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The Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg have been charged with an ‘audacious illegal payment scheme’. Plus, the 10 best popstar career changesGood morning.The Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg, the former president’s long-serving chief financial officer, have been charged with a “sweeping and audacious illegal payment scheme” of tax-related crimes. Continue reading...

Scott Rodd of Capital Public Radio explains how the governor repeatedly overstated the state’s achievementsCalifornia leaders have often touted the state’s wildfire prevention efforts, which have taken on a new urgency as fire seasons continue to set grisly records. But a new investigation, published by Capital Public Radio, found that the governor, Gavin Newsom, has dramatically overblown the state’s achievements.The report, released in June, found that Newsom repeatedly overstated how many acres of the state were treated with fuel breaks and hazardous tree removal, along with other key elements of wildfire suppression. The report also found that the state’s fire agency, Cal Fire, saw its fuel reduction efforts cut in half in 2020. Continue reading...

Warning signs are there for global economy, and central banks will be left in impossible positionIn April, I warned that today’s extremely loose monetary and fiscal policies, when combined with a number of negative supply shocks, could result in 1970s-style stagflation (high inflation alongside a recession). In fact, the risk today is even bigger than it was then.After all, debt ratios in advanced economies and most emerging markets were much lower in the 1970s, which is why stagflation has not been associated with debt crises historically. If anything, unexpected inflation in the 1970s wiped out the real value of nominal debts at fixed rates, thus reducing many advanced economies’ public-debt burdens. Continue reading...

Advocates say having computer programs decide how much help vulnerable people can get is often arbitrary – and in some cases downright cruelGoing up against an algorithm was a battle unlike any other Larkin Seiler had faced.Because of his cerebral palsy, the 40-year-old, who works at an environmental engineering firm and loves attending sports games of nearly any type, depends on his home care support person for assistance with things most people take for granted, like meals and bathing. Continue reading...

The Phoenix Suns star has been as unlucky as he has been brilliant during his long career. But now he has an great chance to finally win a championshipWhen Chris Paul collided with Phoenix Suns’ teammate Cam Johnson in Game 1 of the Western Conference quarter-finals against the title-favourite Los Angeles Lakers, going down in agony as he held his right shoulder, it looked like deja vu. Here was Paul, now on his fifth team, suffering another significant injury on the NBA’s biggest stage. Here he was, appearing to get ready to watch his seemingly indestructible friend LeBron James go on to his 11th finals appearance when Paul still hadn’t been to his first, despite being in year 16 of his NBA career.Paul toughed it out. He re-entered the game and did all he could with a right arm that hung loosely to the side of his body like a dead plant. He struggled to dribble and only took shots from his favourite spot on the right elbow, which he still managed to slingshot in. He played that way most of the series, using his basketball smarts and slick decision-making to overwhelm the Lakers’ defense, helping the Suns win the series, 4-2. Continue reading...

Comparisons of Democrats to Nazis and suggestions thousands should be executed spark fears of violenceThe extremist rhetoric from rightwing news networks and some elected Republicans is “intensifying”, experts have warned, after a Republican congressman compared Democrats to Nazis and a hard-right news host suggested tens of thousands of Americans should be executed.Rightwing TV personalities, including Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, and Republican politicians have seized every opportunity to rail against Democrats and liberals in recent months, with race increasingly coming to the fore. Continue reading...

The charges against Allen Weisselberg might seem small fry, but the threat to people higher up the food chain is mountingMichael Cohen sounded giddy on the latest episode of his podcast, Mea Culpa. Allen Weisselberg, a key lieutenant to Donald Trump, Cohen’s former boss, was about to be charged alongside Trump’s company with tax fraud.“This case is being prosecuted like a mob case. And that means they are starting at the bottom of the tree, and working their way up, by getting the smaller fish to flip with pressure on people like Weisselberg to rat on their former boss of bosses!” Cohen said, gleefully mixing his metaphors. Continue reading...

