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US president blames Tehran for loss of Apache gunship, whose crew were rescued by a drone near strait of Hormuz

The Ukraine and Iran wars are very different, but a common authoritarian delusion unites the men who started themA strongman president, self-styled redeemer of national glory, is trapped in a conflict he can't win but doesn't know how to end without looking like a loser. A cult of infallibility prevents the leader admitting a strategic blunder even to himself. It could be Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin; Iran or Ukraine.The conflicts and the regimes involved are also dissimilar in important ways. Russia's campaign to eradicate a neighbouring democracy is nastier in conception and bloodier in execution than the bungled US effort to dislodge a dictatorship in Tehran. It has also gone on much longer. The first world war was shorter than a special military operation" that was supposed to capture Kyiv within weeks. The Soviet Red Army repelled Nazi invasion and marched on Berlin in less time than it has taken Putin's forces to occupy a tranche of eastern Ukraine, and they are not making any significant advances. The war has burned trillions of roubles and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives for no discernible dividend in national greatness.Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Exclusive: poll across 15 countries finds deep mistrust', with majority doubting US would come to their aid in an attackEuropean confidence in an American security guarantee" has hit a historic low, a survey suggests, with only one in 10 people across 15 countries seeing the US as an ally and majorities in all doubting it would come to their aid if they were attacked.The survey, published on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank before critical G7 and Nato summits in France and Turkey over the coming weeks, revealed deep European distrust in the US", the authors said. Continue reading...

Lieutenant governor and attorney general advance but result signals decisive defeat for controversial Nancy MaceDonald Trump-backed Pamela Evette, South Carolina's lieutenant governor, and Alan Wilson, the state's attorney general, have advanced to a runoff in a competitive race to represent the Republican party in South Carolina's gubernatorial election.The winner of the Republican primary is favored to win the closely watched general election, given South Carolina's conservative tilt, although Democrats are hoping to ride a wave of progressive enthusiasm to make political gains across the ticket. Continue reading...

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Experts worry Trump's administration - now stocked with loyalists and election deniers - may not stand up to attempts to sabotage upcoming elections - key US politics stories from Tuesday 9 June at a glanceDonald Trump is inventing fraud" in California's primary elections, and likely to ramp up unfounded allegations when more races go against him, pro-democracy experts have warned.Trump has repeatedly called the California results into question as ballot-counting continued in the country's most populous state. In the LA mayor's race, Trump said it was not possible" that the former reality TV star and registered Republican Spencer Pratt could have lost, despite the fact that LA is a deeply liberal city. Continue reading...

The ex-reality TV star, who lost his home in the Pacific Palisades fire, cast himself as the antidote to the city's woesSpencer Pratt, an ex-reality TV star, cast himself as the antidote to Los Angeles's woes as he campaigned to be the city's next mayor.He curried favor with swaths of disillusioned voters who related to his diatribes against city leadership. His fervent social media posts, including re-shares of AI-generated campaign ads showing LA in an apocalyptic light, garnered national attention. Continue reading...

Groff tells lawmakers I am not a conspirator' and that she had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes while working for himLesley Groff, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime executive assistant, testified Tuesday before the House oversight and reform committee, telling lawmakers that she had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes while working for him.I believe that my testimony will dispel the false notion that because of my employment with Epstein, I must have knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts," Groff told lawmakers in her prepared opening remarks, obtained by the Guardian. Nothing could be further from the truth." Continue reading...

The man in charge the last time the US hosted the World Cup marvels at the transformation of football in America over the last 32 yearsThe Super Bowl-style half-time show curated by Chris Martin for the World Cup final will not be to everybody's tastes, but one octogenarian American will have a wry smile on his face when Madonna and Shakira walk out on to the pitch at MetLife Stadium next month.In his role as chair and chief executive of the 1994 World Cup, Alan Rothenberg wanted Whitney Houston to perform on the pitch at the final at Pasadena's Rose Bowl, only to be overruled by Fifa, who insisted that the singer stay on the sidelines. Continue reading...

Southern Poverty Law Center releases report as US government pursues federal fraud charges against groupA new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) finds hard-right groups have increasingly expanded their influence across the US government, which is pursuing a federal fraud case into the civil rights organization.Tuesday's report - which identified 1,263 hate and anti-government groups in operation throughout 2025 - comes less than two months after it was indicted by the government it says the hard right has infiltrated. Continue reading...

