We've learned we don’t have automatic stabilizers, safety nets not as good as they should be: El-Erian

Mohamed A. El-Erian, Allianz Chief Economic Adviser joins the On the Move panel to discuss the recent GDP, the Fed decision and jobless claims.

Latest Stories

  • The Latest: Pakistan lowers age for vaccinations

    Authorities in Pakistan have decided to start vaccinating people aged 50 to 59 next week, hours after the country reported over 100 fatalities in a single day for the fifth consecutive day. Saturday's figures bring Pakistan's death toll from the pandemic to 16,094, out of more than 750,000 total confirmed cases in the country of some 233 million people. Pakistan has largely relied on donated or imported Chinese vaccines, which had been offered only to health workers and elderly people.

  • Sikhs in America: A religious community long misunderstood is mourning deaths in Indianapolis mass shooting

    Members of the Sikh community in Indianapolis gather after a mass shooting in which eight people, including four Sikhs, died, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesOn April 16, 2021, a gunman opened fire at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis killing eight people and injuring several others before taking his own life. Four members of the Sikh community were among those gunned down. The site was reported as having a significant number of Sikh employees, and the massacre has left the community shaken and in grief. “I have sat with families from our community and so many others at the Holiday Inn Express as they wait to hear the fates of their loved ones,” said Maninder Singh Walia, a member of the Indianapolis Sikh community. “These kinds of violent attacks are a threat to all of us. Our community has a long road of healing – physically, mentally, and spiritually – to recover from this tragedy.” The shooter’s motive is not yet known. In a statement following the incident, the Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group, called on authorities to conduct a full investigation “including the possibility of bias as a factor.” Sikhs have in the past been targeted in racist attacks. As a scholar of the tradition and a practicing Sikh myself, I have studied the prejudices and barrier that many Sikhs in America face. I have also experienced racial slurs from a young age. The bottom line is there is little understanding in the U.S. of who exactly the Sikhs are and what they believe. So here’s a primer. Founder of Sikhism To start at the beginning, the founder of the Sikh tradition, Guru Nanak, was born in 1469 in the Punjab region of South Asia, which is currently split between Pakistan and the northwestern area of India. A majority of the global Sikh population still resides in Punjab on the Indian side of the border. From a young age, Guru Nanak was disillusioned by the social inequities and religious hypocrisies he observed around him. He believed that a single divine force created the entire world and resided within it. In his belief, God was not separate from the world and watching from a distance, but fully present in every aspect of creation. He therefore asserted that all people are equally divine and deserve to be treated as such. To promote this vision of divine oneness and social equality, Guru Nanak created institutions and religious practices. He established community centers and places of worship, wrote his own scriptural compositions and institutionalized a system of leadership (gurus) that would carry forward his vision. The Sikh view thus rejects all social distinctions that produce inequities, including gender, race, religion and caste, the predominant structure for social hierarchy in South Asia. A community kitchen run by the Sikhs to provide free meals irrespective of caste, faith or religion, in the Golden Temple, in Punjab, India. shankar s., CC BY Serving the world is a natural expression of Sikh prayer and worship. Sikhs call this prayerful service “seva,” and it is a core part of their practice. The Sikh identity In the Sikh tradition, a truly religious person is one who cultivates the spiritual self while also serving the communities around them – or a saint-soldier. The saint-soldier ideal applies to women and men alike. In this spirit, Sikh women and men maintain five articles of faith, popularly known as the five Ks. These are: kes (long, uncut hair), kara (steel bracelet), kanga (wooden comb), kirpan (small sword) and kachera (soldier-shorts). Although little historical evidence exists to explain why these particular articles were chosen, the five Ks continue to provide the community with a collective identity, binding together individuals on the basis of a shared belief and practice. As I understand, Sikhs cherish these articles of faith as gifts from their gurus. Turbans are an important part of the Sikh identity. Both women and men may wear turbans. Like the articles of faith, Sikhs regard their turbans as gifts given by their beloved gurus, and its meaning is deeply personal. In South Asian culture, wearing a turban typically indicated one’s social status – kings and rulers once wore turbans. The Sikh gurus adopted the turban, in part, to remind Sikhs that all humans are sovereign, royal and ultimately equal. [3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter. Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.]\ Sikhs in America Today, there are approximately 30 million Sikhs worldwide, making Sikhism the world’s fifth-largest major religion. Sikh Day parade on Madison Avenue, New York. AP Photo/Craig Ruttle After British colonizers in India seized power of Punjab in 1849, where a majority of the Sikh community was based, Sikhs began migrating to various regions controlled by the British Empire, including Southeast Asia, East Africa and the United Kingdom itself. Based on what was available to them, Sikhs played various roles in these communities, including military service, agricultural work and railway construction. The first Sikh community entered the United States via the West Coast during the 1890s. They began experiencing discrimination immediately upon their arrival. For instance, the first race riot targeting Sikhs took place in Bellingham, Washington, in 1907. Angry mobs of white men rounded up Sikh laborers, beat them up and forced them to leave town. The discrimination continued over the years. For instance, after my father moved from Punjab to the United States around the time of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and racial slurs like “Ayatollah” and “raghead” were hurled at him. It was a time when 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken captive in Iran and tension between the two countries was high. These slurs reflected the racist backlash against those who fitted the stereotypes of Iranians. Our family faced a similar racist backlash when the U.S. engaged in the Gulf War during the early 1990s. The racist attacks spiked again after 9/11, particularly because Americans did not know about the Sikh religion and conflated the unique Sikh appearance with popular stereotypes of what terrorists look like. The rates of violence against Sikhs surged after the election of President Donald Trump. The Sikh Coalition estimated in 2018 that Americans Sikhs were being targeted in hate crimes about once a week. A Sikh American Journey parade in Pasadena, Calif. AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker Scholars and government officials estimate the Sikh American population to number around 500,000. As a practicing Sikh, I can affirm that the Sikh commitment to the tenets of their faith, including love, service and justice, keeps them resilient in the face of violence. For these reasons, many Sikh Americans, including those affected by the mass shooting in Indiana, I believe, will continue to maintain their unique Sikh identity, proudly and apologetically. This is an updated version of an article first published on Aug. 9, 2018. The Union Theological Seminary is a member of the Association of Theological Schools. The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation US. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Simran Jeet Singh, Association of Theological Schools. Read more:French row over mosque isn’t simply about state financing – it runs deep into Islamophobia and French secularismCompassionate courage moves beyond ‘cancel culture’ to challenge systemic racism – but it’s hard work Simran Jeet Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

