Judge says coffee giant has no standing in appeal of NRLP finding it illegally fired two workers for trying to unionize
A federal appeals court has largely rejected Starbucks’ appeal of a National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) finding that the coffee chain illegally fired two Philadelphia baristas because they wanted to organize a union.
The third US circuit court of appeals said the coffee shop giant lacked standing to challenge the constitutionality of administrative law judges of the NRLB, the government agency that is set up to enforce labor laws in the US concerning labor practices and collective bargaining.
Sale of boxes at Camp Nou likely to secure player’s future
Barça had to find way to comply with FFP by 31 December
FC Barcelona have reportedly closed a last-minute €100m (£82.9m) deal to sell VIP boxes at the newly renovated Camp Nou to Middle Eastern investors, enabling them to meet financial fair play rules and finally extend Dani Olmo’s registration.
With the deadline for registration just three days away and Barcelona facing the prospect of Olmo leaving as a free agent just six months after joining on a a €55m (£45.6m) transfer, club president Joan Laporta exercised a sale option on Saturday which the club believe will see the first payment made before 31 December.
Four players were detained after game in São Paulo
Match was called off after apparent monkey gesture
A Brazilian judge has ordered the release from prison of four players from River Plate’s women’s football team, all of whom were arrested over an alleged racial slur during a match against Grêmio.
Judge Fernando Oliveira Camargo decided to free the Argentinian club’s quartet of Candela Díaz, Camila Duarte, Juana Cángaro and Milagros Díaz, on condition they remain in Brazil and show up at court in São Paulo every month until the case is concluded.
Large language models have changed how big corporations function, and the arrival of AI ‘agents’ – essentially automated Moneypennys – could prove irresistible
If 2024 was the year of large language models (LLMs), then 2025 looks like the year of AI “agents”. These are quasi-intelligent systems that harness LLMs to go beyond their usual tricks of generating plausible text or responding to prompts. The idea is that an agent can be given a high-level – possibly even vague – goal and break it down into a series of actionable steps. Once it “understands” the goal, it can devise a plan to achieve it, much as a human would.
In a private property market where supply is restricted, increased family wealth can simply drive up the cost of suitable homes
Improvements in the education of girls is one of the most positive shifts in the developing world over the past decade. Supported by aid agencies, including Camfed and more recently the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, efforts to send girls to primary and secondary school and on to further and higher education have made great strides.
In his new year message, the pope will urge rich countries to support the education of poor children as part of a big debt relief programme in the 2025 papal jubilee year.
Institutions in and around the city combine great works with humdrum relics of local life, to fantastic effect
I’ve been living partly in Sheffield for the past month or so, which has given me the chance to catch up on some of the great monuments of industry and power in and near the city – the model miners’ village and the fantastical Jacobean castle in Bolsover, the stately home of Wentworth Woodhouse with its battleship-length Palladian facade, the buildings of the subtle modernist Peter Womersley in Huddersfield.
Also the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield and the Derby Museum and Art Gallery, both of which combine world-class art with humdrum relics of local life. In one, a large John Singer Sargent portrait of three young Yorkshire women shares the premises with the plastic car roof sign of a 1970s driving school. In the other, there is a gallery full of the illuminated tableaux of science and humanity by Joseph Wright of Derby and another room with a collection of stuffed animals, presumably from a local donor. I hope institutions like this, apart from whatever upgrades might be desirable, don’t change: art comes to life when it’s seen as part of the place it comes from.
Read more from My DIY climate hack, a series on everyday people’s creative solutions to the climate crisis
While droughts are a natural feature of California’s climate, human-induced warming has made them even drier. After Eric Haas, 62, moved to Oakland in 2007, California was in a drought so severe a statewide emergency was declared. After experiencing drought conditions for several years, the California professor had a rainwater and greywater capture system installed at his highly efficient urban home to do his part to conserve water.
15 December 1930 – 27 July 2024 The actor recalls his friend, the Irish writer who was shunned by her country for her progressive work – and whose parties were the stuff of legend
I first met Edna at the Royal Court theatre in 1973 at the premiere of Brian Friel’s play The Freedom of the City, which was about Bloody Sunday in Derry. I was in the bar afterwards and, to my surprise, there she was. I’d read all her books – The Country Girls, August Is a Wicked Month, Girls in Their Married Bliss – because you could get them in the north of Ireland when they were banned in the south. Like a lot of people I was slightly in awe of her, but she came over and chatted and she was extremely warm and generous.
Soon after that, she began to invite me to her famous soirees at her house in Carlyle Square in Chelsea, and we became friends. There were always big stars at her gatherings and she would cook roast lamb for everybody. I remember Jack Nicholson showed up at one. He kept calling her “Ed”, can you imagine?
