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Gerson Turcios was 17 when he fled violence in Honduras to build a new life in the US. Six years later, he was mowing lawns in his home town of Rhinebeck when immigration officers took him. Within hours, friends, neighbours and local celebrities sprang into action. Could they stop his deportation?Gerson Turcios didn't recognise the menstanding next to a couple of dark SUVs outside his house one July afternoon last year. He figured they were lost and approached to see if he could help. A slim 23-year-old with short dark hair and big brown eyes, Turcios had just finished work mowing lawns in the pretty town of Rhinebeck, in New York's Hudson Valley. The men asked if he knew someone called Jimmy - he did, but Jimmy hadn't lived in the small, white weatherboard house with Turcios, his brother and his brother's girlfriend for a while.The men noted Turcios's accent and asked where he was from. Turcios didn't answer, so one took out his phone and snapped a photograph. The next thing Turcios knew, he was in handcuffs in the back of one of the SUVs and on his way to an ICE processing centre in Newburgh, New York, then on to a detention centre. Continue reading...

Weather system tied to warming sea surface expected to intensify in fall and winter, persisting until early spring 2027El Nino, a recurring climate phenomenon marked by above-average sea surface temperatures, when changes in wind patterns allow warmer water to spread across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, could spell a wet winter for portions of the western and south-eastern US, climate models show. Coastal areas may be at elevated risk of flooding, experts warn.Climate scientists predict this year's super" El Nino, a label assigned when sea surface temperatures climb by at least 2C, will be the strongest of the century. The weather system is expected to intensify in the fall and winter, persisting until early spring 2027, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). Continue reading...

Joe Biden's prostate cancer is reportedly debilitating', even as ex-president continues to speak out on public issuesFormer US president Joe Biden's prostate cancer has spread to other parts of his body and is causing him pain, even as he continues to speak out on public issues, his son Hunter said in an interview.In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC broadcast late on Friday, Hunter Biden grew emotional as he discussed his father's condition, describing it as very sad to watch. Continue reading...

Senate minority leader condemns Republicans after Donald Trump's former defense lawyer confirmed by 50 votes to 49 early on Saturday morning. This blog is now closed.Joe Biden's prostate cancer has spread throughout his body, causing the former president great pain, his son Hunter Biden said during an interview broadcast Friday.The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further," Hunter Biden said in a sit-down with the BBC. It's very painful and it's very debilitating in many respects." Continue reading...

State's attorney general says scammers have made off with more than $100m in past two yearsScammers in New York have been using gold bars to steal money from victims, primarily older adults, and made off with more than $100m over the past two years, the state's attorney general announced on Friday.The scheme starts with victims receiving a fake pop-up message that states their computer or financial account has been compromised, the press release stated. The message includes a phone number to call, and when people do, the scammers convince the victims to provide remote access to their computers, which allows them to access their financial information or online bank accounts. Continue reading...

Dr Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients - why is he working in the death chamber?Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years' experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing.It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Continue reading...

City on track to record fewest reported rat sightings since pandemic as Mamdani's containerization' program brings bins to boroughsIs New York finally winning its war on rats? Or are New Yorkers' vermin neighbors merely adapting to changing circumstances and, at least in some neighborhoods, staying out of sight?With an estimated one rat for every three people, New York's long-running rat war is in a period of uneasy detente. Continue reading...

Four-year-old Taras, who now resides at a Minnesota sanctuary, was diagnosed with an often fatal infectionA lion that escaped the war in Ukraine after being found as a four-month-old cub inside a duffel bag at Odesa railway station is facing an even greater battle for survival in his new home in Minnesota from a rare and often fatal fungal disease.Taras, his two sisters Lesya and Stefania, and an unrelated, slightly older cub from Kyiv named Prada, were brought to the US in November 2022 by the Wildcat Sanctuary, a secluded private reserve near Sandstone, Minnesota, that arranged their rescue with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Continue reading...

Major win for president as former personal lawyer wins approval despite outcry over $1.8bn slush fundThe US Senate voted to narrowly confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general in a major win for Donald Trump, who will now have his one-time personal attorney sitting atop the nation's law enforcement apparatus.Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana cast the deciding vote in Blanche's favor after two other Republicans - Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska - voted against him. Every Democrat rejected Blanche's nomination as the Republican-led Senate voted 50-49. Continue reading...