  • EXPLAINER: How is 'reasonableness' key to Chauvin's defense?

    Attorneys and witnesses have used the words “reasonable” or “unreasonable” often at the trial of the former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder and manslaughter in George Floyd's death. The concept of reasonableness has been crucial at trials of officers ever since the landmark Graham v. Connor ruling 32 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is a look at the issue and the key role it's likely to play as Derek Chauvin's trial draws to a close.

  • Prince Harry and Prince William Join Royal Family Procession Behind Prince Philip’s Coffin

    Hannah McKay/WPA Pool/Getty ImagesPrince William and Prince Harry walked behind the Duke of Edinburgh’s coffin at his funeral today. Separated by their cousin Peter Phillips, Princess Anne’s son, the brothers walked behind Prince Philip and the queen’s four children, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward. None were wearing military uniforms, but all were wearing medals, a compromise reached after an internal debate in the royal family about the appropriate dress for Harry and Andrew. The royal procession on foot followed Prince Philip’s coffin, which was carried on a green Land Rover which he helped design. The Duke of Edinburgh's casket was covered in his personal standard and carried his sword, naval cap and a wreath of flowers. His children and grandchildren watched as his coffin was carried by a group of Royal Marines into St George’s Chapel in Windsor for the funeral service itself. The queen arrived separately with a lady-in-waiting in a Bentley. She will sit in the chapel, masked and alone for the duration of the service. The Daily Mail reported she was wiping away tears as she arrived.The royal family were pictured all masked inside the chapel, with its 30 mourners (a number in accordance with coronavirus protocols), all seated separately.A spokesperson for Meghan Markle said she would be watching the ceremony from home in California, adding, “She was hopeful to be able to attend, but was not cleared for travel by her physician at this stage in her pregnancy.”A wreath provided by Harry and Meghan and laid for The Duke of Edinburgh was designed and handmade by Willow Crossley, the same florist who took charge of the flowers at the couple’s wedding reception in Frogmore Gardens.The wreath featured a variety of locally sourced flowers, with Harry and Meghan specifically requesting it include acanthus mollis (Bear’s breeches), the national flower of Greece, to represent the Duke’s heritage; and eryngium (sea holly), to represent the Royal Marines. The wreath also featured campanula to represent gratitude and everlasting love, rosemary to signify remembrance, lavender for devotion, and roses in honor of June being The Duke of Edinburgh’s birth month. The card accompanying the wreath was handwritten by The Duchess of Sussex.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Son of Prince Philip's former protection officer mistook Duke for 'someone from the pub'

