Mumia Abu-Jamal tells New York City students theyare on the right side of history by deciding anot to be silent and to speak outa

In a powerful and rousing live address to students at the City University of New York (CUNY) on Friday night, the incarcerated Black political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal praised the pro-Palestinian movement growing at US colleges as being on the right side of history.

aIt is a wonderful thing that you have decided not to be silent and decided to speak out against the repression that you see with your own eyes,a Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, said while calling from Pennsylvaniaas Mahanoy state prison. aYou are part of something massive, and you are part of something that is on the right side of history.

Pursuit of anon-stop executionsa causing psychological distress to corrections staff as states urged to widen gap between executions

The relentless pursuit of anon-stop executionsa by a rump of US death penalty states is exposing prison staff to extreme levels of psychological and physical stress, according to traumatized corrections officers who are appealing for help.

Though capital punishment is generally on the wane in America, with only five states carrying out executions last year, those states that remain active are showing a renewed determination. In some states, the pace of judicial killings is now so intense that prison guards are kept in an almost permanent state of readiness, with mock executions staged on a rolling basis.

US president and Israeli PM talk as Israel vows to invade Gaza city despite global concern for 1 million Palestinians sheltering there

The White House on Sunday said Joe Biden had again spoken with Benjamin Netanyahu as pressure builds on Israel and Hamas to reach a deal that would free some Israeli hostages and bring a ceasefire in the nearly seven-month-long war in Gaza.

There were no immediate details of the conversation, which took place as Israel vows to invade Gazaas southernmost city of Rafah despite global concern for more than 1 million Palestinians sheltering there. The US secretary of state is returning to the Middle East on Monday.

Governor issues state of emergency for 12 counties as authorities confirm a four-month-old baby was among the dead in Holdenville

At least four people, including a baby, were killed after a series of tornadoes struck Oklahoma on Saturday, amid a weekend of extreme weather that left dozens injured and a trail of destruction across the midwest.

Local authorities confirmed that a four-month-old infant was among the two people dead in Holdenville a one of the hardest hit towns in Oklahoma, located 80 miles south-east of Oklahoma City a where about 20 tornadoes hit late Saturday, leveling buildings and ripping off roofs. The victims have not been named, but at least four others were injured as the tornado left a path of devastation through the town of around 6,000 people.

Senate minority leader says he is anot advocating anything at this levela and that issue is too divisive among lawmakers for consensus

Asked whether he supports a federal abortion ban, US Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that he is anot advocating anything at this levela.

The Republican, during remarks in a new interview published by NBCas Meet the Press, stopped short of saying whether or not he supported a 15-week federal ban on abortion with exceptions, but he instead portrayed the issue as aa practical mattera that was too divisive among federal lawmakers to result in a consensus among them.

CDC says incidents at unlicensed medical spa are first documented cases of virus transmitted by a cosmetic procedure using needles

Three women who were diagnosed with HIV after getting avampire faciala procedures at an unlicensed New Mexico medical spa are believed to be the first documented cases of people contracting the virus through a cosmetic procedure using needles, federal health officials said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its Morbidity and Mortality Report last week that an investigation into the clinic from 2018 through 2023 showed it apparently reused disposable equipment intended for one-time use.

South Dakota governor says she aunderstands why some people are upseta about story of shooting family puppy but points to state law

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, on Sunday again defended killing a family dog and goat on her farm, two days after the Guardian revealed how she describes those actions in a forthcoming book.

aI can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book a No Going Back,a Noem wrote on Twitter/X.

US president made fun of Republican frontrunneras legal woes while critics of his handling of Gaza war protested outside

Joe Biden has shown no mercy to Donald Trump with a series of barbed jokes about his election rival, telling a gathering of Washingtonas political and media elites: aIam a grown man running against a six-year-old.a

The White House Correspondentsa Association (WHCA) dinner on Saturday night provided the ideal platform for Biden to continue a recent run of taking the fight to Trump with more aggressive rhetoric, cutting humour and personal insults.

With abortion on the line, a Black conservative provocateur is pitted against the stateas center-left Jewish attorney general

In front of a conservative talkshow host two weeks ago, Mark Robinson, North Carolinaas Republican candidate for governor, was grousing a bit about being snubbed by the stateas Democratic governor on a matter of race.

aHe talks a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion, but apparently the line for diversity, equity and inclusion stops at the Republican party,a Robinson told Lockwood Phillips. aRoy Cooper has had several chances to congratulate me on the accomplishment of being the first Black lieutenant governor, and he has never taken it.a

aTrumpas rant against me is a barely coherent,a says independent White House hopeful and challenges ex-president to a debate

Robert F Kennedy Jr has dismissed Donald Trump as aunhingeda after a social media tirade from the former Republican president accused the independent White House hopeful of being a aDemocrat planta and awasted protest votea.

aWhen frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged,a Kennedy wrote Saturday on X in a post that doubled as a debate challenge. aPresident Trumpas rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate.a

Star of Lupin says notions of justice, equality and fraternity have been shaken along with his optimism

The French actor Omar Sy, the star of the hit Netflix series Lupin, has said France must move away from the individualism that is fragmenting society and rebuild a sense of the collective if it is to hold back the far right.

