© AJ Mast for The New York Times
Unclear what US president can achieve after direct talks between Russia and Ukraine ended without conclusion
Two high-profile Catholics, Pope Leo XIV and US vice-president JD Vance, were meeting Monday ahead of a flurry of US-led diplomatic efforts to make progress on a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, AP reported.
Vance’s motorcade was seen entering Vatican City just after 7.30am Vance, a Catholic convert, had led the US delegation to the formal Mass opening the pontificate of the first American pope.
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© Photograph: AP
© Photograph: AP
From a disobedient dishwasher to a letter from the taxman, it turns out everything is more palatable with a sprinkling of childlike wonder
Reading about ways to foster joy last week (I know, most of us would settle for waking without lingering dread, but why not dream big occasionally?), I was captivated by the memoirist and cancer survivor Suleika Jaouad’s suggestion: live each day like it’s your first. When Jaouad’s leukaemia returned last year, well-wishers urged her to live each day like it was her last, but the pressure to carpe each second of every damn diem left her feeling panicked and exhausted. Instead, she cultivated a sense of freshly hatched curiosity and playfulness, which she says helped.
I loved this, but doubted the feasibility – can you really convince your tired, cynical self to feel joyful astonishment? I tried living yesterday as if it were my first; not like an actual newborn (red-faced, frequently crying, utterly incompetent – I’m all that already), but with childlike wonder. I had some success being captivated by my breakfast banana – great design and colour – and even more with the magical elixir that makes me not hate everyone (coffee).
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© Photograph: Posed by models; FreshSplash/Getty Images
© Photograph: Posed by models; FreshSplash/Getty Images
Veteran activist reflects on Malcolm’s legacy and decades of progress now rolled back by Trump and ‘white supremacy on steroids’
When African Americans protested police brutality in New York, they were portrayed as rioters, Malcolm X told an audience at the London School of Economics. When shop windows were smashed in the Black community, he said, the press gave the impression that “hoodlums, vagrants, criminals” wanted to break in and steal merchandise.
“But this is wrong,” Malcolm contended. “In America the Black community in which we live is not owned by us. The landlord is white. The merchant is white. In fact, the entire economy of the Black community in the states is controlled by someone who doesn’t even live there … And these are the people who suck the economic blood of our community.”
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© Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP
© Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP
The right wants American women to bear more children and withdraw from full participation in society
Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congress that completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of childcare for large swaths of the American working class.
The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Start were laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the program would not be axed, but more cuts to childcare funding are likely coming: some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for daycare. The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible.
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© Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
© Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Michael Fanone slams Mike Johnson and Republicans for long delaying congressionally approved officer tribute
Donald Trump and his Republican allies are “petty bitches” for refusing to display a congressionally approved plaque honoring police officers who protected the US Capitol when the president’s supporters attacked the complex on 6 January 2021, says one of the cops in question, Michael Fanone.
Speaking recently on the show hosted by political broadcast journalist Jim Acosta, the famously candid and oft profane Fanone said he also had a suggestion about where Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson could position the commemoration. “I think that it would be … perfect … if the plaque was shoved up his ass,” said Fanone, who retired from the Washington DC police force after being wounded during the January 6th attack.
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© Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP
© Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP
© Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
© Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
A new collective seeks to reinvigorate cinema in the mould of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 movement, with a 10-point manifesto opposed to the internet
A group of Danish and Swedish film-makers have relaunched the notorious avant garde Dogme 95 movement with a manifesto updated for the internet age, vowing to make five films between them in a year, from handwritten scripts and without using the internet or any emails in the creative process.
“In a world where film is based on algorithms and artificial visual expressions are gaining traction, it’s our mission to stand up for the flawed, distinct and human imprint,” said the five film-makers in a statement read at the Cannes film festival on Saturday.
