Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will testify at the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on June 22 at 10

A top engineer at Twitter has announced he is quitting his role with the company following the glitch-ridden launch of Florida governor Ron Desantis’s 2024 presidential campaign on the social media platform. “After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday,” Foad Dabiri, who was an engineering chief at Twitter, tweeted on Thursday. The Twitter engineer’s exit from the company comes a day after Mr DeSantis’s long-anticipated 2024 campaign bid for the White House on a Twitter livestream. Mr DeSantis’s campaign launch announcement on Twitter Spaces – the platform’s audio group-chat feature – was marred by a a host of glitches, including long silences and persistent echoes. The Twitter app reportedly crashed for several users who tuned in to listen to the announcement and at one point the Republican governor himself disappeared from the livestream. Mr Musk – who had boasted about several overhauls to the microblogging site since his takeover of the company to make Spaces better – shut the initial Spaces event and started a new one. The second event where Mr DeSantis read a short speech, reportedly gathered fewer listeners than the first, attracting about 161,000 people, according to Twitter’s public-facing data. The buggy event, according to many users on the social media platform, is a reflection of how Twitter under Mr Musk is far from operating smoothly. Since Mr Musk’s takeover of Twitter, he has laid off nearly three-fourths of the company’s workforce, following which the platform has faced several technical issues. Earlier this week, a bug caused tweets deleted by some users in the past to resurface on their timelines, and weeks earlier, many users complained that they were unable to post images and share external links. Mr Dabiri was the engineering lead at Twitter’s Growth Organisation. He tweeted on Thursday that during his stint with the company, he “experienced two distinct eras” before and after Mr Musk’s takeover. “And then came ‘2.0.’ What an extraordinary journey it has been. To say it was challenging at the outset would be an understatement,” Mr Dabiri said. The engineering chief however did not comment on why he was leaving Twitter, and whether it is linked to the problems with the DeSantis livestream. Both Twitter and Mr Dabiri did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment. “Working with Elon Musk has been highly educational, and it was enlightening to see how his principles and vision are shaping the future of this company,” he tweeted. Read More Ron DeSantis news – live: DeSantis floats pardoning Trump and Jan 6 rioters after ‘train wreck’ Twitter launch AOC jokes more people watched her gaming online than listened to glitch-ridden DeSantis launch DeSantis pushes past embarrassing campaign start, outlines travel schedule for early state visits AOC jokes more people watched her gaming online than listened to DeSantis launch What is Twitter Spaces and why did it go so wrong during DeSantis’s 2024 launch? What are Elon Musk’s political beliefs?

Sudanese and U.N. officials say the United Nations secretary-general was “shocked” by a letter from Sudan’s army chief demanding the removal of the U.N. envoy to the country

Sara Ramirez sported a keffiyeh as they joined thousands of protesters to march through the Bay Ridge neighborhood

South Africa's David Miller hailed Afghanistan as "one of the joys of the World Cup" on Thursday but admitted thoughts were already turning towards...

By Howard Schneider WASHINGTON Inflation staying stuck above the Fed's 2% target remains a greater risk than tight

