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Nomi Kaltmann supported her boyfriend Daniel’s campaign for federal parliament when he was 21. Watching the results roll in, she felt immense pride Find more stories from The moment I knew series Daniel and I went to the same high school in Melbourne. He was a year older than me, and we must have passed each other thousands of times, but I have no memory of ever talking to him. We knew of each other but we didn’t know each other’s names. We met properly for the first time at a pre-drinks when I was in my first year of university. He was holding a six-pack of beer and looked vaguely familiar. I introduced myself, he offered me one of his drinks and we got talking. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/IqButOm

Washington state officials swarmed to scene to find 70,000lbs of hives and bees abuzz in a sticky situation Officials near the US border were abuzz after being relentlessly attacked on Friday morning by a swarm of fugitives: honeybees had escaped after a truck carrying hives overturned near the Canadian border. About 250m honeybees flew free of the truck around 4am a few miles south of Canada. The truck that was transporting around 70,000lbs of hives and honeybees rolled over on a road in north-western Washington state . Local sheriff deputies and bee experts swarmed to the scene, where they removed the box hives to help recover and rescue as many bees as possible. The driver of the truck was not injured. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/gqBlpXe

Organizer points to president’s anti-diversity push as companies join Adidas and Clorox in withdrawing support In another blow to one of the largest celebrations of LGTBQ+ people in North America, Pride Toronto has unexpectedly lost two more major corporate sponsors, just weeks before the festival in a setback the festival’s organizer says is direct result of Donald Trump ’s campaign to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the US. Google and Home Depot both announced their plans to abandon the festival in the form of one-line emails, said Kojo Modeste, the executive director of the Canadian event. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/EqGdlwD

Twenty-two plaintiffs between ages seven and 25 allege government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach Twenty-two young Americans have filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over its anti- environment executive orders. By intentionally boosting oil and gas production and stymying carbon-free energy, federal officials are violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty, alleges the lawsuit, filed on Thursday. The federal government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach by breaching congressional mandates to protect ecosystems and public health, argue the plaintiffs, who are between the ages of seven and 25 and hail from the heavily climate-impacted states of Montana, Hawaii, Oregon, California and Florida. They also say officials’ emissions-increasing and science-suppressing orders have violated the state-created danger doctrine, a legal principle meant to prevent government actors from inflicting injury upon their citizens. Continue reading... ...

Trump officials offer to move 300 birds to Mehmet Oz’s Florida ranch after Canada’s kill order over avian flu fears What is bird flu, and should you be worried about it? Senior officials in the Trump administration have intervened in attempt to save more than 300 ostriches on a farm in British Columbia which the Canadian government had ordered to be killed over fears the flock is infected with avian flu . Robert F Kennedy Jr , the US health secretary, and Mehmet Oz, a physician and former TV host appointed by Trump as the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid , have offered to move the birds to Oz’s ranch in Florida – despite the kill order imposed by Canadian health authorities. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/9eijZ3K

Registrations for new vehicles in April drop to half 2024 figure despite a broader rise in battery electric cars Sales of new Tesla electric cars are sliding across Europe, data suggests, amid a political backlash against its billionaire chief executive, Elon Musk. The figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) showed registrations for new Teslas halved in April compared to the same month a year earlier, despite a broader rise in battery electric vehicles overall. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/9GxqAXn

French president denies quarrelling with Brigitte Macron after footage is seized on by Russia and far-right accounts Emmanuel Macron has denied he and his wife, Brigitte, had an altercation after a viral video promoted by Russian state media and French far-right accounts appeared to show her pushing him in the face as they prepared to get off a plane in Vietnam. The video, shot by an Associated Press camera operator, shows the French president appearing in the doorway of the plane at the start of a visit to Hanoi. His wife’s hand appears to shove him, causing him to step back before recovering and waving. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/PD4oMjX

St George’s Bristol The former church was an excellent setting for Robert Hollingworth and his group’s superb exploration of Benevoli’s baroque masses for multiple choirs I Fagiolini may be a small vocal ensemble, but their director Robert Hollingworth thinks big, always pushing boundaries in an imaginative way. Their 2023 recording of music by the 17th century Orazio Benevoli – a leading composer in Rome’s post-Palestrina era – was much admired and they’re now exploring more of Benevoli’s masses for multiple choirs. Bristol’s St George’s , whose gallery runs on three full sides of the former church, offered an excellent setting. In Benevoli’s Missa Angelus Domini for three choirs of four voices – a single voice to each part as was the usual practice – the complexity of the interweaving lines emerged with clarity, the singing gutsy rather than overly refined. Individual voices were free to come through the texture with colourful flourishes when appropriate, the primacy of the text...

