Politicians who continue to welcome contracts with US companies without considering the risks and consequences of total dependency in the years to come are undermining the raison d’etre of the NHS, argues Dr JOHN PUNTIS

“ALL that is solid melts into air,” wrote Karl Marx. In the US today, all that was once solid is being smashed into pieces.
We are staring at the shattered remains of what was an already deeply imperfect democracy. Institutions are being dismantled, lives and livelihoods destroyed. The illusion once known as the American dream has melted into air along with the financial and psychological wellbeing of millions of working people.
The man wielding the axe is Elon Musk, the de facto US president. If there were any remaining doubts about that, they were dispelled at the first gathering of Trump’s full cabinet this week when he deferred to his billionaire puppet-master to open the meeting.

But the beneath the racism and misogyny of the far right lies a shared grievance with the left — Starmer’s complete betrayal of working people, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

For 80 years, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have pleaded “never again,” for anyone. But are we listening, asks Linda Pentz Gunter