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Erin Piacenti, a 32-year-old vice-president at the bank, was killed in Tuesday stabbing in New York City, officials sayA corporate vice-president at Bank of America was killed in a stabbing in New York City's Times Square, the second-biggest US lending bank said on Tuesday about a random incident that took place in broad daylight in the bustling heart of Manhattan.The incident had brought the streets of the crowded area to a halt on Monday as emergency vehicles swarmed between the skyscrapers. Continue reading...

Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was convicted of killing a 16-year-old girl who rejected his advances and wounding her two friendsA Florida man convicted of killing a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends was set to be executed Tuesday evening.Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6pm at Florida state prison near Starke. He was sentenced to die for the 1976 fatal shooting of Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr and Terri Rice. Continue reading...

British far-right pundit breaks silence on ICE arrest and deportation and says he was really, really terrified'Milo Yiannopoulos, the British far-right commentator who was arrested last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Louisiana and deported to the United Kingdom, has broken his silence about the experience, saying that for the first time I know what it feels like to be really, really terrified".Yiannopoulos on Tuesday appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored, a YouTube show presented by Piers Morgan, the British broadcaster and media personality. Yiannopoulos, 41, described the experience in the US as humiliating and disorientating", physically degrading" and frightening". Continue reading...

Exclusive: financial disclosures from Emil Michael - who also reaped millions from xAI stock earlier this year - show he sold his Perplexity stock for up to $25mThe top Pentagon official overseeing military artificial intelligence policy, who reaped profits earlier this year of up to $24m selling his private investment in Elon Musk's AI company, has now sold his holdings in another AI company for between $5m and $25m, according to records seen by the Guardian. (Federal financial records show ranges of dollar values rather than specific figures.)Earlier this year, the Guardian disclosed that the official, Emil Michael, had profited handsomely from his investment in Musk's xAI in January, with a gain of between 400% and 4,800%. Continue reading...

Outgoing congressman Thomas Massie urges justice department to launch immediate investigationAn outgoing Republican congressman accused billionaire Leon Black and David Copperfield, the illusionist, of being co-conspirators of the accused late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and repeated a call for the Department of Justice to launch an immediate investigation into the men, among others.Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who recently lost his primary to a challenger backed by Donald Trump, named several friends and associates of Epstein on the floor of the House in his bid to shame" the Department of Justice to investigate a group of men and one woman who Massie called perpetrators" of Epstein's crimes. He also noted that, nearly one year after Trump signed the Epstein Transparency Act, which led to the release of millions of so-called Epstein files", millions more have yet to be publicly disclosed.Additional reporting by Anna Betts Continue reading...

Experts say more bears are wandering into human's homes and shops in search of food, due to drought-driven food shortages across the US west Continue reading...

ICE spokesperson says Loreto Javar failed to disclose criminal conviction in Philippines when he applied for visaA 76-year-old man holding permanent US residency and grappling with stage four prostate cancer is reportedly being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in Tacoma, Washington.Federal immigration officials detained Loreto Javar during his US citizenship interview in Tukwila, Washington, in June. Javar, a Filipino national, moved to the US in 1995 and has lived in the country with his wife and daughter ever since. Continue reading...

PEN America study details verbal and physical threats to librarians, funding cuts and proliferation of book bansPublic libraries in the US are at breaking point" because of an onslaught of political interference, harassment and ideological censorship, a new report published on Tuesday said.Book bans, cancelled story hours, attacks on librarians, funding cuts and the undoing of libraries' independent governance are examined by the free expression advocacy group PEN America in its study called Out of Circulation: Expanding Censorship in Public Libraries. Continue reading...

Girls Gone Bible is on tour in the US, touting a regressive ideal of femininity through discussions of abstinence and mental health strugglesAt first glance, the crowd gathering outside a music venue in Red Bank, New Jersey, could have passed for a group of sorority rush hopefuls - or Ella Langley fans on their way to the country star's show. Most of them were under the age of 30. They wore cowboy boots, maxi sundresses and soft, bouncy blowouts, scrolling on their phones outside the doors as they waited for friends to arrive.But one accessory gave them away: the Bibles they toted. These women were there to pray. Continue reading...

