Oregon’s governor expresses dismay at ‘unprecedented’ temperatures while fierce wildfire rages in northern CaliforniaJoe Biden and Kamala Harris met with governors from western states today, as a fierce wildfire raged in northern California and the region is battling a historic heatwave that has set record-high temperatures in many cities.“This is a personal issue for me as a daughter of California,” the vice-president said at the start of the meeting, which included Democratic and Republican governors. Continue reading...

Details emerge of lives separate and diverse from a wide range of nationalities and religions – but also inextricably intertwinedThe names of the victims from the Surfside condo disaster have so far come at a slow yet steady trickle. But behind each of the names comes a story, of love and compassion; of family and deep friendships; and of a once tight-knit community in a south Florida condo block lost to the unimaginable.They include a couple married for six decades, who were the rocks of their family as parents, grandparents and later as great-grandparents; a young man who achieved his dream as a graphic designer despite the challenges of muscular dystrophy, and his mother who dedicated her life to caring for him. Continue reading...

• Republican Kristi Noem deploys national guard to Texas• Move justified as response to ‘crimes’ committed by migrantsSouth Dakota’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, is deploying up to 50 national guard troops to the southern US border, responding to a call from the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, for help dealing with a rise in border crossing, although the majority of migrants have been sent back to Mexico.Noem said on Tuesday in a statement that she was responding to his request for assistance in responding to “ongoing violations of state and federal law by illegal aliens crossing the unsecured border”. Continue reading...

Kataluna Enriquez won the Miss Nevada USA pageant Sunday and will compete in Miss USA pageant in NovemberA transgender woman who won the Miss Nevada USA pageant will soon become the first openly transgender Miss USA contestant.On Sunday, Kataluna Enriquez beat 21 other contestants to win the crown. The 27-year-old took to Instagram the next day to celebrate. “Huge thank you to everyone who supported me from day one,” she wrote. “My community, you are always in my heart. My win is our win. We just made history. Happy pride.” Continue reading...

Figures in first ranked choice poll that seemed to show Kathryn Garcia narrowing gap on Eric Adams included ‘test ballots’New York City’s mayoral election has been thrown into chaos after the board of elections mistakenly included 135,000 “test ballots” in its vote tally.The board of elections had published updated vote totals for the Democratic primary earlier on Tuesday, which showed Kathryn Garcia, New York’s former sanitation commissioner, narrowing the gap on Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, to less than two points. Continue reading...

China scored higher than the US when it came to handling the pandemic in survey of global attitudesA new survey has found that since Joe Biden came to power, positive views of the United States have rebounded across 17 advanced economies in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Most continue to see China in an unfavourable light.“Confidence in the US president has shot up precipitously since Joe Biden took office, while confidence in President Xi Jinping remains unchanged and near historic lows,” the survey, conducted by the US-based Pew research centre, found. The survey was conducted between 1 February and 26 May this year across 17 advanced economies as a part of Pew’s 2021 Global Attitudes survey wave. There were 18,850 respondents. Continue reading...

• Resolution affects men who supported slavery and segregation• Bill names John Calhoun, Charles Aycock and James ClarkeThe House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to remove statues of white supremacists and Confederate leaders who advocated for slavery from the US Capitol.The vote passed 285 to 120 with every Democrat present and 67 Republicans voting in favor of the legislation, which directs the removal of “all statues of individuals who voluntarily served in the Confederate States of America or of the military forces or government of a State while the State was in rebellion against the United States”. Continue reading...

After the discovery of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former school for Native children in Canada, it is time to investigate similar abuses in the USThere is so much mourning Native people have yet to do. The full magnitude of Native suffering has yet to be entirely understood, especially when it comes to the nightmarish legacies of American Indian boarding schools. The purpose of the schools was “civilization”, but, as I have written elsewhere, boarding schools served to provide access to Native land, by breaking up Native families and holding children hostage so their nations would cede more territory. And one of the primary benefactors of the boarding school system is the Catholic church, which is today the world’s largest non-governmental landowner, with roughly 177 million acres of property throughout the globe. Part of the evidence of how exactly the church acquired its wealth in North America is literally being unearthed, and it exists in stories of the Native children whose lives it stole, which includes my own family.Last month, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation made a grisly discovery of 215 children’s remains at a burial site next to the former Kamloops Indian residential school in British Columbia. The news sent shockwaves through Indian Country. On Tuesday, the US interior secretary, Deb Haaland, announced that her department would lead an investigation into “the loss of human life and lasting consequences” of federal Indian boarding schools. Although it’s unclear whether the scope of the investigation will include church-run schools, it should because many of the Catholic-run schools received federal trust money set aside for Native education. Continue reading...

