praise for transforming Hungary into an illiberal state" that extols traditional" values - and for projecting the kind of strongman" persona the president admires. Continue reading...
It was a nation of dreams, built for the screen. Then it shatteredThe first impression America gave me was gentle carelessness. We were driving down from Canada to visit family friends in Texas sometime in the mid- to late 1980s, and a young border patrol agent at a booth, crouched over a newspaper, leaning back in his chair, carelessly waved my family's station wagon across without looking up. You didn't even need a passport to enter the United States until I was 33.You need clear eyes at the border today. Europe and Canada have issued travel advisories after a series of arbitrary detentions, deportations to foreign jails without due process and hundreds of valid visas pulled or voided amid a sense of general impunity. While I have crossed the border a hundred times at least, sometimes once a month when I lived there, I cannot say when I will see America again, and I am quite sure I will never return to the country I once visited. Continue reading...
If gastropods are lucky, another cheap and unlovable source of age-defying secretions will come along soonApologies. As a reasonably attentive student of generational divides, I'm still late to one of the most dramatic divergences yet: the normalisation of snail slime.At some point, maybe around the time I stopped believing in face cream miracles, smearing on snail mucus, in serums or lotions, was hailed by newcomers to Korean-made skin products as transformative, almost immediately. Its most cherished effect being, as an industry spokeswoman told British Vogue in 2023, a radiant youthful glow". Today, thanks more to rhapsodising influencers than age-defying evidence, the slime phenomenon persists, gathers converts and withstands objections from snail supporters, who do not, sadly, seem that numerous. What snails need now, perhaps more than any other animal, is celebrity allies, supposing there are any willing to sacrifice the magical power of slime. Continue reading...
Substituting liberal biases with conservative will only serve to subvert academic objectivityFew people want to live in an echo chamber. Many have no problem being friends with those who vote differently to the way they do. And many would probably agree with John Stuart Mill that he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that" - that to truly know one's own argument, one must also know the arguments of those who disagree.How to create a culture that encourages more fruitful engagement between those of differing political views has become a key question in contemporary public debate. Nowhere more so than in universities, where there has been much debate about viewpoint diversity", the aspiration to nurture differing and conflicting perspectives within an institution or group as a means of sharpening arguments and teasing out truths. Continue reading...
Playing in Stanford's football stadium, the school's softball home game against archrivals California set the NCAA attendance record Saturday with a crowd of 13,207 Continue reading...
Protesters pour into the streets from east coast to west in second wave of demonstrations this month - key US politics stories from Saturday 19 April at a glanceProtesters poured into the streets across the country again on Saturday in the second wave of demonstrations this month, as organizers seek to turn discontent with Donald Trump's presidency into a mass movement that will eventually translate into ballot box action.Large protests took place from east coast to west, in major cities like Washington, New York and Chicago, as well as Rhode Island, Maryland, Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, among many others. Americans abroad also signalled their opposition to the Trump agenda in the Irish capital of Dublin and other cities. Continue reading...
Aditya Wahyu Harsono, father of infant with special needs, surprised at work despite valid visa through June 2026An Indonesian father of an infant with special needs, who was detained by federal agents at his hospital workplace in Minnesota after his student visa was secretly revoked, will remain in custody after an immigration judge ruled Thursday that his case can proceed.Judge Sarah Mazzie denied a motion to dismiss the case against Aditya Wahyu Harsono on humanitarian grounds, according to his attorney. Harsono, 33, was arrested four days after his visa was revoked without notice. He is scheduled for another hearing on 1 May. Continue reading...
Organizers call for 11 million people to march and rally in this weekend's effort to protect democracy'Protesters poured into the streets of cities and towns across the United States again on Saturday, in the second wave of protests this month, as organizers seek to turn discontent with Donald Trump's presidency into a mass movement that will eventually translate into action at the ballot box.By early afternoon, large protests were under way in Washington, New York and Chicago, with images of crowds cascading across social networks showing additional demonstrations in Rhode Island, Maryland, Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, California and Pennsylvania, among others. Americans abroad also signaled their opposition to the Trump agenda in Dublin, Ireland, and other cities. Continue reading...