Fury as President Macron reveals the new ‘contemporary gesture’ for cathedral devastated by 2019 fire
In the wake of the April 2019 fire that devastated Notre Dame cathedral, the French president Emmanuel Macron promised the monument would be rebuilt with a “contemporary gesture”.
There followed all manner of madcap ideas: a glass spire; a 300ft carbon-fibre flame, a swimming pool on the roof and a covered garden. In the end, Notre Dame was restored to its original former glory and reopened in a ceremony this month.
Billionaire Trump adviser said his ‘significant investments’ in the country justified his wading into German politics
The tech entrepreneur and close adviser to Donald Trump Elon Musk has taken a stunning new public step in his support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), publishing a supportive guest opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that has prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.
The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday ahead of being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the US politics news site Politico.
With the aid of the birds I was able to learn to love the night
As a child I was afraid of the dark, as so many children are. Not the dark in and of itself, but what I was certain it contained: bad spirits, bad people, monsters with ill intent. The dark hid creatures with talons and teeth, or men with weapons who would use them to sneak up on an unsuspecting child and do them harm. The dark let curses slip out of buildings or hedges and attach to a child walking past. I kept myself bounded within the dome of torchlight on winter afternoons, thinking of light as a spell of protection. I went to bed by the orange glow of a nightlight, the hall light on and the door ajar.
I borrowed Jill Tomlinson’s book The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark from the library and fell in love with the baby barn owl, Plop. He thinks “dark is nasty” and won’t go hunting with his parents. He learns through others who love the dark that it can be exciting, kind, fun, necessary, wonderful, beautiful and super. I identified with Plop, but I wasn’t convinced about the wonderfulness of the dark.
Changing tides have led to an increase of beached marine life, whom rescuers scramble to save before they die
While Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is known as a popular vacation destination in the north-east US, it has built a reputation for an entirely different reason this year: animal strandings.
Dolphins, whales, sea lions and turtles are turning up in large numbers on the beaches of the famous peninsula in a phenomenon that has experts scrambling to execute more rescue operations than ever before. The cause? Changing tides.
Replacing Williams with a CGI ape in an otherwise human cast pays off enormously in Michael Gracey’s warts-and-all tale of the pop phenomenon
It was a throwaway comment: Robbie Williams, Take That’s cheeky chappie-turned-tabloid fodder solo phenomenon, described himself as a performing monkey, prancing and preening in front of the cameras and seeking the approval of the audience (or at least a banana or two). But for director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), it was the key to unlocking Williams’s conflicted relationship with his celebrity and his compulsion to perform. In a creative gamble to rival Piece by Piece director Morgan Neville’s decision to tell the Pharell Williams story with Lego animation recently, Gracey replaces Williams in this warts-and-all biopic with a CGI chimpanzee in an otherwise human cast. It’s a gamble that not only pays off – it’s arguably the main reason the film works as well as it does.
Narrated by Williams (Jonno Davies delivers a motion-captured performance as Robbie the Monkey) in a tone that strikes a precarious balance between wry self-deprecation and maudlin self-pity, the story itself is pretty generic stuff: a by-the-numbers trawl through the early hardship of Williams’s working-class childhood in Stoke-on-Trent, father-son tensions and industrial-level substance-abuse issues. The film’s emotional beats – Williams’s doomed relationship with All Saints singer Nicole Appleton; the death of Robbie’s beloved nan – are hammered home with piledriver subtlety. But the capering ape device transforms what would otherwise be a rote addition to the rock biopic canon, infusing the story with humour, mischief and a sparky, unpredictable anarchy. Yes, Williams clearly takes himself pretty seriously and has a weakness for therapy-speak platitudes. But he also invites us to see him as a surly adolescent chimp in a shell suit. You have to love him for that.
Whether you’re receiving guests, working from home or don’t like slippers at all, we’ve found the perfect pairs of slippers and bed socks for keeping every foot warm
If it’s true that you can judge a person by their shoes, then it is perhaps even more so when it comes to their slippers. What you choose to put on your feet in your own home is a window into what you value most. As such, buying the perfect pair for yourself is an act of self-nurture.
If that all feels too hyperbolic, it feels safe to say that they’re at least a reflection of your favourite mode of relaxation and how high you like to turn up the heating.
Planes were going to drop out of the sky, nuclear reactors would explode. But then … nothing. What really happened with Y2K? People still disagree …
Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, 25 years ago, Queen Elizabeth II stepped off a private barge to arrive at London’s Millennium Dome for its grand opening ceremony. Dressed in a pumpkin-orange coat, she entered the venue with Prince Philip, taking her place alongside Tony and Cherie Blair and 12,000 guests to celebrate the dawn of a new millennium. At the stroke of midnight, Big Ben began to chime and 40 tonnes of fireworks were launched from 16 barges lined along the river. The crowd joined hands, preparing to sing Auld Lang Syne. For a few long moments, the Queen was neglected – she flapped her arms out like a toddler wanting to be lifted up, before Blair and Philip noticed her, took a hand each, and the singing began. A new century was born.