Extreme weather is the start of a ‘permanent emergency’ caused by climate breakdown, Americans have been told. Plus, the man who made a $1bn business from celebrity shoutoutsGood morning.As a historic heatwave, extreme drought and wildfires engulf much of the North American west, experts and officials have warned this is just the beginning of a lasting crisis caused by climate breakdown. Continue reading...

Homicides were up across the US in 2020 and appeared to be primarily driven by rising gun violence, but other crimes fellThere’s been a wave of media coverage this summer about an increase in homicides across the United States, with attention often focused on the same political question: will Americans still want to defund or even reform the police if “violent crime” is on the rise?Anxiety about violent crime is often used to win elections. Police and politicians routinely share misleading, out-of-context crime statistics to advance their agendas. Fearmongering about rising crime has also been used for decades to undermine Black Americans’ protests for civil rights. So it’s important to ask: is this homicide increase actually significant? And how much evidence is there for any of the explanations about why killings are going up? Continue reading...

Lordstown Motors promised to bring the good times back to the once thriving Ohio town, but locals are braced for more disappointmentIt’s less than a year since Lordstown Motors was touted as the future for the Youngstown, Ohio, the once thriving steel and manufacturing city that has struggled to reinvent itself in the post-industrial age.Related: Start me up: ‘car guy’ Joe Biden accelerates push to turn America electric Continue reading...

Kearny Scots are based in a New Jersey town that has bred some of the finest players in US history. Now they’re looking to the futureImmigrants from Scotland poured into northern New Jersey in the late 19th century to find work in the giant textile mills and, in their free time, play fitba – or soccer as the locals more commonly call it these days. A club known as the Kearny Scots joined the new National Association Football League in 1895 and finished second to a club from nearby Bayonne.

The ruination of a once-thriving area of Ethiopia is the result of war and its associated crimes. The world needs to wake upIt is hard to believe it’s happening again, even harder to believe that so few people seem to know or care. A massive famine is unfolding in Tigray in northern Ethiopia. Five million people are in need of food aid, and perhaps 900,000 are already starving.In other words, it’s looking horribly reminiscent of the start of the 1984 famine, in which a million people died, most of them in Tigray. Like the last cataclysm, this has nothing to do with “natural causes”. It’s caused by war and its associated crimes. This time, however, the man in charge is a Nobel peace laureate: the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed. A great weight of evidence suggests that his troops, and those of his Eritrean allies, are using hunger as a weapon of war. Continue reading...

US Pacific north-west and Canada see soaring temperatures and drought fuels flames as crisis illustrates climate breakdownThe summer of 2021 is already shaping up to be one for the record books, with much of the American west gripped by historic heatwaves, extreme drought, and the threat of large wildfires that have already begun to burn across the region. The crisis has also extended into Canada, with temperatures in British Columbia soaring to 118F (46.6C) on Monday, shattering records for the area where few are set up for such intense heat.Experts and officials fear that the catastrophic conditions, fueled by the climate crisis, will only get worse through the coming months. Continue reading...

Strikers among those transferred from Newark jail as activists say move puts them at risk of being force-fed or deportedA group of 30 immigrant detainees in Newark, New Jersey, were quietly transferred to an unknown location in the early hours of Tuesday. Among them were some men who were on a hunger strike for over a day who had worries about being sent to another location and were demanding to be released.Essex county chief of staff Philip Alagia confirmed 30 detainees under the jurisdiction of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) were transferred out of the facility, and that the Ice population in the facility is now down to 76 men. Continue reading...

Roger Federer moved into round two when Adrian Mannarino retired before the start of the fifth set and there were also wins for Ash Barty, Venus Williams, Alex Zverev, Dan Evans and Denis Shapovalov8.42pm BSTRelated: Dan Evans beats Feliciano López and wants more focus on British success Related: Wimbledon ditches traditional gender distinction over players’ towelsRelated: Wimbledon: Francesca Jones beaten by Coco Gauff on her main draw debut7.04pm BSTAnyway, that was a pretty decent day ... and there’s another just like it but nothing like it all along tomorrow. Ooh yeah! See you then!Related: Roger Federer edges through after Adrian Mannarino retires in fifth set Continue reading...