    Prince Philip’s former protection officer yesterday revealed his son once assumed that the Duke was "someone from the pub" when he phoned the family’s house. Richard Griffin, who spent over 30 years in protection officer roles for the Royal Family, told the BBC that the child’s confusion resulted in an anecdote that the Duke used to "dine out on". Mr Griffin said: "He rang up one day and my five year-old son answered the phone. He used to call me 'Dick' so he said, 'Can I speak to Dick please?'. "He [his son] said, 'He’s in the garden, I’ll go and get him. Who shall I say is calling?' He [the Duke] said, 'The Duke of Edinburgh'. He said all he heard was my little boy yell out, ‘Dad, can you come to the phone, someone from the pub wants to speak to you!’” Speaking shortly before the Duke’s funeral on Saturday, Mr Griffin said that the Duke "wouldn’t bother" phoning his house via a switchboard, instead ringing directly.

  • Biden news - live: Woman charged with threat to kill VP Harris as China hits out at US’s Japan alliance

    Follow the latest updates

  • 'A little bit of healing to do': Georgia Republicans look to mend after months of division

    Georgia Republicans look to reconcile the controversial election law and former President Trump while facing another national political limelight.

  • With FedEx shootings, America suffers 6th consecutive week with a mass killing

    Almost 50 people have died in eight shootings since March 13.

  • 'Anumeric' people: What happens when a language has no words for numbers?

