Trump defends his university and attacks the media as North Korea welcomes a ‘far-sighted candidate’
Donald Trump’s defense of Trump University’s predatory practices toward its students and questions over raising money for veterans involved a sustained, quixotic counterattack on the media. After judge Gonzalo Curiel ordered the release of more than 400 pages of Trump University “playbooks”, used to train employees to target students’ financial weaknesses in an attempt to sell them high-priced real estate courses, Trump described Curiel as a “total disgrace”. The presumptive Republican nominee then went after the press for questioning his effort to raise money for veterans, and blamed journalists for distorting what he called an act of goodwill and making it appear duplicitous. “I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job,” Trump said. “You make me look very bad.”
The North Korean state media outlet DPRK Today has welcomed Trump’s “far-sighted” policies and urged US voters to reject “dull” Hillary. “There are many positive aspects to Trump’s ‘inflammatory policies’,” wrote Han Yong-mook, described as a Chinese North Korean scholar.
Donald Trump’s ‘playbooks’ offer a glimpse into his ruthless business practices
Milky Way weighs in at 700bn suns, say scientists
The estimated mass of our galaxy, including stars, black holes, dust and dark matter, is about 300bn suns less than previous studies have stated. Does that mean the Milky Way is slimming down? Not necessarily. The effort to weigh the star system has been going on for at least two centuries. But because earth is on an arm of the galaxy, only a fraction of it is visible. Authors of the Canadian study said they’d devised a “galactic mass estimator” and hoped their work would bring us closer to understanding dark matter, the glue that holds this galaxy, and the universe itself, together.
Milky weigh? Astronomers find new method for weighing the universe
Harambe investigation to look at the role of parents
Authorities in Cincinnati have confirmed that they are investigating the parents of the four-year-old who fell into a gorilla enclosure on Saturday, setting off a chain of events that led to authorities ordering the 400lb silverback shot dead. Police department investigators have called for witnesses to come forward as they conduct a review of “the incident and the lead-up to it”. A spokeswoman said it was too early to say “what those charges might be”.
Gorilla shooting: family of boy who entered enclosure under investigation
Tiananmen Square families accuse authorities of intimidation
The Tiananmen Mothers campaign has accused Chinese authorities of using intimidation and threats of detention to stop them speaking out about the violent crackdown nearly 27 years ago. The families accuse Beijing of conducting a program of “white terror” as part of a campaign by security agents to cover up what many believe to have been a massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in the country. The families say they will not be silenced by such “detestable perversity”.
Families of Tiananmen Square victims accuse Beijing of three decades of ‘white terror’
Artists to look at the dilemma of real estate values
Six thousand members of Los Angeles’ homeless population are about to be graced with a new amenity – a nine-hole golf course, courtesy of local artist Rosten Woo and the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), a performance art and activist group. The piece is a commentary on gentrification, and is being developed with the backing of estate of the LA artist Mike Kelley. The Back 9, a course of nine holes inside the group’s Skid Row History Museum and Archive, will require “certain types of decision making”, Woo says.
Art house: Los Angeles and New York artists tackle the inequity of real estate
Haiti Cholera: UN signals potential breakthrough over responsibility
The United Nations has for the first time signalled its “human rights obligation” over the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti that has claimed the lives of at least 30,000 people. For more than five years, the body has refused to accept responsibility for a disaster that began with the accidental release of a strain of cholera carried by Nepalese peacekeepers. While the UN still has not accepted responsibility for the outbreak, a letter from the organisation’s second-in-command, Jan Eliasson, states: “The secretary general and I are fully committed to ensuring that the organization fulfills its human rights obligations,” adding that the UN could do more to “assist the victims of cholera and their communities”.
UN response to Haiti cholera epidemic critics signals ‘potential breakthrough’
Does soccer have a diversity problem?
Many seem to think so. Studies suggest it remains a game, at least in the US, for white middle-class children – and that’s shutting out some of America’s best young players. Doug Andreassen, the chairman of US Soccer’s diversity taskforce, says he sees well-to-do families spending thousands of dollars a year on soccer clubs that propel their children to the sport’s highest levels, while thousands of gifted athletes in mostly African American and Latino neighborhoods get left behind. “People don’t want to talk about it,” he says.
‘It’s only working for the white kids’: American soccer’s diversity problem
Clinton’s lack of empathy: don’t fake it to make it – attack
With polls tightening, this is a time of high anxiety for supporters of Hillary Clinton. Political columnist Richard Wolffe writes that it may already be too late for Clinton to build a plausible sense of empathy with voters since she and Trump are running “equally poorly on issues of honesty and trust”. But at this “late stage of a primary campaign and political career, she can at least drive home questions about her opponent”.
Hillary Clinton’s lack of empathy has her limping to the finish line
And another thing …
Eric Thurm ponders whether David Schwimmer’s long-awaited renaissance is finally here. Even as his Friends co-stars found paths to follow, he spent years in a special kind of thespian wilderness. Now Schwimmer is on a rebound, first as the impressionable but oddly prophetic Robert Kardashian in The People v OJ Simpson and now with the mob-chef drama Feed the Beast, his own TV vehicle. Thurm says the Schwimmnaissance is finally here, and it’s been overdue.
No longer ‘on a break’: is the David Schwimmer renaissance finally here?
