DINNER PARTY INTEL...

The topics you have to be able to discuss this week

1. Home justice

When the US Supreme Court last week denied Donald Trump’s request to block the National Archives & Records Administration from sending documents from the Trump administration concerning the January 6 insurrection to the congressional committee investigating the riot, the vote was eight to one.

The only dissenting vote came from justice Clarence Thomas. No surprise there. His wife, Ginni, supported the January 6 rallies that led to the attack on Congress and has a long history of incendiary rhetoric.

2. An earnest Barbie

Barbie might still be a bimbo, but some of her fellow dolls have gravitas. Ida B Wells has become the latest Barbie doll, honouring a US woman who was born into slavery in 1862 and who was removed from a whites-only railway carriage long before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus in 1955.

In 2020, Wells, a journalist, was posthumously honoured with a Pulitzer Prize “for her outstanding and courageous reporting” on violence against African Americans in the era of lynching.

Among Wells’s recent Barbie contemporaries are astronaut Sally Ride and author Maya Angelou.

3. No-5G zone

The world’s largest telecommunications company has agreed to restrict 5G near US airports after airlines warned that it could cause interference with aircraft radio altimeters, which measure altitude. AT&T, along with US wireless network operator Verizon, agreed to the restriction after being convinced that 5G, an innovative service meant to speed up mobile devices, could cause altimeters to malfunction. The 5G system used by AT&T and Verizon works on similar frequencies to the ones used by altimeters. The rest of the world is expected to apply similar restrictions.