A new Netflix series explores one man’s twin addictions to racing and drug trafficking. And how his double life eventually caught up to himHere it was, the escape hatch that never fails to present itself in crime films: a chance to get away with it, an opportunity to go legit. Except when this all-too-real turning point arrived 37 years ago, Randy Lanier was deep into an unlikely double life as an endurance car racer and marijuana smuggler – and was convinced the feds were closing in on him. But to his great relief, the suspicious-looking suits who had been shadowing him at the track late in the 1984 IMSA endurance racing season weren’t FBI agents; they were representatives from Ford. And once they finally approached Lanier, he couldn’t believe what they were offering: a sit-down in Detroit to discuss him joining their factory team. In essence, it meant he wouldn’t have to smuggle weed to keep Blue Thunder – his racing team – punching well above its weight, and KO’ing some of the biggest dogs in the sport.But did Lanier take the meeting? “My mind was already made up,” Lanier says. “I wanted to keep Blue Thunder together. That’s what friends do.” Continue reading...

In Memphis on Saturday, the best US men’s and women’s rugby players will kick-off a pro competition for the shortened gameMidway through our conversation, Perry Baker greets a friend not seen in a while. The other party to the post-pandemic reunion is Tai Enosa, another US Eagle who Baker will face on the field on Saturday.Fourteen US Olympians, men and women, will play in the first event staged by Premier Rugby Sevens, the first games kicking off at AutoZone Park in Memphis, Tennessee at 9am local time, the day capped with televised finals in the early evening. Continue reading...

Agreement would extend US borrowing authority into December but larger disputes remainThe US Senate has approved a deal to extend the government’s borrowing authority into December. The compromise between Republican and Democratic leaders would temporarily avert an unprecedented federal default that experts say would have devastated the economy.With a 50-48 vote, senators agreed to increase the borrowing limit by $480bn, sufficient to prevent the US government from defaulting by keeping debt payments up until 3 December. Continue reading...

Attack class submarine USS Connecticut hit an unknown object on routine operations and is in a ‘safe and stable’ condition, US navy saysA nuclear powered US navy attack submarine has struck an object while submerged in international waters in the South China Sea, officials have said.Eleven sailors were hurt – two suffered moderate injuries and the rest had minor scrapes and bruises, officials said. All were treated on the sub. Continue reading...

President to expand sites shrunk under Trump, in win for environmental advocates and Indigenous leadersJoe Biden will expand two sprawling national monuments in Utah that were downsized significantly under Donald Trump, the state’s governor said on Thursday.The move marks a victory for environmental advocates and indigenous leaders who had fought for years to restore protections for the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments. Continue reading...

Investigators seek documents and testimony from Trump allies and organization that backed rallyThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Thursday issued new subpoenas to allies of Donald Trump as well as the organization affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” rally that deteriorated into the 6 January insurrection.The third tranche of subpoenas reflects the select committee’s overarching focus on the extent of Trump White House involvement in planning the Capitol attack, as they target entities connected to top executive branch officials and members of Congress. Continue reading...

Exclusive: the British boxer on his third fight with Deontay Wilder and why speaking out on mental health was one of his finest achievementsIt’s all smiles in dressing room four in the bowels of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, where Tyson Fury is only days away from defending his WBC heavyweight title against Deontay Wilder. It’s a scene that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when Fury’s career appeared over after he left the sport for more than two years amid public battles with addiction and mental illness.“I’m not overconfident,” Fury says. “I’m not going in there thinking I’m just going to knock this guy out. I’ve prepared hard, I’ve prepared well. No injuries. So I’m giving Wilder the respect he needs and deserves for this fight.” Continue reading...

Bizarre request made ahead of immigration hearing for Manning, whose previous attempts to enter Canada have been deniedCanadian government lawyers recently invited US whistleblower Chelsea Manning to travel to a hearing in Montreal – so that border agents could then physically remove her from the country.The bizarre request, which was eventually denied by an adjudicator, was made ahead of an immigration hearing set to begin on Thursday for Manning, whose previous attempts to enter Canada have been denied.This article was amended on 7 October 2021 to correct a city name that was misspelled. Continue reading...