Questions over Trump's ballroom and other structures might not feel urgent. But when his reign ends, Trumpism must be repudiatedOn Monday, a majority on the supreme court found a technical way to overrule a lower court's imperative to stop work, while not taking a stance on whether the whole enterprise might be illegal to begin with. Preservationists, the majority held, appear to lack legal grounds for filing a suit blocking Trump's ballroom; that means construction will proceed, even if none other than John Roberts, in a dissent, held that those responsible" were breaking the rules in deciding what to build up at the People's House". The solicitor general John Sauer is on record claiming that 65% of the project is completed (of course, he might have exaggerated - such things are known to have happened in Trump administrations). Either way, it is thus likely that there will be a massive structure next to the original White House; and, given that the ruling will embolden the president dramatically to change Washington DC's landscape by spending money never approved by Congress, we might be cursed with a triumphal arch as well. All of which raises the question: what to do with a monstrous architectural legacy in post-Trump America?Some might dismiss the question as a bit of a luxury problem. After all, a war that also demonstrates the ongoing disempowerment of Congress keeps dragging on; ICE continues its cruel day-to-day work; Trump is trying every tactic to make the midterms go his way. But the built environment, and especially the civic landscape of a capital, is never just an afterthought. Buildings and monuments make values visible, as the philosopher Susan Neiman once put it. And the decision to leave Trump's structures in place as if his reign had just been another normal era in US history is not neutral - just like leaving Confederate monuments in place is not neutral.Jan-Werner Muller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University Continue reading...

The president is lashing out at an NBC host. As the agency's former chair, I can only hope it stands up for free speechWill the FCC chairperson again abuse his authority over broadcast licenses to put a Band-Aid on Donald Trump's thin skin?Since the opening days of the Trump presidency, Brendan Carr has acted as the president's attack dog to coerce broadcasters to say things that please his client. Only days after taking office in January 2025, Carr revived a previously dismissed complaint against CBS for the editing of 60 Minutes that tracked candidate Trump's specious lawsuit on the matter. At the time, the FCC was considering the transfer of CBS licenses to Skydance, a decision that did not come until after CBS agreed to pay $16m to settle with Trump. In September, after Jimmy Kimmel's remarks about Charlie Kirk, Carr urged broadcasters to take action, saying we can do this the easy way or the hard way" - an attack even the senator Ted Cruz said sounded right out of Goodfellas". In March 2026, he threatened broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war after the president complained on Truth Social. In April, he ordered Disney's eight ABC-owned television stations to submit their licenses for premature review, even though most aren't even halfway through their license term (Disney, ABC and the stations are suing).Tom Wheeler was chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017 Continue reading...

Jury took about three hours to reach verdict in case that relied heavily on confessions from the defendant. Plus, the woman who lived with and loved Freddie Mercury as her fianceGood morning. A Las Vegas jury has found the former South Side Compton Crips gang leader Duane Keith Davis guilty of the murder of Tupac Shakur, bringing the case to a close nearly 30 years after the rapper was gunned down. The jury took about three hours to reach a guilty verdict in a case that relied heavily on multiple confessions from Davis himself.The 63-year-old, who was accused of instigating the deadly shooting but not pulling the trigger himself, had spent years telling investigators and interviewers alike of his direct involvement before he was arrested in 2023.Who was Tupac Shakur? Shakur was born in 1971 in East Harlem, New York, and rose to fame in the early 90s with lyrics that doubled as a sharp commentary on social injustice including systemic racism and police brutality. He was 25 when he died, is regarded among the greatest rappers to ever live, and continues to be celebrated around the world years after his life was cut short.How have his family reacted to the trial? We've been waiting 30 years to grieve properly," Zayd Akinyela, Shakur's cousin, told reporters outside the courtroom when the trial was under way. A lot of people don't get to grieve until they understand what happened to their loved one and how it happened."Why have authorities been so heavily criticised over the case? Las Vegas police faced criticism that they had bungled the investigation and failed to pursue crucial leads, including from a member of Shakur's entourage who claimed he could identify the shooters. That witness died weeks later in a separate shooting. Continue reading...

Mike Rogers isn't merely campaigning alongside a controversial supporter. His campaign put an extremist on its faith leadership teamHasan Piker.Turn on cable news. Pick up a newspaper. Log on to Twitter. It doesn't seem to matter where you get your political news: for the past month, the leftist Twitch streamer has become one of the dominant subjects of coverage, conversation and controversy surrounding the crucial Michigan Senate race between the Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and the Republican Mike Rogers. Continue reading...

Inquiry come after conservative thinktanks claim unions are using member dues to support Democratic causesHouse Republicans are investigating several US labor unions based on claims from far-right nonprofits alleging union dues are being used for illegal political funding.Republicans on the House's education and workforce committee opened the investigation this summer after multiple reports from the conservative thinktanks targeted unions and their spending, claiming that unions are using member dues to support Democratic causes. Continue reading...

