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Judge rejects administration's request to lift injunction secured by several Democratic-led states on 25 JuneA federal appeals court on Saturday declined to allow Donald Trump's administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting before the November elections that will decide control of Congress.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals rejected the administration's request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on 25 June from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president's order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to pause the US district judge Indira Talwani's ruling while it pursues an appeal, the Department of Justice argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump's directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature. Continue reading...

The NBA superstar's shock move to the Philadelphia 76ers isn't about money or legacy. It's about confronting the end of a career and making the most of whatever remainsThe most enormous celebrities, those larger-than-life characters with immense cultural impact, occupy a kind of hard-to-quantify space in the zeitgeist. They're human, of course; that's what makes them compelling. But they often come to represent something beyond themselves. In LeBron James' case, for me, he's become a measure of the passing of time. An aide-memoire of my own mortality. Yes, his defiance of the aging process has been heartening proof that while Father Time comes for us all, the pace isn't fixed. But the growing number of gray hairs in his beard, the players born after he was drafted who now meet him in transition, are persistent reminders that time marches on.On the one hand, as anyone who has experienced it can attest, aging is exhausting. Battles once worth fighting no longer seem worth the effort. An extra 30 minutes of quiet solitude starts to feel like life's greatest luxury. So perhaps that instinctive understanding clouded all of our assumptions about where LeBron would choose to finish his career. Surely, by now, he had to be tired. Why not golf with Stephen Curry in northern California while playing probably meaningless (but highly entertaining) basketball? Why not head back to Miami, where Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo could shoulder the defensive burden, allowing James to hand over the offensive keys and spend whatever time remained by the pool? Or why not end it in Cleveland, where he's already beloved, where the stakes are lower, where the narrative is clean and tidy? Wouldn't that be easier? Continue reading...

Firefighters responded to an emergency call and found the bodies, six of which were those of childrenA devastating tragedy has unfolded in Michigan after emergency crews responding to a house fire found eight members of the same family, including six children, dead. At least some of the dead inside the home had gunshot wounds.Deputies with the Ottawa county sheriff's office and firefighters from the Grand Haven fire department were dispatched at about 11.40am local time on Friday to a residence on Riverside Trail in Grand Haven Township. Continue reading...

Nathan Matthews, 43, died a month after deadly burnover enveloped his fire crew near the Colorado-Utah borderA fourth firefighter has died from burns after he and several colleagues were overcome by a fast-moving wildfire near the Colorado-Utah border last month, officials said on Saturday.Nathan Matthews, 43, died on Friday, the US interior department said in a release. He was from Lincoln, Nebraska. Continue reading...

Warning: some viewers may find the following footage distressing. A fatal police shooting that killed 38-year-old Corey Ruiz has sparked massive protests in Madison, Wisconsin. Bystander video shared with the Guardian shows how the shooting unfolded on 22 July. Continue reading...

Frank Yiannas, formerly of the FDA, calls for an independent review of federal response to illness causing explosive diarrheaDonald Trump's former top food safety official has accused the administration of a near catastrophic" mismanagement of the cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people in the US.There should be an independent review of the federal government's response to the rash of illnesses caused by the spread of a parasite found on raw produce, according to Frank Yiannas, who was deputy commissioner for food policy at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) across the presidencies of both Trump and Joe Biden from 2018 to 2023. Continue reading...

Koller, who co-founded the celebrated band in 1986, had been battling cancer of the esophagusLou Koller, the singer and co-founder of New York hardcore band Sick of It All, has died after a battle with cancer, his bandmates announced. Koller was 59.In a social media post on the band's Instagram page, a statement paid tribute to Koller and his work and said: The level of loss that we feel at this time is overwhelming." Continue reading...

Two biologists were taken hostage for about 15 hours by a man and his son in a remote part of Shasta-Trinity national forestTwo biologists with the US Forest Service were surveying frog habitats in the remote wilderness of the Shasta-Trinity national forest in north-eastern California late last week when a man allegedly approached them carrying an AR-15.The man ordered the women to turn around with their hands in the air, and then, according to court documents, used zip ties to restrain them before ordering the pair into a nearby trailer where authorities say they were held hostage for roughly 15 hours. Continue reading...