An exchange between Dr Erica Schwartz and Senator Josh Hawley during her confirmation hearing is alarmingRobert F Kennedy Jr's new cooking show isn't the only big news out of the public health world this week. On Wednesday, Dr Erica Schwartz was confirmed by the US Senate as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making her the first Black woman to hold the position. This is the first time in almost a year that the agency has had a permanent leader; the previous director, Susan Monarez, only lasted 29 days before she was ousted for butting heads with RFK about US vaccine policies. Translation: she was a little too keen on following accepted science for the Trump administration.So is Schwartz an RFK-approved vaccine skeptic who thinks you can cure cancer by praying to trees? Surprisingly: no. Schwartz, who served as deputy surgeon general during Trump's first term, actually has government experience and a public health background. During her confirmation hearing in July, she walked a careful tightrope when asked about her stance towards vaccines. Schwartz said she will never betray the science" but also dodged questions about how she would handle pressure from Kennedy.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Tech companies offer eye-movement trackers, personalized podcasts and optimized nap predictions'. Who actually needs this?What job in our world is less lucrative than being a parent? A Hollywood internship? Volunteering at a soup kitchen? Professional writer? Parenting is the only job you have to pay money to do. Lots of money. Lodging, clothes, food, school, Pokemon cards - it really adds up. And it's getting worse. According to the tech industry, I have to strap my drooling offspring to a computer in order to ensure the baby's survival.Parents are being offered life-altering advancements in artificial intelligence that purport to make this taxing endeavor a tiny bit easier. OpenAI is suggesting its latest products can make child-rearing more efficient: its boss, Sam Altman, suggests generating a podcast about your kid's life that you can listen to in the morning on the way to school. How entertaining would a podcast that talks about one kid's soccer game that afternoon, one kid's upcoming birthday, some news, etc" actually be? Jimmy needs to work on his dribbling." Great. I think he knows already. He's not going to be the next Messi, so how about we switch back to music? Continue reading...

Ever the strategist, the Chinese leader is taking the offensive, both abroad and at home. That's bad news for global order, and minorities in his countryImagine what would happen if a British prime minister in London told the Scots they could not have their own parliament, national football team or fly the saltire. Or if the Welsh were told their language and poetry were banned and must no longer be taught in schools. The ensuing uproar would probably destroy the United Kingdom. Yet that's exactly what Xi Jinping, China's communist emperor, is telling the roughly 125 million members of the 55 ethnic and religious minorities who together comprise about 9% of the country's (majority Han Chinese) population.Xi claims his sinicisation policy, embodied in a new ethnic unity" law, will boost national identity and integration and, by expanding compulsory use of the Mandarin language, improve life and work prospects. Minorities should hug tightly like pomegranate seeds" to build a strong, united China, he says. But Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghurs and others who value their separate language and customs fiercely object to what they see as forced assimilation into a conformist, intolerant monoculture dominated by the Communist party's tunnel vision. For them, it's ethnic cleansing by another name.Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator Continue reading...

Documents published on US embassy's website prompt claims of attempt to export Maga propaganda to UKThe US embassy in London is offering grants of up to half a million dollars for new public education" programmes in what has been criticised as interference in British domestic politics.Using language that the pro-Trump Maga movement has sought to appropriate, a funding notice identifies a goal of fostering a national conversation" about shared civilizational values" underpinning US-UK ties. Priority will go to applicants aiming to celebrate freedom of speech" and limited government". Continue reading...

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Rescuers not yet able to reach scene of crash near Richfield in central Utah, prompting fears for two missing peopleA firefighting Sikorsky S64 helicopter with two individuals onboard crashed on Friday morning in a remote area of central Utah, according to federal aviation authorities.The US Forest Service initially declined to comment on the condition of the helicopter's passengers, asking the public for patience while we focus on response efforts" in a statement. Continue reading...

Officials describe deplorable conditions' at home run by pair linked to crematory closed due to mishandled remainsThe remains of 56 people were found improperly stored and decomposing on Thursday at a Chicago funeral home run by a couple who previously operated a crematory that was similarly shut down because of mishandled remains, authorities said.Illinois state officials, meanwhile, suspended the license of one of the funeral home's directors, alleging bodies were being kept in an unrefrigerated area in deplorable conditions". Continue reading...

Officials praise unarmed employee from nearby store for engaging 24-year-old gunman who later killed himselfPolice released video on Friday of a mass shooting that killed three people at an Idaho In-N-Out Burger restaurant last weekend, and praised an unarmed employee from a nearby store who engaged the gunman outdoors, slowing him down and possibly preventing more deaths as authorities were catching up.The video released by the police also showed at least three people confronted the gunman with their own weapons during the incident. Continue reading...