There are still three weeks to go before anyone gets to actually see Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, but it’s already completely monopolised pop culture, from music to fashion to furniture. Google “Barbiecore” and you’ll find the film’s pink-plastic aesthetic infiltrating everything you can imagine, with TikTok clips offering detailed outfit suggestions to viral Twitter threads praising individual looks from the film’s characters. But nothing is getting quite as much attention as Barbie herself. Or, more specifically, the red carpet wardrobe of the actor playing her. Across social media, Margot Robbie has been the subject of endless posts, threads and reels as a result of her chosen ensembles. “Margot Robbie had the chance to do the greatest fashion press tour ever and lord did she take it,” reads one tweet. “Margot Robbie just absolutely slaying all her Barbie press tour looks,” adds another. Meanwhile, British Vogue recently described her as an “unstoppable fashion force”. In typical Hollywood, none of this would be particularly remarkable. Robbie is, after all, an A-list star with an entire entourage of people whose job it is to make sure she looks her best all of the time. The fact that she keeps knocking it out of the park on the Barbie press tour, then, should just be par for the course. But, for Robbie, this carries special significance. Rewind just a few months, and Robbie’s red carpet presence had become something of a political issue. In January, social media was alight with derision for her red carpet wardrobe, mostly due to her long-standing partnership with Chanel. According to Robbie’s fans, the actor’s sense of personal style had been neutered by the luxury Franch conglomerates, with many insisting – albeit without any real evidence – that she was being forced into wearing garments she didn’t actually like. Celebrity stylist Elliot Garnaut labelled Robbie the “worst-dressed” celebrity in Hollywood, adding that someone at Chanel “obviously hates her”. Of course, nobody knew how true or false such claims were. But fans noticed a marked difference in Robbie’s demeanour whenever she stepped out in a designer ensemble that wasn’t Chanel. There was an entire Bottega Veneta phase, for example, where photos of the actor went viral alongside speculation that she was entering her “new fashion era”, finally unshackled from Chanel’s chains. What all of this taught us was that people quite clearly care quite a lot about what Robbie wears. Now it seems they care more than ever. The actor truly hasn’t missed a beat with her press tour wardrobe, tapping into cult vintage looks and recreating actual Barbie doll outfits. As is expected, there is a lot of pink. But it’s not just happening on the red carpet. Remember the iconic tweed blazer originally worn by Claudia Schiffer on the spring/summer Chanel 1996 runway? Robbie was spotted wearing it with jeans and a white crop top when she landed at Sydney airport last month. Her luggage was also pink, naturally. Another Chanel moment came via a sunshine-yellow tweed suit that looked like it had been plucked straight out of Cher Horowitz’s wardrobe. Speaking of co-ords, we’ve seen plenty. There was the pink gingham Prada set Robbie wore to CinemaCon 2023, and the bespoke Bottega Veneta pleated skirt and crop top that the label made especially for the press tour (the exact shade of pink matches that of Barbie’s car). Elsewhere, we’ve seen Robbie wearing the iconic pink polo neck and metallic skirt by Versace from its autumn/winter 1994 collection – fashion fans will remember photos of Kate Moss wearing this on the runway. She paired the look with white platform sandals and lilac socks: a perfect way to accessorise like a doll. Another standout vintage Versace look from the same collection came at a Barbie event in Sydney, where the star wore a pink sequin minidress complete with a corseted bodice. But the undisputed highlight has been the moments in which Robbie directly references Barbie herself, with looks taken from 1950s dolls. At a press conference in Seoul, Robbie dressed in a pink sparkling skirt suit covered in crystal studs, complete with a heart-shaped bag and a pillbox hat. Then there was the “day to night” doll look from 1985 that Robbie recreated – courtesy of Versace – in a pink pencil skirt suit with white lapels and matching high heels. The actor referenced another look worn by the same doll later that night, in a tulle Versace dress complete with a sparkling bodysuit. Over in Sydney, we saw the actor don a striped bodycon minidress by Hervé Léger that paid homage to a swimsuit worn by a Barbie doll from 1959. And at a photocall in LA, Robbie wore a pink polka dot cutout dress from Valentino that referenced a similar frock worn by another original Barbie doll. And in a double whammy of references, it was also a remake of a similar gown worn by Karen Mulder on the brand’s spring 1993 runway. All of this has been the work of celebrity styling mastermind Andrew Mukamal, who has worked with everyone from Zoe Kravitz and Billie Eilish to Kieran Culkin and Irina Shayk. “We’re always thinking about risks to take,” Mukami once told Vogue of his long-standing partnership with Kravitz. “We want to make an impact and create iconic moments that people will remember and be drawn to.” It seems he’s taken this exact modus operandi and applied it to Robbie, too. And thank goodness, because Barbie is nothing if not defined by what she wears. In 2023, that might sound reductive. But given Gerwig’s esteemed reputation and what we know about the film so far, we have every reason to believe that fashion, much like everything else, will prove to be an important and meaningful platform in the script. Robbie’s archival wardrobe also marks the latest sign that red carpet fashion is leaning increasingly backwards. The only outfits that matter are those that we’ve seen before. At least, that’s how it seems when you consider the fanfare surrounding celebrities any time they get their hands on a cult vintage look. This taps into the sartorial zeitgeist of shunning fast fashion in favour of sustainable alternatives. But it also suggests a slightly less exciting prospect that fashion is running out of new ideas. Even at the Met Gala, fashion’s greatest global stage, some of the most talked-about looks were vintage. Is this the death knell for originality? And what of Robbie’s own style progression? Once the Barbie press tour is over, will she go back to grinning weakly in Chanel pastels? Nodding to fashion history is a worthwhile cause. But it’s something the Queen of fashion herself, Vogue’s Anna Wintour, famously despises: “Fashion’s not about looking back. It’s always about looking forward,” she once said. Try as she might, Robbie can’t dress like a doll for the rest of her life. So perhaps this marks the start of a new costume-orientated era for the actor, one where fashion will be taken more seriously than ever before. Funnily enough, it’s a modus operandi that puts her more in sync with Barbie than anyone could have anticipated. ‘Barbie’ is in cinemas from 21 July Read More Hostage to fashion: Margot Robbie’s Chanel problem speaks to a wider red carpet crisis Walk this way... but not like that: How men’s walks became sexualised Plastic fantastic: Barbiecore is the fashion movement turning hyper-femininity on its head

Policymakers from Washington to Frankfurt head into the final quarter of 2023 with tentative grounds for optimism that

Bethesda Softworks has officially announced a release date for its highly anticipated "NASA-punk" RPG, Starfield.

Randy Cox, the man who was paralyzed while authorities were transporting him handcuffed and without a seat belt in a police van, reached a $45 million settlement with the City of New Haven, his attorneys announced Saturday.

Justin Hawkins thought he was "too old" to be a rock star by the time he reached 18 but made it by working his way up through studying and getting a job in a studio.

Chef JJ Johnson uses rice at home in many different ways — making crepes with his kids, using leftover rice for his wife’s lunch salad and frying it for dinner multiple ways