Two new surveys confirm that women who take on children from an earlier marriage will almost always be seen as witchesStepmothers have always been witches. Long before the Brothers Grimm gave us Snow White's usurping queen (and long before Gal Gadot's toe-curling recent turn in the role), there was Medea, witch of classical myth. Medea is best remembered for killing her own children but, according to Ovid, she went on to acquire a stepson, the hero Theseus, and attempted to kill him too. (Poison, of course, and with an eye on his inheritance: Witchy stepmothering 101.)Two millennia after Ovid, modern women still let our lives be limited by such stories. A new survey says that 43% of single mothers are deterred from dating other parents by negative stereotypes of stepmothers portrayed in popular culture"; 37% explicitly cite the fear that their partners' children will view them as a wicked stepmother". One should approach such a survey with caution - it is commissioned by a dating app for parents - but these findings are mirrored in academic studies the world over. A 2018 survey from New Zealand found that stepmothers altered their behaviour, fearful of setting boundaries with their stepchildren, for fear of the wicked stepmother" tag.Do 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...
Former president spoke at commemoration for the 168 people who died in the 1995 attack by far-right extremistBill Clinton called on Americans to put aside whose resentments matter most" and issued a defense of government employees as he returned to Oklahoma City on Saturday for a remembrance service for the 30th anniversary of the deadliest homegrown terrorist attack in US history.If our lives are going to be dominated by efforts to dominate people we disagree with, we're going to put the 250-year-old march toward a more perfect union at risk," he said. None of us would ever get much done. Believe me, we've all got something to be mad about." Continue reading...
The Catholic church has taken the first steps to canonise the architect of Barcelona's extraordinary Sagrada FamiliaI don't understand the processes by which people become saints, but the case for the canonisation of the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, now progressing with the blessing of the pope, seems strong. He was devout - he tried to go without food for 40 days in emulation of Jesus Christ, until a bishop friend talked him out of likely death. The unprecedented phantasmagoria that he designed in stone, iron and ceramic could be called miracles. He even suffered a form of martyrdom, being hit by a tram while apparently deep in thought about his most famous work, the church of Sagrada Familia. It's not quite the same as a burning at the stake or a fusillade of arrows or the other grisly ends of ancient saints, but has its own significance. Gaudi's mission was to find spiritual meaning in a world transformed by industry and machines, of which the fatal tram might be considered a representative. Continue reading...
Neverending calls to automated customer service lines aren't just frustrating - new research suggests they may be quietly radicalising as wellQuestion: what are the eight most annoying words in the English language? Answer: Your call is important to us ... please hold." But when you have turned into a gibbering wreck after 10 minutes of your valuable time have ticked away - intermittently punctuated by assurances that, while your tormentor is experiencing high call volumes at the moment", nevertheless your call is still important to him/her/it - you can take comfort in the thought that you are not alone. In fact, you belong to the majority of sentient beings in an industrial society like ours.Thanks to a useful piece of market research, we now have an idea of the numbers of victims of this industrial practice - at least in the UK. A survey commissioned by the New Britain Project thinktank found that the average Briton spends between 28 and 41 minutes every week coping with inefficient customer service systems, and that nearly four-fifths of them are frustrated by the wasted time, the unnecessary friction, and the quiet resignation that has become part of daily interactions with both public and private services". Continue reading...
Agencies protecting coal miners from hazards such as black lung' among those gutted by government cutsThe Trump administration's efforts to expand coal mining while simultaneously imposing deep cuts to agencies tasked with ensuring miner health and safety has left some advocates dumbfounded".Agencies that protect coal miners from serious occupational hazards, including the condition best known as black lung", have been among those affected by major government cuts imposed by the White House and the unofficial department of government efficiency" (Doge) run by the billionaire Elon Musk. Continue reading...
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