In a series of media interviews to promote a new book about his life, Sy said the notions of justice, equality and fraternity had been shaken, and it was hard to be a black person in France.

Researchers are calling for the retraction of misleading anti-abortion studies that could influence judges in critical cases

The retraction of three peer-reviewed articles prominently cited in court cases on the so-called abortion pill a mifepristone a has put a group of papers by anti-abortion researchers in the scientific limelight.

Seventeen sexual and reproductive health researchers are calling for four peer-reviewed studies by anti-abortion researchers to be retracted or amended. The papers, critics contend, are afatally flaweda and muddy the scientific consensus for courts and lawmakers who lack the scientific training to understand their methodological flaws.

Trumpas former fixer to appear as prosecution witness, while Avenatti, serving prison sentence, willing to testify for defense

As Donald Trumpas hush-money trial enters its second week, jurors will be asked to focus on the testimony of his former Mr Fixit a the disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen.

Cohen, who served as Trumpas personal attorney for 12 years until 2018, is acting as a witness for the New York district attorney, Alvin Bragg. The case could turn on Cohenas testimony about payments sought by two women, the porn star Stormy Daniels and the Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, and how those payments were made and allegedly disguised, as prosecutors contend, in violation of accounting and political campaign laws.

Speakeras crude interventions on campus have forced many to question if his motives on Ukraine were quite so heroic

Democrat Nancy Pelosi cited his aintegritya and described him as acourageousa. Republican Michael McCaul called him a aprofile in couragea. CNN hailed him as aan unlikely Churchilla.

Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, began the week showered in plaudits for leading the House in approving $95bn in urgently needed wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies.

The effectiveness of Tinder and Hinge is hard to judge without access to their data. But now researchers are creating a free alternative with full transparency

A class-action lawsuit filed in a US federal court last Valentineas Day accuses Match Group a the owners of Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid dating apps, among others a of using a apredatory business modela and of doing everything in its power to keep users hooked, in flagrant opposition to Hingeas claim that it is adesigned to be deleteda.

The lawsuit crystallised an ocean of dissatisfaction with the apps, and stimulated a new round of debate over their potential to harm mental health, but for scientists who study romantic relationships it sidestepped the central issue: do they work? Does using the apps increase your chances of finding your soulmate, or not? The answer is, nobody knows.

Having a baby led to an unexpected disease and then surgery that altered Lauren Benstedas body for ever. She talks about the pain she felt in being separated from her newborn, and her journey to learn to accept her new life

aWeare going to have to disconnect you,a says the man at my bedside. Since I was hospitalised a fortnight ago, this man and his team have been trying to save my colon, a 5ft-long tangle of ulcers and inflammation. The speed and scale of my colonas fury has fascinated doctors. I imagine them in their morning meetings, poring over my colonoscopy with the mystification usually reserved for the Voynich manuscript. But time is up. Unless they adisconnecta me, my bowel will perforate and I will die.

Disconnection, explains the doctor, involves whipping the whole colon out a here he mimes pulling a rabbit from a hat a and diverting my digestion through a hole in my abdomen called a stoma. He sketches my new anatomy on a piece of paper, quick as a high-street caricaturist. He cannot imagine what it is like to receive this news a to hear your body will change for ever and with it your whole life too a just as I cannot imagine what it is to break it. I want to grab his hand, ask him how. How does a body give birth to a healthy baby and then burst into flames?

Donat be deluded by media hullabaloo a but smart employers can get creative with schedules to attract and retain talent

According to CNN a4-day workweeks may be around the corner. A third of Americaas companies are exploring them.a CNBC says: aThis US company tested a 4-day workweek a and says it made workers happier and more productive.a Newsweek tells us: aMillennials Are Ready For a Four-Day Week.a So why do all of my clients say nope?

According to an advocacy organization, more than 300 companies have four-day workweeks and, per the reports above, many others are apparently atestinga the concept. I admit that Iave spoken to none of these companies but Iam not sure I have to. I spend my life working with small and mid-sized businesses and I know a PR stunt when I see one. Hey, good for them. In these times of tight labor - itas a great marketing campaign. aPeople! Come work for us except you donat have to do as much work and weall still pay you the same!a Now thatas a company I want to work for.