Decarlos Brown Jr to stay in custody while receiving treatment for remainder of case over Iryna Zarutska's deathThe man accused of fatally stabbing Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte commuter train in August has been found incompetent to stand trial in federal court for now, the US attorney's office for the western district of North Carolina said on Tuesday.Decarlos Brown Jr, 35, is accused of killing Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, on a Charlotte light rail train in a case that drew national attention after a surveillance camera video depicting the violent attack was released. Continue reading...

Earthquake was region's strongest tremor in nearly 150 years and was also felt in parts of Mexico including CancunAn earthquake on Monday off the coast of Cuba, which was that region's strongest tremor in nearly 150 years, could be felt in Florida and parts of Mexico.The 6.1-magnitude earthquake, which struck in the afternoon, occurred approximately 65 miles (105km) north-west of Mantua, Cuba, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS added that the earthquake had a depth of 16 miles. Continue reading...

House report alleged governor and state attorney general knew of widespread taxpayer fraud' in social programs

We would like to hear from fans in New York and around the world about their reactions to the Knicks' performance in the NBA finalsThe New York Knicks are leading the NBA finals 2-1 against the San Antonio Spurs, much to the excitement of fans across the world. It's their first appearance in the playoff finals since 1999, when they lost the best-of-seven series to the very same Texas team.We would like to hear from New Yorkers and Knicks fans, both in the state and around the globe, about how they're feeling in this current moment. With the Knicks doing so well after so long, how are you celebrating? Are you still optimistic despite the Spurs' close win in Madison Square Garden on Monday? How are you feeling about the future? Continue reading...

National average gas price stands at about $4.16 per gallon as Americans grapple with price hikes sparked by the warDonald Trump has claimed US fuel prices are not very high, relatively speaking" as his administration grapples with affordability concerns after the surge in costs sparked by his war on Iran.The national average gas price stood at about $4.16 per gallon on Tuesday, according to AAA - $0.37 lower than a month ago, but still about $1 more expensive than the same time last year. Continue reading...

Shasta county has one of the state's highest rates of suicide and gun ownership. Here's how locals are trying to combat itLike many men in the mountainous California county of Shasta, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, Bill Rocha loved to hunt and fish, spending the infernal summers out on the lake in his boat. For decades he made his living as a contractor, working hard with his hands every day. And like many men in rural parts of the state, Bill was a gun owner. He had several hunting rifles, some of which he kept locked in a safe, and another firearm that he kept unlocked in his car.Kelly Rocha, his daughter, described him as extremely sociable, but in private things were starting to fray. She didn't know the extent of what her father was struggling with until she got a call one night in 2019. She had slept through two voicemails from her father's wife, but finally picked up when her own mother called. It was after midnight," recalled Kelly, who was then 43. She told me that my dad went out to his truck and killed himself." Continue reading...

Deal to create a streaming and sports powerhouse will be scrutinised by Competition and Markets AuthorityThe UK competition watchdog has opened an investigation into Paramount Skydance's $110bn (82bn) takeover of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD).The deal will create a media powerhouse controlling assets including the Paramount and HBO Max streaming services, Channel 5 and TNT Sports, which broadcasts Champions League, Premier League and the Olympics, the Hollywood studios behind franchises including Superman, Batman and Top Gun, as well as HBO, home to shows including Game of Thrones, The White Lotus and Succession. Continue reading...

Reform had previously suggested Farage would be steering clear' of event, modelled on US conservative gathering

Pacoima is hemmed in by highways and heavy industry, and its residents are fighting pollution with hyperlocal air quality monitoringJose Luis Salas looks up at the ladder. Are you ready?" he asks Shance Taylor, an environmental project manager who's holding a white container, about the size of a shoebox, covered with wires and numbers.Taylor nods and climbs up to reach the side of Salas's tidy house in Pacoima, a neighborhood in Los Angeles's north-east San Fernando valley. The curious box in their hands is known as Aeroqual sensor - part of a community air-quality monitoring program run by Pacoima Beautiful, a local environmental group. Continue reading...

Rights groups and some locals worry that program to track illicit activity' could become a data collection projectThe Great Lakes have rarely ever been considered a hotbed of illicit drug activity or center for illegal immigration.But that hasn't stopped US government agencies and the company behind surveillance sailing drones from treating the region as such. The US Coast Guard recently announced it has launched an armada of at least six sailing drones in the Great Lakes this summer in an attempt to, in part, track illicit activity". Continue reading...

Nuvalent's late-stage lung cancer treatments zidesamtinib and neladalkib are expected to launch later this year

Suspect, charged with driving while impaired, was eventually captured and arrested with injuries to his armsAn alligator inserted itself into a police pursuit in south-eastern Louisiana, chasing and attacking an allegedly impaired driver who tried to evade law enforcement by leaping into a swamp.The suspect, a 40-year-old man, was eventually captured and arrested with injuries to both arms. Deputy body-worn camera footage of the alligator swimming at speed towards the man and thrashing with him in the water was posted on YouTube by local CBS News affiliate and Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana. Continue reading...

