Major League Baseball has incorporated the statistics of former Negro Leagues players into its historical records on its website, meaning legendary leaders in some categories like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb have now been replaced in the record books by players who were not allowed to play on the same fields as them during segregation. Josh Gibson, one of the greatest sluggers in the history of the Negro Leagues, is now listed as MLB's new all-time career leader in batting average at .372, moving ahead of Ty Cobb at .367. The MLB website shows Gibson also overtaking Babe Ruth in career slugging percentage.
An Australian discovery has added weight to a long-held theory about the painful condition – but relief for most patients is still elusive
After enduring years of experimental and unhelpful treatments in Australia to treat her chronic urinary tract infections, Grace* took the drastic measure of flying to the UK to seek help for symptoms so painful she “could barely walk down the street”.
While common and uncomplicated cases of the infections, known as UTIs, are usually easily treated with a short course of antibiotics, this often does not work for chronic, recurring cases like Grace’s. Left untreated, UTIs can cause permanent kidney damage and life-threatening infections.
Former Australian prime minister issues warning that young men’s thinking on the issue is going backward
Former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has said global progress on gender equality is “really glacial and slow” as she warned that it is going backwards among young people.
Gillard cited recent polling by King’s College London’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, which showed that 51% of respondents believe that men are doing too much to support gender equality, while 46% think that men are now discriminated against.
New poll gives Labour its biggest lead since Liz Truss meltdown as ‘Tory towns’ gain most from new funds
The Tory general election campaign hit more trouble on Saturday as Rishi Sunak faced accusations of using levelling up funds to win votes and Labour opened its biggest poll lead since the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss.
As Sunak tried to fire up his party’s campaign before the first crucial TV debate with Keir Starmer on Tuesday, it emerged that more than half of the 30 towns each promised £20m of regeneration funding on Saturday were in constituencies won by Tory MPs at the last election.
The Tories and Labour are forking out more than ever on social media ads, but going viral isn’t easy. We speak to influencers and strategists about the messages and memes
Why would you hold an election in November? The question came from digital marketing guru Mike Harris and was asked in a message to his friend, Labour’s campaign manager, Morgan McSweeney, earlier this year. Digital advertising is more expensive in October and November because the internet is swamped with ads for Christmas and Black Friday, said Harris, the founder of communications agency 89up. Why not pick a cheaper time of year?
Teflon Don has become Felon Don, but the US constitution has no objection to him holding the highest office
It was the moment America, or at least America’s politicians and media, had been waiting for. It was the day justice finally caught up with Donald Trump. The former president’s manipulation of the 2016 election, by hushing up a sex scandal that threatened his chances, and his attempts to discredit a criminal justice system intent on punishing him, was famously thwarted. It was an all-time presidential and judicial first, a historic result that transformed Teflon Don into Felon Don, thanks to a jury of 12 ordinary men and women and a brave prosecutor, Alvin Bragg.
Looked at another way, however, last week’s much anticipated dramatic denouement of the criminal trial of the New York playboy, billionaire and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate may turn out to be less pivotal than anticipated. According to the US networks, most Americans tuned out weeks ago, not least because cameras were barred from the Manhattan courtroom. One not untypical public survey found that 67% of respondents said a conviction would make no difference to how they voted this autumn. The 34 guilty verdicts were an overnight sensation. But they may not significantly shift the political dial.
US representative and failed contender for president says Kathy Hochul should grant pardon ‘for the good of the country’
The outgoing Democratic US representative who failed in his presidential primary challenge against Joe Biden called on the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, to pardon Donald Trump over his criminal conviction for hush-money payments to influence the 2016 election “for the good of the country”.
Minnesota representative Dean Phillips, who was the first Democrat to call on fellow party member Henry Cuellar to resign following bribery charges against the Texas representative, urged for the pardon on Friday in a post on X.
Former Tory minister admits at festival that he felt a fraud due to need to give the impression he was in three places at once
Former Conservative MP Rory Stewart found being a politician “very yucky” and felt like a fraud, he told an audience at Hay festival on Saturday.
Asked whether he would consider going back into politics, he said that he found being a politician “personally very, very unpleasant” and “didn’t like it”, adding: “I feel like a fraud all the time, in a whole series of ways.”
Unearthed notes owned by the renowned philosopher Jeremy Bentham reveals the roots of his influential ethics
One of the dangerous “fools” caricatured in a medieval printed satire called Ship of Fools is the Foolish Reader. He is shown in an illustration surrounded by his many learned volumes, but he doesn’t read any of them. This idiot, depicted with many others, including a Feasting Fool, a Preaching Fool and a Procrastinating Fool, was a warning to the wise by the German author Sebastian Brandt 530 years ago.
