Tag Archives: WorldNews

China rebukes US during tense Pompeo visit

China’s foreign minister has called on the US to stop its “groundless attacks” on the Asian giant’s global and domestic policies. The tense exchange came during a visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The Kavanaugh case revealed a system rigged against women | Nesrine Malik

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There are no silver linings to the judge’s confirmation. But the history of women’s activism shows the virtue of persistence

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” said Martin Luther King Jr, “but it bends towards justice.” It is hard to keep faith with that right now. A woman with everything to lose took on the might of the US political establishment, only to see the man she accused of sexually assaulting her appointed to the highest court in the land, following a hasty smokescreen of an investigation.

Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the supreme court on Saturday was not just a defeat for sexual assault victims, it was also a clear reaffirmation of an entrenched, patriarchal hierarchy. It was a reminder to all women that there was more important business to be done; there were ideological agendas that needed to be advanced and political careers that needed to be protected. The perfunctory way the Republicans endorsed a shoddy FBI probe, the result of which was a foregone conclusion, sent a clear message that many women are familiar with: this is bigger than you.

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Imagine if men were afraid to walk home alone at night | Katy Guest

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There was uproar when women discussed an imaginary 9pm curfew on men, but the anger is misdirected

What do women really want? And what would the crazy feminists do if they finally managed to steal all the rights from men, lock them up at night and keep the power for themselves? Well, the answers are just in, thanks to a thought experiment, and they might surprise you. “Ladies … what would you do if all men had a 9pm curfew?” mused Danielle Muscato in a random Tuesday morning tweet, adding: “Dudes: read the replies and pay attention.”

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Trust in Vladimir Putin declines steeply among Russians, poll shows

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Backing for ruling party also falls as analysts say pension changes the likely cause

Trust in Vladimir Putin and Russia’s ruling party have declined steeply over the past year with analysts pointing to the government’s controversial pension changes as the main reason.

In a poll by the independent Levada Centre, 39% of Russians listed Putin as a politican they trust. That is a 20% decrease from November 2017, when Putin was named by 59% of Russians, according to the same polling agency.

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Former Cambridge Analytica chief used N-word to describe Barbados PM

Elitist White Brit – no surprises here.

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Exclusive: leaked papers reveal racist slur by Alexander Nix, who is pitching to run election campaigns in Caribbean

Alexander Nix, the former chief executive of the elections consultancy Cambridge Analytica, is facing fresh questions about his conduct after a leak of documents revealed he used a highly offensive racial slur to describe the prime minister of Barbados.

The British consultant, who lost his business after an investigation by the Observer exposed the firm’s unauthorised use of data from millions of Facebook users, has been pitching to once again run election campaigns in the Caribbean.

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Marine Le Pen: Steve Bannon has no part to play in ‘saving Europe’

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French far-right leader plays down ex-Trump aide’s plans for European populist movement

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has said that Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon would not play a leading role in a nationalist drive to “save the real Europe” as he is “American, not European”.

Speaking during a joint press conference in Rome with Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister and leader of the far-right League, Le Pen said she wanted to clarify “lots of conjectures” about Bannon’s plans to set up a Europe-wide network to boost the chances of populist parties ahead of elections to the European parliament in May 2019.

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Daveed Diggs: ‘Days before I started on Hamilton, I got thrown against a fence by police’

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He’s the star of TV and Broadway whose new film Blindspotting unveils the evils of gentrification. The actor discusses protest, prejudice and the ‘neo-Nazi president’

Daveed Diggs, born poor and “very happy” in Oakland, California, says his Jewish mother and African-American father informed him early on that he was going to be policed differently than many of his friends. Regardless of the success he has had of late – including his double-star turn as both Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton’s original Broadway cast – the 36-year-old says that fear is still “always there”. Growing up, he was never as aware of the imbalance as when he was around some of his more reckless white friends, a burden he compares to “a weight on my shoulders, a kind of disability that wasn’t shared by them”.

“I got pulled over the first time, five days after I got my driver’s licence, I was 16,” says Diggs. “My car was surrounded by four police cars, one of them walking up to the door with his hand on his gun. Because I had forgotten to turn my lights on and I was driving at night.” Over three years in his 20s, he was pulled over 36 times. “Two days before I left LA to move to New York to work on Hamilton, I got pulled off of my bike and thrown up against a fence by police officers who thought I fitted a description. These events keep happening. It doesn’t change. And so you live with it.”

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How a homophobic, misogynist, racist ‘thing’ could be Brazil’s next president | Eliane Brum

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Jair Bolsonaro is the monstrous product of the country’s silence about the crimes committed by its former dictatorship

Many people in Brazil cannot bring themselves to utter the name of the rightwing extremist expected to win the first round of voting in the country’s presidential election on Sunday. On social networks, the former army officer Jair Bolsonaro is often referred to simply as “the thing”.

To understand why Bolsonaro evokes such dread, consider some of the things he has said in the last few years:

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