US news | The Guardian

Houston has become the top destination in the country for unaccompanied migrant children in search of safety, opportunity and familyCars and helicopters descended on Alex almost as soon as he crossed the Rio Grande River. He was an 11-year-old boy trying to see his mom. Border agents threw him in a freezing cell, then handcuffed him.That was Alex’s introduction to the United States, a place he hoped would become his new home. But even after he left government custody to join his family in Houston, Texas, his future was unsettled at best. He recalls how at school, a classmate told him to go back to El Salvador. Continue reading...

A 90-75 rout of Tokyo 2020 host nation Japan confirmed yet another Games gold and 55th straight winWhen celebrating a fifth Olympic gold medal, mineral water and an energy drink hardly seem worthy of the occasion. So it was fair enough that Diana Taurasi arrived in the press conference room clutching a bottle of champagne. Dismissing the sponsored offerings on the table, the Team USA veteran took a couple of swigs between answers as she discussed an astonishing personal and collective achievement.Taurasi and Sue Bird, the teammate sat next to her, won basketball gold in Athens, Beijing, London and Rio and added Tokyo to the collection with a 90-75 victory over Japan on Sunday. They are the first basketball players to win five Olympic golds and the US now have seven successive titles. Continue reading...

The president appeals to the ‘civil religion’ of Washington and Kennedy. His opponents use weasel words and seek to limit democracy. The stakes could not be higherJoe Biden declared his third candidacy for president on 25 April 2019 in a three-and-a-half minute video. The format was new, but for Biden relied on an old-fashioned conception of masculinity.Related: Want to make Jim Jordan sing about the Capitol attack? Ask Jefferson Davis | Sidney Blumenthal Continue reading...

A growing list of US businesses are demanding that their staff be immunised but corporate culture, and law, differ in BritainCNN hit the headlines on Friday after firing three employees who went into work unvaccinated against Covid-19, in what it called a violation of company policy. The US media organisation requires all staff entering its offices or working on assignments with other team members to be fully immunised.The news network is at the more extreme end of corporate America’s response to the recent surge of the coronavirus Delta variant, in a country where vaccination take-up rates have split down party lines. Continue reading...

A month after fleeing the state to thwart passage of restrictive voting laws, Democrats again refused to appear at the state CapitolTexas Democrats have refused to return to the state Capitol as governor Greg Abbott began a third attempt at passing new election laws, prolonging a months-long standoff that ramped up in July when dozens of Democratic state lawmakers left the state and hunkered down in Washington, DC.“A quorum is not present,” said Republican house speaker Dade Phelan on Saturday, who then adjourned the chamber until Monday. Continue reading...

Albany officer Craig Apple describes woman as a victim and says investigation of governor could lead to arrestThe sheriff of Albany county, New York, on Saturday repeatedly referred to a woman who filed a criminal complaint against Governor Andrew Cuomo, following her allegation of sexual misconduct, as a victim and touted her bravery in coming forward.“I think we’ve all read the attorney general’s report, I think we all know what’s in it,” Sheriff Craig Apple told reporters during a press conference in the state capital on Saturday, adding: “At this point, I’m very comfortable and safe saying she’s in fact a victim.” Continue reading...

The Covid lockdown bonanza may be ending for big gaming firms but the smart money is on boom times aheadFifteen years ago, when the UK government was finalising the legislation that shaped the modern gambling industry, moral panic about planned “supercasinos” meant the idea was ultimately consigned to the scrapheap. Plans for up to 40 were whittled down to eight, then again to just one in Manchester, before Gordon Brown caved in to media pressure – shrewdly harnessed by the Tories – and abandoned the idea altogether.The flurry of gambling company results due out this week will show how the spotlight shone in the wrong place. Smartphones hit the market at roughly the same time as the 2005 Gambling Act came into force. We now live in a society where everyone has a 24-hour casino in their pocket. Continue reading...

The penultimate day of action saw Sifan Hassan complete a unique track treble, Brazilian football joy and British golds in boxing and pentathlon

Judge demands information from PG&E utility as investigators seek cause of blaze spanning 698 sq milesAt least eight people were missing on Saturday as what has become the largest single wildfire in California’s recorded history continued to scorch through northern communities, forest and tinder-dry scrub in the Sierra Nevada mountains.People in the scenic region were already facing a weekend of fear as the huge Dixie fire threatened to reduce thousands of homes to ashes. Continue reading...