Life at itas essence is about time and by 2050, nearly 3.7 million people are expected to live up to 100. What can we do to get the most out of our bonus years?

Loneliness. Ageism. Physical limitations, cognitive decline and, increasingly, elder poverty.

The downsides of living to 100 and beyond are numerous. But so are the upsides. Life at its essence is about time a time to live, time to laugh, time to love a and many of those who have achieved a triple-digit age are living their best lives as centenarians.

A new approach aims to restore fish levels in the Yukon River but some feel it unfairly targets traditional practices while failing to tackle huge losses to industrial fishing in the ocean

Earlier this month Alaska officials announced a new plan they say could revive the Yukon Riveras struggling salmon population. The 2,000-mile waterway that runs from Canadaas Yukon Territory to the Bering Sea has seen sharp declines in its Chinook, or king salmon, in recent years.

The new strategy aims to restore the number of fish that reach their northern spawning areas near the Canadian border to 71,000, up from about 15,000 that reached the Canadian border in 2023, by suspending commercial, sport, domestic and personal use fisheries in the Yukon River until 2030. Previously, fishing closures were revisited each year.

The socialite and collector prioritised art over family and claimed she had 1,000 lovers. But a new UK exhibition tells another tale a that of the five years she spent in Hampshire and Sussex leading a relatively ordinary life, as her granddaughter explains

Beside the Grand Canal, on a wall of the palazzo she called home for 30 years, a portrait of Peggy Guggenheim fizzes with her larger-than-life personality, a personality that once reverberated between these walls, and across Venice. In the painting, Peggy wears a pair of her signature outsize sunglasses, and clutches three of her beloved Lhasa Apsos terriers. Today, Peggyas palazzo is a museum housing the art collection she amassed from the 1930s to the 1970s, featuring work by everyone from Picasso to Pollock, Ernst to Kandinsky, Duchamp to Tanguy, all of whom she knew and many of whom she slept with. The portrait hangs outside the office of the museumas director, who happens also to be Peggyas fiercest critic. She is Karole Vail, daughter of Peggyas son, Sindbad.

Vail has been director of the Venice Guggenheim (there are related Guggenheim museums in New York and Bilbao) since 2017, and itas fair to say that her take on her grandmother is mired in the belief that, while Peggy was a superlative art collector, she left much to be desired as a mother and grandmother. aShe was obsessed with the men in her life: she never focused on her children in the way they needed,a says Vail.

As many as 28% of young adults in the UK do not drink. Here, three of them explain why their relationship with alcohol has changed

A recent World Health Organization (WHO) study found Great Britain has the worst rate of child alcohol consumption in the world a with more than half of children in England, Scotland and Wales having drunk alcohol by the age of 13.

Yet this is coupled with a growing move towards sobriety among young people. Alcohol education charity Drinkaware found that, as of 2021, young adults were the most likely to not drink alcohol, at 28%, whereas older adults were the least likely, at 15%.

In a new book, Robert KD Colby of the University of Mississippi shows how the Confederacy remained committed to slavery

While the civil war is associated with the end of slavery in the US, the so-called peculiar institution survived throughout much of the Confederacy right to the end of the conflict. Thatas the thought-provoking narrative of a comprehensive new book by Robert KD Colby, a history professor at the University of Mississippi.

aMany Confederates saw slavery as indelibly bound up with their bid for independence, and used the slave trade to try to build a world around an independent slaveholding republic,a Colby says.

Sexual violence within the queer community is rarely visible in the media a we need to see our stories on the small screen

• Jeffrey Ingold was a LGBTQ+ consultant on Baby Reindeer

Richard Gaddas critically acclaimed Netflix series Baby Reindeer has proved wildly popular since its release two weeks ago.Itas a harrowing, semi-autobiographical tale about a young bisexual man who is stalked by an older woman. Much of the discussion around the show has focused on aMarthaa, the fictional portrayal of Gaddas real-life stalker. But Baby Reindeer is also a story of how trauma can shape the present, of sexual violence and its far-reaching impact, and sexuality.

For two years, I worked on Baby Reindeer as the showas LGBTQ+ consultant, reviewing scripts to feed back on how LGBTQ+ people and issues are represented, providing training on creating an inclusive set for cast and crew, and ultimately, acting as a resource to answer questions or concerns from anyone working on the show.

From Everest to Machu Picchu, we canat get enough of those amust-seea places. Itas time to show some restraint

Climbing Everest used to be an even more dangerous pursuit than it is today, requiring huge bravery, endurance and skill. Even then the mountain could kill. A century ago, it claimed the lives of two of Britainas finest climbers, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine.