    A Pirahã family. Caleb Everett, CC BY-SANumbers do not exist in all cultures. There are numberless hunter-gatherers embedded deep in Amazonia, living along branches of the world’s largest river tree. Instead of using words for precise quantities, these people rely exclusively on terms analogous to “a few” or “some.” In contrast, our own lives are governed by numbers. As you read this, you are likely aware of what time it is, how old you are, your checking account balance, your weight and so on. The exact (and exacting) numbers we think with impact everything from our schedules to our self-esteem. But, in a historical sense, numerically fixated people like us are the unusual ones. For the bulk of our species’ approximately 200,000-year lifespan, we had no means of precisely representing quantities. What’s more, the 7,000 or so languages that exist today vary dramatically in how they utilize numbers. Speakers of anumeric, or numberless, languages offer a window into how the invention of numbers reshaped the human experience. In a 2017 book, I explored the ways in which humans invented numbers, and how numbers subsequently played a critical role in other milestones, from the advent of agriculture to the genesis of writing. Numberless cultures Cultures without numbers, or with only one or two precise numbers, include the Munduruku and Pirahã in Amazonia. Researchers have also studied some adults in Nicaragua who were never taught number words. Without numbers, healthy human adults struggle to precisely differentiate and recall quantities as low as four. In an experiment, a researcher will place nuts into a can one at a time, then remove them one by one. The person watching is asked to signal when all the nuts have been removed. Responses suggest that anumeric people have some trouble keeping track of how many nuts remain in the can, even if there are only four or five in total. This and many other experiments have converged upon a simple conclusion: When people do not have number words, they struggle to make quantitative distinctions that probably seem natural to someone like you or me. While only a small portion of the world’s languages are anumeric or nearly anumeric, they demonstrate that number words are not a human universal. It is worth stressing that these anumeric people are cognitively normal, well-adapted to the environs they have dominated for centuries. As the child of missionaries, I spent some of my youth living with anumeric indigenous people, the aforementioned Pirahã who live along the sinuous banks of the black Maici River. Like other outsiders, I was continually impressed by their superior understanding of the riverine ecology we shared. Yet numberless people struggle with tasks that require precise discrimination between quantities. Perhaps this should be unsurprising. After all, without counting, how can someone tell whether there are, say, seven or eight coconuts in a tree? Such seemingly straightforward distinctions become blurry through numberless eyes. Children and animals This conclusion is echoed by work with anumeric children in industrialized societies. Prior to being spoon-fed number words, children can only approximately discriminate quantities beyond three. We must be handed the cognitive tools of numbers before we can consistently and easily recognize higher quantities. In fact, acquiring the exact meaning of number words is a painstaking process that takes children years. Initially, kids learn numbers much like they learn letters. They recognize that numbers are organized sequentially, but have little awareness of what each individual number means. With time, they start to understand that a given number represents a quantity greater by one than the preceding number. This “successor principle” is part of the foundation of our numerical cognition, but requires extensive practice to understand. None of us, then, is really a “numbers person.” We are not predisposed to handle quantitative distinctions adroitly. In the absence of the cultural traditions that infuse our lives with numbers from infancy, we would all struggle with even basic quantitative distinctions. Number words and written numerals transform our quantitative reasoning as they are coaxed into our cognitive experience by our parents, peers and school teachers. The process seems so normal that we sometimes think of it as a natural part of growing up, but it is not. Human brains come equipped with certain quantitative instincts that are refined with age, but these instincts are very limited. For instance, even at birth we are capable of distinguishing between two markedly different quantities – for instance, eight from 16 things. Alex, an African gray parrot, was trained by ethologist Irene Pepperberg to count objects. AP Photo/File But we are not the only species capable of such abstractions. Compared to chimps and other primates, our numerical instincts are not as remarkable as many presume. We even share some basic instinctual quantitative reasoning with distant nonmammalian relatives like birds. Indeed, work with some other species, including parrots, suggests they too can refine their quantitative thought if they are introduced to the cognitive power tools we call numbers. The birth of numbers So, how did we ever invent “unnatural” numbers in the first place? The answer is, literally, at your fingertips. The bulk of the world’s languages use base-10, base-20 or base-5 number systems. That is, these smaller numbers are the basis of larger numbers. English is a base-10 or decimal language, as evidenced by words like 14 (“four” + “10”) and 31 (“three” x “10” + “one”). We speak a decimal language because an ancestral tongue, proto-Indo-European, was decimally based. Proto-Indo-European was decimally oriented because, as in so many cultures, our linguistic ancestors’ hands served as the gateway to realizations like “five fingers on this hand is the same as five fingers on that hand.” Such transient thoughts were manifested into words and passed down across generations. This is why the word “five” in many languages is derived from the word for “hand.” Most number systems, then, are the by-product of two key factors: the human capacity for language and our propensity for focusing on our hands and fingers. This manual fixation – an indirect by-product of walking upright on two legs – has helped yield numbers in most cultures, but not all. Cultures without numbers also offer insight into the cognitive influence of particular numeric traditions. Consider what time it is. Your day is ruled by minutes and seconds, but these entities are not real in any physical sense and are nonexistent to numberless people. Minutes and seconds are the verbal and written vestiges of an uncommon base-60 number system used in Mesopotamia millennia ago. They reside in our minds, numerical artifacts that not all humans inherit conceptually. Research on the language of numbers shows, more and more, that one of our species’ key characteristics is tremendous linguistic and cognitive diversity. While there are undoubtedly cognitive commonalities across all human populations, our radically varied cultures foster profoundly different cognitive experiences. If we are to truly understand how much our cognitive lives differ cross-culturally, we must continually sound the depths of our species’ linguistic diversity.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Read more:When languages die, we lose a part of who we areIf you speak Mandarin, your brain is differentIf we ever came across aliens, would we be able to understand them? Caleb Everett was a 2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. He receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

  • France to give one bn euros aid to farmers hit by frost

    French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Saturday pledged more than one billion euros in aid for farmers and winemakers reeling from the worst frost in decades.

