BSUas Scott Yenor ran Action Idaho, which attacked the university, LGBTQ+ people and Republicans deemed not rightwing enough
Boise State University (BSU) professor and Claremont Institute scholar Scott Yenor was the hidden hand behind Action Idaho, a far-right online media platform that featured inflammatory rightwing commentary on politics in that state, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The documents, obtained through public records requests, also show that Yenor sought and received funding for the initiative from wealthy and influential donors like Claremont Institute board chair, Thomas D Klingenstein.
Continue reading...Strike near Aleppo weapons depot reportedly killed Hezbollah and Syrian troops, while civilians also said to be among dead
Israeli airstrikes on Syriaas Aleppo province have killed more than 40 people, including members of Hezbollah and a large number of Syrian soldiers in an area near the militant Lebanese organisationas weapons depots, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.
As many as 42 people were killed in what contradictory reports described as air and drone strikes in the early hours of Friday that hit missile depots for Lebanonas militant Hezbollah group in Aleppoas southern suburb of Jibreen, near Aleppoas international airport, and a nearby town that houses a military facility.
Continue reading...The US journalist was seized by officials and charged with espionage, and friends and family say he has kept his spirits up
Friday marks the grim first anniversary of the day when masked Russian officers grabbed Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist, at a steakhouse in Yekaterinburg where he was waiting to eat on a reporting trip.
Gershkovich, a 32-year-old reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has not seen a day of freedom since. He has been held in the infamous Lefortovo prison on the outskirts of Moscow, where the Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was once detained.
Continue reading...Descendants of enslaved miners who dug up gold, silver and emeralds worth billions call on Colombia to halt plan to lift cargo
Indigenous communities in Bolivia have objected to Colombiaas plans to recover the remains of an 18th-century galleon believed to be carrying gold, silver and emeralds worth billions, calling on Spain and Unesco to step in and halt the project.
Colombia hopes to begin recovering artefacts from the wreck of the San JosA(c) in the coming months but the Caranga, Chicha and Killaka peoples in Bolivia argue that the excavation would rob them of their acommon and shareda heritage.
Continue reading...Analysis finds majority of paraquat, banned in 60 countries, is used in counties where Latinos make up 75% of the population or higher
Low-income Latinos living in California are disproportionately threatened by paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide widely used on US cropland, a new analysis of state data finds.
The notorious weedkiller is banned in more than 60 countries and for some uses in the US, like golf courses, because it is so dangerous. But the US government still allows its use on crops, putting agricultural workers or those living in communities near where it is spread at risk.
Continue reading...Brazilas president has nixed commemorations of the 1964 coup, possibly to avoid irking the military as senior officers facing jail for allegedly conspiring to stop Lula taking power after 2022 election
Relatives of the victims of Brazilas brutal two-decade dictatorship have voiced anger and dismay over President Luiz InA!cio Lula da Silvaas reported decision to block official remembrance events marking the 60th anniversary of the 1964 military coup daA(c)tat.
Activists had hoped the leftistas government would mark the 31 March 2024 anniversary of that power-grab with a series of memorials honouring the thousands who were killed, disappeared or tortured by the 1964-85 regime.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Territoryas government calls for visit to listen to those thought to be living with consequences of forced fitting of IUDs
The Danish health minister should aget on a plane and visita some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenlandas gender equality minister has said.
In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone.
Continue reading...Nato member says it finds fragments of what appears to be a drone on farm near river Danube and border with Ukraine
Russian prosecutors have asked the justice ministry to label Alla Pugacheva, the queen of Soviet pop music, as a aforeign agenta, Reuters reported citing the state RIA news agency.
Ukraine has received a $1.5 billion tranche of funding under a World Bank programme, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Friday, helping it pay for its budget and social spending as it defends itself against the Russian invasion.
Continue reading...Poor harvests in extreme weather conditions have led to a tripling of cocoa prices a but farmers have seen no benefit
Around the world this holiday weekend, people will consume hundreds of millions of Easter eggs and bunnies, as part of an annual chocolate intake that can exceed 8kg (18lb) for every person in the UK, or 5kg in the US and Europe. But a global shortage of cacao a the seed from which chocolate is made a has brought warnings of a achocolate meltdowna that could see prices increase and bars shrink further.
This week, cocoa prices rose to all-time highs on commodity exchanges in London and New York, reaching more than $10,000 a tonne for the first time, after the third consecutive poor harvest in west Africa. Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together produce more than half of the global cacao crop, have been hit by extreme weather supercharged by the climate crisis and the El NiA+-o weather phenomenon. This has been exacerbated by disease and underinvestment in ageing plantations.