When it comes to my favourite soft drink, someone could make a lot of money opening a rehab clinicAt significant risk of giving a multinational corporation publicity it does not need – please feel free to Google oligopoly markets after reading this piece – I am going to extol the virtues of a long-term love: Diet Coke. Someone has to, given Cristiano Ronaldo’s rejection of the drink in a Euro 2020 press conference and a recent plummet in its share price.There are two types of people: those who can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi, and those whose taste buds are clearly compromised. Confusing the two is basically like downing a glass of red and proclaiming: “Love a sauvignon blanc!” Continue reading...

Anne Robinson’s new job might not seem relevant to the average working woman, but visibility is vital to defeat ageismAnne Robinson is, as she says herself, the oldest woman on television not judging cakes.But age has hardly mellowed her. Like the canny pro she is, the 76-year-old former Queen of Mean toned it down a bit for her somewhat unlikely new gig hosting the gentle teatime TV quiz show Countdown, but the pre-launch interviews were as sharp and punchy as ever. After this long in the business, she knows her shtick. And love it or loathe it, there is something rather thrilling about her determination not to be put out to grass. Continue reading...

The Los Angeles police department detonated a cache of homemade fireworks it had seized, causing a major explosion on a residential block that injured 17 people, flipped and damaged cars and smashed windows in nearby homes. The fireworks were detonated inan iron containment vessel – which exploded – because they were deemed toounsafe to move from a SouthLos Angeles neighbourhood

Site was evacuated after workers reported sounds of shifting inside still-standing 12-storey sectionRescue efforts have resumed at a Miami condo block that collapsed one week ago, killing at least 18 and leaving 145 more unaccounted for, more than 12 hours after the work was halted amid fears the structure would topple.Rescue work had been stalled earlier on Thursday when workers reported hearing sounds of shifting inside the still-standing 12-storey section of the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside overnight and evacuated the disaster site out of safety concerns. Continue reading...

Anti-Asian crimes more than doubled while hate crimes against Black people increased by 87%, state reports revealHate crimes against Asians in California more than doubled in 2020, as part of an overall 31% surge in hate-based crimes, according to a pair of new reports by California’s attorney general.The increase in anti-Asian crimes was fueled by rhetoric, including that of Donald Trump, blaming Asian communities for the spread of Covid-19 in the United States, the reports said. Continue reading...

Among most prominent figures are ex-Honduras president José Porfirio ‘Pepe’ Lobo Sosa and his wife, Rosa Elena Bonilla de LoboThe US state department has named more than 50 current and former officials, including former presidents and active lawmakers, suspected of corruption or undermining democracy in three Central American countries.Related: 'Deeply alarming corruption': US bill would sanction Honduran president Continue reading...

Miya Ponsetto also charged with aggravated harassment and endangering a child after incident at New York hotel in DecemberA California woman who wrongly accused a black teen of taking her phone at a New York City hotel late last year and grabbed at him as he tried to leave has been charged with a hate crime.Miya Ponsetto was arraigned in court in Manhattan via videoconference on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to charges including unlawful imprisonment as a hate crime, aggravated harassment and endangering the welfare of a child. Continue reading...

Department causes explosion on residential block, flipping cars and smashing windowsThe Los Angeles police department detonated a cache of homemade fireworks it had seized, causing a major explosion on a residential block that injured 17 people, flipped and damaged cars and smashed windows in nearby homes.It could take days to determine why what was supposed to be a safe operation to handle explosives that police said were too unstable to remove turned into a huge explosion. Continue reading...

The former president appeared to mount a typically Trumpian bid to focus attention away from the growing scandal at his companyNo one could accuse Donald Trump of lying low when the long arm of the law finally caught up with him.On Wednesday the former US president visited the Mexico border, highlighting his favourite campaign issue, then held an hour-long televised town hall with Sean Hannity, his favourite Fox News host. Continue reading...

• Speaker ready to veto Republican members of House inquiry• Pelosi determined to investigate root causes of Capitol attackNancy Pelosi is poised to take a hard line should Republicans try to derail her recently announced select committee into the 6 January Capitol attack and she may appoint its members at her sole discretion, according to a source familiar with the matter.The committee, which passed the House in a near-party-line vote on Wednesday, will have eight members appointed by Democrats and four members appointed by Republicans, as well as broad subpoena power and no deadline to complete its work. Continue reading...