Jackson, a prominent workers' rights advocate and a leading progressive voice, replaces the scandal-plagued Graham PlatnerAs cinemagoers flock to The Odyssey, Democrats in Maine are hoping that their long and perilous quest for a political hero ends in Troy.They have nominated lumberjack Troy Jackson this weekend as their candidate to challenge Susan Collins, a veteran Republican in the US Senate, after the implosion of the party's original candidate left them scrambling for a replacement less than four months before the midterm elections. Continue reading...

Between the companies pushing junk food and the bacteria threatening our produce, eating right feels basically impossibleWhile war and conflict seem to be raging across the planet, the greatest weapon of mass destruction afflicting the United States today is, apparently, a salad - in the sense that fresh produce is now waging battle with our stomachs thanks to the cyclospora parasite. Cyclospora has infested an unknown amount of our food, causing thousands to suffer bowel movements that would make Pompeii look like a gender-reveal party.This is a tragedy for everyone except the fat cats at Big Toilet. Cyclospora may be spread through human feces getting into irrigation systems in the food supply due to poor worker hygiene. It can't be killed through usual agricultural sanitation processes. The best we can do is throw all that cilantro away and start from scratch. The FDA is scrambling to find the source of the contamination as soon as possible, going as far as to finger the supplier Taylor Farms with a false positive test that they had to sloppily retract as fast as they declared it. I, for one, am trembling, and not because I'm seconds away from expelling parasitic eggs. I'm terrified because now I don't know what to eat.Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist Continue reading...

No press briefing has been held for months, as the defence department belatedly or inaccurately releases figuresThe Pentagon is taking a shameful approach" to releasing information about US casualties in the Iran war, Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director, has told the Guardian.The defence department has not held a press briefing for two-and-a-half months. Officials have faced accusations that they are engaged in a cover-up designed to hide the true cost of Donald Trump's war of choice in Iran, fearing a public backlash before November's midterm elections. Continue reading...

Lucy Harrison, 23, was shot in 2025 with her father's gun. He was never arrested and a grand jury chose not to indict himLucy Harrison felt that 2024 was her best year yet. The 23-year-old had graduated from university with first class honours, landed her dream job and bought her first house with her boyfriend.She was a big girl adult" now, Lucy would say. She shed tears of joy seeing her idol, Taylor Swift, at Wembley on the Eras tour that summer. Life could hardly get any better. All the hard work, all the tears, everything was coming to fruition," said her mother, Jane Coates, from Warrington in north-west England. Continue reading...

After a Kyiv visit, rightwing firebrand now supports Ukraine - but perhaps it's just because Trump favors a winnerLaura Loomer, the online Maga provocateur, has never worked in the White House or anywhere else in the government, but her sudden conversion to the Ukrainian cause this week is significant because her social media posts often have real policy implications in the second Trump administration.The rightwing commentator has spent the last few days in Kyiv, where she announced a newfound sympathy for Ukraine in its long war with Russia, and admitted that she had previously fallen for Russian propaganda. Continue reading...

An underground network of privacy activists is disabling or destroying the ubiquitous surveillance devices sprouting up across the USThe first time that NoMark" tried to knock out a Flock camera feed, he waited an hour for the perfect moment - pacing in and out of bushes that towered over him, a few feet behind a pole holding up the device.I was just so nervous," he said. Continue reading...

Donald Trump jokingly announced he was running for a fourth term, pulling out a red hat emblazoned with the words 'TRUMP 2028' during the White House correspondents' dinner on Friday. He framed his remarks as a tongue-in-cheek appeal to journalists, calling the statement 'somewhat of a scoop'. Trump returned to the annual event celebrating press freedom after a shooting disrupted the original gathering in April

President's speech started well enough but quickly moved to the usual insults, taunts, jokes and grievancesThis time, at least, everyone got to finish their dinner.And any urge to hide under the table was driven not by the barking commands of Secret Service agents on alert against a marauding gunman, but by a desire to escape the tedium of a meandering speech from Donald Trump that strayed quickly and wildly from the matter at hand into the weeds of his normal stump addresses. Continue reading...

President mocks political opponents and journalists in mostly light-hearted, hour-long speech at White House correspondents' dinnerDonald Trump joked around with the room of journalists who he again accused of producing fake news" as he hurled insults at his political enemies in a speech at the White House correspondents' dinner.A day after the Trump administration abandoned, for now, an extraordinary bid to subpoena reporters over their coverage, the US president attended the rescheduled White House correspondents' dinner - an annual celebration of press freedom - in Washington on Friday evening. Continue reading...