Will Rosenzweig's defunct blog was publicized online by conservative pundit who tagged senior DoJ officialsA federal prosecutor fired last year over critical comments he had written as a private citizen about Donald Trump sued the justice department on Friday, saying his termination violated his first amendment rights.Will Rosenzweig was two weeks away from trying a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case when a blog he had written years earlier covering a broad range of topics was publicized online by a conservative political commentator who also included a screenshot of Rosenzweig's LinkedIn account and tagged senior justice department officials for their awareness. Continue reading...

Chad Eberle of Texas charged over deadly shooting in Saltillo that officials say stemmed from custody disputeA Texas police officer has been arrested in Mexico after authorities there accused him of killing three people and critically injuring the mother of his child in what investigators say stemmed from a dispute over the custody of the minor.The Coahuila attorney general's office said 35-year-old Chad Eberle was arrested on Wednesday at the border on a warrant accusing him of femicide and qualified homicide, according to La Razon de Mexico, a newspaper based in Mexico City. Under Mexican law, femicide refers to the intentional killing of a woman or girl because of her gender. Continue reading...

Late senator spent final days of his life working to advance bill that will now head to the House after 86-11 Senate voteBy a large, bipartisan margin, the US Senate on Friday approved a bill intended to punish Russia and countries that buy its petroleum exports over the invasion of Ukraine, capping a legislative push that was spurred by the death of its champion, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham.The measure, renamed the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia Act in honor of the late senator's work on the issue, was approved by an 86-11 vote. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the sole Republican to oppose the legislation, together with 10 Democrats. Continue reading...

Police arrested Herbert Wayne Smith, 65, in connection with the Gann fire, which has burned more than 15 sq miles in Calaveras countyAt least one person has died in a wildfire burning in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada mountain range that officials believed was sparked by a man using a chainsaw.Police arrested Herbert Wayne Smith, 65, in connection with the Gann fire, which has destroyed seven buildings, scorched more than 15 sq miles in Calaveras county and killed a well-known dog breeder in the town of Angels Camp. Continue reading...

White House continues to target Cook despite decision from justices that upheld Federal Reserve's independenceDonald Trump is attempting once again to oust the US Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, despite a recent US supreme court decision that upheld the central bank's independence.Cook reportedly received a letter from the White House this week that provided notice, in accordance to the supreme court's June ruling, that Trump was considering removing" her from her Fed position over the same claims of mortgage fraud that he levied against her last summer. Continue reading...

Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi pleads guilty to killing Rebecca Marodi, decorated fire captain who fought Eaton blazeA California woman this week admitted to killing her wife, a decorated fire captain who fought the deadly 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, by stabbing her - the same fate she previously delivered to her husband and had served a decade in prison for.Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi, 54, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to second-degree murder after killing her wife, Rebecca Becky" Marodi, 49, a California fire captain, at their home in February 2025, just a month after Becky, as she was known, battled the Eaton blaze that killed 19. Continue reading...

Wildfires in the US and Europe, Russian strikes in Kyiv, beekeepers in Gaza and the European Aquatics Championships - the past seven days as captured by the world's leading photojournalists Continue reading...

Judge finds probable cause to believe the MyPillow founder violated campaign law by handing out free pillows at eventAn administrative law judge in Minnesota has found probable cause to believe Mike Lindell, candidate for Minnesota governor and the MyPillow founder, violated campaign finance law by handing out free pillows at a public event last month.In a four-page ruling issued on Thursday, Judge Nicholas Lienesch found that a complaint against Lindell had enough to move on to an evidentiary hearing in front of a three-judge administrative panel. Continue reading...

Bill Cassidy, Republican seen as a decisive holdout, said he is prepared to back Trump's former personal lawyer

Much-delayed devices to be deployed by end of month after immigration agents involved in deaths or serious injuriesOfficers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be equipped with much-delayed body cameras by the end of next month, it was reported on Friday. But experts have questioned the transparency of a policy that allows the ICE director to restrict the public release of footage unless it is in the best interests of the agency".Pressure has mounted on the Trump administration to provide body cameras after people caught up in encounters with federal immigration personnel suffered death or serious injuries. Continue reading...