Reproductive rights groups and Democrats welcome federal judge’s decision but warn its impact could be temporaryTexas’s near-total abortion ban has been temporarily blocked after a federal judge ruled on Wednesday that it violated the constitutional right to an abortion. Reproductive rights groups and Democrats have welcomed the decision, while warning its impact could be temporary.“From the moment SB 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the constitution,” Judge Robert Pitman wrote as part of a 113-page opinion, granting an emergency request from the justice department. Continue reading...

Tyson Fury labelled Deontay Wilder “weak” before a blazing argument erupted between the heavyweights at their final pre-fight press conference, leading to the traditional staredown being scrapped.Fury defends his WBC title on Saturday against a fighter he defeated to become champion, and it was the outcome of that bout 20 months ago – and Wilder’s unfounded allegations of cheating – that was the catalyst for a heated row.

Arizona officials looked under the hood and found no evidence of wrongdoing. But some people will never accept the resultHello, and happy Thursday,Back in May, I spent some time with a small group of people who had gathered outside of Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix to express their support for the investigation into the election results in Maricopa county, the largest county in Arizona. Continue reading...

Extraordinary demands on troops from Covid and militarization at the southern border were cited in mistakes that led to the disasterAn investigation by the US marine corps found that pandemic burnout and intensive troop commitments played a central role in the drowning of nine US service members last July during a pre-deployment training session off the California coast.The report, released Wednesday, investigated the formation of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and scrutinized the various demands placed on commanders, staff, and troops before the sinking of a 26-ton amphibious assault vehicle. Continue reading...

Efforts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas to review last year’s results are ‘delegitimizing democracy’, critics sayRepublicans in several states are advancing partisan reviews of the 2020 election results, underscoring how deeply the GOP has embraced the myth of a stolen election since 2020.The investigations in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas are advancing even after an extensive similar effort in Arizona, championed by Donald Trump and allies, failed to produce evidence of fraud. All three inquiries come as Trump has called out top Republicans in each state and pressured them to review the 2020 race. He is also backing several candidates who have embraced the myth in their races for statewide offices in which they would oversee elections. Continue reading...

Since 1988, humans have destroyed an area of rainforest roughly the size of Texas and New Mexico combinedShortly before his 44th birthday, in December 1988, the Brazilian rubber tapper and environmental activist Chico Mendes predicted he would not live until Christmas. “At first,” he said, “I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”Mendes had received death threats for years. The threats escalated when an aggressive rancher laid claim to a nearby forest reserve, where he intended to burn and level trees to create pasture for cattle. The rancher hired gunmen to prowl around Mendes’s neighborhood. Mendes publicly opposed the rancher, and continued to advocate for the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, saying Brazil must save the most biodiverse forest in the world. Destroy it, he said, and we, the human race, will end up destroying ourselves. Continue reading...

Tyson made his professional debut in March 1985. With 21 months, he had won 28 fights and become a world championBy Steven Pye for That 1980s Sports BlogTo boxing fans, Mike Tyson was a menacingly exciting presence in the heavyweight division as he made his professional debut in 1985 and worked his way towards a world title in 1986. To his opponents, he was a terrifying hurricane enveloping them and unleashing pain. Tyson won 15 fights in his first year as a professional before defeating 13 more opponents in 1986 on his way to clinching his first world title. At that stage of his career, everything came quickly. Just ask the men who faced him. Continue reading...

Gavin Newsom’s survival as California’s governor was just one of hundreds of recall attempts on the west coast this yearRecall attempts across the US in recent months have hit a fever pitch in response to Covid-19 and racial justice disputes, and a socialist city council member in Seattle has become the latest prominent seat to be targeted.Opponents of Kshama Sawant have spent months collecting thousands of signatures in an attempt to unseat the council member, who became the first socialist on the Seattle council in nearly a century after she beat a Democrat in 2013. Last week, the recall effort officially qualified for an election in December. Continue reading...

Even after passing reconciliation as is, the US welfare state would still be a small investment by world standardsAs Democrats continue negotiations in the hopes of saving Biden legislative agenda, one thing has consumed the media and conservative Democrats in Congress: the price tag. Nearly every news item on Biden’s signature Build Back Better reconciliation bill has led with the $3.5tn cost, as if the price were in the title of the bill itself.The West Virginia senator Joe Manchin issued a scathing critique of the supposedly profligate Biden agenda, calling the reconciliation bill “fiscal insanity” that ignores the “brutal fiscal reality our nation faces”. The Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema claims that she cannot support a bill with a price tag this high. The tone of these conservative senators and the media coverage would lead anyone to think that $3.5tn of additional spending over a decade was an enormous amount of money that would drastically increase the size of government, endanger government coffers, and even “re-engineer the social and economic fabric of this nation”. Continue reading...