Age on the agenda in Massachusetts but octogenarian leftwinger leads younger rival Seth Moulton in primary pollDemocrats have spent the summer ousting long-serving incumbents in primaries across the country. On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will decide whether that generational revolt extends to the 80-year-old Ed Markey, whose younger Democratic rival has argued that the incumbent is simply too old to serve another term.But the Senate primary in this heavily Democratic state flips a central dynamic of previous contests, where youthful progressive insurgents have targeted - and in several cases, toppled - older incumbents they derided as avatars of an outmoded cautious establishment. Continue reading...

The deluge capped a summer of extreme climate events, from deadly heatwaves to wildfires. We must take action nowFor millennia, the high peaks of the Himalayas were held together by an invisible, frozen cement - permafrost and glacial ice that bound ancient rock into seemingly unshakable fortresses. But as the planet continues to warm, this alpine glue is liquefying.The glacial collapse and deluge in Nepal and Tibet was not a freak weather event; it was the structural failure of a mountain itself, nature's latest commentary on the deadly consequences of human-caused planetary warming. And it was the exclamation point on a summer of extremes, illustrating with a sole unnatural disaster the apocalyptic future that lies in store if we fail to take dramatic climate action. Continue reading...

The non-profit Leaving Maga is built on the premise that abandoning the Trump-built movement is like fighting a disease or breaking an addictionStephania Messina kept birthing boys. In the Quiverfull conservative Christian church she belonged to outside Detroit, Michigan, that made her a community celebrity. Your quiver, as the church taught it, is your womb, meant to be filled with as many arrows - a metaphor for children - as you can shoot unto the Lord. She shot five. They treated me like I was Mother Mary, like I was this gift to the church," she said.But while she was quickly pushed into leading worship and Bible study groups for women and children, she wasn't permitted to talk about politics. Continue reading...

Alex Eala has become the Philippines' biggest sporting star since Manny Pacquiao. Now the 21-year-old's traveling army of fans have descended on Flushing MeadowsThe crowd began to swell in Louis Armstrong Stadium a half hour before 2pm. A fair number of fans were probably there to see Taylor Fritz and Terence Atmane practice, but it was the session after theirs that was the headline attraction on the Friday of the US Open's fan week. The blue, red and white throughout the stands, spotted on bucket hats and posters and basketball jerseys and flags, signaled who these people were here to see.This has been the year of Alex Eala, the 21-year-old sensation who has taken the tennis world by storm. At No 18, she is the Philippines' highest-ranked player ever, its biggest sports celebrity since Manny Pacquiao. The country's president hosted a reception to celebrate her success, and called for a national celebration after she won her first tour-level title this month at the DC Open. Forbes estimates Eala's off-court earnings for the past year to exceed $5m, plus $1.7m in prize money, and her agent predicts she will be the world's second-highest-paid female athlete by 2027. Continue reading...

Comments signal president prepared to use dispute to push UK to raise defence spending and Nato contributionsDonald Trump has suggested he is reconsidering US support for Britain's sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, in a move likely to strain the special relationship" between Washington and London.I always review every position - that's just one of many," the US president told reporters in the White House, in response to a question about whether he was reviewing the US's position over the South Atlantic islands, an archipelago whose status has long been disputed by Argentina, which claims sovereignty. Continue reading...

A decade after Kaepernick's quiet protest shook the NFL, his exile looks less like an aberration than a blueprint for the culture war that followedAmerica likes nice round numbers, perfect for anniversaries and reflections, and it has, suddenly, been 10 years since Colin Kaepernick first protested police killings - more accurately, police killings of Black people that went unpunished either internally or by the courts - by taking a knee during the national anthem for the entirety of the 2016 NFL regular season. He never played in the league again.Ten years covers a lot of ground, especially in these years of American darkness, and many of the important details surrounding Kaepernick, his banishment and significance have disappeared, time replaced by more time and more darkness - time moving faster than ever, at internet speed, where nothing matters, where nothing sticks. We consume by clip, by click, by meme, and knowledge by meme is not knowledge at all. Continue reading...

A year on from the purge, with thousands of jobs cut and billions in foreign aid lost, a former leader reflects on the sorry saga - and why it would never happen to NasaA year has passed since I and thousands of colleagues lost our jobs at USAID. Asking myself Why us?" I have come to the conclusion that the American public had very little idea of what we were doing and why.Doge, the department of government efficiency", began its work in January 2025, with USAID as its first target, in a reckless campaign that even Elon Musk has said he would not repeat. At that moment of chaos, Americans lacked the knowledge that could contradict the false narrative presented by Musk, who called the agency a criminal organisation" and a viper's nest of radical left-marxists who hate America". Continue reading...