Now research at a London university has unearthed a rare English 1509 copy of this book once owned by the renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. And the 1494 satirical allegory, which pokes fun at various kinds of public folly, sheds new light on Bentham’s influential ethics.
There is still an expensive war to fight, and if EU and UK politicians insist on using taxpayer funds for it, there will be little left to spend on public services
There were hopes that 2024 would be a good year. Economists talked of a soft landing, by which they meant a solid rebound from last year’s high-inflation, high-interest shock. A drop in inflation would spark cuts to the cost of borrowing while trade expanded, unemployment stayed low, and household disposable incomes increased.
This cheerful scenario was going to be played out across Europe and allow the EU and UK to pursue many of the goals, not least tackling climate change, that were delayed as ministers sought to protect business and household finances from the fallout from the pandemic and the Ukraine war.
Connectivity is continuing to transform the Automotive and Smart Mobility ecosystem, increasing cybersecurity risks as more functionality is exposed. 2023 marked the beginning of a new era in automotive cybersecurity. Each attack carries greater significance today, and may have global financial and operational repercussions for various stakeholders. Upstream’s 2024 Global Annual Cybersecurity Report examines how […]
Welcome to the Check Point 2024 Cyber Security Report. In 2023, the world of cyber security witnessed significant changes, with the nature and scale of cyber attacks evolving rapidly. This year, we saw cyber threats stepping out from the shadows of the online world into the spotlight, grabbing the attention of everyone from government agencies […]
Zimperium’s latest research explores a dynamic and expanding threat landscape by meticulously analyzing 29 banking malware families and associated trojan applications. This year alone, the research team identified 10 new active families, signifying the continued investment from threat actors in targeting mobile banking applications. The 19 adversaries who persist from last year reveal new capabilities […]
Today’s cyber landscape is threatened by a multitude of malicious actors who have the tools to conduct large-scale fraud schemes, hold our money and data for ransom, and endanger our national security. Profit-driven cybercriminals and nation-state adversaries alike have the capability to paralyze entire school systems, police departments, healthcare facilities, and individual private sector entities. […]
Senior adviser who worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown says there is an ‘urgent imperative’ for a new government to address wealth inequality in Britain
A key New Labour adviser who worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Downing Street says there is an “overwhelming economic and ethical case” for Keir Starmer’s party to impose higher taxes on wealth if it wins the general election.
Writing in the Observer Patrick Diamond, professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London, and his colleague Colm Murphy, a lecturer in British politics, say a Labour government will need to look at radical ways to raise money, not least because the plans for higher economic growth that the party is relying on may never materialise.
The Brown-era adage ‘Prudence with a purpose’ could be the way to obtain the economic stability that has eluded every UK government since the 2008 financial crisis
Keir Starmer appears destined for Downing Street. Even so, as the election campaign rumbles on, his party will be challenged to articulate a compelling platform that secures not only the keys to Number 10 but also the economic stability that has eluded every UK government since the 2008 financial crisis. That will demand fiscal discipline delivered not only through a prudent approach to public spending but also fundamental reform of our tax system.
In headline policy, Labour is committed to fiscal rules on spending and debt. Rachel Reeves promises to move towards balanced current spending and to secure a falling debt-to-GDP ratio by the fifth year of the forecast. As her speech on Tuesday argues, Labour believes such rules will underpin “stability” and “growth”.
ITV News on Friday night reported on a “severe mental health crisis” at Wethersfield in Essex, with many incidents of suicide and self-harm including five to 10 suicide attempts and 10 of self-harm in January this year alone – the highest level since the site opened.
Both Labour and Conservative are pledging to look after the older voter while Gen Z is being ignored
Baby boomers are being courted with financial inducements from both main political parties. Millennials and Gen Z, not so much. Here we assess the intergenerational impact of the election so far.
Daisy Ridley stars in the true-life tale of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the Channel, in a drama that stretches the truth somewhat
You wait years for a stirring feminist true-life endurance swimming drama, then two come along within 12 months of each other. Young Woman and the Sea stars Daisy Ridley as Gertrude (Trudy) Ederle, the plucky butcher’s daughter from New York who, in 1926, became the first woman to swim the Channel. It follows Nyad, starring Annette Bening as Diana Nyad, who in 2013 swam from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64.