As Greg Abbott prepares to run for re-election, political buzz has McConaughey and O’Rourke as challengers. But how about Congresswoman Veronica Escobar to rally behind?One of my favorite tales from the vault of family lore involves a woman named Ignacia Jasso, who was better known as “La Nacha”. As the tale goes, in the late 1930s or early 40s, a distant relative eloped with one of La Nacha’s daughters. But La Nacha did not approve of this marriage and, as the head of one of the first Mexican drug syndicates based in Juarez, she ordered that the relative be shot.He survived, and fled Texas, where he died of natural causes decades later in another state. Of course, the allure of the story for me involved our family’s proximity to organized crime, but the notion that a woman headed this criminal enterprise – and, I later learned, pioneered many modern-day cartel practices – never struck me as odd. Despite the macho stereotype of Hispanic men along the border, there has historically been a cultural acceptance of women in power. It is this acceptance that makes discussion of a Latina governor of Texas long overdue. Continue reading...

The latest status symbol in kitchens is invisible appliances – but hiding behind that fridge disguised as a cabinet is a long history of people trying to engineer societyRich people are having a couture cooling moment. The new status symbol, according to the New York Times, is an invisible fridge. Rich people buy enormous $15,000 Sub-Zero fridges and then stick panels on them that match their custom cabinetry. The result? As if by magic, it looks like there are no appliances in the house.There are cooling drawers, too. The drawers are mostly built into kitchen islands, although it’s increasingly common for the ultra-rich to have them installed in bathrooms for temperature-controlled face creams. Continue reading...

Players from Gotham FC and Washington Spirit halted Wednesday's game with five minutes played before linking arms in the centre circle. The gesture was a show of solidarity with players who have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against a prominent NWSL coach.Last week, the Athletic published claims of abuse made by former NWSL players Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim in addition to more than a dozen players from every team former coach Paul Riley has coached since 2010.

This week’s roundup also features George Graham, Alex Ferguson and college football’s biggest-ever win1) The upcoming Ashes series is still in the balance, but let’s close our eyes and pretend we’re at the Gabba anyway. Here’s a brutal bout of rain from 1987, a sensational hailstorm discharged in 1992, and a further classic enjoyed in 1998.2) On Saturday night, Mackenzie Dern takes on Marina Rodriguez in the UFC’s straw-weight division. The daughter and step-daughter of Brazilian jiu-jitsu champions, Dern’s submission game is exceptional, so here’s a little doc about her rise and an interview in which she discusses people’s fascination with her accent (amongst other things). Continue reading...

The Florida-based athlete has the fastest-known marathon time for a double-leg amputeeMarko Cheseto will line up for Monday’s Boston Marathon with justified confidence: he has the fastest known time for a double-leg amputee: 2 hours 37 minutes and 23 seconds. In other words, Cheseto is capable of running six-minute miles for just over 26 miles.The journey he took to get to this stage took him across two continents and through immense physical and emotional pain. Continue reading...

The striker looked like he could be the future of soccer in America. But fans never got to discover how far he could goDuring a locker room celebration after a World Cup qualifying win over Canada on 20 October 1976, Miro Rys could not have been more elated. The 19-year-old striker not only scored the opener of the US’s 2-0 triumph but also his first international goal.“I’ve got the ball right here,” Rys proudly told reporters. “I’m going to take it home and hang it on the wall. I predicted before the game I would score, but when I scored, I felt incredible.” Continue reading...

Erasing his two-decades-old record would require the rightwing Texas governor’s goodwillCriminal justice reform experts are hopeful that if Texas governor Greg Abbott approves a pardon request for George Floyd’s drug-related charges, which are almost two decades old, it will send a strong message about the prejudices of a justice system that disproportionately incarcerates Black and Latino people.Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer and his death triggered a wave of outrage over police violence and systemic racism that spread across America and to the rest of the world. At the trial of his killer, Derek Chauvin, defense lawyers attempted to portray Floyd’s history of drug use as somehow a cause of his death. Continue reading...