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A Las Vegas jury on Monday found Duane Keffe D' Davis guilty in the 1996 murder of the hip-hop icon

Phantom Ranch, set up by Teddy Roosevelt, has welcomed exhausted hikers to its famed cabins for over a century

Flash flooding in Arizona tourist destination was likely triggered by compounding climate factors, such as drought and warming in Pacific Ocean

Officials say one person still unaccounted for as forecast heavy rain and thunderstorms threaten further floodingA second death was confirmed by National Park Service officials on Monday after a flash flood sent a surge of water and debris through an area of the Grand Canyon over the weekend.Dozens of visitors had to be evacuated by helicopter during the deluge, which consumed trails and infrastructure. Nearly 80 people were rescued and one person is still unaccounted for, as more heavy rain and thunderstorms in the forecasts threaten additional debris flows, flash floods or rock falls, the NPS said in a statement. Continue reading...

Pamela Cisneros, 49, was wielding two knives when she stabbed a woman, who died in the hospital, and a manNew York City police shot and killed a woman Monday after she stabbed two people in Times Square, city authorities said during a press conference.Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, described the stabbings as random and unprovoked" acts carried out by a woman with previous mental health problems. Continue reading...

Company is offering cash reward for 40,000lb stolen cargo, and turns theft into lighthearted social media promotionPabst is offering a reward after tens of thousands of cans of its Blue Ribbon beer were stolen from the company's southern California warehouse two weeks ago - if it is all safely returned.In Instagram posts, Pabst put the weight of the stolen cargo at 40,000lb (18,000kg) and started a countdown seeking its return. Continue reading...

Justices' 5-4 ruling permits Trump administration appeal to block lower court order halting above-ground workA divided US supreme court has permitted Donald Trump to continue building his controversial $400m White House ballroom despite legal challenges, raising the likelihood it will be completed.In a 5-4 ruling, the justices permitted the Trump administration's request to block a lower court order that had halted above-ground construction of the project while a lawsuit by a historic preservation group seeks to block it. Continue reading...

Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka began their title defences with comfortable victories on Arthur AsheSabalenka eases through on her serve, advancing to the net to secure her first game of the tournament with a forehand volley. It's 1-1 in the opening set against Osorio.Sabalenka and Osorio are underway on Arthur Ashe, with the Colombian serving. She records two double-faults before Sabalenka seizes upon the second serve, whipping a blistering forehand to make it deuce. But the defending champion finds the net and the stratosphere, too, as Osorio holds to go 1-0 up. Continue reading...

Letter from chair of joint chiefs of staff addresses concerns over Trump officials using military to interfere with voteThe highestranking US military officer says there are no plans to deploy troops to polling places during the November midterm elections - responding to Senator Elissa Slotkin's request for information amid concerns about whether the Trump administration might send service members to election sites.In a letter obtained by the Guardian, first reported by the Associated Press, Gen Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, told Slotkin the Joint Force has no plans to send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections". He added that there are also no plans to use such personnel to seize ballots, voting machines, or other electionrelated material". Continue reading...

Response seeks to discredit Washington Post story that four generals and admirals advised against prolonging Iran warPete Hegseth regularly receives formal objections from senior commanders and proceeds anyway, the Pentagon's top spokesman has said, as he tried to discredit a Washington Post report that four generals and admirals had advised against prolonging the war in Iran.Of course, we demand candid military advice," Sean Parnell wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Non-concurs are standard. The Secretary sees them constantly. That's how you run a real military." Continue reading...

After Lindsey Graham's death, Democrat Annie Andrews finds herself in a closely watched race as she seeks to flip his Republican seatAnnie Andrews was a dark horse Democrat challenging a five-term Republican in the US Senate when 314 Action, a political action fund devoted to electing scientists and doctors, first backed her.Now, after the unexpected death of Senator Lindsey Graham, Andrews finds herself in a closely watched race. Donald Trump persuaded South Carolina voters last week to select Graham's sister, Darline, as the new Republican candidate. They will face off in November in an election still heavily favored to keep the seat in Republican hands in the conservative state. Continue reading...

Donkey named HeeHaw was shot and killed as authorities reportedly looked on property in search of a missing personA police officer in the US state of Georgia was placed on leave after a family's pet baby donkey was shot and killed during an early-morning search on their property.The animal's owner, Hannah Israel, said officers were at her pasture without notification or permission at about 12.45am on Sunday, reportedly looking for a missing person when they encountered the small male donkey named HeeHaw. Continue reading...