Continue reading...The singer, who is known for her attempts to run her career sustainably, likened the practice to The Hunger Games a playing a game to get fans to keep buying more
Billie Eilish has criticised the practice of musicians releasing several vinyl variants of the same record in order to drive sales and earn athem more moneya, likening it to The Hunger Games franchise: aWeare all going to do it because [itas] the only way to play the game.a
aI canat even express to you how wasteful it is,a Eilish, 22, told Billboard in an interview about her push to run her career in a sustainable and less environmentally impactful way.
Continue reading...aUber of the skiesa Joby Aviation will build its fleet of aircraft at a $500m facility in Dayton and plans to employ 2,000 people
For a decade, Dayton in south-west Ohio has fought to shed its rust belt past. New apartment blocks, hotels and breweries have cut into a landscape dominated by derelict warehouses and general industrial decline. But today, that transformation is shifting gears and taking to the skies.
A town that 120 years ago produced the pioneers of human flight the Wright brothers is set to build hundreds of futuristic flying taxis each year.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Satellite analysis revealed to the Guardian shows farms devastated and nearly half of the territoryas trees razed. Alongside mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israelas onslaught on Gazaas ecosystems has made the area unlivable
In a dilapidated warehouse in Rafah, Soha Abu Diab is living with her three young daughters and more than 20 other family members. They have no running water, no fuel and are surrounded by running sewage and waste piling up.
Like the rest of Gazaas residents, they fear the air they breathe is heavy with pollutants and that the water carries disease. Beyond the city streets lie razed orchards and olive groves, and farmland destroyed by bombs and bulldozers.
Continue reading...A small but aggressive group of election deniers have been pressuring state officials on a weekly a sometimes daily a basis to investigate unfounded claims
In December, a Texas man named Kevin Moncla emailed Georgia election board members in response to their decision not to investigate the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, over bogus election fraud claims. Moncla made a vague threat that he was willing to take things outside the bounds of his increasingly frustrated emails.
The communication alarmed members of the state election board (SEB) enough to contact federal law enforcement.
Continue reading...The Harry Potter and Bridget Jones star is a dazzlingly versatile performer, with a string of Michael Winterbottom films under her belt, as well as Star Wars, TVas Happy Valley and an Olivier award. She explains how she keeps on top of it all
It is easy to feel protective of Shirley Henderson on this gloomy winter afternoon. Is she warm enough? Does she want to put the heating on? aAye, Iam OK,a she says from her home in Fife, a few strands of chestnut hair falling over her glasses as she huddles close to the laptop. aItas a wee bit blowy out. But Iam at the age where you can get too warm, so Iam all right.a Her giggle is helium-high: the sort of sound you want to trap, like in one of those toy moo boxes, so that you can play it when youare down in the dumps. Hearing Henderson laugh, or say aSorry darlina?a when she hasnat quite heard your question makes you feel as if youave been cuddled.
Her allusion to the menopause, though, takes a moment to sink in. Though 58, she looks barely old enough to be online without parental controls. (No suspension of disbelief was required when she played a mother who dresses as her own adolescent daughter to sit an exam in May Contain Nuts.) Henderson came to prominence in the 1990s as one of the UKas most probing, unpredictable character actors. After being spattered with excrement in Trainspotting, she won pivotal roles in two masterpieces: she was a soprano pining for her son in Mike Leighas Gilbert-and-Sullivan extravaganza Topsy-Turvy, and a feisty hairdresser smacking her lips at London life in the rhapsodic Wonderland. That was the first and best of her six collaborations with the director Michael Winterbottom, as well as the one which got her hooked on improvising.
Continue reading...The increased use of AI to replicate the voice and movements of actors has benefits but some are concerned over how and when it might be used and who might be left short-changed
When she discovered her voice had been uploaded to multiple websites without her consent, the actor Cissy Jones told them to take it down immediately. Some complied. aOthers who have more money in their banks basically sent me the email equivalent of a digital middle finger and said: donat care,a Jones recalls by phone.
aThat was the genesis for me to start talking to friends of mine about: listen, how do we do this the right way? How do we understand that the genie is out of the bottle and find a way to be a part of the conversation or we will get systematically annihilated? I know that sounds dramatic but, given how easy it is to steal a personas voice, itas not far off the mark.a
Continue reading...People in Hiroshima react to first screening of the film, which was delayed after outrage at aBarbenheimera memes
It is hard to think of a more emotionally charged venue than Hatchoza for the first screening in Japan of the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer. The cinema in Hiroshima is located less than a kilometre from the hypocentre of the first atomic bombing in history a the devastating culmination of the American physicistas work.