  • No uniforms, but Royal family show military ties with medals at Prince Philip's funeral

    They may not have been wearing uniform, but the Royal family's military ties were plain to see in the medals they wore to the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral on Saturday. The Queen decreed that the men should wear morning suits with black ties and the women day dresses amid concerns that the Duke of Sussex could have ended up being the only senior royal not in uniform after relinquishing his royal and military ties last year. The Duke of York had also sparked ructions by demanding to go dressed as an Admiral, despite his promotion to that rank in the Royal Navy being deferred after he stepped down from public duties in November 2019 over his relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. All the Queen's children and the Duke of Cambridge wore the Garter Star, representing the Order of the Garter which is the highest order of chivalry in the British honours system and at the sovereign's sole discretion. The Duke of Kent, 85 – the oldest member of the Royal family taking part in the walking procession – wore, among his other medals, the King George Coronation Medal, while those present for the Queen's Coronation in 1953, including the Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Gloucester, wore the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal.

  • Prince Philip's close friend Countess Mountbatten attends funeral on behalf of ill husband

    They became so close during the course of their nearly 30-year friendship that she was known as “and also” on account of her name always appearing on the Duke of Edinburgh’s guest list. So it was hardly a surprise when the Countess Mountbatten of Burma was included in the 30-strong congregation for Prince Philip’s funeral, handpicked by the Queen. Also known as Penny Knatchbull, later Lady Romsey and Lady Brabourne, the 68-year-old mother of three was the Duke’s carriage driving partner and one of his closest confidantes. Yet it emerged on Saturday that the Countess, pictured below, was actually representing her husband, the Earl of Mountbatten of Burma, who is unwell and therefore unable to attend.

  • MyPillow guy’s free speech site bans curse words

    ‘Huge letdown’: Telegram users on Lindell’s verified channel express frustration at signing up for VIP access to new social media network that still hasn’t opened despite announcement

  • How women dress for other women

    Wardrobe choices can be part of a delicate social dance. Everett Collection/Shutterstock.com“If you can’t be better than your competition,” Vogue editor Anna Wintour once said, “just dress better.” Indeed, our research suggests that women don’t just dress to be fashionable, or to outdo one another when it comes to enticing men. They also dress for other women. But Wintour’s quote misses some of the nuances that go into the outfits women choose with female friends, co-workers and acquaintances in mind. It’s not just about dressing better. In fact, my colleagues and I found that women can be motivated by another factor: avoiding the slings and arrows of other women. The psychology of women’s wardrobes My social psychology lab explores how women navigate their social relationships with other women. With my co-authors, Oklahoma State graduate student Ashley M. Rankin and Arizona State University graduate student Stefanie Northover, I recently studied what goes into women’s fashion choices. Of course, both men and women consider a variety of concerns when selecting their outfits: cost, fit, occasion. Existing psychological research on women’s clothing choices tends to center on how women dress for men – the makeup, shoes and colors they select to impress the opposite sex. But we posed a different question: How might women dress for other women? For over a century, psychologists have been interested in competition between men. Only over the past few decades have researchers started to seriously look into how women actively compete with one another. The competition isn’t necessarily nice. Like men who compete with one another, women can be aggressive toward other women they’re competing with. But it’s rarely the physical kind. Instead, social scientists like Joyce Benenson, Kaj Bjorkqvist and Nicole Hess have shown that women are more prone to rely on social exclusion and reputation-damaging gossip. So we wondered: Do women ever dress defensively – to mitigate the chance that other women might go after them? We know that women who are physically attractive and who wear revealing clothing are more likely to be targets of same-sex aggression. For example, psychologists Tracy Vaillancourt and Aanchal Sharma found that women behaved more aggressively toward an attractive woman when she was dressed in a short skirt and low-cut shirt than when that exact same woman wore khakis and a crewneck. We reasoned that women would be aware of this dynamic – and some would try to avoid it. So we tested this theory in a series of experiments. Dressing defensively First, we studied whether people would expect women to be aggressive toward attractive, scantily clad women. We asked 142 people to read a scenario about two women, Carol and Sara, who met for coffee after connecting on a friend-finder app that was like Tinder, but for platonic relationships. We asked the participants how they thought Carol would treat Sara during an otherwise uneventful coffee date. Although the scenarios were the same, some people saw a photo of Sara that depicted her as an attractive woman wearing khakis and a crewneck; others saw a photo of her wearing a low-cut shirt and short-skirt; and a third group saw her in the more revealing outfit, but the image had been photoshopped to make her look less physically attractive. We found that when Sara was attractive and revealingly dressed, people expected Carol would be meaner to Sara. We then wanted to see whether women would also act on the awareness of this dynamic, so we ran a series of experiments with college-aged and adult women from the U.S. For a set of two studies, we instructed female participants to imagine that they were going to meet new people in a professional setting, like a networking event, or at a social gathering, such as a birthday party. They were also told to imagine the event as either single-sex or mixed-sex. In the first, we asked women to draw their ideal outfits for those events, and we later had undergraduate research assistants measure how much skin was revealed. In the second, we asked women to choose outfits from a menu of options – akin to shopping for clothes online. Each of the possible outfits had been rated for modesty by a separate set of participants. In both studies, women chose more revealing outfits for social events than professional ones. This wasn’t surprising. But interestingly, women chose less revealing outfits to meet up with an all-female group – regardless of whether it was a professional or social setting. But wouldn’t the more revealing clothing in mixed-group settings simply reflect their desire to attract men? Not exactly. Not all women dressed the same for other women. The women who rated themselves as more physically attractive were the ones who chose more modest outfits when meeting up with a group of women. This supports the idea that they were dressing defensively – to avoid bringing attention to themselves and being targeted by the other women. Because same-sex aggression is more likely to come from strangers than friends, in our final experiment we asked 293 young women, aged 18 to 40, what they would wear to meet up with a prospective female friend. Again, we found that more physically attractive women indicated that they would dress with more discretion. Together, these findings show that women don’t always dress to impress. Nor do they dress to aggress. Instead, there’s a more subtle social dance taking place – one that involves humility, hesitance and heightened awareness. [Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jaimie Arona Krems, Oklahoma State University. Read more:Serena Williams’ catsuit controversy evokes the battle over women wearing shortsHow white became the color of suffrageCriticism of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s clothes echoes attacks against early female labor activists Jaimie Arona Krems does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