What we learn from watching both in relatively quick succession is that there are only so many ways that directors can inject tension into the inherently monotonous act of ploughing through the ocean for hours on end. Jellyfish peril figures prominently in both films, as does unprocessed childhood trauma. In the case of Ederle, a close brush with death as a young child battling measles means that she was subsequently treated as the runt of the family, and later her all-girl swimming team.
Sharing digitally altered “deepfake” pornographic images will attract a penalty of six years’ jail, or seven years for those who also created them, under proposed new national laws to go before federal parliament next week.
The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, is expected to introduce legislation on Wednesday to create a new criminal offence of sharing, without consent, sexually explicit images that have been digitally created using artificial intelligence or other forms of technology.
The prime minister said if Starmer was elected then he would also pander to the left in power
SNP leader John Swinney has urged people to take part in a “Scottish national service” by using the general election to vote Tory MPs out of office, PA Media reports.
Scotland’s first minister said his party could “remove the remaining rump of Tory MPs”.
Party says policy is costly, unnecessary and part of a Tory war on the younger generation
The Liberal Democrats are to call for the abolition of voter ID at polling stations, describing the policy as part of a “Tory war on the younger generation”.
The Lib Dems will say in their election manifesto that they will “lead the charge” to ditch the policy in the next parliament because it is costly, unnecessary, is addressing a problem that does not exist, and makes it harder for young people to vote.
Rishi Sunak was confronted by a student who asked him why he “hates young people so much”.
Henry Hassell, a 16-year-old singer-songwriter, who lives in west Devon, posed the question on Wednesday while the prime minister was on a campaign visit to a local pub.
Migrants seek redress for ‘immense distress’ from deportations now thrown into chaos by election announcement
Asylum seekers detained by the Home Office and threatened with deportation to Rwanda are set to take legal action against the government after Rishi Sunak admitted that no flights will take place before the general election.
The Home Office started raiding accommodation and detaining people who arrived at routine immigration-reporting appointments on 29 April in a nationwide push codenamed Operation Vector.
Trump and his Republican allies sow distrust in US judicial system as analysts warn backlash could tear at social fabric in already volatile election year
A shameful day in American history. A sham show trial. A kangaroo court. A total witch-hunt. Worthy of a banana republic.
These were the reactions from senior elected Republicans, who once claimed the mantle of the party of law and order, to the news that Donald Trump had become the first former US president convicted of a crime.
Justices to address abortion, guns, social media – and whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for role in January 6 insurrection
The US supreme court is poised to deliver a raft of politically sensitive decisions as it ends its judicial term, addressing tumultuous issues including whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his role in the January 6 insurrection in 2021, abortion access for millions of women and the basic functioning of the federal government.
With the court entering its traditional June climax, observers are bracing themselves for yet another potentially seismic four weeks that could radically reshape American public life. Matters before the court include a possible loosening of gun laws in a country with already exceptionally lax controls, and new guardrails on how social media platforms deal with misinformation.
Dublin does not seem a fair city to those who move there to work but can’t afford a home. Ireland’s coalition government says it is acting on housebuilding, but bosses and staff say it must try harder
Ireland’s economy is “absolutely booming,” says Stephen O’Dwyer, the founder and owner of Dublin’s Tang cafe/restaurant chain. “But it has left people facing a very unequal and difficult society to work in.”
At the top of O’Dwyer’s concerns is housing, which is cited by businesses large and small as a significant barrier to Ireland’s economic growth. The capital is not alone: cities from Cork to Limerick report acute housing shortages and rising levels of homelessness.
Once motherhood spelled the end of a sporting career. But more mums than ever are taking part in this year’s Olympics and Paralympics (the village even has a nursery for the first time). How do they do it?
Nekoda Smythe-Davis is a Commonwealth gold medal-winning judoka (judo expert) who has won silver and bronze at the World Championships and represented Great Britain at the 2016 Olympics.
Keir Starmer will need broad support to undertake a ‘decade of renewal’ in office. This sordid episode suggests he won’t have it
It’s not every day that you see Keir Starmer’s increasingly ruthless electoral machine in a state of confusion and disarray. But its chaotic approach this week to the question of whether Diane Abbott, a Labour MP for the past 37 years with one of the biggest majorities in the country, could stand in the general election – a question seemingly finally resolved on Friday by Starmer saying that she was “free to go forward as a Labour candidate” – has been very revealing about the condition of the party and of our wider politics.
