Michael Cohen was seen leaving his home in Manhattan on Monday morning to testify once again in Trump’s first criminal trial.
Donald Trump, flanked by his son Eric and staunch congressional supporters Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz, attended the 18th day of his hush-money trial on Thursday.
Step into a grocery store in France and you’re liable to see a green, yellow or red score on the front of most packaged foods: a green “A” for the healthiest, a red “E” for the least nutritious. Zip across the globe to Chile, and that traffic light-like label becomes a stop sign, warning consumers when a food contains a high amount of sugar, salt, saturated fats or calories.
Today, more than a dozen countries require that companies print nutritional labels on the front of food packages – a move that’s come as the rate of diet-related diseases, like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity, increases worldwide.
‘Intuitive eating’ is an anti-diet that helps reconnect us to internal cues. But how does it work?
Figuring out what to eat is complicated. What are you in the mood for? What do other people in your household want? What can you afford? What do you have time to prepare?
Add the ambient pressure of a culture that loudly celebrates certain foods, bodies and lifestyles as desirable while vilifying others, and the simple question of what to have for dinner becomes fraught.
Sensing election-year traction, coalition of 20 environmental groups also demand entrenchment of pause in gas-export licences
Joe Biden’s administration is coming under renewed pressure to escalate its curbs on the US’s booming trade in fossil fuels by halting new deepwater oil-export facilities, as well as entrenching its pause in gas-export licences.
A coalition of 20 environmental groups, sensing election-year traction with Biden as he seeks a second term as US president, has written to officials demanding a freeze on deepwater oil-export facilities, similar to the move announced by the Biden administration earlier this year when it paused new licenses for liquified natural gas (or LNG) exports.
Judges had deferred a decision on whether Assange could take his case to another appeal hearing
Julian Assange has won a victory in his ongoing battle against extradition from the UK after judges at the high court in London granted him leave to appeal.
Two judges deferred a decision in March on whether Assange, who is trying to avoid being prosecuted in the US on espionage charges relating to the publication of thousands of classified and diplomatic documents, could take his case to another appeal hearing.
Dali remained at collapse site since it lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s supporting columns in March, killing six people
The container ship that caused the deadly collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was refloated Monday and has begun slowly moving back to port.
The Dali has remained at the collapse site since it lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s supporting columns on 26 March, killing six construction workers and snarling traffic into Baltimore Harbor.
With the sudden death of President Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian regime unexpectedly finds itself faced with having to hold elections to appoint a successor. The choice for Tehran is whether to allow the vote to be semi-democratic and contested, or risk nothing by ensuring no candidate with any organisation or following stands against the hardliner likely to be chosen as the regime’s preferred candidate.
Influencers and politicians use snappy cliches to get you on side – but you can fight fire with fire
Since the moment I learned about the concept of the “thought-terminating cliche” I’ve been seeing them everywhere I look: in televised political debates, in flouncily stencilled motivational posters, in the hashtag wisdom that clogs my social media feeds. Coined in 1961 by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, the phrase describes a catchy platitude aimed at shutting down or bypassing independent thinking and questioning. I first heard about the tactic while researching a book about the language of cult leaders, but these sayings also pervade our everyday conversations: expressions such as “It is what it is”, “Boys will be boys”, “Everything happens for a reason” and “Don’t overthink it” are familiar examples.
From populist politicians to holistic wellness influencers, anyone interested in power is able to weaponise thought-terminating cliches to dismiss followers’ dissent or rationalise flawed arguments. In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Lifton wrote that these semantic stop signs compress “the most far-reaching and complex of human problems … into brief, highly selective, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. They become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
The scandal that caused thousands of people in the UK to become infected or die from contaminated blood was avoidable and inflamed by a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up by the NHS and government, a scathing report has concluded.
In the long-awaited conclusion to a five-year public inquiry, Sir Brian Langstaff, who chaired the investigation, said the calamity could “largely, though not entirely, have been avoided” – but successive governments and others in authority “did not put patient safety first”.
The trailblazing musician was a powerful force for change and unity, and his legacy continues to inspire millions. He deserves his homeland’s highest honour
He is a 20th-century global icon but not officially designated a national hero in his own land. In a recent interview at the Bob Marley: One Love movie premiere, Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, disclosed that his government was considering again the longstanding petitions to award its highest honour to the legend. Marley’s profound impact on music and Jamaican culture is undeniable. From Kingston to Harare, he stood for social justice and freedom and against colonialism. To have decades of deliberation by politicians on whether to declare him a national hero is baffling.
From baby boomers to generation X, growing up in the Caribbean was enriched by a vibrant and resonant tapestry of diverse music. The formative backdrop was artists such as Sam Cooke, Sparrow, Jim Reeves, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire and Bob Marley. All could be heard back to back on the airwaves. Reggae was growing internationally, with Marley paving the way for the multitude of Caribbean artists to come.
The hardline Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, has died in a helicopter crash in foggy weather in the mountains near the border with Azerbaijan.
The charred wreckage of the aircraft, which crashed on Sunday carrying Raisi, as well as the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six other passengers and crew, was found early on Monday after an overnight search in blizzard conditions.
British driver pushed Verstappen for victory at Imola
‘We expect them to be competitive at all circuits,’ says Horner
Christian Horner and Toto Wolff found themselves in rare agreement as the rival team principals hailed the extraordinary progress of Lando Norris and McLaren over the past 12 months and declared the Briton a contender for the title.
Max Verstappen won the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola for Red Bull on Sunday but was chased down in the final laps by Norris, who finished 0.7sec behind and believed he could have taken the win with one or two more laps.
