Author: The Guardian

Donald Trump was wrongly removed from Colorado’s primary ballot last year, the US supreme court has ruled.The court’s significant decision overturns a 4-3 ruling from the Colorado supreme court that said the former president could not run because he had engaged in insurrection during the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The Colorado decision was a novel interpretation of section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from holding office.Enacted after the civil war, the measure says that any member of Congress or officer of the United States who engages in insurrection after taking an oath to the…

The European Union fined Apple 1.8 billion euros (£1.5 billion) after an investigation found it had limited competition with music streaming services such as Spotify.The fine, which is nearly four times higher than expected, signals that the European Commission will take decisive action against technology companies that abuse their dominance in the mobile phone and online services markets.EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the smaller fine amounted to nothing more than a “parking fine” and was intended to act as a “deterrent” to such practices by Apple and other companies.”I think it’s important to see that if you are a…

British soldiers are “on the ground” in Ukraine helping Kyiv’s forces fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles, according to a leak in Russian media of a top-secret call involving German air force officers.The Kremlin said the leak demonstrated the direct involvement of the “collective west” in the war in Ukraine – while former British defence ministers expressed frustration with the German military in response to the revelations.Released on Friday by the editor of the Kremlin-controlled news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, the audio recording – confirmed as authentic by Germany – captures Luftwaffe officers discussing how Berlin’s Taurus missiles could be used…

A group of masked men opened fire at an outdoor party in central California on Sunday night, killing four people and injuring three others, police said.The King City Police Department said officers responded to a report of a shooting in King City around 6 p.m. and found three men with gunshot wounds who were pronounced dead in the front yard.Four other people suffered gunshot wounds, including a woman who died after being taken to Mee Memorial Hospital, about 106 miles (170 kilometers) south of San Jose.The three men were taken to Natividada Hospital in Salinas, police said.Several people were attending…

When my parents agreed to take in Lucy, “a lovely quiet Burmese”, from a friend of a friend, they had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. “She’s no trouble at all – just feed her Kitekat and she’ll be happy.” Eight-year-old me knew these were the exact words because my mother repeated them often, with a rising note of indignation, over the following months.We knew Lucy had never previously been outside the walls of a Glasgow tenement, so obviously a period of adjustment was expected. But for days, she was a yowling ball of black fur lurking…

UUntil recently, I used sexual encounters the way anyone else would have a glass of wine after a long day, or some chocolate after a meal—and before you know it, one glass can quickly turn into two or three a day, or A piece of chocolate.After nearly five years of being single, I find myself viewing sex more and more as a competitive sport. It becomes a means to an end—an orgasm, a stress reliever, a cure for boredom or loneliness. I once joked with a friend that I “masturbated with his body,” referring to my latest conquest.I’ve been acutely…

Need to get your creative juices flowing? Get moving. A long line of influential thinkers have instinctively moved their bodies to open their minds, from Darwin, who advanced his theory of evolution while accumulating laps of his “thinking path”, to Nietzsche, who in 1888 warned: “Do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement.” And now scientists are not just confirming the link between exercise and creativity, but unpicking precisely how it works.Often, when we hear about the benefits of physical activity, researchers are really referring to the benefits of fitness –…

IIt was in the middle of winter, when rugby league was far from most people’s minds, that one of the game’s biggest names said this to me. Led by IMG, the sport has been preparing for the most important season of the modern era, with the weeks leading up to the start of the new Super League campaign busier than ever and more exciting than the sport has ever seen. Much publicity, coverage and, no doubt, the mainstream attention that rugby league has longed for has finally arrived. “This buzz is something we’ve never experienced before,” they said. “But look:…

In 1994, Gregg Alexander got into his blue Ford Mustang to go out clubbing, but the old car wouldn’t start. “I had a moment of annoyance that I couldn’t go to the house clubs in Detroit,” he remembers. So he reached for the acoustic guitar in the back, channelling his emotion into a song beginning “It’s murder on the dancefloor, but you’d better not kill the groove.”“You know how Paul McCartney originally sang about scrambled eggs in Yesterday?” he chuckles. “‘Murder on the dancefloor’ wasn’t anything deep from my subconscious. It was just a dummy lyric that was kind of…

They are impressive, mysterious structures that loom out of Earth’s deserts and are also found on Mars and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.Experts from universities including Aberystwyth University in Wales have now determined the age of a star dune in a remote part of Morocco, revealing details about its formation and how it traveled across the desert.Professor Jeff Duler, from the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University, said: “They are extraordinary things and one of the natural wonders of the world. From the ground they look like pyramids, but from the air they look like pyramids. You see…