Author: The Guardian

Emma Raducanu kicks off her grass court season with a thrilling win over Ena Shibahara in the first round of the Rothesay Open and slams Brazilian referee Ana Carvalho. She won the Japanese qualifying match in Nottingham in straight sets and then launched a scathing attack on the quality of the referees.The Hawk-Eye system was not used in the match and Raducanu was visibly unmoved after a series of harsh calls that went against her. “I felt like I was playing two-on-one on the court — it was crazy,” Raducanu said. “I would probably use at least four challenges [if…

A teenager who tried to return a malfunctioning replica gun that shoots plastic projectiles to a sporting goods store in Washington state was shot to death by an off-duty security guard who believed the boy was holding a real gun and planned to rob the business, according to authorities.The man arrested in the killing, 51-year-old Aaron Myers, told police that he was not working at the time he shot and killed Hazrat Ali Rohani, who was returning a malfunctioning airsoft gun to the Big 5 store in Renton. But he had offered to keep watch due to alleged rising crime…

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who is at the center of the flag controversy, said one side in America’s bitter left-right ideological conflict must prevail, saying in secretly recorded remarks that they could exacerbating people’s concerns.Alito – one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices – also agreed that America must “return to its sacred ground” in an off-the-cuff comment about a filmmaker posing as a conservative.His wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was also recorded making critical comments about the gay pride flag.Most recently, the Alito family was revealed to have flown an upside-down American flag outside their home just weeks…

Name: The sexiest books of all time.Age: Surprisingly youthful.Appearance: They’re books – don’t judge them by their covers.So what is the sexiest book of all time? Is it DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Hang on: for this particular survey, the cataloguing website Goodreads ranked a total of 45 saucy books based on scores out of five.OK, I get it. Is it Fear of Flying by Erica Jong? Wait. The books are spread across three categories: BookTok, romance and romantasy.I only know one of those words. BookTok is a TikTok subgroup for book lovers – mostly very young ones – and “romantasy”…

Julia Louis-Dreyfus refutes former costar Jerry Seinfeld’s negative comments about “political correctness” in comedy, saying “having a sensitive antenna is not a bad thing” and complaining that political correctness is “a A red flag because it sometimes means something else”.Louis-Dreyfus was asked in an interview with The New York Times about Seinfeld’s assertion that television comedy has been undermined by “the far left and computer trash and people who are too worried about offending people.” Louis-Dreyfus responded: “I don’t think having a sensitive antenna is a bad thing. It doesn’t mean that all comedy is lost because of it.She added:…

Hunter Biden, the eldest living son of the US president, was found guilty Tuesday on all three felony counts he faced relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine.Biden received the verdict in court as his friends and family, including the first lady, Jill Biden, stood in support.The jury reached its verdict after about three hours of deliberation over two days. It followed a weeklong trial in the Biden family’s home town of Wilmington, Delaware, that featured sometimes excruciating testimony about his addiction habit, from some of his closest relatives. Hunter Biden chose not to take…

1) Wells provides Lancashire with bowling depthLancashire have won just one game in the Championship all season but four wins from five in the T20 Blast have seen them top the Northern Group. Two solid wins last week, one in pursuit (vs Nottinghamshire) and one in defense (vs Birmingham). Luke Wells played a key role in both events.Wells, who joins Lancashire as opening batsman in 2021 after 10 years at Sussex, may still be his day job after hitting 66 from 32 balls in Birmingham. Proved this. But these days, his bowling ability is at least as valuable and his…

More than a third of Harvard’s graduating seniors are heading into finance or management consulting – two professions notable for how quickly their practitioners “make a bag”, or make money, reports the New York Times.Similar percentages show up in other prestigious universities.Frankly, if anything, I’m surprised that only a third of graduating seniors at Harvard and similar places are heading into finance and consulting.In this era of raging income inequality and billionaire robber barons, the bags are gigantic. At Goldman Sachs they start at $105,000 to $164,000. At McKinsey, $100,000 to $140,000.And that’s just the first year.Think of it: make…

GB’s 4x100m relay performance at the European Athletics Championships on Tuesday went from disastrous to divine, with the men finishing last in their warm-up and the women setting the fastest time in Europe this year.All eyes will be on the men’s team as this is the first time CJ Ujah and Richard Kilty have run together since the former’s positive drug test led to the team’s silver medal finish at the Tokyo Olympics. In the aftermath, Kilty promised to never forgive his “hasty and reckless” team-mates for snatching his medal or spending £10 on Amazon for an amino acid supplement…

Hundreds of unaccompanied child migrants across Europe are being forced to work as soldiers for increasingly powerful drug cartels to meet the continent’s soaring appetite for cocaine, a Guardian investigation has found.EU police forces have warned of industrial-scale exploitation of African children by cocaine networks operating in western Europe in cities including Paris and Brussels as they seek to expand Europe’s £10bn cocaine market.Child protection agencies warned that cocaine gangs, which are exploiting the “unlimited” supply of vulnerable African children at their disposal, are using brutal means to control their victims, including torture and rape if they fail to sell…