The only provocative thing about Ian Rank-Broadley’s characterless sculpture is how shamelessly it plays up to mawkish Diana worshipIan Rank-Broadley’s statue of Diana, commissioned by her sons, was kept secret until its unveiling as if it might be wildly provocative. Looking through the artist’s previous oeuvre, I noticed he has a taste for the nude and created a statue for the late Felix Dennis called Lord Rochester, His Whore and a Monkey. That raised the fascinating prospect of a naked Diana for everyone to get furious about.Instead, he’s let it all hang out in a different way. The sentiment splurges across the flower beds like an uncontrolled wail of artistically absurd pathos. A larger than life Diana, who stands in an awkward, stiff, lifeless pose and has a face that’s more manly than I remember, modelled apparently with thickly gloved hands and no photo to consult, protects two children in her arms while a third lurks behind her. Continue reading...

We are still living with the catastrophic consequences of Rumsfeld and his gang. And it’s not as if this chain of events was unimaginable at the timeIt is customary, at times like these, to gloss over the failures and foibles of recently deceased officials: to paint a portrait in broad brush strokes about their achievements and qualities and public service.Related: History unlikely to forgive Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq warmongering Continue reading...

I know that when it’s safe, I’m going to be an enthusiastic hugger again. But I’ll first be asking if it’s OKWhen I was 17, during a confessional campfire round-robin on a school trip, a teaching aide made a striking admission. “I don’t know when it suddenly became the thing to hug all of your friends, but I don’t really like hugging,” I remember her saying.This eminently reasonable personal preference surprised me. In the mid-late aughts of my western Canadian adolescence, social hugging was so ubiquitous that it never occurred to me to question the practice. I hugged people frequently throughout my youth: my family, my schoolmates, the kindly lady who taught me piano. Continue reading...

Agency will no longer require medical certification if self-selected gender does not match citizenship or identity documentsThe US state department has said transgender Americans are now able to change the gender marker on their passports, and a non-binary option will soon be offered.In an announcement on the last day of Pride Month, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said procedures would be immediately updated so applicants can self-select their gender as “M” or “F”, and the agency will no longer require medical certification if an applicant’s self-selected gender does not match the gender on their other citizenship or identity documents. Continue reading...

Time will tell if alliance with Kanye West and plans for online-only presence will pay offThe news that Gap is to close all 81 of its stores in the UK and Ireland will hardly come as a surprise to those in the fashion industry. Once a favourite of insiders looking for classic minimal pieces without the price tags of catwalk labels, its position has faded in recent years, replaced by brands including Arket, Weekday and Uniqlo.Founded in 1969 in San Francisco, Gap came to the UK in 1987 and has long been known for American classics such as khakis, jeans and white T-shirts. After various sweatshop allegations in the 90s and early 00s, it positioned itself as the home of premium basics and kept its fashion relevance for a long time by balancing its blue-chip heritage with collaborations with buzzy young designers including Alexander Wang, Rodarte and Band of Outsiders. These names reworked classic designs that would showcase in slick adverts with supermodels including Liya Kebede. Continue reading...

The 73-year-old, whose five decades of service to the family began under Donald’s father, has been called Robin to Trump’s BatmanAllen Weisselberg, the 73-year-old top financial executive of the Trump Organization, is known for his deep fealty to the Trump family.Weisselberg surrendered to Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday morning to face charges following a lengthy criminal investigation of the former president and his namesake company. Continue reading...

• Oregon reports 62 deaths, while Seattle along records 13• ‘The dust is settling and it still feels pretty intense’The scorching heatwave that has shattered temperature records in the Pacific north-west is being blamed for hundreds of deaths and thousands of emergency calls and hospital visits in the region, which includes Oregon, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia.As cooler temperatures began to bring some relief to the region, which has sweltered under record-setting temperatures of up to 118F (47C) over the last five days, health officials were just beginning to take stock of the horrendous health effects of the heat on the region’s population. Continue reading...