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President directs interior department to display signs outside museum that accuse institution of inaccuracyDonald Trump on Friday ordered the interior department to display signs in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History that accuse the institution of inaccuracy.The order escalates the Trump's attacks against the Smithsonian, which he and his allies accuse of politicizing the institution by focusing too much on injustices in American history, instead of more triumphant moments such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Continue reading...

Three-judge panel of Democratic appointees let stand lower court's ruling that fee constitutes an unlawful taxA federal appeals court on Friday rejected a bid by Donald Trump's administration to halt a judge's order preventing it from imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined to put on hold a lower court judge's 8 June ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general, striking down the fee on the basis that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized. Continue reading...

Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who was 13 at the time, later received an abortion, text messages indicateSinger D4vd had impregnated the teenager he is accused of fatally stabbing, according to evidence presented in a Los Angeles courtroom on Friday. Celeste Rivas Hernandez later received an abortion, text messages between the two indicate.The musician, who was born David Anthony Burke, apologized to Rivas Hernandez in January 2024 for putting her through this", in a text message obtained from his phone. Continue reading...

Abortion medication ruled to be safe as judge orders Trump administration to consider overturning restrictionsA federal judge upheld the safety of the abortion medication mifepristone and ordered the Trump administration to examine and consider overturning restrictions on the drug as barriers to abortion access mount across the country.Robert S Ballou, a US district judge in Virginia, ordered the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) on Friday to reconsider mifepristone restrictions, which the judge found to be arbitrary and capricious. Continue reading...

President flew to Ankara onboard Qatari-gifted jet, without advanced defenses, and flew home on old Air Force OneDonald Trump switched aircraft before departing Turkey earlier this month after US officials determined there was a credible threat from Iranian proxy forces targeting him and Air Force One, according to a new report from the New York Times.The threat surfaced while the US president was attending the Nato summit. He had arrived in Ankara onboard the new Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, an aircraft that Trump acknowledged does not have the same advanced defensive systems as the older Air Force One. Continue reading...

After years of trying to be skinny, Guardian reporter Madeleine Aggeler did a 180 and decided to 'bulk'. Bulking, or gaining weight on purpose to get stronger, challenged everything she had been taught about her body, and transformed her relationship to food. Madeleine speaks to Carter Sherman about her owns body image struggles, and they discuss why strength training and weightlifting has become so popular for women. Is this actually healthy, or just an extension of toxic diet culture? Continue reading...

Environmental groups are sounding the alarm over plans that threaten a desert spring that's home to rare fish and turtles and sacred to the O'odham peopleQuitobaquito Springs in south-west Arizona has been called a biological wonderland with few equals.The springs are an oasis in the vast Sonoran desert along the US-Mexico border, held sacred by the O'odham people, who call it A'al Vaipia. Here, water flows out of an aquifer at the bottom of a hill, runs along a short concrete channel and collects in a pond. Continue reading...

Forced labor is a problem, especially in the US, where prisoners are coerced to work for pennies - or nothing at all

Wildfires in Europe, Russian missile strikes in Kyiv, the cockroach protests in New Delhi and the World Cup final - the past seven days as captured by the world's leading photojournalistsWarning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing Continue reading...

Philadelphia wasn't the obvious destination for LeBron James. That may be exactly why it makes perfect sense for a player who has always prioritized fit over sentimentShould we have seen this coming all along? LeBron James knew that joining the Golden State Warriors would have been a losing gamble on the health of players five times closer to the ends of their careers than the beginnings. He knew the Cleveland Cavaliers, however strong their analytics, hopelessly lacked the unquantifiable greatness of a championship team. He knew the Giannis Antetokounmpo-led Miami Heat were too unproven to hitch his wagon to.Of course he knew. Continue reading...

Six migrants from Honduras and Mexico - including 14-year-old boy - were found dead in May near US-Mexico border

Traffic cameras captured the moment a driver dressed as Spider-Man helped a wheelchair user safely cross a busy road in Arkansas. In the footage, a person who was on his way back from a superhero-themed event is seen jumping out of his vehicle to help the struggling pedestrian Continue reading...