The whole messy episode could be significant in the election, but also in the longer story of the Labour party and its fractious but pivotal relationships with the left, London and Black Britain. If those relationships with three of Labour’s traditionally strongest bases of support break down– and this week considerable damage has been done – then it may become much harder for it to gain and hold on to power, and for these millions of voters to be properly represented in parliament. Abbott’s ordeal, and her apparent survival of it, matter to many more people than her angry, baffled and now relieved constituents in Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist. His book on Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left since the 1960s, The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies, is out now
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
After week of campaign missteps, ‘reset’ is attempt to firm up base and beat back Reform UK, say observers
Rishi Sunak is heading to north-east England for a rare foray into the “red wall” after a campaign that has so far focused on shoring up the Conservatives’ older, more affluent southern base.
The prime minister has spent much of the first week of the general election campaign speaking to voters in the south of England who are considering Reform UK, targeting them with a range of policy announcements including the return of national service and tax breaks for pensioners.
With the Tories’ chances at near zero, Labour is concentrating on fighting an ideological ground war with itself
It’s just over a week since Rishi Sunak got soaked in the rain as he called the general election. Since then he has forgotten that Wales didn’t qualify for the Euros, paid a visit to Belfast’s Titanic quarter and been photographed under an exit sign. Richard Holden, the Tory party chair AKA Baldrick impersonator, has insisted that the campaign has been going exactly as planned. God knows what might have happened if it hadn’t. Then the Conservatives started pumping out policies as if there’s no tomorrow. National service, the pension triple lock, a ban on Mickey Mouse degrees, and driving penalty points for flytippers. If they’re all such good ideas, it makes you wonder why the Tories didn’t do any of them in the last 14 years.
Not that any of them are likely to happen, because the chances of the Conservatives winning the election are currently near zero. A sign of how bad Rish! thinks things are is that almost all his campaign visits have been to what used to be Tory strongholds, to try to shore up the vote. Meanwhile, Labour figures have been touring the country shouting “change” and not much more. They think it’s enough just not to be the Tories. So far that appears to be working. The polls have barely shifted in the last 10 days. It’s all been sound and fury, signifying nothing, and most people will end the week talking of little more than the Donald Trump verdicts. But here are the highlights you may have missed.
Robinson, who moved to White House when Barack Obama won presidency, helped to care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha
Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama, who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.
Robinson’s death was announced in an online tribute by Michelle Obama, and included details of the time Robinson spent living in the White House, as an informal first grandmother to the Obama children.
The former president’s rambling tirade at Trump Tower contained a number of questionable assertions
Donald Trump delivered a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the atrium of Trump Tower, a day after the former president was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial.
Here is a fact check of some of the things he said on Friday – and why they weren’t true.
D:Ream members regret association with Tony Blair and do not want song played at July general election
The pop group that sing Things Can Only Get Better – which became an anthem for Labour at the 1997 general election victory – will deny any request from Keir Starmer to use the track at this year’s election.
D:Ream’s founding members Peter Cunnah and Alan Mackenzie said they were dismayed to hear their song play through a loudspeaker as the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, called a 4 July general election on a wet afternoon in Downing Street.
Rishi Sunak says the money, paid over 10 years, would help regenerate areas such as Mansfield, Rotherham and Hartlepool
The Conservatives have promised to give another 30 towns in the UK £20m each in levelling up funding over the next decade if they win the election.
Rishi Sunak said the 30 would be added to the government’s long-term plan for towns, which is intended to pay for the regeneration of underfunded areas.
Emily Baden says after a disagreement over political lawn signs with the US supreme court justice’s wife, a black car began parking at her mother’s home
Neighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into “unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger” by the supreme court justice’s wife.
Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC.
The prosecution and the guilty verdicts are unprecedented. But making history is not the same as shifting election outcomes
Guilty. The New York jury’s unanimous verdicts on 34 counts mean that Donald Trump is not only the first sitting or former US president to be prosecuted in a criminal trial, but the first to be convicted.
Trump was found to have falsified business records to hide $130,000 of hush money paid to cover up a sex scandal he feared might hinder his run in 2016. Before his entry into politics, it would have been taken for granted that such charges would kill a campaign. Yet Trump is running for the White House as a convicted criminal. If he is jailed when he is sentenced in July – which most experts think unlikely – it is assumed that he would continue. If anything, the prospect of such a sentence spurs him on.
Years of work and my connection to the community have been brushed aside. But after months of being isolated and bullied, I should have known this was coming
On Wednesday night I was removed, via email, from being the Labour parliamentary candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green. I live and grew up here, and this battle means so much to me personally.
I was asked to attend a sham 45-minute online meeting via email just hours before my deselection, with three members of the National Executive Committee – one of whom never put his camera on or said a word – and my fate was decided. More than four years’ work thrown in the bin. My connection to my community brushed aside. My deep and utter commitment dismissed. And the desires of thousands in my constituency disregarded.