The film finally premiered in Japan on Friday, more than eight months after it opened in the US, to reviews that ranged from praise for its portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer a the afather of the atomic bomba a to criticism that it omitted to show the human misery it caused in Hiroshima and, days later, Nagasaki, in the final days of the Pacific war.
Continue reading...This charming period drama about a 1920s Russian aristocrat being kept in a hotel by the Bolsheviks sees McGregor on sparkling form. Heas an intoxicating, swaggering figure of delight
Some books are difficult to film, and TV is a fool to attempt them. Others, however, perch on the shelf poised and preened, all dressed up and ready for the small screen. Amor Towlesas 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow could have been designed as a handsome, charming period drama, of the kind that once slid smoothly on to BBC One or ITV1 on a Sunday evening. Itas actually on Paramount+, but is handsome and charming and Sunday-ish still.
It remains to be seen whether Paramount takes advantage of the fact that the novelas early chapters create a setup that could run on TV indefinitely, or whether it renders roughly the same amount of narrative as the book then bids us adieu. But that setup is this: in Moscow in 1921, four years after the revolution, the countryas disfranchised aristocracy face summary trials and executions. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov (Ewan McGregor) a Sasha to his friends, aYour Excellencya to the dwindling minority of Russians who still recognise honorifics a seems to be next, but is saved from death by the surprising fact that he is the credited author of a seminal revolutionary poem.
A Gentleman in Moscow is on Paramount+ now
Continue reading...Vivien Sansour, founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, believes biodiversity will save the planet in the climate crisis
The first year that the Hudson Valley Seed Company tried growing yakteen at their farm in upstate New York, the heirloom variety of Palestinian gourd quickly spread until its vines were sending their tendrils across a full acre of land. Born of a partnership with the artist, researcher and conservationist Vivien Sansour, that pilot plot was just one of many pieces of evidence supporting Sansouras thesis: that saving Palestinian heirloom seeds could benefit not just Palestinians, but could help feed an entire planet in crisis.
Sansour is the founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, a project that began in 2016 to conserve Palestinian heritage and culture by saving heirloom seed varieties and telling the stories and history from which they emerged.
Continue reading...It started with a single Dominican bodega worker. Now his familyas chain, Compare Foods, has found a sweet spot in the sun beltas changing demographics
Ivan Almonte has been in the US for almost 25 years years, but he still takes photos of the perfect produce a bouquets of epazote, mountains of chiles and perfectly ripe tunas from the prickly pear cactus a in his favorite Durham, North Carolina, grocery store.
The 45-year-old remembers when those items were hard to find in this bustling New South city, when he first arrived in 1999 from California after emigrating from MichoacA!n, Mexico.
Continue reading...Women say being fitted with IUDs without their consent left them with pain, shame and lasting reproductive difficulties
Hedvig Frederiksen had been at her new school in Paamiut, Greenland, for only a couple of days when she was summoned from her dorm to the local hospital by a Danish caretaker.
She was 14 and had no idea what was going on. aBut back then [1974], when a Danish person said something, their word was law, you had to listen to them,a said Frederiksen, speaking from her home in Nuuk, Greenlandas capital.
Continue reading...Some schoolkids are clearly nervous. One asked if Iad ever killed a child
Iave always been interested in the past. At school, I threw myself into history lessons. I turned one of my mumas bedsheets into a toga so I could pretend to be a Roman, and spent holidays learning hieroglyphics long after lessons on ancient Egypt had finished.
When I was eight, we did the Tudors at school, and my aunt took me to the Tower of London, not far from where I grew up in Thurrock, Essex. I was spellbound. Back home, Iad pore over my mumas Encyclopaedia Britannica, try to copy Hans Holbein portraits, and watch documentaries about Henry VIII over and over. There was just something magical about the Tudors.
Continue reading...While religion doesnat feature much in video games, I find the theory that we are all characters in a huge sim ever more believable a and appealing
Itas Easter weekend, when Catholics like me spend hours in church listening to the extended editoras cut of a story whose ending we already know. Sitting there for the millionth performance of the Passion recently, I got to thinking about how few religious video game characters Iave ever encountered. Itas interesting that in a world where so many peopleas lives are dictated by religious beliefs, there is such a scarcity of religion in games. I mean, you could argue that all games are Jesus homages, with their respawns and extra lives, but even I admit thatas a stretch.