Members vote 67-27 to move the biggest investment in US roads, bridges, airports and waterways in decades to next stageThe US Senate voted on Saturday to advance to the next step of a $1tn infrastructure package, an important procedural stage towards passing the key legislation after months of negotiations between Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of senators.In a 67-27 vote demonstrating broad support, senators agreed to limit debate on the legislation, which represents the biggest investment in decades in America’s roads, bridges, airports and waterways. Continue reading...

Which country boasts the best athletes on the planet? Well, it depends on who you ask – and how you measure successAs of this writing, the United States leads the medal count in the Tokyo Olympics. Or maybe it’s China. Or San Marino.It all depends on how you choose to list the medals, and it’s surprisingly contentious. Let’s take the 2016 Olympics as an example. A British supporter would have preferred that the medals were listed in order of gold medals won – that put them in second place with 27 golds ahead of China in third 26. A fan of the Chinese would have been happier if credit was given to total medals, where their team finished with 70 – three ahead of Team GB’s 67. The media in the US tend to count total medals, whereas the rest of the world generally favors gold. Some would say it’s no coincidence that the US tends to do better in the latter method as it nearly always fields the largest number of athletes. Continue reading...

Former press secretary says ex-boss ‘is in’ while Barbra Streisand offers tip for combating Trump’s election lieDonald Trump’s onetime press secretary, Sean Spicer, said his former boss would run for the presidency again in 2024.“He’s in,” Spicer claimed of Trump’s interest in the race during a recent Washington Examiner interview. Continue reading...

Hungary’s leader and Fox News are natural bedfellows in peddling paranoia politicsTucker Carlson is not much to look at. A little man with a face screwed into the scowl of a junior manager passed over for promotion, you might walk by him in the street with barely a glance. Only when he describes how “the elite has turned against its own people” should you take notice. Carlson is the dependable voice of the dominant force on the right that will destroy democracy in the name of “the people”.Last week, Carlson’s Fox News beamed an admiring show from Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, even though there is every indication that Orbán will make it Europe’s first rightwing dictatorship since the fall of Franco’s Spain in 1975. Fox News built its audience and Orbán built his power by creating paranoid fears of an enemy so dangerous, any tactics can be justified to defeat it. Usually, it is the globalised liberal elite that turns against its own people by allowing mass immigration. Orbán has added a fascistic twist to the great replacement conspiracy theory by blaming the Jewish financier George Soros for plotting to flood Christian Hungary with Muslims. If it is not migrants, it is the gay men he implies are paedophiles, and if it is not gay men, it is the European Union. The name of the enemy is incidental. The point about modern far-right politics is that there must always be an enemy. Continue reading...

The runner has overtaken Carl Lewis as the most decorated US track Olympian, but her influence transcends athleticsIn the minutes after the end of the very last event, an army of construction workers filed into the Olympic Stadium to start getting it ready for the closing ceremony. The athletes were still making their way out through the line of TV, radio and press interviews while the workers were marching past them, hauling palettes of stacked plastic matting to lay over the track and great rolls of fabric to unwrap. The Olympics are winding down, and the athletics is wrapping up. Looking back on what’s happened here in the last nine days, you can see the ways in which the Games have started to change.The most keenly anticipated race of these Olympics wasn’t the men’s 100m but the women’s, and the biggest stars of the athletics championships were Elaine Thompson-Herah, who swept all three sprints, and Sifan Hassan, who completed an unprecedented treble when she followed her victory in the 5,000m and her bronze in the 1,500m with another gold medal in the 10,000m. And then there was Allyson Felix, who says she has enjoyed every minute of it. Continue reading...

The sprinter met and defied every lofty expectation of her on the way to setting an impossibly high standard of excellenceOf course they called her Chicken Legs. Ninth graders are the worst. Clearly, the girls on Los Angeles Baptist High’s track team were just waiting to pounce on Allyson Felix, all stems and a cheeseburger shy of skinny back then. A nickname like that makes clear she was more eggbeater than world beater, nobody’s standout sprinter. But it didn’t take her long to turn that insult into an aspiration.Here’s the thing about chickens: they’re hard as hell to catch. (Rocky could barely pin one down in a dirt alley, remember?) Once Felix started breezing through 270lbs deadlifts at age 14 before going on to replace Marion Jones in the California high school record books, there was no more belittling this rare athlete. There was only watching her run so fast and far from all who dared doubt her that you could halfway think she was flying. Continue reading...