The technology can help candidates listen more deeply to voters, as examples from Japan and Scotland showThere are plenty of signs that AI will make all of our experiences of the US midterm elections worse. Voters have anxiety about AI's impacts on the country. Politicos are using AI deepfakes to spread lies. The White House is posting slopaganda.Meanwhile, candidates are missing a real opportunity to use AI to make campaigning better. The technology can help candidates listen more deeply to voters' concerns, engage constituents more inclusively, and formulate policy platforms that are more responsive to our input. There are vanishingly few examples of this in US politics, but groups in Japan, Scotland and the US's own academic and private institutions show how that could change. Continue reading...

Director Mark Mori followed coffee chain workers' struggle to unionize: These young kids are so inspirational'As the food service industry was pushed on to the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, workers at Starbucks stores in the Buffalo region of New York went public to announce their union-organizing campaign.Their efforts, and Starbucks' responses, have culminated in one of the most expansive union-organizing campaigns - and one of the most aggressive union-busting campaigns - in modern US history. Continue reading...

War on Gaza and violence in West Bank is playing out in the streets of Toledo, Ohio, where the Arab American community has flourishedFrom his office outside Toledo, Ohio, Thamin Tim Ridi opens his phone to livestream the scene outside the besieged house of his brother, Loui, thousands of miles away in the occupied West Bank.This month, with his property at risk of being destroyed by Israeli settlers, Loui traveled from Ohio to his ancestral home in Qusra, south of Nablus, where his mother and other family members have been living in constant fear of attack. Continue reading...

Death toll from unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud and debris now stands at more than 900. Plus, was it a mistake to take away Pluto's planet status?

The space industry treats the sky as a place to dump what it no longer wants. We must develop a new model of accountabilityOn 5 August, a piece of a derelict SpaceX rocket traveling at 5,400 miles an hour met with the moon and punched a fresh hole into it near Einstein Crater. Astronomers were thrilled. The European Southern Observatory caught sodium and lithium flaring in the debris plume and called it a bonus. The media called it a light show. Nobody was physically hurt, so nobody is responsible, and within a week the story was gone.I have spent 20 years tracking the junk humanity leaves behind in space for a living, and I want to tell you plainly what that crater actually is: a receipt. It's what you get when an entire industry treats the sky, and now the moon, as a place to dump what it no longer wants, and calls the dumping normal operations" or space exploration". Continue reading...

US trade representative Jamieson Greer has a level-headed reputation but commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and White House adviser Peter Navarro also have key rolesHaving reportedly read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, in French, during a military tour of duty in Iraq, Jamieson Greer considered himself an unlikely target for accusations of francophobia.But Donald Trump's US trade representative, hitherto one of the president's less high-profile cabinet members, found himself in that uncomfortable position amid the acrimonious collapse of bilateral trade talks with Canada that now threatens to degenerate into an all-out trade war between the two close trading partners whose economies are tightly intertwined. Continue reading...

Public lands belong to all of us. Noone should plunder those lands for profitDo people still say a car was sold for parts"? Because the US is being sold for parts or just handed over to the oligarchy. It's a fire sale, a bankruptcy auction, it's a planned dismantling of everything from its military to its institutions of higher education to its scientific research to its public lands.And while the threat to sell off part of Yosemite National Park is about a quarter-mile parcel on the park's edge, Yosemite is a crown jewel in the national park system and, arguably, the world's first national park.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell's Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility Continue reading...

Dozens evacuated after flash-flood event near Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch, officials sayOne person died and about 15 people were missing or unaccounted for after a major flash flood swept through the Grand Canyon national park in Arizona on Saturday afternoon, according to the National Park Service.The flash-flood event occurred in the area of Bright Angel Canyon and the Phantom Ranch, where park staff and the Arizona department of public safety had evacuated more than 60 people as of Sunday morning. Continue reading...

Richer countries might have more resources to deal with catastrophe, but this problem grips the entire planet, however much leaders may want to deny itClimate breakdown is happening on one Earth, but two different worlds. In one, its impacts increasingly encroach on everyday life; longer periods of discomfort and shorter periods of sharp pain. Endless, hotter summers, and within them sudden wildfires, evacuations, homes burned to cinders in a matter of hours. In another, catastrophe. This summer has been a snapshot of that split-screen. The hottest day on record in parts of Europe, and a wave of water, mud and ice in Nepal that so far has claimed more than 750 lives. Thousands of people are still missing.The difference is also one of resources. The climate crisis has an economic cost, but some places can absorb it better than others. Responses to this summer of wildfires in Europe included a rapid scrambling by the French government to provide everything from tax breaks for businesses affected by the fires to relocation costs and aid to rebuild homes. The UK government had deployed almost 100m before the summer to strengthen wildfire resilience. Continue reading...