Attorney Dan Cogdell backs Paxton's Democratic opponent and says the Republican is too focused on appeasing TrumpA lawyer who represented Ken Paxton, Texas's attorney general, for nearly a decade over accusations of corruption and securities fraud is supporting Democrat James Talarico - and not his former client - in one of the biggest US Senate races.Talarico on Monday drew attention to his campaign winning the endorsement of Houston attorney Dan Cogdell, who was part of Paxton's defense team during the Republican's historic impeachment trial in 2023 that ended in acquittal. Continue reading...

The climate phenomenon is intensifying an already unequal global economy Continue reading...

The US men have scored 25 goals (we'll spare you the own-goals) in the World Cup since 1990. Ranking them requires some nuanceWhat makes a good goal? This was the question each of us pondered as we embarked upon the process of ranking every goal we've seen the US score at the men's World Cup - a worthwhile bit of nostalgia before the national team kicks off their 2026 World Cup campaign hoping to add more to this list.First, we had to narrow the field. The team have scored 40 goals at the men's World Cup, but scant video evidence exists of 12 of those - appropriate, given they were scored in 1930, 1934, and 1950. Piecing together reports and descriptions can give you an idea, but they were always going to be judged differently than those we've seen, felt and heard. And so, with apologies to Aldo Buff" Donelli and Joe Gaetjens, our pool is limited to US World Cup apearances from 1990 til the present. Continue reading...

Becoming the world's first trillionaire is only going to supercharge this sense of impunity and bring us one step closer to full-blown oligarchyWhoever said money can't buy happiness' really knew what they were talking about," Elon Musk wrote in February on Twitter/X, the social network he bought for $44bn. He capped the statement with a sad face emoji.Alas, Musk's information is outdated. A 2024 study found a substantial difference in happiness between the wealthy and people who are low income. A greater feeling of control over life can explain about 75% of the association between money and happiness," the study's author noted.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead Continue reading...

Partly inspired by the poem In This Place (An American Lyric) by Amanda Gorman, FotoFocus, a non-profit, has opened its inaugural exhibition at the new FotoFocus Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Titled Big Tent, the show is on view until 22 August 2026 and presents the work of more than 50 artists. The work created by each photographer reflects on the present state of US democracy and demonstrates the power of the image Continue reading...

The magazine writes: Resisting Gen-Z socialism is therefore an urgent task.' That urgency must outweigh any urgency of feeding hungry peopleA spectre is haunting Europe and America - the spectre of gen Z socialism.That's the urgent warning from the Economist in a new cover-story editorial, How to fight back against gen Z socialism. Alarmed by a youthful threat to the established order, the magazine is calling for heightened vigilance from defenders of private enterprise.Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy Continue reading...

The tournament kicks off on Thursday in Mexico City. Here's what newcomers can expect from one of the world's largest and most watched eventsIt is! Every four years the best men's teams on the planet gather to see who will be crowned world champions. This year's tournament will be co-hosted by frenemies Canada, Mexico and the United States in 16 cities as different as Vancouver, Kansas City and Guadalajara. The 48 teams are initially divided into [does arithmetic] 12 four-team groups with each team playing the others in the group once. The top two from each group, along with the eight best third-placed teams - 32 in total - will advance to the knockout stages. Matches from that point on are single-elimination - lose and you're out. If scores are level at the end of extra-time, the match is decided by a penalty shootout. Continue reading...

Critics say president using well-worn playbook - with loyalists in key positions ready to amplify his messageDonald Trump is inventing fraud" in California's primary elections, and likely to ramp up unfounded allegations when more races go against him, pro-democracy experts have warned.While the US president has used this playbook for years - from his loss at the Emmys as a reality TV star to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election - election integrity campaigners fear this time could be different. Continue reading...

Players and fans denied visas, the spectre of ICE raids on stadiums, Pete Hegseth's latest speech ... By the end of this contest, the nature of this US government will be even clearerWhenever my kids and I are stationary in the same room, within five minutes they will have started talking about football. Every now and then, a name will float out that I recognise - Jude Bellingham, say - but most of the time it lacks the dramatic texture to hold my attention. Everyone is either a genius or an irretrievable loser.There's a lot of counting. Would you watch a play in which everyone was either entirely wise or entirely stupid and the rest of it was mainly a body count?" I ask, trying to wedge myself back into the conversation. They reply: Hello? Romeo and Juliet?!" then go back to the shortcomings of La Liga, so I go back to looking at my phone. Continue reading...