The AFL could borrow some of the gumption from a North American ice hockey league to grow Australian rules football's elite women's competitionIn Australia, it is called the Matildas effect. Elsewhere, it has increasingly become known by a different name: business as usual.The Professional Women's Hockey League is one of several North American competitions making a habit of not only attracting spectacular women's sports crowds, but doing so at a domestic level. Just three years into its existence, the ice hockey league is doing a mighty fine job of it too, with last season's attendance up 71% on their inaugural campaign. Continue reading...

Estimates for previous two months were revised down sharply but unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%

Robyn Cory says daughter Kristen was not protected, amid questions about why it took six years to identify remainsThe family of Kristen Galvan, a 15-year-old Houston girl who was sex trafficked and murdered, says law enforcement failed her twice by not protecting her after she gave forensic interviews about her traffickers, and later by taking more than six years to identify her remains.The Texas attorney general's office announced on 28 July that Kristen's remains had been positively identified using advanced DNA testing conducted over the past year. Parts of her skull, clothing and an earring were found beneath a bridge beside a jogging trail in Missouri City, about 10 miles outside Houston. Continue reading...

Domestic flights cost 26.5% more than last year, data shows, amid demand for travel and reduced oil refining capacityEven if a lasting ceasefire between the US and Iran lowers oil prices, travelers hoping to snag cheaper airfare should buckle their seatbelts and expect continued turbulence.US domestic airfares are 26.5% higher than a year ago, according to June's consumer price index data, and analysts say prices globally are up 25-30% compared with 2025. Continue reading...

Environmentalists and activists furious as Trump's policies raise costs for Americans. Plus, the masterpiece that was left lying in museum storageDon't already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning. Donald Trump's statement that oil companies have made too much money" from the Iran war has angered environmentalists, who say his policies were designed to benefit those very corporations.Americans have paid more than $78bn more at the pump since the start of the Iran war, according to a Brown University tracker. A recent analysis from the environmental advocacy group Climate Power and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal thinktank, found that Trump's policies had cost the average American family $285 more when filling up their cars.What policies has Trump enacted to help the oil industry? Since re-entering the White House last year, he has eased dozens of restrictions and regulations on fossil fuel expansion, exempted fossil fuel producers from environmental rules, and signed an executive order last year directing the attorney general to prioritize blocking climate lawsuits targeting oil majors. Trump has also personally invested in major oil companies.What did the supreme court previously rule? In the court's June decision, the chief justice, John Roberts, said Trump's first order violated the 14th amendment of the US constitution. Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights - to freely participate in our political community," he wrote. The framers of the 14th amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in this land'. We keep that promise today." Continue reading...

Save Our Signs aims to document every sign in the more than 400 national parks and historic sites across the country before the Trump administration removes themJenny McBurney was among hundreds of people around the world who sprang into action last year when the Trump administration started deleting government datasets and webpages because they included information about gender ideology", environmental justice or diversity, equity and inclusion.McBurney, a government publications librarian at the University of Minnesota, joined the Data Rescue Project, a group that mobilizes volunteers to archive critical government datasets that are at risk of deletion by the Trump administration. Continue reading...

Few have heard of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, but it has saved tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollarsWhen I started my training in 1980, we accepted an arithmetic that would now be indefensible. Central lines, the catheters we threaded into the great veins of the critically ill, became infected, and some of those patients died. We recorded the deaths as complications. Almost no one thought of them as preventable, because no one had yet done the slow work of proving they were.That work got done, and federal money paid for it. Beginning in 2008, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a small arm of the health department, funded a national effort in more than a thousand adult intensive care units: a checklist, a sterile insertion protocol, and a unit culture in which a nurse could stop a surgeon. Central-line bloodstream infections fell by 41%, from 1.915 to 1.133 per 1,000 catheter days. The agency estimates that effort alone averted between 290 and 605 deaths. Across its wider work on hospital-acquired harm, AHRQ's own accounting credits 20,500 deaths prevented and $7.7bn saved in the four years from 2014 to 2017. Hardly any of my patients have heard of the agency. That was always rather the point.Robert B Shpiner is an internist and clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He has practiced and taught intensive care medicine for more than 40 years Continue reading...

Donald Trump's second term is unlike his first. The politicians who challenged him are gone. The lawyers who once pushed back now choose their battles. What remains is an imperial president with almost no internal checks - using executive power to reshape everything from the economy to immigration and even the presidency itself.Few journalists have covered Trump as closely as the New York Times's Jonathan Swan. He speaks to Jonathan Freedland about how the president has consolidated such enormous power and what it could mean for America - and the world.Regime Change by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman https://guardianbookshop.com/regime-change-9781398567597/ Continue reading...

