Damning

Power, documentarian Yance Ford’s clinical inquiry into US policing, isn’t trafficking in new information. The 86-minute project billed as an “essay-film”, which premiered at Sundance and will stream on Netflix later this year, has clear eyes on the past, synthesizing the work of several academics with a robust archival record to examine the origins, structure and impact of police power in the United States.That doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary; the film makes cogent, sweeping sense of the record for perhaps the most…

Virginia Roberts-Giuffre alleged that Bill Clinton put pressure on Vanity Fair magazine in 2011, amidst newly unsealed documents raising questions about the former US president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Discussing her upcoming book in 2011, alleged sex-trafficked victim Roberts-Giuffre claimed that Clinton marched into the offices of the magazine, owned by Condé Nast, to urge it halt a planned publication of a story about Epstein, newly released court documents show.Roberts-Giuffre said that Clinton “walked into VF and…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeThere was once a time when a film as nakedly terrible as Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom would become its own spectacle. It’d be celebrated, ironically, as another Highlander II: The Quickening or Battlefield Earth – a banquet of nonsense for future inebriated university students to feast on. But the superhero market has thoroughly annihilated that joy. Now, it’s somehow possible to watch…

New details have emerged in the plea deal of YouTuber and family vlogger Ruby Franke. The infamous mommy vlogger behind the popular “8 Passengers” family channel pleaded guilty on Monday to four counts of second-degree felony child abuse, according to KUTV. (Representatives for Franke did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.) Franke faces up to 60 years in prison and a $40,000 fine, per Utah law.  Franke has spent the past three months in police custody without bail. She and her business…

A trade union that won a landmark case against Uber in the UK’s Supreme Court had a “culture of abuse and toxicity,” with an internal power struggle threatening to paralyze its operations, according to a damning independent report obtained by WIRED.The report into the App Drivers and Couriers Union, or ADCU, which was commissioned by the union itself last summer and conducted by a leading UK barrister, also identified incidents of racial abuse and Islamophobia, mistreatment of staff, and evidence that senior figures…

Donald Trump announced this week that he has been notified that he is a target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the events of Jan. 6, 2021. That suggests he is likely to be indicted in the coming days for his role in the first insurrection on American soil since the Civil War. Originated and directed by the then-president, the attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power was the culmination of a series of attacks on our democracy by him and his allies, employing increasingly desperate methods to…

The many legal perils amassing against former President Trump have a way of blurring together at this point. But the civil trial of the writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit for assault and defamation, which began Tuesday in New York, is about to stand out dramatically from the pack.That’s because the law, the evidence and the personalities involved portend a lopsided and relatively brief trial that will portray Trump vividly as a liar, bully and sexual predator.And we can probably add “coward” to that because Trump decided…

via Marvel Studios We’re now officially less than a month away from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hitting theaters, but now that it’s almost here Marvel fans aren’t sure they’re actually ready for it — thanks to the threequel providing yet more proof that it’s going to turn us into emotional wrecks. Meanwhile, a Secret Invasion star comes clean about their eagerly anticipated character as the wildest recast for Jonathan Majors as Kang, one that would either sink or save the whole MCU, is touted. Guardians of…

Amazon was hit with an unusually forceful safety citation by federal investigators in the US today. The findings appear to back up what some workers at the company have long alleged: that the online retail giant’s warehouse and fulfillment facilities are designed for speed over safety, causing lower-back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders at high rates.The citation released by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration today concluded that Amazon was “failing to keep workers safe.” The company did not…

A bonfire, a bonfire, a bonfire. David Cameron promised one as prime minister, as did Boris Johnson, as did Liz Truss when she ran for the highest office in the land. Conservative leaders come and go, but they all want a conflagration. Always of red tape, of course, the semi-mythical substance that is said to throttle business. The trouble is that, in the case of Grenfell Tower, it was human lives that burned. The 30-year pursuit of deregulation in the building industry demonstrably contributed to the killing of 72 people…