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© Photograph: PR Image
© Photograph: PR Image
© Pool photo by Henry Nicholls
© Jay Turner Frey Seawell
© Jeff Swensen for The New York Times
© Dina Litovsky for The New York Times
© Ysa Pérez for The New York Times
© Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The latest in an ongoing series of writers highlighting their go-to mood-lifting movies looks back at the 2008 Eastbourne-set teen comedy
Last year, it took me a grand total of three weeks to make the olive costume, Georgia Nicolson’s papier-mache creation from Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Night and day, I slaved away, dipping strips of newspaper into a mix of flour and water, then patting it onto a giant-sized balloon. Never have I defined myself as anything close to arty. So why did I decide to dedicate a significant portion of my life to an elaborate craft project? The answer, of course, is simple. The olive costume is iconic, as the signature feature of the greatest teen movie ever made.
Just ask any girl who grew up in Britain in the noughties, and they’ll recognise the image: Georgia Nicholson, played by Georgia Groome, frantically running through the streets of Eastbourne dressed as a mammoth green hors d’oeuvre. Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, the film based on the first two books in Louise Rennison’s series, was studied at our teenage sleepovers. We pored over it, reciting its lines as if they were from a sacred text. Even now, I can reel off the classic quotes without thinking. “Boys don’t like girls for funniness,” if you didn’t already know.
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© Photograph: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
The WNBA stars are helping drive record-setting interest in the league. But the conversation distracts from other players, and brings in unwelcome ugliness
At first, it seemed that the Indiana Fever’s home win over Chicago Sky on Saturday would be just another spicy chapter in the rivalry between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. Both players were typically excellent: Clark spurred the Fever to victory with a triple-double, while Reese grabbed 17 rebounds to go with her 12 points.
But it was a moment in the third quarter that WNBA fans will be talking about for weeks to come. Some of them may even do so without resorting to cheap bigotry. With 4:38 remaining, Clark reached for the ball over Reese’s head, made what appeared to be deliberate contact with her arm, and sent her opponent spiraling to the floor. There was a brief confrontation, Clark was hit with a flagrant foul and Reese received a technical. After the game, Clark said she didn’t have cynical intent leading up to the foul, and Reese agreed calling it “a basketball play.”
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© Photograph: Jeff Haynes/NBAE/Getty Images
© Photograph: Jeff Haynes/NBAE/Getty Images
The lure of a limitless digital jukebox was great, but as the algorithm increasingly served up music I didn’t enjoy, I’ve taken back control of my listening
When most people were comparing how many times they had listened to Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx and Fontaines DC on Spotify Wrapped last December, I had to make do with Burger King Unwrapped, delivered to me via their app, which told me how many Burger Kings I’d eaten that year (a solitary Whopper meal in July). You see, I’ve stopped streaming music, which, in this modern day and age, seems frankly weird. But hear me out. I’ve gone back to buying CDs, and it’s made me fall in love with music all over again.
I listen to music all day, every day. I can’t work without music in the background, or consider doing the washing up without some tunes to groove to. Traditionally, I’d buy albums on CDs or vinyl, and listen to them over and over until I was bored to death with them, by which time I’d hopefully have bought another album. It’s apparently a very annoying habit: as a student (way before the days of Spotify), one housemate was so utterly exasperated with me blasting Urban Hymns by the Verve around the house that they barged into my room, ejected the CD and flung it out the window.
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© Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
© Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
More and more people are hooked on watching animals in real time. Now researchers say it could even improve your mood, help you relax and give you better sleep
In 2012 Dianne Hoffman, a retired consultant, became a peeping Tom. For five hours a day she watched the antics of a couple, Harriet and Ozzie, who lived on Dunrovin ranch in Montana.
The pair were nesting ospreys, being streamed live as they incubated their clutch of eggs. The eggs never hatched, but the ospreys sat on them for months before finally kicking them out of the nest.
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© Photograph: Rachel Wisniewski/The Guardian
© Photograph: Rachel Wisniewski/The Guardian
Anglers say more than a third of freshwater sites breach phosphate levels for good ecological status
Citizen testing of rivers in England and Wales by anglers reveals that more than a third of freshwater sites breach phosphate levels for good ecological status.
Volunteers from angling groups are using the data to try to drive change in the way rivers are treated – but the task ahead is huge, according to the Angling Trust and Fish Legal.
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© Photograph: Gillian Pullinger/Alamy
© Photograph: Gillian Pullinger/Alamy
© Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times
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