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The FTC estimates about 30 million people, or one in five American workers, from minimum wage earners to CEOs, are bound by noncompetes. It says the policy change could lead to increased wages totaling nearly $300 billion per year by encouraging people to swap jobs freely.

New polling data from Pew shows shift in Americans’ opinion since loss of constitutional right to abortion in June 2022

In the two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, leading to abortion bans across many parts of the south and midwest, abortion rights have only grown more popular, new polling from Pew research Center has found.

A majority of Americans has long supported abortion rights. But more than 60% of Americans now believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases – a four percentage-point jump from 2021, the year before Roe fell.

This support transcends numerous demographic divides in US society: most men, women, white people, Black people, Hispanic people and Asian people believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. It extends to majorities of all age groups and education levels, although 18-to-29-year-olds and people with more education are more likely than other cohorts to believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Guardian investigation identifies Jonathan Keeperman, a former lecturer at the University of California, Irvine, as ‘Lomez’

A Guardian investigation has identified former University of California, Irvine (UCI) lecturer Jonathan Keeperman as the man behind the prominent “new right” publishing house Passage Press and the influential Twitter persona Lomez.

The identification is based on company and property records, source interviews and open-source online materials.

The reporting has revealed that Keeperman’s current status as a key player and influential tastemaker in a burgeoning proto-fascist movement came after years of involvement in far-right internet forums.

Much of that journey coincided with his time at one of the country’s most well-regarded writing programs: Keeperman first came to UCI as a master of fine arts (MFA) student, and was also a lecturer in the English department from 2013 to 2022, according to public records.

The emergence of Passage Press and other such publishers has been a key part of the development of a swathe of the current American far right, which is seeking to capture US institutions – or develop far-right equivalents – as part of a political and cultural war against what it sees as the dominance of a liberal “regime” in America.

A 21-year-old Florida man was sentenced Monday to three and a half years in prison for firebombing a Southern California Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022, federal prosecutors said.

Xavier Batten pleaded guilty in January to one felony count of possessing an unregistered destructive device and one misdemeanor count of intentionally damaging a reproductive health services facility.

U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney also sentenced Batten, of Brooksville, Florida, to three years of probation and ordered him to pay $1,000 in restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Carney said Batten had committed a “cowardly crime” that showed “no empathy for women and their rights,” according to the statement. He has been in federal custody since July 2023.

White House levy to protect US makers from cheap imports likely to inflame trade tensions

The US president, Joe Biden, has announced a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of a package of measures designed to protect US manufacturers from cheap imports.

In a move that is likely to inflame trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, the White House said it was imposing more stringent curbs on Chinese goods worth $18bn.

Sources said the move followed a four-year review and was a preventive measure designed to stop cheap subsidised Chinese goods flooding the US market and stifling the growth of the American green technology sector.

…

Despite the risks of retaliation from Beijing, Biden said the increased levies were a proportionate response to China’s overcapacity in the EV sector. Sources said China was producing 30m EVs a year but could sell only 22-23m domestically.

• US home prices have soared 47% so far this decade.
• The price surge has outpaced the gains seen in the 1990s and 2010s, and is nearly ahead of the 2000s.
• The rising value of homes has coincided with a millennial-fueled demand surge and years of low mortgage rates.

***

US home prices have soared 47.1% so far this decade, according to a ResiClub analysis of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.

The massive price gains seen in the first four years of the 2020s have eclipsed all of the growth seen in the 1990s and 2010s, according to the analysis. Housing prices in those two decades grew 30.1% and 44.7%, respectively.

On top of that, housing price growth in the 2020s is on the verge of eclipsing all of the growth seen in the 2000s, which was 47.3% after peaking at just over 80% before the 2007 housing market crash.

In hundreds of deaths where police used force meant to stop someone without killing them, officers violated well-known guidelines for safely restraining and subduing people — not simply once or twice, but multiple times.

Most violations involved pinning people facedown in ways that could restrict their breathing or stunning them repeatedly with Tasers, an Associated Press investigation found.

Some officers had little choice but to break policing best practices — safety guidelines that are recommended by government agencies, law enforcement groups and training experts — to save a life or protect someone.

Many other violations were harder to explain. Officers at times prematurely resorted to weapons or physical holds during routine calls or misread a person’s confusion as defiance in medical emergencies, setting off a string of mistakes. In other cases, they kept applying force even after they had people handcuffed and controlled.

If an airplane has to be evacuated, the Federal Aviation Administration says all passengers must be capable of getting outwithin 90 seconds.

But critics say the agency’s testing standards have not kept pace with the shrinking size of airplane seats — which means more people jammed into the cabin — or the changing composition of the flying public.

“This is ridiculous. This is not how we travel today,” said U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) in an interview.

Duckworth argues the FAA’s current tests fail to take real world conditions into consideration.

“They did not mimic the seat density of a modern aircraft. They had no carry-on baggage. They had nobody over the age of 60 and nobody under the age of 18,” said Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot who lost both her legs in the Iraq war.

“They didn’t have anybody with a disability. Of course they were able to evacuate the aircraft in 90 seconds,” she said.

The intensification of the onslaught by Israeli forces on Rafah, in Gaza, Palestine, has forced MSF to stop providing lifesaving care at Rafah Indonesian Field hospital as of 12 May. The 22 patients who remained in the hospital have been referred to other facilities, as we can no longer guarantee their safety.

“We have had to leave 12 different health structures and have endured 26 violent incidents, which include airstrikes damaging hospitals, tanks being fired at agreed deconflicted shelters, ground offensives into medical centres, and convoys fired upon,” says Michel-Olivier Lacharité, MSF head of emergency operations.

For decades, police across the United States have been warned that the common tactic of handcuffing someone facedown could turn deadly if officers pin them on the ground with too much pressure or for too long.

Recommendations first made by major departments and police associations culminated in a 1995 federal safety bulletin that explained keeping someone on their chest in what’s known as prone restraint can dangerously restrict breathing. The solution: Once cuffed, turn them onto their side.

Yet today, what some officers are doing on the street conflicts with what has long been recognized as safe, a deadly disconnect that highlights ongoing failures in police training, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The Biden administration's plan to slap heavy new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and batteries would provide temporary protection for U.S. auto jobs, potentially at the expense of White House efforts to fight climate change by accelerating U.S. EV adoption.

Few Chinese-made EVs are currently sold in the United States, so the immediate impact on consumers of higher EV tariffs would be minimal, analysts said. The White House also plans to more than triple tariffs on Chinese EV batteries and battery parts to 25%. Graphite, permanent magnets used in EV motors and other EV minerals would get new 25% duties added. These tariffs could affect a broader range of vehicles.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration issued tailpipe pollution standards in April designed to drive the share of electric vehicles up from 8% last year to as much as 56% by 2032. Automakers have warned that hitting the EV targets will be challenging, in part because different Biden administration rules deny federal subsidies to EVs that get too much content from China.

JPMorgan Chase was named the biggest fossil fuel financier in the world, having increased its financing from $38.9bn in 2022 to $40.8bn in 2023.

It ranked among the worst banks in terms of financing to companies involved in fossil fuel expansion. It was also one of the biggest financiers of: racked oil and gas; Amazon oil and gas; and methane gas power.

Barclays was labelled the number one fossil fuel funder in Europe, lending $24.5bn in 2023 up from $16.58bn in 2022.

It was singled out for financing what the report describes as 'deadly' coal power plants in the United States, despite high profile climate commitments.

The authorities think it was an apparent suicide. At her daughter's graduation ceremony. Seriously WTF?!

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