News Round-up

Elliot Page Delivers on His Promise to Advocate for Trans Community

Courtesy: The Oprah Conversation

Elliot Page sat down for his first on-camera interview with Oprah Winfrey, discussing how he felt it was “crucial” to come out as transgender last year and how he can now breathe a sigh of relief when he looks at the mirror, to see himself and say, “There I am.”

During the 45-minute conversation that aired Friday, he also revealed how years of debilitating depression and anxiety over pressures to present himself as feminine once led him to collapse on the night of the Inception premiere in Paris, after he was presented with dresses to wear.

But to 34-year-old Page, the most important aspect of his talk was to deliver on his promise to use his platform to bring awareness and advocate for the rights of the transgender community, especially trans youth. “You really hope people can just look into their hearts,” he said. “You really hope people could just listen and educate themselves with the real information and have empathy and compassion.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scandal upon scandal: the charge sheet that should have felled Johnson years ago | Jonathan Freedland

This is about so much more than wallpaper. A pattern of lying, betrayal and callousness is ruining lives

Yes, it’s a real scandal. Despite the apparent absurdity of a Westminster village obsessing over soft furnishings and the precise class connotations of the John Lewis brand, there is a hard offence underneath all those cushions and throws. By refusing to tell us who first paid for the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, Boris Johnson is denying us – his boss – the right to know who he owes and what hold they might have on him.

Offence is the right word because, even before the Electoral Commission determines whether the law on political funding was broken, Johnson’s failure to come clean may well be, by itself, a breach of the ministerial code. That bars not only actual conflicts of interest between ministers’ “public duties and their private interests” but even the perception of such conflicts. In refusing to tell us who first paid that bill for overpriced wallpaper, or to give full details of who paid for his December 2019 holiday in Mustique, Johnson has offended the public trust.

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American politics are getting more European

Democrats are more aggressively seeking to build the kind of social democracy that exists in many European countries. Growing ranks of Republicans, meanwhile, are flirting with a brand of nativist populism already prevalent among the European far right.

Logan Paul v Floyd Mayweather is a payday boxing must treat with caution | Barney Ronay

Exhibition between YouTuber and 44-year-old is a destructive, easy source of revenue – and a troubling prospect for the sport

The phrase “(Person X) has a punchable face” is a horrible thing. There is so much wrong with it. The idea people have any say in what their face looks like. The suggestion punching is an acceptable human response. It’s degrading. It’s cowardly. It stinks of all the worst parts of the internet, humankind’s angriest medium.

And yet, with all due advisories, and having considered soberly all available evidence, it has to be said Logan Paul really does have a punchable face.

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Solskjær says fans must be heard as Manchester United prepare for protest

  • Supporters angry at Super League plans and ownership
  • Up to 10,000 expected at Liverpool match on Sunday

Ole Gunnar Solskjær stressed the importance of fans being heard as thousands of Manchester United supporters prepare to descend on Old Trafford for what the manager hopes will be a “peaceful” protest.

The departing executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward followed the co-chairman Joel Glazer in apologising to supporters for the club’s attempt to join the European Super League at an emergency fans forum on Friday and promised United “do not seek any revival of the Super League”.

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The Best New Launches From Adidas, Made In, and More

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Scouted/Vendors

New Kids on the Block helps you navigate all the new and exciting launches from our favorite brands, all in one place.

Pizza Steel: Made In, the makers of our favorite pan, just launched a pizza steel, perfect for making homemade pizza on the grill outdoors or in the oven inside. It’s made out of blue carbon steel and features 86 perforations to allow for optimal air flow, so you can achieve that brick oven-like crust.

Send Chinatown Love Digital Cookbook: Want to support the AAPI community and become a better home cook? Send Chinatown Love has helped create revenue streams to Chinatown businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic and just launched a PDF cookbook. Umamicart, a great Asian online supermarket, is also offering kits to go along with the recipes, like the 886’s Taiwanese Sausage Fried Rice Kit and Wing Hing’s Baby Shrimp Fried Rice Kit.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Climate crisis: our children face wars over food and water, EU deputy warns

Exclusive: Frans Timmermans says older people need to make sacrifices to protect the future

Older people will have to make sacrifices in the fight against climate change or today’s children will face a future of fighting wars for water and food, the EU’s deputy chief has warned.

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the EU commission, said that if social policy and climate policy are not combined, to share fairly the costs and benefits of creating a low-carbon economy, the world will face a backlash from people who fear losing jobs or income, stoked by populist politicians and fossil fuel interests.