The host nation were deservedly ecstatic after their win against the US. But how much value can be placed on an event when the best athletes do not show up?As Japan cheered its first and perhaps last title it was time to bid farewell to an existential crisis dressed up as an Olympic sport. Why are we here? Will we ever see each other again? If a Fan Cam scans the stands for people dancing to Uptown Funk, in a stadium without any fans, did anyone really bust some moves?Officially introduced at Barcelona 1992 (softball followed four years later), baseball was axed from London 2012, though nearly 120,000 people were interested enough to attend a two-game series between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox in the capital’s former Olympic Stadium seven years later. Continue reading...

The last thing we need right now is another billionaire, regardless of their skin colorRihanna just became the newest member of the Black billionaire class. She did it through her ambitious and game-changing makeup company, Fenty Beauty. Fenty rejects eurocentric beauty standards and provides a wide array of cosmetics that celebrate darker skin tones often ignored by the beauty industry. That’s great. Unfortunately, the last thing we need right now is another billionaire, regardless of their skin color.Related: US billionaires don’t pay tax, and our politicians don’t seem bothered | Maureen Tkacik Continue reading...

People in remote areas of the state still resist the vaccine, either out of concern for its development, or inconvenience – or politicsWith Covid-19 cases surging across California last month, Bill Canterberry decided it was time to get the vaccine.For months, the Lassen county resident had worn his mask and waited. Worried by news reports about rare but severe side effects, he put off getting a shot. When his wife was vaccinated earlier in the year, he monitored her closely, just to be sure. Continue reading...

943,000 jobs were added last month, but 5.4% remain unemployed at a time when some employers are having difficulty recruitingThe American economy added 943,000 jobs in July, demonstrating another month of steady, positive growth. However, 5.4% remain unemployed at a time when some employers are having difficulty recruiting workers. Continue reading...

For some of us, living with Covid the past 18 months gave us permission to slow down, and to re-evaluate how we want to live when this is finally overWhen I walked out of my town’s massive conference center in early April, a second Pfizer shot fresh in my arm, a flood of emotions swelled in me. Creeping behind the feelings of joy and anticipation, I felt a strange bit of sadness that, all the way home, I could not shake. When I walked into my house and my three-year-old dashed into my arms, it hit me.‘I think I’m going to miss being locked down,’ I realised, in disbelief. Continue reading...

The New York governor’s self-defense follows the playbook of powerful men accused of sexual misconduct – but it’s shocking given his history of advocacyOn 12 August, 2019 Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, held a glitzy bill ceremony in his executive mansion in Albany to mark the signing into law of new legislation designed to beef up sexual harassment protections for women in the workplace.With a flourish of a pen, Cuomo sought to seal his reputation within the Democratic party as a champion of gender-based rights. Continue reading...

A month ago, Americans were getting vaccinated, cases and deaths were falling, and Biden seemed to have the virus in his grasp. Not so fastIt was not supposed to be this way.A month ago Joe Biden appeared to have victory over the coronavirus pandemic within his grasp. As tens of millions of Americans got vaccinated, cases, hospitalizations and deaths were falling precipitously. Continue reading...

Gymnast who captured gold at the Tokyo Olympics greeted with signs and a crowd of hundreds at airportThe chants of “Suni! Suni! Suni!” rang out in the Minneapolis-St Paul international airport terminal as soon as their new golden star, Olympic champion gymnast Sunisa Lee, stepped foot off her plane, home from Japan.Related: How Sunisa Lee overcame family tragedy and injury to win Olympic gold Continue reading...

Offer for UK company from Marlboro cigarettes maker had alarmed medical expertsUS private equity firm Carlyle has made an improved £958m takeover offer for British inhaler maker Vectura, trumping an earlier bid from tobacco company Philip Morris International that had alarmed medical experts.

Assistant to New York governor accused him of groping her while they took a selfie togetherA woman who accused New York governor Andrew Cuomo of groping her breast last year while they took a selfie photograph together has filed a criminal complaint with the Albany county sheriff’s department, the office said on Friday.Related: ‘Biden plan is working,’ says president after July’s strong jobs report – US politics live Continue reading...