Few would have predicted the CCP’s triumph. Now it guards its power ruthlesslyOne hundred years ago, 13 young Chinese men and two Comintern representatives met secretly in Shanghai’s French Concession. Fearing discovery by police, they soon fled to nearby Jiaxing, where they had to conclude discussions on a pleasure boat.From these unpromising beginnings sprang the world’s largest and most powerful political movement: the Chinese Communist party, now 92 million strong. Within 30 years, it would control the country. A century on, it has grown into a behemoth that controls a fifth of the world’s population and its second-largest economy, and is shaking the confidence of its superpower, the US. To detractors, as well as supporters, its feat looks truly incredible. Three decades after its patron and rival, the Soviet Union, collapsed, the CCP is looking ahead: “We must march forward towards the second centenary goal,” its leader, Xi Jinping, said as celebrations of Thursday’s official anniversary gathered pace. Continue reading...

Surprisingly insightful film explores relationship between martial arts champion and his two sons, one of whom has a genetic disorderPart classic montage-showdown sports movie, part southern gothic Oedipal family drama, this decidedly peculiar but oddly compelling film is the proverbial curate’s egg. The plot revolves around the fraught relationship between a mixed martial arts cage fighting champion named Cash Boykins (Stephen Dorff, a sinewy mass here of cut muscle, tattoos and barely controlled rage) and his semi-estranged 18-year-old son Jett (newcomer Darren Mann, more than holding his own). In possession of a much finer soul than his old man, high-school senior Jett lives in a modest suburban house with his waitress mother Susan (Elizabeth Reaser) who divorced Cash a while back, and younger brother Quinn (Colin McKenna, delightful), a sweet, cheeky kid who happens to have Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects physical and mental development.Jett has a weird, semi-professional relationship with Cash, having been groomed to be the next MMA in the family by the domineering patriarch, but there’s deep reservoir of hurt between them due to the fact that Cash used to beat Susan and treated Quinn, whose disability he couldn’t accept, with appalling cruelty. Outwardly, Cash revels in obnoxious, macho swagger, indicated in the very first scene wherein he discusses his penis size at length. Plus, a good white son of Alabama, he loves to spout sexist, racist hate speech even though he’s currently married to Jade (Karrueche Tran), a biracial woman with whom he’s had another son. But screenwriter David McKenna and director Nick Sarkisov take pains to indicate Cash’s own past as an abused child. Still, that doesn’t stop him from pushing Jett to take part in an unlikely-to-happen-in-the real-world fight with him, for a pay-per-view audience, that’s filmed with brio but at numbing length in the last quarter of the film’s running time. Continue reading...

Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia also added to list that now has 17 states where state employee travel is forbiddenCalifornia added five states, including Florida, to its list of places where state-funded travel is banned because of laws that discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community.California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, on Monday added Florida, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia to the list that now has 17 states where state employee travel is forbidden except under limited circumstances. Continue reading...

Andrew Giuliani, who has traded off his surname, embarrassed by poll that indicates Lee Zeldin will challenge Andrew CuomoAndrew Giuliani, son of former New York mayor-cum-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, received no votes in a poll of state Republican leaders about the party’s next choice for governor of New York state.The poll was not binding but it indicated that Lee Zeldin, a Long Island congressman, is the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge Andrew Cuomo next year. Continue reading...

Panel will have eight members appointed by Nancy Pelosi and five appointed ‘after consultation with’ Kevin McCarthy

Hundreds of unmarked graves, and testimonies of countless horrors, belie our angelic self-imageIt’s not often that Canadians have to apologise for their country. I’ve travelled the world reporting on conflict and human rights and am always greeted positively when I say I’m Canadian. “It is a beautiful country,” I am told. “Your country cares for its citizens.” In Canada, people make sympathetic noises when I retell whatever tragic story I have been working on. “We are so lucky to live in Canada,” they say.Canadians like the idea of a “good” country full of “good” people. There’s even a name for it: “the angel complex”. Look at all the immigrants and refugees we welcome here, goes the doctrine – we’re not like those American racists, or those European xenophobes. Canada see itself as proudly multicultural, tolerant, peace-loving and polite. A beacon of light to the world. Continue reading...

Rightwing Southern Baptists believe they must ‘save’ white Christian America by embracing Trumpism. A more moderate faction just won control – by the tightest of marginsIs the Southern Baptist Convention – the largest and arguably most powerful Protestant denomination in the United States – being held together by culture wars instead of Biblical teaching? That is the question in recent weeks, as thousands of Southern Baptists gathered in Nashville for their annual meeting to determine the bitterly contested future of the convention.Related: ‘Where you live determines everything’: why segregation is growing in the US Continue reading...