  • Diversity in Hollywood is 'better in some ways but worse in others,' actor Alfonso Ribeiro says

    Diversity in Hollywood is “better in some ways and worse in others,” actor Alfonso Ribeiro, star of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Host of America's Funniest Home Videos told Yahoo Finance when discussing how the industry has evolved over the years.

  • Black soldier mistreatment common even before Virginia case

    Lt. Caron Nazario had been pulled over in rural Virginia by the two officers, who repeatedly demanded that he step out of the vehicle. Nazario said he was afraid to get out, to which Gutierrez replied: “You should be.” Within minutes, Nazario was pepper-sprayed, struck in the knees to force him to the ground and handcuffed.

  • How Meghan ensured she had a part in Prince Philip's funeral – with a handwritten note on wreath

    The Duchess of Sussex wrote the card attached to the wreath sent by her and Prince Harry to ensure that, in a small way, she played a part in the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral service. Meghan, who is heavily pregnant with the couple's second child, had hoped to attend the ceremony but was advised against travelling by her doctor. The 39-year-old was watching the funeral on television at home in Montecito, California. The Sussexes' tribute was among nine family wreaths laid in the Quire of St George's Chapel, propped against the stalls on each side of the Duke's coffin. Buckingham Palace aides declined to provide details of the other wreaths, saying they were private. But a source close to the Sussexes confirmed that theirs had been designed and handmade by Willow Crossley, a Cotswold florist known for her natural, rustic arrangements. The variety of locally sourced flowers, some of which were picked from the designer's garden, were chosen due to their particular significance. Prince Harry and Meghan asked for it to include Acanthus mollis, or bear's breeches, the national flower of Greece, to represent the Duke's heritage; Eryngium, or sea holly, to represent the Royal Marines; Campanula, to represent "gratitude and everlasting love"; rosemary to signify remembrance; lavender for devotion, and roses in honour of the Duke's birth month of June.

  • Oakland protest against police shootings turns violent

    Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Oakland, California, on Friday night to voice their anger over the deadly police shootings of Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo.

  • Libya launches public vaccination drive

    Libya on Saturday launched its coronavirus vaccination campaign for the general population in Tripoli, with the elderly and healthcare workers given priority in the conflict-hit North African nation.

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene launches ‘America First’ platform to promote ‘Anglo-Saxon traditions’

    ‘America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,’ an America First pamphlet says