The 25 Democratic attorneys general say administration imposed unlawful' conditions on federal disaster grantsA group of 25 Democratic attorneys general led by California's Rob Bonta are taking the Trump administration to court for imposing unlawful" conditions on federal grants for disaster preparedness and response.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) have been placing stipulations on federal grants that amount to a campaign of coercion" designed to force states to adopt the White House's preferred voting and immigration policies says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Thursday. Continue reading...

US president faced criticism from Democrats after tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% imposed on more than 80 countries

Over 11,500 people this summer are suspected to have been sickened by disease that can cause explosive diarrhea, CDC saysInvestigations into the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak on record expanded to nine states this week, as more than 11,500 people are suspected to have been sickened this summer, according to reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Data released by the CDC this week said the agency is looking into 4,173 laboratory-confirmed domestic cases of the disease and investigating an additional 7,400. Continue reading...

Explosive diarrhea infection detected in 41 states with at least 72 sickened by new, as yet unknown source of parasiteConfusion abounds in the cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands in at least 41 states, as officials identify a new cluster of cases and more potential products come under scrutiny.The recall of products during this outbreak of explosive diarrhea has been an unusual one, complicated by poor communication, politicization and the delay of a new regulatory rule could have helped trace the cyclosporiasis outbreak faster. Continue reading...

Marriage offers an opportunity to ask for help creating a home. But what about when the marriage ends - and the household with it?It's peak wedding season, and my own divorce is waiting on a judge's signature. People are being congratulated with Dutch ovens and serving bowls for dinner parties they may not ever host.Marriage comes with an etiquette system for asking people to help build a home. The registry says the embarrassing part for you. Divorce deserves the same grace. Continue reading...

Court questions plan to offer male hormone treatment to cisgender troops while denying it to trans service membersPete Hegseth's controversial plan to screen older soldiers for testosterone deficiencies and offer them more of the hormone faced scrutiny this week from a federal judge, who ordered the Trump administration to explain a discrepancy with the treatment of transgender troops.The US defense secretary announced earlier this month that male service members aged 30 and above would be checked to ensure they have the right testosterone levels" to perform in the military at an optimal level. Continue reading...

Rightwing provocateur meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who says he expects to meet Donald Trump in Washington next weekVolodymyr Zelenskyy will meet Donald Trump in Washington next week, according to the rightwing US influencer Laura Loomer, amid signs the White House's traditional hostility towards Ukraine is beginning to crumble.In an interview with Loomer, the Ukraine president said he will probably attend the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham and hold talks with Trump, which will take place as the latest version of the Russian sanctions bill makes its way through Congress. Continue reading...

Sister Leticia Ugboaja says she went into a cold sweat as ICE officers approached her in McAllen on her way to churchA nun who was taken into immigration custody last month in Texas said on Thursday that she went into a cold sweat as two armed men approached her while she walked to Sunday mass in her habit, thinking about the day's Bible readings and carrying little more than her rosary and cellphone.Honestly, in that moment, I did not understand what was going on, what was happening to me," Sister Leticia Ugboaja said at a news conference at Our Lady of Sorrows church in McAllen, Texas, on the US-Mexico border, where she spoke out for the first time since US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested her on 28 June. Continue reading...

An incident in which an autonomous OpenAI agent hacked a startup either confirms that the end is nigh - or that the product is just amazingly sophisticatedThroughout history, many things have been seen by terrified populaces as a harbinger of doom. A comet. A crow on the battlefield. A solar eclipse. A mutant livestock birth. Yet times move on. In the modern era, the leading harbinger of doom is literally any picture of the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, attached to a news story. You know it's not going to be good, right? You know that by the time you've read it, you'll be begging to go back to the time when the worst thing that could happen to us at the hands of the techlords was just some democracy-subversion, or childhood destruction, usually followed by Mark Zuckerberg putting on a suit and claiming: We will learn from this."Anyway: a lot of pictures of Sam Altman in the news of late. Most recently, this week, one darkened the skies alongside the tale of how an OpenAI autonomous agent went rogue during a supposedly sandboxed/guardrailed test, and hacked a major startup that functions as a repository of coding information. (I'm slightly obsessed with the fact that the startup in question is called Hugging Face, adding weight to my suspicion that some vast, tweely benign emoji is the last face humanity will see before it dies.)Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Residents warn project could worsen gambling addiction and raise rents, while developers promise jobsOn Main Street in Flushing's Chinatown, shoppers weave between fruit stands, restaurants and family-run businesses that have served the New York City neighborhood for decades. But behind the bustle, many residents fear the working-class immigrant community is under threat from an $8bn casino development that could displace thousands of renters and force small businesses to close.A predatory project is being dumped in our community that disproportionately harms our people," said Jack Hu, 37, a Flushing resident and member of the No Casino in Flushing Meadows Corona Park campaign. This community is really upset about this project and how it was pushed through without our consent." Continue reading...