The rhetoric reveals the direction of US foreign policy – and the work to be done unpicking the damage wrought by TrumpThe US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has just wrapped up a week-long swing through Europe, while basking in the afterglow of not representing Donald Trump.Along the way Blinken has delivered encouraging, albeit boilerplate, rhetoric: hearty appreciation for the US’s strong ties with Europe, a case for the importance of international cooperation and the Biden team’s latest riff on the responsibilities of the world’s democracies “to deliver” – not just for their citizens, but for the global population. The US has no better friend and partner than (he inserted the name of the country he was visiting) in pursuing this challenge of our time. Blinken’s rhetoric rarely deviates from the standard diplomatic playbook, but his language about China is revealing about the possible direction of nascent US foreign policy. Continue reading...

The Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg have reportedly been charged in a tax investigation. Plus, Britney Spears was denied her conservatorship requestGood morning.The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, have reportedly been charged in a tax-related investigation following a three-year investigation into Donald Trump’s company. Continue reading...

People need to explain to themselves their immiseration, their disenfranchisement, their lack of power. Conspiracies do thatThe greatest conspiracies are open and notorious – not theories, but practices expressed through law and policy, technology and finance. Counterintuitively, these conspiracies are more often than not announced in public and with a modicum of pride. They’re dutifully reported in our newspapers; they’re bannered on to the covers of our magazines; updates on their progress are scrolled across our screens – all with such regularity as to render us unable to relate the banality of their methods to the rapacity of their ambitions.The party in power wants to redraw district lines. The prime interest rate has changed. A free service has been created to host our personal files. These conspiracies order, and disorder, our lives; and yet they can’t compete for attention with digital graffiti about pedophile satanists in the basement of a DC pizzeria. Continue reading...

A supreme court ruling has paved the way for college athletes to make money from a $14bn industry. But don’t expect many of them to strike it richCollege sports’ governing body, the NCAA, ruled on Wednesday that college athletes will be allowed to profit from their name, image and likeness (NIL), a historic ruling by the 115-year-old institution. It’s pretty easy to figure out why the NCAA is making the decision now – and it’s not because they’re concerned about college athletes’ bank balances. Last week, the supreme court unanimously ruled in favor of college athletes in a case that paved the way for them to be paid. Then, on Wednesday, a variety of state laws were set to change that would allow athletes to legally pursue NIL profits. The NCAA’s ruling, which came a mere 12 hours before the sweeping legal changes, ensures that athletes in all 50 states will be eligible to make money off of their fame.Why is this a “historic” ruling? Continue reading...

Reports of unmarked graves of Indigenous children have shocked many Canadians. But these just confirmed what we knew all alongPeople across the country are waking up to the reality that Canada is a country built on the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The horrifying reports of unmarked graves of children at residential “schools” in Kamloops, British Columbia, Brandon, Manitoba, and most recently Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan have shocked many Canadians and others around the world. However, these were not discoveries, but confirmations of what we knew all along: Canada was built on genocide.Related: The Guardian view on Canada’s residential schools: an atrocity still felt today | Editorial Continue reading...

Bills seeking to limit the teaching of CRT has been introduced in 22 states in 2021. Emerson Sykes explains the plans to fight backIf 2020 was a year of racial reckoning for the United States, 2021 is shaping up to be one of backlash.A concerted campaign against efforts to address persistent racial inequality has consolidated under the watchword of “critical race theory” (CRT). Once a relatively obscure academic framework for examining the ways in which racism was embedded in US laws and institutions, CRT has been recast by rightwing activists as an omnipresent and omnipotent ideology, one that is anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-white. Continue reading...

The conviction of a high-profile rapist sends a message women rarely hear: rape is wrong. Cosby’s release snatches that awayBill Cosby was released from a Pennsylvania prison on Wednesday after the Pennsylvania supreme court vacated his 2018 conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. Cosby, who has been accused of a pattern of drugging women and then raping or sexually assaulting them while they were unconscious, is out on a technicality: the court found that a prosecutor mishandled incriminating testimony that the comedian had given in a 2004 civil suit, and hence threw out his 2018 criminal trial. But according to the court’s ruling, Cosby cannot be retried, either. His release on these charges is final. He will never serve another day in prison for the assault of Andrea Constand.Related: ‘I am furious’: shock and anger after Bill Cosby’s conviction overturned Continue reading...