The former president has said his successor’s unfounded ‘big lie’ claims are fuelling voter suppression. Plus, why America needs to plant more than 30m treesGood morning.Barack Obama has accused Donald Trump of violating a “core tenet” of democracy by refusing to concede the presidential election and making up a “whole bunch of hooey”. Continue reading...

Tejon Ranch Company says its plan to build 20,000 homes would help the housing crisis. Experts warn it could put people in dangerAbout an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles lies one of the last remaining pieces of the truly wild, wild west.The 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch is dotted with centuries-old native oaks. Endangered mountain lions roam the grounds, and California condors soar above it. Rains paint the hills bright orange with poppies, and purple with lupine. But in the summer, and during drought years, the landscape dries to a shimmering gold. A small group of cowboys still run cattle here. Continue reading...

The college basketball star became a symbol of the fight against drugs in the 1980s. But it ended up ushering in a discriminatory legal systemSometimes solutions can have drastic unintended consequences. Mike Krzyzewski, one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time, once told the Washington Post: “During my years as a coach, the two most dominant players we’ve faced were Michael Jordan and Len Bias”. Bias was a star for the University of Maryland, and was selected as the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics, where he would play alongside such legends as Larry Bird. But on 19 June 1986 at 6.30am, months before Bias was due to step on to a court as a professional, a 911 operator received a call that changed both sports and US history.In my book, Tiger Woods’s Back and Tommy John’s Elbow, I examine athlete deaths and tragedies and how their consequences ripple outward resulting in something called the Cobra Effect. The Cobra Effect is based on an anecdote from India during the days of the British empire. At the time, the cobra population was out of control. In order to curb the epidemic, a local governor decided to put a bounty on cobra skins. Unbeknownst to officials, farmers began to breed cobras to skin for bounties. Once the scheme was discovered, the bounty program was cancelled. With no market for their cobras, the farmers released them into the wild, increasing the snake population. As a result, what was supposed to be a solution created a worse problem. The reaction to Bias’s death fell into the Cobra Effect. Continue reading...

Photographer Jake Michaels became mesmerised by the community’s gentle pace of life – which raises questions about the way we live our own lives Continue reading...

New York prosecutors may soon bring indictment against Trump Organization tied to perks for top executivesDonald Trump is facing a potentially crippling financial and political blow as state prosecutors consider filing criminal charges against his family business this week.Prosecutors in New York could soon bring an indictment against the Trump Organization related to the taxation of lucrative perks that it gave to top executives, such as use of apartments, cars and school tuition. Continue reading...

Ex-president calls for action to stop ‘delegitimizing of democracy’ during redistricting fundraiserBarack Obama said on Monday that his successor in office, Donald Trump, violated a “core tenet” of democracy when he made up a “bunch of hooey” about last year’s election and refused to concede he lost.Speaking at his first virtual fundraiser since the 2020 election, the former Democratic president said former Republican president’s claims undermined the legitimacy of US elections and helped lead to other anti-democratic measures such as efforts to suppress the vote. Continue reading...

After Novak Djokovic came from behind to beat Jack Draper, Andy Murray defeated Nikoloz Basilashvili in an emotional four-setter on Centre Court

Seattle, Portland and other cities broke records over the weekend and face even higher temperaturesSeattle, Portland and other cities in the Pacific north-west broke all-time heat records over the weekend, with temperatures soaring well above 100F (37.8C).But forecasters said Monday could be even worse, with the mercury possibly hitting 110F (43C) in Seattle and 115F (46C) in Portland. The high temperatures could continue on Tuesday in some areas. Continue reading...

City urges condo associations of 40-plus-year-old buildings above six stories to get an inspection within 45 days

As the US has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, a new study finds. Its lead author, Stephen Menendian, speaks about America’s failure to integrateAs the United States has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, according to a new nationwide analysis from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.Related: ‘It’s time to fix it’: can Chicago tackle its worsening racial life expectancy gap? Continue reading...

Leaked data shows other high-profile members have overlapping membership in more explicitly racist or violent groupsLeaked membership data from the neo-Confederate Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) organization has revealed that the organization’s members include serving military officers, elected officials, public employees, and a national security expert whose CV boasts of “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance”.But alongside these members are others who participated in and committed acts of violence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and others who hold overlapping membership in violent neo-Confederate groups such as the League of the South (LoS). Continue reading...

I have loved Oscar since he was a puppy. Twelve years on, the morning stroll is a challenge for both of us