These spaces are crucial for our wellbeing, but cash-strapped councils are being forced to treat them as revenue earners
My local green space, Brockwell Park in Brixton and Herne Hill, south London, is an oasis of calm in the busy city. Friends catch up in the walled garden, where wisteria trails over pillars and roses and bluebells explode from the earth. In the community garden, local people work together to grow vegetables and run sessions to connect nature-deprived children to the land.
In the centre of the sometimes crushing metropolis, this park means everything to me – it keeps me sane, and it gives me hope. But this green lifeline is, every summer, taken away, as I await the arrival of the park’s music festival season with dread. As huge metal walls go up, dividing us from the green, and HGVs begin flattening the grass and soil, I feel a genuine sense of horror. A large part of the park is cut off for weeks, and our community’s heart is pulled out as people stream into events whose expensive tickets most people living round here could never afford. And the same is happening in shared green spaces all over the UK.
Rebecca Tamás is a writer of environmental nonfiction and a poet. Her most recent book is Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman
Hyping conspiracy theory that Democrats are bringing people into US to vote for Biden, extremists try to tie immigration to elections
Dozens of Donald Trump’s allies and election denialists, including extremists like lawyer Cleta Mitchell and ex-adviser Stephen Miller, are promoting a bill to bar non-citizens from voting in federal elections, even though it’s already illegal and evidence that non-citizens have voted in federal races is almost nil.
The push for the bill is seen as further evidence of extremist tactics used by ex-president Trump and his Maga movement to rev up his base of supporters for the 2024 election with outlandish claims designed to scare-monger over election fraud and far-right rhetoric detached from reality.
Abe Dane once had doubts about voting security. His work as an elections administrator changed his view: ‘These are people just like me’
Abe Dane would be the first to admit he had concerns about election fraud during the 2020 election. He believed the elections in his own county, where he had worked the polls, were clean – but he wasn’t sure about other counties in the state, where unfounded claims of fraud swirled in 2020.
That was before he took a position in local election administration. Now, with first-hand experience, Dane, the director of elections in Hillsdale county, Michigan, is confident in the process.
A team would have to be pretty near perfect to deem Palmer surplus to requirements but such is Manchester City’s level they could not find a regular place for him. Still, the attacking midfielder’s £42m move from Manchester City to Chelsea has worked out for all parties – giving City some financial fair play wriggle room while bestowing upon Chelsea a shining light in another muddled season. Palmer is the main reason Mauricio Pochettino’s side managed a top-half place. The City academy graduate has combined crowd-pleasing flicks and tricks with a ruthless, determined streak illustrated by the manner in which he has supplanted Raheem Sterling (and the squabbling Nicolas Jackson and Noni Madueke for that matter) as the club’s penalty taker. His nerveless conversion of the equaliser in Chelsea’s 4-4 rollercoaster against City in November should have settled that argument and beyond that his 22 league goals and 11 assists have made him the most important creative player at Stamford Bridge. His former manager Pep Guardiola described him as “the most decisive player of the season” last month. Now his current one needs to build something cohesive around him next term.
Hundreds of Australian and New Zealand travellers are stuck in the French Pacific territory where protests and violence are preventing access to the airport
Hundreds of Australian and New Zealand tourists stranded in New Caledonia amid deadly unrest are anxiously waiting on French authorities to allow air travel out of the territory, as their governments stand by to bring them home.
Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president who died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, was a hardliner who had been instrumental in the last few years in steering Iran back towards the more uncompromising beliefs of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary founders.
A supporter of deeply conservative values on the domestic front, in terms of foreign policy, Raisi also carved out an increasingly aggressive stance, and it was on his watch that Tehran opted to launch its recent unprecedented missile and drone strike against Israel, bringing the two countries into direct and open conflict for the first time.
The death of the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, in a helicopter crash comes at a time when the country, faced by unprecedented external challenges, was already bracing itself for a change in regime with the expected demise in the next few years of its 85-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In the country’s hydra-headed leadership where power is spread in often opaque ways between clerics, politicians and army, it is the supreme leader, and not the president, that is ultimately decisive.
Taiwan’s first female president has presided over big social changes, but her main legacy is the cultivation of the island’s rising prominence on the world stage
In a riot of yellow braids, glitter and spandex, garnished with a huge yellow water lily, Taiwan’s latest global celebrity danced her heart out for the island’s diminutive, softly spoken president, whose mild manners belie her outsized legacy.
Tsai Ing-wen, 67, stepped down as Taiwan’s president on Monday. Before handing over the keys, on Wednesday she welcomed Taiwan’s most famous drag queen, Nymphia Wind, for a live performance in the presidential office. After sashaying to Lady Gaga’s Marry the Night, Nymphia Wind, who recently won the 16th season of the US reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, thanked Tsai for “all these years of making Taiwan the first in so many things”.
Biden will be remembered as a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicit in this war
With great fanfare, Joe Biden confirmed on 8 May that his administration had suspended one weapons shipment to Israel, delaying the delivery of 3,500 bombs that can cause devastating casualties when dropped on population centers. Biden said he warned Israeli leaders that he would also block artillery shells and other munitions if Israel went ahead with a ground invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where 1.4 million Palestinians have taken shelter.
It seemed Biden had finally decided to use the most effective leverage he has over Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his extremist government to force an end to Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. But less than a week later, it became clear that Biden had backtracked and he will continue sending Israel far more weapons than the one shipment he held back. Last Tuesday, the Biden administration notified Congress that it would move ahead with more than $1bn in new arms deals for Israel.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University
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