Experts worry that immunocompromised people and those who unable to access the vaccine have been forgottenJust as the troubling Delta variant was spreading through the US, Charis Hill got a worrying call from their doctor.The medications Hill takes to treat their spondylitis affect their immune system, and they knew the Covid-19 vaccine might not work as well for them as it does for others. So weeks after their second shot, they got a test. Continue reading...

The team famously crashed out in the quarter-finals to Sweden at the Rio Games. But they have learned valuable lessons since thenIf the US are going to become the first team to win a Women’s World Cup followed by Olympic gold, we now know the squad that will do it. But how does the current squad compare to the one that crashed out at the 2016 Olympics for the USWNT’s worst-ever major tournament finish? Here is a look at how the 2021 squad competing at the Tokyo Olympics stack up against the 2016 group.GOALKEEPERS Continue reading...

The history of the century-old party is far more interesting than its sanitised propaganda would suggestA new museum commemorating the history of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) opened in June in Beijing as part of the runup to the party’s 100th anniversary. Online images of its collections show reverential black-and-white photos of the dozen or so young men who gathered at the party’s founding meeting in Shanghai in 1921. Those activists, one of whom was a young library assistant called Mao Zedong, would have found the China of 2021 impossible to recognise: an economic behemoth run by the most powerful and longest-lasting Communist party in the world.Yet although much of the CCP’s propaganda is firmly focused on the future, the party is still obsessed with controlling the telling of its own past. The museum’s narrative is of a China brought to peace and prosperity by the inevitability of the CCP’s rise to power. The bumpy realities of history, from the failed policies and leaders of the party’s early years to the purges and brutalities that have marked its time in power, are played down or absent. The CCP has always been opaque about its own internal workings. Control of its narrative is another way of maintaining that mystery. Continue reading...

Showdowns between Polish activists and its ultra-conservative government could help build a more tolerant future

For years my pain was dismissed again and again by doctors who did not believe I was sufferingOne summer’s day in 2009, I was 17 and on a beach holiday with friends when I was struck very suddenly by a stabbing pain in my abdomen. In the 12 years since, it has never gone away.The pain was so bad that I was admitted to hospital several times over those 12 years. I was misdiagnosed on multiple occasions and sent home with no diagnosis or treatment on others. Continue reading...

Analysis: reluctance to take heed of warnings that did not fit in with his world-view continues to burden the US government two decades onDonald Rumsfeld’s name will forever be associated with the biggest military fiasco in US history, the 2003 invasion of Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, alongside the widespread use of torture that has dogged America’s reputation ever since.Related: Donald Rumsfeld, former US defense secretary, dies aged 88 Continue reading...

Two Republicans – Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – join Democrats in voting for panel to investigate attack – follow live1.35am BST– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh12.32am BSTSarah Betancourt reports:South 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.Related: South Dakota governor uses private funds to send troops to Mexico border Continue reading...

147 still unaccounted for while NHC monitoring two potential tropical systems crossing the AtlanticAuthorities announced the recovery of six more bodies from the wreckage of a collapsed Miami condo tower on Wednesday, raising the confirmed death toll to 18.Four victims were recovered overnight while two additional victims found in the rubble were announced on Wednesday evening. Daniella Levine Cava, the mayor of Miami-Dade county, said two of the victims were children. It was the highest one-day death toll since the collapse last week, and 147 people remain unaccounted for. Continue reading...

Republican who served under Gerald Ford and George W Bush was involved in decision to invade Afghanistan and IraqDonald Rumsfeld, a two-time US defense secretary who was a key architect of America’s bitterly divisive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has died at the age of 88.Rumsfeld passed away surrounded by his family in Taos, New Mexico, the family said in a statement on Wednesday. Continue reading...