Nominees to face off in November in redistricted seat central to Trump's bid to retain slim Republican majorityTennessee primary voters picked a pair of Memphis-area lawmakers to square off in a dramatically reconfigured US House seat central to Donald Trump's plan to try to hold on to a slim Republican majority in the midterm congressional elections.Republicans chose state senator Brent Taylor, who was endorsed by Trump, to be their nominee in the revamped 9th congressional district. Democrats picked state representative Justin Pearson, who gained national prominence three years ago when he was expelled from the Tennessee House for protesting in support of gun control measures. Continue reading...

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For more than a decade, president has been fixated on trying to undermine a key constitutional rightWith a pair of executive orders on Thursday, Donald Trump has tried - once again - to undermine the guarantee of birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the US constitution and reaffirmed by the supreme court just five weeks ago.The orders attempt to broaden the categories of children who would be ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called birth tourism", which the president claimed is practiced by hundreds of thousands" of people. Continue reading...

Orders come after supreme court rejected president's first bid to restrict guarantee enshrined in US constitutionDonald Trump has made a second attempt to restrict the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, just weeks after the US supreme court rejected his initial, more sweeping bid to deny automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents.Trump on Thursday signed two executive orders that seek to broaden the categories of children ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called birth tourism". The directives are expected to face legal challenges. Continue reading...

While officials say proposed revisions to Head Start program will encourage more enrollment, advocates say it will undermine the programThe Trump administration has said it plans to overhaul Head Start, tossing out many of the regulations that are the hallmark of the early education program for the nation's neediest children.Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federally funded preschool program, said on Thursday the proposed changes would encourage more local decision-making, but the proposal has sparked alarm across the Head Start community, where advocates say it threatens the backbone of the antipoverty initiative. Continue reading...

Settlement ends years-long legal battle over collapse of 18-story hotel that was under construction in New OrleansA judge approved a $106m settlement on Thursday that ends a years-long legal battle over the deadly 2019 collapse of a Hard Rock Hotel that was under construction in New Orleans.The 18-story hotel project partially collapsed in October 2019 , killing three people and damaging nearby property. A grand jury ultimately decided against indicting anyone in the deadly collapse, but lawsuits were filed, including one brought by the city of New Orleans in August 2020 naming the building owners, their partners and contractors. Continue reading...

President attacks terrible mistake' of US attorney, who said in court filing damage stemmed from botched renovationDonald Trump has doubled down on his criticism of Jeanine Pirro after the US attorney for the District of Columbia publicly challenged his claims that vandals had damaged the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.She said there was no vandalism. There was tremendous vandalism," Trump told NBC News on Thursday. So, she made a terrible mistake. I don't understand why she did such a stupid thing." Continue reading...

Expansion of immigration enforcement at US airports puts employees at odds with agents seeking 2,000 daily arrestsA dramatic increase in immigration enforcement at US airports has reportedly placed the airline industry at odds with the Trump administration as workers decline to help federal officials arrest their targets - many of whom have pending applications for visas, asylum or green cards.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) - both part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - have expanded their collaboration to make as many as three dozen daily arrests at US airports last month, the Wall Street Journal reported. Continue reading...

Shift in monitoring methods has led to revenue boost for Geo Group, a private prison firm, that also makes the deviceThe US is tracking nearly 54,000 immigrants through GPS-enabled ankle monitors as part of a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) electronic surveillance program, according to private prison corporation The Geo Group. Early last year, just 17,000 immigrants were wearing the devices..The Geo Group owns BI Inc, the company that runs ICE's intensive supervision appearance program (ISAP), and reported the numbers in its earnings call on Thursday. Continue reading...

Court documents allege Aaron Farinacci, who faces slew of arson charges, set 25 fires in Spokane area over past yearThe 37-year-old man accused of sparking a devastating fire in Washington allegedly studied how to maximize the blaze's destruction and was responsible for setting 25 other fires in the Spokane area over the past year, according to a court affidavit.Aaron Farinacci, who faces a slew of arson charges, is accused of starting the Old Trails fire, which began on 1 August and is still burning - one of three Spokane complex" fires that have scorched hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of residents. Continue reading...

Astronauts Jessica Meir and Anil Menon conduct a spacewalk outside the International Space Station, preparing the installment of new rollout solar arrays which will provide extra energy to support the station, according to Nasa Continue reading...