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‘No live music and a curfew’: Glastonbury opens Worthy Farm for tranquil camping

Festival regulars are poised to secure pitches when booking lines open

The announcement that a farmer in the English West Country is opening up his fields as a campsite for a few weeks in the summer does not usually cause a stir.

But when booking lines open for one site on Saturday, pitches at Worthy Pastures are expected to be snapped up.

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More than 100 lone children rescued trying to cross Mediterranean

Unicef warns many child refugees and migrants picked up off the coast of Libya will be sent to ‘appalling’ detention centres

Fears are rising over the numbers of lone children risking their lives to reach Europe after 114 were pulled from the Mediterranean Sea in one day this week.

The unaccompanied minors were among 125 children rescued off the Libyan coast on Tuesday by the authorities, aid agencies said.

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MSNBC Host Hammers West Virginia Guv for Signing Anti-Trans Sports Bill

MSNBC

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle took Republican West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice to task on Friday morning for signing a measure that bans transgender girls from competing in school sports. Repeatedly pressed by Ruhle to provide just one example of a trans child trying to gain an unfair advantage in his state, all Justice could do was shrug and deflect.

With Republican-controlled legislatures across the nation passing a slew of anti-trans bills, West Virginia followed suit this month with legislation that would prohibit transgender women and girls from competing in sports at “any public secondary school or state institution of higher education.”

The measure says teams must be based on “biological sex” and trans girls are barred from women’s teams “where competitive skill or contact is involved.” It was signed into law by Justice on Wednesday.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Young generations can't face climate burden alone, Germany rules

Should future generations have to give up more than current generations to combat climate change? Germany’s top court ruled that the country must set clearer emissions targets for the future – a decision that activists say delivers generational justice.

Pieces of Hate

Steve Brodner

Warrants Executed. Scenes from our series “The Greater Quiet” for the week of April 26.

The post Pieces of Hate appeared first on The Nation.

Rudy Giuliani Taps Alan Dershowitz for Legal Advice Following Federal Raid

Getty

On Wednesday, the apartment and office of former New York City mayor and Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani were raided by the feds. On Thursday, he picked up the phone and called Alan Dershowitz.

“I had spoken out a number of times against the raid, [and on Thursday] Giuliani called me and asked me if I would share that view with his lawyers,” Dershowitz, a celebrity attorney and Democrat who served on then-President Trump’s defense team in the first impeachment trial, said in a phone interview Friday morning.

Dershowitz continued that he would be happy to talk to Giuliani’s lawyers about the Fourth Amendment issues surrounding the search of Giuliani’s apartment and the seizure of some of his electronic devices “as a sounding board,” but he noted that he hadn’t heard from his lawyers yet.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Sadiq Khan is way ahead – but the London mayoral elections are still full of jeopardy | Zoe Williams

While local elections are complicated and give me the blues, the London race has big characters and bizarre real-world consequences

Local elections give me the blues. All political parties talk down their chances ahead of them, then a bunch of psephologists weigh in to describe what normal results look like at this stage in the electoral cycle, as if anything were normal nowadays. Local elections remind me of Emmerdale – not enough happens, but what does is way too complicated.

The London mayoral elections, on the other hand, unfold like a novel – a neatly bracketed timeline (they only started in 2000), with great big characters and the most bizarre, upside down consequences. No London mayor has enough power to solve the housing crisis, which is what all Londoners, renters at least, really think about; yet the office can bestow enough significance on an insignificant person that he can accrue the power to ravage the nation.

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UK’s aid cuts hit vital coronavirus research around world

Leading UK expert says loss of funding certain to damage attempts to tackle virus and variants

Vital coronavirus research, including a project tracking variants in India, has had its funding reduced by up to 70% under swingeing cuts to the UK overseas aid budget.

One of Britain’s leading infectious disease experts said the UK government cuts were certain to damage attempts to tackle the virus and track new variants.

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With Ratings in the Toilet, Are the Oscars Doomed?

Todd Wawrychuk/Getty Images

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.

I’m so old I remember that the Oscars were this week.

Our distracted brains have moved onto other pressing matters in the circus of entertainment, such as Kourtney Kardashian making out with Travis Barker and why Zac Efron’s face look like that—admittedly ridiculous (though very real) preoccupations that have eclipsed any mainstream interest in what is supposed to be the most important and definitive event in the year of pop culture.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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