His toxic Henry Nowak intervention fits a pattern. Vance has hard-right views, a disdain for European society - and he may yet become presidentImmigration is falling in Britain. It's falling so fast and so hard - net migration to the UK nearly halved between 2024 and 2025 - that before long we could conceivably be a shrinking population, with more people leaving the country than coming here. (And no, that's not because of an exodus of bright young Britons fleeing overseas, though you wouldn't blame them given how hard they're finding it currently to get jobs: the rise, as the Institute for Government's Sam Freedman helpfully points out, is mainly in foreign students and foreign workers going home.) Even small-boat crossings are down on last year. We have, in short, finally made ourselves as unattractive to the rest of the world as leave voters always wanted - which means that, sooner or later, populists who built their careers on railing against supposedly uncontrolled immigration are going to be needing another scapegoat to explain why taking back control hasn't magically solved all the country's problems. And with a grim inevitability, they're finding it in turning on migrants who are already here.That's the background to two hand grenades lobbed aggressively into British politics from across the Atlantic last week, causing enough concern in Downing Street to prompt a rare public rebuke. The claim from the US vice-president, JD Vance, that righteous anger" was the only response" to the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak would have been provocative enough, given its pointed echo of Nigel Farage's now widely condemned call for pure, cold rage". Continue reading...

Track and field's youngest world champion on wanting to change the sport' and his admiration for NapoleonWe are in living in the era of teenage super talents. On Saturday, Mirra Andreeva won the French Open at 19. Spain's Lamine Yamal, at 18, is one of the favourites for the World Cup's golden ball. Then there is Cooper Lutkenhaus, the 17-year-old American already making the world's best athletes gasp for air and reach for superlatives, who may yet prove the best of the bunch.True, it is early days. But Lutkenhaus is already track and field's youngest world champion, having won 800m indoor gold in March. On Sunday, he added to his CV with victory against a top-class field in his first Diamond League race. But it was what his rivals said afterwards in Stockholm that left the deepest mark. Continue reading...

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A renowned academic, Wood was hit by a car as he was crossing a supermarket's parking lot and later died of the injuriesGordon S Wood, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian, was killed on Sunday when he was struck by a car in a supermarket parking lot in Rhode Island.Wood, 92, won the Pulitzer in 1993 in the history category for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a landmark tome that advanced the theory of the break with Britain being at least as much of an internal social and political transformation as a desire to be rid of colonial masters.This story was amended on 8 June 2026 to correct the Pulitzer prize-winning book's title to The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Continue reading...

Group seeks emergency injunction to halt UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House before a single punch is thrown - key US politics stories from Monday 8 JuneDonald Trump is throwing himself quite the 80th birthday party at the White House on Sunday. All he needs now is for a federal judge, Dwayne The Rock" Johnson and a passing thunderstorm not to ruin it.The watchdog group Public Integrity Project filed a lawsuit on Saturday in DC federal court, seeking an emergency injunction to halt the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event before a single punch is thrown on 14 June - which is both Flag Day and the president's birthday. Continue reading...

Progressive challenger to face incumbent mayor in November as former reality star Pratt trails behindNithya Raman, a progressive Los Angeles city council member, has advanced to the November runoff for LA mayor, edging out former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt for the chance to face incumbent mayor Karen Bass.Pratt, who decided to run for mayor after his Pacific Palisades home burned down in the 2025 wildfires, held a lead over Raman for days. But as ballot processing from last week's election continued, the city councillor pulled ahead. Continue reading...

Acting in the role since April, Blanche faces Senate confirmation after controversial DoJ moves

Raman shook up LA mayoral race by entering hours before the deadline - now she faces her one-time political ally

As president and allies spread baseless conspiracy theories, here's what you need to know about the California countAs California continues to slowly count ballots, edging closer to determining who will advance in elections to run the state and its largest city, Donald Trump and other Republicans are spreading claims of election fraud that have become common after California elections.On Monday, Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton was inching closer to securing the second runoff spot in the California governor's race, after Democrat Xavier Becerra secured the first spot on Friday. But the race has yet to be called for Hilton, with more than 2.5m ballots still left to be counted across the state. Continue reading...

US president for years has repeatedly suggested - and said outright - that he would not take the country to warDonald Trump has forcefully denied he ever promised not to draw the US into war, having spent years pledging to avoid doing just that.The US president's own biography on the White House website credits him with putting a stop to endless wars" - raising questions about the US-Israel war on Iran, which he launched, with no end currently in sight. Continue reading...