Shows like White Lotus allow us to feel some moral superiority over the rich. But as Logan Roy shows, they couldn’t care lessHow should a rich person be? In Succession, the HBO drama about the trials and tribulations of the ultra-wealthy Roy family and their crumbling media dynasty, the answer is, mostly, unhappy. In the first two seasons, as patriarch Logan Roy was faced with the problem of choosing one of his disappointing children as a successor we saw a gallery of paranoid elders and neurotic, despondent heirs rattling around their gilded cage, pecking at each other. (The third season will air in the coming weeks.) The characters seemed terrible but real, the tone was an unusual combination of funny and unsettling but clearly articulated – conversations about politics were topical but cynical. It felt weird, honest and fresh. It was excellent TV.But, in our risk-averse production climate, every good cultural artefact is replicated and warped in the process, usually losing whatever it was that made it good in the first place. And so there has been a trend of similar shows, all playing off the premise of a group of hyperwealthy people, awkwardly bound together – by family connections, staying at the same hotel, or attending the same school – in an unhappy tangle of resentment and neurosis. The cast of characters includes recognisable stock types (the “white feminist” girl-boss, the entitled older man, the rich socialist). The characters talk about the sort of political and cultural topics for which we all know what the “right” position to hold is. The tone is humorous. Continue reading...

The transition from college to the NFL is notoriously tough. But the Jaguars coach is in serious trouble after just four gamesSo, who had October in the Urban-Meyer-flames-his-way-out-of-Jacksonville pool?The Jacksonville Jaguars head coach may hang on to his job until the end of the season. But his run as an NFL czar effectively ended on Monday. Continue reading...

Union took issue with company’s threats to outsource jobs from the US to Mexico if workers refuse to accept their proposalsAbout 1,400 Kellogg’s workers at four US plants have gone on strike after their current union contracts expired and amid accusations that the cereal giant is offshoring jobs.The workers, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), produce cereals for brands, including Rice Krispies, Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes and Raisin Bran, at plants in Michigan, Tennessee, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. Continue reading...

Twelve bulging bears battled it out to take home the illustrious title of Alaska’s fattest bear earlier this week. Thousands cast their vote in the annual competition which compares the pre-hibernation weight gain of the Katmai national park residents. Master-of-salmon and reigning champion Otis took the crown this year, with a charming underdog backstory that ultimately won over bear enthusiasts. Pre-hibernation weight gain over Alaska’s short summer and fall is crucial for bears heading into the long, freezing winter. Gorging on salmon during this time allows the bears to emerge healthy from hibernation when spring comes around. Continue reading...

Judge excoriates ‘unprecedented scheme’ to deny women abortion right as law faces uncertain futureA US federal judge has temporarily blocked the near-total ban on abortion in Texas, dealing the first legal blow against the contentious law and throwing its future into uncertainty.The law, known as Senate Bill 8, banned most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state and, until now, had withstood a wave of early challenges. Continue reading...

Items for sale include photographs, firearms, jewelry and furniture belonging to gangster and his familyIt was Christmas Day in 1946 when the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone took his wife and four granddaughters out for a walk on to the dock of their sprawling mansion on Palm Island, Florida.A picture shows “Papa”, as he was known to them, relishing his freedom after being released from Alcatraz where he served over seven years for tax evasion. Continue reading...

Musician says city should have taken more proactive stance after police fatally shot his cousin there earlier this yearPharrell Williams has pulled his popular Something in the Water festival in Virginia Beach after a police officer fatally shot his cousin there earlier this year.City leaders had appealed to Williams to restore the festival in 2022, but Williams criticized officials’ “toxic energy” in a letter this week. Continue reading...

Brad Little, who was in Texas with other Republican governors, promised to reverse Janice McGeachin’s orders when he returnedIdaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, temporarily left the state on Tuesday on government business and his deputy, Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin, immediately began issuing rightwing orders while she was temporarily holding executive power – including a ban on coronavirus vaccine mandates.That same afternoon, McGeachin issued an executive order – as acting governor – banning state officials from requiring what she called “Covid-19 vaccine passports” from employees, the Washington Post reported. Continue reading...

America still holds enormous sway on the global economy. So when Congress starts down a path to a possible debt default, could it hit the world with GFC 2.0?