Faiza Shaheen was the Labour parliamentary candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green in 2019, and teaches at the London School of Economics
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Labour leader says it was ‘most efficient form of transport’ from Wales and party has offset the carbon
Keir Starmer has admitted he used a private jet to travel to a campaign rally in Scotland where he promised to create “tens of thousands” of clean energy jobs with a new publicly owned energy company in the country.
Responding to media questions after speaking to activists in Greenock, Inverclyde, Starmer said: “We did use a private jet because we did need to get very quickly to Scotland from Wales yesterday and it was the most efficient form of transport in the middle of a very busy general election campaign.”
Almost 1,500 genes have been implicated in intellectual disabilities; yet for most people with such disabilities, genetic causes remain unknown. Perhaps this is in part because geneticists have been focusing on the wrong stretches of DNA when they go searching. To rectify this, Ernest Turro—a biostatistician who focuses on genetics, genomics, and molecular diagnostics—used whole genome sequencing data from the 100,000 Genomes Project to search for areas associated with intellectual disabilities.
His lab found a genetic association that is the most common one yet to be associated with neurodevelopmental abnormality. And the gene they identified doesn’t even make a protein.
Trouble with the spliceosome
Most genes include instructions for how to make proteins. That’s true. And yet human genes are not arranged linearly—or rather, they are arranged linearly, but not contiguously. A gene containing the instructions for which amino acids to string together to make a particular protein—hemoglobin, insulin, serotonin, albumin, estrogen, whatever protein you like—is modular. It contains part of the amino acid sequence, then it has a chunk of DNA that is largely irrelevant to that sequence, then a bit more of the protein’s sequence, then another chunk of random DNA, back and forth until the end of the protein. It’s as if each of these prose paragraphs were separated by a string of unrelated letters (but not a meaningful paragraph from a different article).
In “Living off the Land attacks,” adversaries use USB devices to infiltrate industrial control systems. Cyberthreats from silent residency attacks put critical infrastructure facilities at risk.
Revisited: Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland speaks to Sam Levine about how Donald Trump became the first US president, sitting or former, to become a convicted criminal
Today, we are sharing Politics Weekly America’s latest episode with Today in Focus listeners.
Donald Trump has made history again, becoming the first US president, sitting or former, to be a convicted criminal. Late on Thursday a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Within minutes of leaving the courtroom, Trump said he would appeal.
Media groups claimed act criminalised investigative journalism and meant no one could say Jimmy Savile was a paedophile
A Northern Ireland law banning the naming of suspected sex offenders until they are charged has been revoked in a court judgment hailed as a victory for press freedom.
The law, which came into effect last year, granted anonymity for life and 25 years after death to anyone suspected of sexual offences who had not been charged.
Joe Biden warned on Friday that it was reckless and “dangerous” for anyone to claim Donald Trump’s criminal conviction was the result of a rigged trial, as the former president hit out at the verdict against him and Republicans maligned the integrity of America’s justice system.
Donald Trump hit out furiously on Friday morning at the new status of “felon” conferred on him by a New York jury, whose guilty verdict made him the first former US president ever to become a convicted criminal.
During the Jeremy Corbyn era, some of the leftwing leader’s fiercest critics gave up and left the Labour party: not so Luke Akehurst.
Behind the scenes, Akehurst was doing what he has been doing since he was a 16-year-old political activist – organising to get his wing of Labour back on the front foot and later to help cement Keir Starmer’s control over the party.
Alum Rock in Ladywood has become a protest hub – with local people saying poverty and other issues will also dictate vote
On a Wednesday afternoon, despite the pouring rain, Alum Rock Road is buzzing with activity. The busy thoroughfare in Birmingham is clogged with cars, and families flit in and out of shops that are selling bowls of fruit, colourful fabrics and sizzling kebabs.
Every few metres a Palestinian flag is pinned in a shop window or draped off a lamp-post.
Veteran MP had party whip restored this week, but it was suggested she might be ‘barred’ from running
Diane Abbott is “free to stand” as a Labour candidate in the general election, Keir Starmer has said.
The Labour leader had spent three days insisting her candidacy was not in his power, and it was a matter for the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), but the row was increasingly distracting from Labour’s election campaign.
Number of new cyber operations recorded In 2023, the European Repository of Cyber Incidents (EuRepoC) recorded a total of 895 new cyber operations, averaging about 75 operations per month. There were notable spikes in reported activity during March and May, with 115 and 112 new operations recorded in these months, respectively. In contrast, the summer […]