The worldas highest mountain eventually succumbed to human challenge when, almost three decades later, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay carried the flags of Britain, the UN, and Nepal to its summit on 29 May 1953. Sporadic trips involving handfuls of explorers continued over succeeding years.

The liberal justice has been called the supreme courtas conscience but we canat afford a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

A month ago Josh Barro (a man) at the Atlantic wrote a piece headlined Sonia Sotomayor Should Retire Now. Around the same time the Guardianas Mehdi Hasan (a man) similarly opined that afor the sake of all of us, Sonia Sotomayor needs to retire from the US supreme court.a The University of Colorado Boulder law professor Paul Campos (a man) also went on CNN to argue that 69-year-old Sotomayor should consider stepping down as a justice in order to give Joe Biden time to fill the seat with another liberal judge should the worst happen. And pundit Nate Silver (you guessed it a| another man) said much the same thing.

We often have as much in common with strangers as our relatives, according to studies a so why do we still love to say our children are like us?

How alike are parents and kids? Quite, right? Surely we all play that game. I, for example, am competitive like my dad (but without a shred of his energy); my sister got my motheras compassion and I got her lust for crispy potato products and staying in bed. My husband and his mum, meanwhile, share a lively debating style (Iam choosing my words carefully); itas why their conversations get so a| animated.

Itas an assumption that transcends geography: there are athe apple doesnat fall far from the treea equivalents worldwide a mostly tree-related, although I like the Portuguese aa fishas child knows how to swima.

Pots of slime, pig heads, sexy dollsa| we were only looking for a present for my sonas fourth birthday

This week I found myself in a large toy shop in a retail park off Londonas North Circular. We were looking, in a pleasant panic, for a present for my sonas fourth birthday. His birthdays always hit me in an odd way, a bit like those slaps round the face they have in films to stop the woman screaming. Because: he was born at the beginning of the pandemic and, just as his early developmental stages like sitting up or eating solids worked as a marker of time having passed, of us having survived, so do his birthdays. It is four years, this means, since those tight, hot days of the first Covid lockdown, of sanitiser-cracked hands and the brisk hell of home schooling, and every time the anniversary comes round I find myself having to sit down, take a breath.

Anyway, this toy shop, good God. Do you have any ideas what toys are today? I was not prepared. There are the board games, which include your Guess Whoas and so on, but they are overwhelmed by other games called things like, Who Can Poo On Who and Fart School and Diarrhoea of a CEO and I may be misremembering titles slightly yes, but this was very much the gist, boxes with rabid cartoon characters covered in phlegm and instructions that involve, for eg, burping oneas name.

When we mistakenly believe we live in a meritocracy, those in need are left behind

Life is a game of chance. Or thatas what I tell myself when Iam losing at my newest hobby, poker. Of course itas a different story when I win the pot: then I chalk it up to skill. So it was crushing to hear an experienced playeras take when I fessed up to the fact I seem to do worse when Iam trying to play well. aThatas because no strategy is better than a bad strategy: it makes you harder to predict than a very basic game plan.a Thatas me told.

This is partly what it is to be human. We like to attribute our successes to effort and talent, but when we fail itas more comforting to blame bad luck. The more successful someone is, the more marked this tendency becomes and it has a knock-on impact on how we understand the world more generally.

#MeTooas real legacy may not be ending predatorsa impunity so much as highlighting the tenacity of that impunity

Usually, rape isnat reported. When it is reported, it is often not charged. And when it is charged, it rarely leads to a conviction. These facts shape both our cultural understanding of sexual violence and womenas sense of their own embodied lives, clarifying something many of us already know a that while sexual violence is technically illegal and officially abhorred, it is also tolerated in practice, with actual arrests and convictions being so rare that most sexual violence is de facto decriminalized.

Only occasionally does a notable rape conviction come to pass; when it does, its very rarity highlights this dissonance, making plain the gulf between how rape is officially talked about and how it is usually treated. Now, that gulf has come to the fore again, because on Thursday one of the most high-profile rape convictions in American history was overturned.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Americans are recognizing we must do more for Palestine and are signaling dissatisfaction with the party, as they did in 2008

The US is just months away from the 2024 election, and the prospect of a second Trump presidency grows each day as he evades repercussions for the expansive list of indictments heas accrued. With this reality looming, many Democratic party loyalists are panicked about the aleave it blanka movement, in which hundreds of thousands of voters have marked auncommitteda on their primary ballots to protest against US support of Israelas war on Gaza.

Some worry that a protest vote at the ballot box is an automatic vote for Trump. Theyare sure that even during times of mass dissent, harm reduction is the only moral voting strategy. Theyare afraid that this election will mean the end of democracy, or that the re-election of Trump will guarantee unprecedented disharmony.

Camonghne Felix is an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School