The Peggies in Far Cry 5 are a mind-controlling violent cult; those Founders in BioShock Infinite use religion to elevate and justify hatred of foreigners; and you have those wackadoodles in Fallout worshipping atomic bombs. Religion is almost exclusively used as means for leaders to get minions to do bad things. (Admittedly, they may be on to something here.) I guess that when so many video games are structured so as to set you up as a lone protagonist, up against a huge force, religion is a fairly obvious go-to villain.
Continue reading...He was a tough bouncer from Kent who, like the country around him, grew to accept social progress
My late dad was the hardest nightclub bouncer in a tough working-class area in Medway, Kent. He was a bodybuilder and terrifyingly quiet; you never quite knew what was going through his head.
My underage sixth-form mates knew he would refuse them entry if they tried to get into the sprawling, sticky floored and aggressively heterosexual nightclub where he worked the door with a formidable scowl. Luckily, I would sooner pour petrol in my eyes than set foot inside. He told me he broke the arms of any drunken louts giving him trouble. I believed him.
Gary Nunn is on X. Visit his free Substack here
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Continue reading...The Stanford neuroscientist is highly credentialed and endearingly earnest on his popular wellness podcast, but is now facing claims against his credibility
Iam going to divulge something rather embarrassing: earlier this year I got sucked deep into the aHuberspherea, the cult-like following of Andrew Huberman, the controversial neuroscientist and podcaster who is the subject of a viral New York Magazine article that came out this week. Huberman has racked up a massive (and lucrative) following with his data-driven aprotocolsa for a better life. These protocols involve things like taking enormous amounts of expensive supplements, ensuring you view early morning sunlight for 10-30 minutes after waking, carefully timing when you drink coffee and plunging yourself in ice baths.
Sounds like your run-of-the-mill scammy wellness influencer, right? Not quite. What makes Huberman different from others in the aGoop for brosa wellness space is that he is highly credentialed and endearingly earnest. The 48-year-old describes himself as a neuroscience professor at Stanford and a lab director at Stanford School of Medicine. He leans heavily on his affiliation with the Ivy League to bolster his credibility and frequently has other Stanford professors on his podcast, which was the third most popular in the world last year, according to Spotify.
Continue reading...There have been no changes since the ex-mogulas conviction as lawmakers fail to pass regulations to protect the public
There is a palpable feeling of relief in the cryptocurrency industry. Evangelists are preaching the good news that the industry has been purged of the Sam Bankman-Frieds, the Alex Mashinskys, the Do Kwons and the Changpeng Zhaos of the world. They proclaim that crypto can finally ascend from its purgatorial, awild westa days to become a respectable sector of the financial world blessed by regulators and speculators alike.
That exultant attitude has contributed to surging cryptocurrency prices, which surpassed previous all-time highs in the weeks leading up to Bankman-Friedas sentencing of 25 years in prison on Thursday.
Continue reading...After a Trump-backed purge of the RNC this month, promoting the 2020 stolen election lie has become a litmus test for loyalty
If youare seeking employment at the Republican National Committee (RNC), youare likely to be asked in your job interview if you believe the 2020 election was stolen. And if you say no, well, you might as well seek a job with George Santos.
After a Trump-backed purge of the RNC this month, agreeing to the false claim has become a kind of litmus test for gaining employment a no less than itas become a litmus test for running for public office as a Republican.
Continue reading...Too often cemeteries for enslaved people have been all but erased from history but how we remember matters
For archeologists, what defines people as human is how we bury our dead. Imagine, then, a society that relegates a whole community as legally inhuman, enslaved with no rights. In spite of slavery, African burial grounds are tangible reminders of the enslaved and free a defying oppressive circumstances by reclaiming peopleas humanity through acts of remembrance.
When I first visited the British overseas territory of St Helena in 2018 and saw the burial ground in Rupertas Valley, I was astounded by its size and significance. It unambiguously placed the island at the centre of the Middle Passage a tying the British empire to the institution of slavery in the US, the Caribbean, and globally.
Continue reading...A braid from a formerly enslaved African buried on the island was the catalyst for Annina van Neelas work to preserve and share these histories
At the end of January 2012, I arrived on St Helena after a six-day journey by ship from Cape Town. After being surrounded by water for nearly a week, the sight of land on the midnight-blue horizon was overwhelming. It was as though someone had forgotten their piece of land in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. 47 square miles of volcanic rock, 2,810 miles from the coast of Brazil and 1,610 miles from Angola a an oasis in a desert, an enigma.
I arrived on the island as part of the project team constructing St Helenaas first airport. Previously accessible only by sea, this incredible community, which had been defined by its isolation as an outpost and a place of exile for 500 years, would for the first time be easily reached by the rest of the world.
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