It’s like Midsomer Murders with jokes, or Rosemary and Thyme – but good. This fun new murder mystery bounces along with verve. It’s a cut above By some curious dint of mathematics, one of life’s greatest pleasures is coming across something that is just a little bit better than it needs to be. It’s such rarity, such a treat – and to pessimists, such a shock to the system – that it becomes disproportionately, though still genuinely, delightful. Such a phenomenon is Death Valley, a new Sunday night comedy drama in which an amateur sleuth helps the police solve crimes in a bucolic village – usually English, this time Welsh – with an astronomically high murder rate and a suspect under every gooseberry bush and felt hat. So far, so Gently cum Midsomer cum Marple cum Agatha Raisin cum pull-up-a-chair-and-a-teacake-and-enjoy. Death Valley was on BBC One Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3fkZO7e

Marilyn’s Mater Paddle, now in its second year, held at Balcarrick beach to raise funds for women’s cancer care Almost 200 Marilyn Monroe lookalikes have made a splash by taking part in a themed charity swim at an Irish beach. Sporting retro swimsuits and blond wigs, swimmers dressed as the film star took the plunge at Balcarrick beach in Donabate, County Dublin, for Marilyn’s Mater Paddle. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Aypi1CD

Six of Sunday’s 10 games potentially have something riding on them – testament to the English elite’s enduring rude health In a perfect world, what would the final day of the Premier League season look like? You’d have two sides going for the title – perhaps three or even four, all playing teams of similar standard and motivation. You’d have maybe six teams contesting the three relegation slots, possibly playing each other, and also a skirmish for European qualification. Ideally all 10 games would mean something and there should be times over the course of the afternoon when each side have the set of results they need to achieve their aims. And there should definitely be a moment when it becomes apparent that a harassed television presenter has forgotten or overlooked a goal so viewers can mutter furiously at the screen: “For heavens’ sake, that puts Brentford in ninth.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/oImrzAX

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, evacuations in Ukraine, tornadoes in Missouri and the FA Cup final at Wembley: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/hAMweol

Legislation would dismantle regulations in farming, mining and energy, increasing risk of widespread destruction Environmental activists in Brazil have decried a dramatic rollback of environmental safeguards after the senate approved a bill that would dismantle licensing processes and increase the risk of widespread destruction. The upper house passed the so-called “devastation bill” with 54 votes to 13 late on Wednesday, paving the way for projects ranging from mining and infrastructure to energy and farming to receive regulatory approval with little to no environmental oversight. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/E2aNwi0

Cannes film festival Focusing on the rogue’s gallery of hypocrites and crooks surrounding him, Assange himself is in the background of a pretty definitive examination Julian Assange sits at the centre of this gripping account of the WikiLeaks founder’s rise, fall and protracted seven-year limbo inside the Ecuadorian embassy. Eugene Jarecki’s documentary takes its title from the price the incoming Ecuadorian government supposedly charged the Trump administration for helping furnish his extradition to the US, thereby reneging on a promise of political asylum. If The Six Billion Dollar Man doesn’t rebuild Assange, exactly, that’s because it’s more interested in comprehensively demolishing his enemies. Compared to the hypocrites, scoundrels and crooks who surround him, the man himself looks almost virtuous. Actually Assange is mostly a background presence here. He’s more talked about than talking up; a karmic victim of his own success. While even his supporters admit to his personal fai...

Homeland security agent Gerard Gannon testifies about federal raid on Miami Beach property in March last year The federal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs entered its eighth day of testimony in New York on Wednesday, with a homeland security agent resuming testimony about the federal raid of Combs’s Miami property last year. Combs, 55, is facing charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He was arrested in September and has pleaded not guilty. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/ezb84kJ

UK justice secretary says victims should have chance to give impact statements as new bill goes through parliament Defendants who refuse to appear in court for sentencing are giving a “final insult to victims and their families”, the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said, as an impact statement from the mother of a murdered girl was read to MPs. During the second reading of the victims and courts bill, the Labour MP Anneliese Midgley read a statement on behalf of Cheryl Korbel, the mother of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, who was shot dead in her Liverpool home in 2022. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/diSlR6V

Report finds Nestlé used purification treatments that were unauthorised for natural mineral water France’s lucrative mineral water industry is under scrutiny after a report by the senate found the French government had covered up a scandal over illegal filtering treatments of premium brands. At the heart of the report, released on Monday, is France’s world-famous fizzy water, Perrier . Obtained from a source in southern France and traditionally served on ice with a slice of lemon, Perrier has long been long known as the “champagne of table waters”. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/bqEyxCv

Chris Murphy says Trump strategically visited Gulf states ‘willing to pay him off’ as backlash rises against luxury offer Donald Trump ’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a leading Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut , condemned the “ flying grift ” on NBC’s Meet the Press as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/UrbKOqG

Horden Methodist Church, County Durham Ensemble ’84 generate an exhilarating racket in this gutsy rendition of Brecht’s play about the thirty years’ war The noise is constant. It is in the eight marimbas lined up across the stage, which add a South African bounce to Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 epic of the thirty years’ war. It is in the operatic songs, all lush harmonies and pulsing percussion. And it is in the vocal effects of the large cast, adding birdsong or insect rhythms to the battlefields. Sometimes it is in the crackle of a plastic bottle to suggest fire, the shuddering boom of a drum to indicate an execution, or the grind of hands across metal for machine-gun fire. All of it is generated by the actors, much like the set, by the ensemble with Janet Brown and Eve Booth: a resourceful collection of corrugated iron, wooden pallets, old tyres and buckets. It gives Mark Dornford-May’s production an in-built theatricality: each performance created anew. Continue reading... from The ...

As a song contest on a space station descends into terror, Ncuti Gatwa gives his most disturbing performance yet – and the Doctor in rage mode is terrifying For an episode that started out like a joyfully camp romp into the world of Eurovision, Juno Dawson turned in a script that truly had ice in its heart, in just the way the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) told Kid (Freddie Fox) that the Time Lord now had ice in his hearts. Doctor Who stories often feature alien invasions, conquest, destruction and the desire for revenge, but they have seldom so bleakly painted the determination to carry out a mass casualty terrorism event. That in turn provoked one of the most extreme reactions we have ever seen from the lead character. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/E5mZ0uV