The tech scene is booming in the US’s largest Black-majority city, with foreign investment and a recent population boost

When the Book Cadillac hotel opened in Detroit a century ago this month, it crowned the Motor City as one of the most dominant metropolitan powers on the planet.

The tallest hotel in the world at the time, it boasted more than 1,100 rooms set across 31 stories. Back then, Detroit was a place where all and sundry wanted to see or be seen as the city’s dominant industry – automobiles – fueled the dawn of mass mobility for the wider world.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: Sarah Owen warns Reform MPs are making task of strengthening UK communities more urgent

The Conservative government’s relentless focus on small boat crossings and delays processing asylum claims played a role in stoking August’s UK riots, the chair of the Commons equalities committee has said.

The Labour MP Sarah Owen, whose committee has launched an inquiry into improving community cohesion after the unrest, warned that Reform UK MPs were also making the task of strengthening communities more urgent.

Continue reading...

Black Girls Hike will explore themes of prejudice and diversity in the countryside at Manchester Museum exhibition

In early December, Emily Zobel Marshall completed her mountain leader training for the walking group Black Girls Hike: a two-night expedition in Snowdonia that involved wild camping at -6C and night-time navigation.

Speaking just before she left, Zobel Marshall, an academic from Leeds Beckett University, insisted she was thrilled by the upcoming challenge.

Continue reading...

Kevin Colantonio prepared to plead guilty to igniting blazes outside Rhode Island’s Shiloh Gospel Temple in February

A Rhode Island man is prepared to plead guilty on 7 January to lighting several fires just outside a predominantly Black church nearly a year earlier, federal court documents show.

Kevin Colantonio, 36, ignited the blazes around Shiloh Gospel Temple’s exterior in North Providence during the early morning of 11 February because of the “race, color, religion, national origin and/or ethnicity of the congregants there”, according to a plea agreement filed on 20 December. Investigators said most of the worshippers at the Pentecostal church, which has existed for about 35 years, are Black and African American.

Continue reading...

Israel uses it to silence critics of its Gaza war while the right uses it to attack opponents. Meanwhile, the issue itself goes unaddressed

When the international criminal court issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials in November, the response from the country’s government was all too familiar. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected outright the warrants for alleged war crimes in Gaza against him and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, calling them “an antisemitic decision”. The ultranationalist national security adviser, Itamar Ben-Gvir, declared that the court had shown “once again that it is antisemitic through and through”. And the transport minister, Miri Regev, chimed in, claiming : “This is modern antisemitism in the guise of justice.”

Bleakly, none of this was a surprise. Over a year into Israel’s assault on Gaza, which some experts have described as a genocide , accusations of antisemitism raised to counter criticism of Israel have gone into overdrive. Such claims have been made against protesters crying out for an end to the bloodshed in Gaza and against the UN and aid agencies warning of a humanitarian catastrophe. They have been levelled at global news channels and the international court of justice ; against actors, artists, pop stars and even British-Jewish film-makers . So sweepingly and speech-chillingly are such claims made by Israel’s diehard defenders that the very term “antisemitism” is losing its meaning. It is exactly as the British-Jewish philosopher Brian Klug warned 20 years ago : “When antisemitism is everywhere, it is nowhere.” Blanket misuse has, troublingly, turned the term into a feature on an Israeli politician’s lingo-bingo scorecard.

Rachel Shabi is the author of Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

Continue reading...

Damning report reveals millions in England are living in poor-quality housing that threatens their health

Ministers have been warned that efforts to save the NHS and grow the economy will fail unless they tackle the housing crisis, as a damning report reveals millions of people are living in substandard homes that risk worsening their health.

In total, 4.5 million people aged 50 or above with an existing health condition in England are living in poor-quality housing with one or more problems such as rising damp, rot or decay that may be making them even sicker, the Centre for Ageing Better analysis found. Of those, 1.7 million are aged 70 or over.

Continue reading...

The UK’s first black female bishop has always been a fearless defender of people’s rights, from Montego Bay to the streets of Dover, as she recalls in her memoir published next month

She is about as far from the stereotype of a Church of England bishop as you can get: black, female, fearless. She was born and raised in poverty in Jamaica, deprived of parental love, beaten and abused as a youngster, yet Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin radiates warmth and joy as she opens a pile of Christmas cards in her office at Canterbury cathedral.

The card she sent this year depicted a black Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in a refugee tent on a hillside. It is a message that came straight from her heart. As bishop of Dover, the issue of migration – whether it is people fleeing war, persecution or economic hardship – is always near the top of her in-tray.

Continue reading...

Lack of faith in political leaders is leading the socially disaffected to be seduced by violence

Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the alleged perpetrator of the horror attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg , does not, Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, observed, “ fit any existing mould ”. He had acted in “an unbelievably cruel and brutal manner, like an Islamist terrorist, though he was clearly ideologically hostile to Islam”.

Faeser is not alone in her confusion about how to understand Abdulmohsen.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

Continue reading...

Macmillan Cancer Support criticises unacceptable variations in people’s cancer care

Black cancer patients and people living with a disability are less likely to feel they are getting enough support while receiving treatment in hospital, according to analysis by a leading charity.

Analysis of the 2023 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey for England by Macmillan found that 71% of black patients with cancer feel like they are getting enough support with their overall needs while in hospital, compared with the national average of 76% of patients.

Continue reading...