Greenville, a community of about 1,000 in the Sierra Nevada mountains, reduced to ashes by California’s third largest fire ever recordedThe US’s largest wildfire raged through a beloved Gold Rush-era California mountain town this week, reducing much of the downtown and surrounding homes to ashes.Greenville, a remote community of about 1,000 in the Sierra Nevada mountains, was a place of strong character, where neighbors volunteered to move furniture, and writers, musicians, mechanics and chicken farmers mingled, resident Eva Gorman said. Continue reading...

He left in disgrace, yet all signs point to a third presidential run. And his disdain for facts is now an article of Republican faithWe have so much to worry about, it’s a relief that at least one big source of angst is no longer there to keep us up at night. Given how much psychic energy so many – inside the US and out – once devoted to him, how he came to invade even our dreams, there is solace in the fact that these days we need pay no more attention to Donald Trump. Right? I’m afraid not.True, the great orange spectre has disappeared from the social media timelines, exiled by the emperors of Facebook and Twitter, reduced to starting his own blog to get around the ban – an effort that, like so many Trump enterprises before it, was quietly abandoned in failure. It lasted a month. Continue reading...

New CDC guidance and breakthrough infections have sown confusion. Here’s some sound advice from two epidemiologists on how to keep safeIn late July, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its earlier mask-wearing guidance for people vaccinated against Covid-19 by recommending that even those who are fully vaccinated resume masking indoors, in public, if they live in areas with “substantial or high transmission” of the virus. The update was a jarring 180 from the previous CDC mask guidance issued in May, which gave fully vaccinated individuals the green light to remove face coverings and resume activities without social distancing.Confusing? Maybe just a bit. But there’s a logic to the CDC’s about-face. Continue reading...

Mexico has tried almost everything to stop US-made guns from fueling cartel violence. So now it’s doing what any litigious American would do: suingEven as Republican members of Congress accuse Joe Biden of failing to secure the nation’s southern border, Mexico is facing a growing problem of securing its northern border. Guns from America are pouring into Mexico, arming violent drug gangs.Mexico has tried just about everything to stop the flow of firearms from the north – passing strict gun control laws, imposing stiff penalties on traffickers, and pleading with US authorities to stop the trafficking – but nothing has worked. So now it’s doing what any litigious American would do: it’s suing. Continue reading...

A shutdown of the currents would have devastating global impact and must be prevented, scientists say. Plus: the struggle to protect our oceans from sunscreen pollutionGood morning.Climate scientists have detected warning signs that suggest the Gulf Stream might collapse, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points in the climate crisis. Continue reading...

The US stumbling in the dark when it comes to breakthrough cases. Why?Breakthrough cases – infections among vaccinated people – are happening. These are normal and expected because the vaccines, though all powerfully protective against Covid, are not 100% effective. But how many people, and which populations, are having breakthrough infections? And what are the chances they will develop long Covid, the cluster of debilitating symptoms that can last for weeks or even months?Related: The latest terrible pandemic trend? Vaccine hypocrites | Arwa Mahdawi Continue reading...

Health companies see decline from record profits of last year – but where is the scrutiny of such vast sums?Five of America’s largest health insurers reported more than $11bn in profits in the second quarter – a decline from the same period last year when the Covid-19 pandemic helped drive sky-high profits.The rise in profits last year was a result of people in the US seeking less medical care because of fears about Covid-19 while still paying for health insurance. Companies warned pent-up demand could have an effect on their bottom line, but medical use still has not returned to normal rates. Continue reading...

World records have tumbled at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo. Are athletes simply getting better or are other factors at play?At the US Olympic trials in June, Sydney McLaughlin became the first woman in the history of the 400m hurdles to post a time under 52 seconds. Her mark of 51.90 was a world record, and she arrived in Tokyo a favorite to win gold.On Wednesday, she did – and the 21-year-old broke her own world record in the process. McLaughlin finished in 51.46 seconds, a notable improvement upon her time from five weeks ago. Continue reading...

The fast-moving Dixie fire has continued to burn through northern California, leaving much of the gold rush town of Greenville in ashes. The three-week-old fire has burned more than 500 sq miles and destroyed dozens of homes. Greenville was previously damaged by a significant fire in 1881 but maintained some buildings that were more than a century old

Curtis Sliwa, 67, faces Eric Adams in November’s election. Can the attention-loving founder of the Guardian Angels upset the odds?Curtis Sliwa has a lot of cats.On a recent Tuesday afternoon, there were 16 felines packed into the Manhattan apartment that Sliwa, the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City , shares with his wife. Continue reading...