One politician who wasn’t in attendance at the glitzy celebration was Paddy Tipping, a Labour MP who spent the night in the Cabinet Office. Tipping was minister for the millennium bug. After 25 years, it might be hard to recall just how big a deal the bug – now more commonly called Y2K – felt then. But for the last few years of the 90s, the idea that computers would fail catastrophically as the clock ticked over into the year 2000 was near the top of the political agenda in the UK and the US. Here was a hi-tech threat people feared might topple social order, underlining humanity’s new dependence on technological systems most of us did not understand. Though there are no precise figures, it’s estimated that the cost of the global effort to prevent Y2K exceeded £300bn (£633bn today, accounting for inflation).
The actor and former footballer talks about grief and the countryside, sobriety and humility, overloading himself and playing tough but fair
People think I’m a city boy, but I’m a nature-lover. We lived in Bushey until I was seven, then we moved to a little village called Bedmond, in the countryside just outside Watford. Now, I live on a farm in West Sussex and I find it hard to leave. I prefer to talk to my dog than to a human being.
My parents split when I was 12. It happens all the time now, but in those days it was hard. I went my own way after that: teenage rebellion, rowing with my old man. At 15, I packed my bags and went to Pangbourne, washing pots and pans at Bradfield College.
Biofeedback devices promised a whole new world of mental and physical harmony. They did change my life, but not in the way I’d hoped
I love to run, but ask me about my running times or distances and I will have no idea. For me, running is about squeezing exercise into a busy schedule, clearing my head and being in nature. I don’t need to measure it.
But unfortunately I am not immune to the oh-so-pleasing dopamine injection of unboxing a new bit of wearable tech, personalising the app for hours and thinking this might just change my life – the new, calmer, fitter, stronger, smarter me dangling tantalisingly within reach. One such scenario occurred after researching the importance of human connection on mental and physical health: less stress, less inflammation, less illness. Human connection, I learned, can stimulate and be facilitated by the vagus nerve – a primitive part of the nervous system.
It’s now time to ‘hold space’ for everything that happened in 2024 with a list – so here are 10 of the biggest stories from the year in patriarchy
2024 was a very demure, very mindful, very dystopian sort of year. I started last year’s annual roundup by noting that it had been the hottest year on record and … guess what? 2024 has now surpassed 2023 as the hottest year ever. Many of the same extreme themes from last year have also persisted: anti-abortion activists are still trying to roll back reproductive rights in the US and the horrific situation for women in Iran and Afghanistan has only got worse.
Meanwhile Gaza is still being destroyed, and – despite the fact that an increasing number of experts are terming the bombardment a “genocide” – the US is continuing to enable the destruction and much of the world is still continuing to look away. The civil war in Sudan, which started last April, has also spread catastrophically, with women and girls bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis.
Court found 51 men guilty including Dominique Pelicot, who was given a 20-year prison sentence
At least 15 of the men found guilty of raping or sexually abusing Gisèle Pelicot have appealed against their convictions and will be given a second trial.
All 51 men, including her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, were convicted and given prison sentences of between three and 20 years before Christmas after a trial lasting three and a half months. Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years.
Bamba dies six days after knockout of Rogelio Medina
Puerto Rican boxer won all 14 of his 2024 fights by KO
Puerto Rican boxer Paul Bamba has died at the age of 35, his manager, the R&B singer Shaffer ‘Ne-Yo’ Smith, announced Friday. The news comes less than a week after Bamba claimed the WBA’s secondary ‘gold’ cruiserweight title with a sixth-round knockout of Rogelio Medina in New Jersey.
Bamba’s death was confirmed in a joint statement from Ne-Yo and Bamba’s family. “It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of beloved son, brother, friend, and boxing champion Paul Bamba, whose light and love touched countless lives,” the statement read. It also described Bamba as a fierce competitor with an unrelenting drive for greatness.
Two tankers were hit by storm in Kerch strait on 15 December, causing one to sink and another to run aground
Russia has warned of severe environmental damage from a huge oil spill in the Black Sea caused when two tankers were hit by a storm near Crimea, which has declared a state of emergency.
Biographer says government departments give contradictory refusals to requests and accuses them of ‘cover up’
Researchers have called for greater transparency from the Foreign Office over the files it holds on the Duke of York. Officials responding to freedom of information requests have given a variety of reasons why the files cannot be released.
Andrew Lownie, an author who is researching a biography of Prince Andrew, was told that the files could not be made public until 2065, and implied there was a general rule that papers relating to members of the royal family must remain closed until 105 years after their birth.
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