While overall levy for UK is unchanged, sectors not covered by Turnberry deal face tougher competition

Measures replace 10% global duty and come after supreme court declared many of the earlier tariffs illegal. Plus, how secondhand fashion got so expensiveGood morning.Donald Trump has imposed a fresh round of tariffs on more than 80 countries to replace a 10% global duty that was due to expire, provoking a wave of criticism and protests from US allies and trading partners.What is Trump's justification for the tariffs? The newest tariffs, announced late last night by the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, would fall under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, aimed against countries that engage in forced labor. Trump had said his administration would investigate unfair trading practices to impose permanent tariffs as soon as the February supreme court decision was announced.How have the affected countries reacted to the news? The forced labour' rationale for Trump tariffs has been met with bewilderment, with some saying their labor laws are stronger than those in the US.How are the authorities responding? Last week, Bill Essayli, an assistant US attorney, asked the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the cluster to determine if there is an environmental cause. Continue reading...

The US will no longer hold transportation agencies accountable for unintentional discrimination. That's devastating for those of us who depend on itAs the first congenitally blind member of Congress and a former president of the Bay area Rapid Transit (Bart) Board, I know that the ability to move - to get to work, to school, to the doctor - is a freedom our nation's civil rights laws have long promised to protect. Last month, the Trump administration derailed that promise.Through a regulatory maneuver designed to evade public scrutiny, the Department of Transportation announced it will no longer hold transportation agencies accountable when their decisions produce discriminatory outcomes - no matter how severe - so long as the discrimination was unintentional. As a result, decades of civil rights protection were erased by regulatory fiat.Congresswoman Lateefah Simon represents California's 12th congressional district in the East Bay. She is the first congenitally blind member to serve in Congress and a strong advocate for transportation and disability justice. She previously served as Bart president and executive director of the San Francisco Lawyers Committee for Civil RightsGuillermo Mayer is an attorney and the president and CEO of Public Advocates, a 55-year old civil rights law firm and advocacy organization dedicated to challenging the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination Continue reading...

Sixty years ago, the famed Red Sox slugger used his Cooperstown speech to champion Black players who were excluded because of the sport's color barrierWhen Ted Williams, the last man to hit .400, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he had an iconic career to reflect on. But he decided to dedicate a portion of his speech to championing Black players who had been excluded because of baseball's longtime color barrier.I've always been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, to have struck out or to hit a tape-measure home run," Williams said in his 25 July 1966 speech - 60 years ago Saturday. And I hope that someday the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way could be added as a symbol of the great Negro players that are not here only because they were not given a chance." Continue reading...

Journalists urge attenders to confront president over media attacks, while Melanie Trump and JD Vance to be absentDonald Trump will address a rescheduled White House Correspondents' Association (WCHA) dinner on Friday three months after the original event was abruptly halted after an armed assailant tried to storm it, with the alleged aim of assassinating him.The rearranged dinner has been condemned as hypocritical" by retired journalists and press freedom groups, who are urging the association to use it to confront Trump over his administration's intensified attacks on the media. Continue reading...

From Lionel Messi's final flourish to players who barely featured, we rank every MLS representative who appeared in the 2026 World CupMessi was always going to be No 1. In what was likely his last World Cup, the Argentinian put together an incredible tournament, registering eight goals, four assists and the most progressive passes of any player, according to Futi. With zero defensive responsibility on his shoulders, Messi was free to do as he liked. The 39-year-old roamed the field with ease and effortlessly drew Argentina back from the brink time and time again. It was Messi who led his country to a 3-2 win against Cape Verde, Messi who assisted and then equalized against Egypt, and Messi who created both of Argentina's late goals against England. In the final, however, Messi disappeared. Across 139 minutes including stoppage time, Messi completed just 28 of 39 passes, registered only one shot and hardly affected the game. He may have left the tournament with no personal or team accolades - a rarity for him - but Messi extended a World Cup legacy that few players have ever to come close to rivaling. Continue reading...