US news | The Guardian

The imbalance is more extreme than it’s been in over a century. We need to fix this structural problem before it’s too latePolicymakers and the media are paying too much attention to how quickly the US economy will emerge from the pandemic-induced recession, and not nearly enough to the nation’s deeper structural problem – the huge imbalance of wealth that could enfeeble the economy for years.Related: ‘When is this going to end?’: US factory town devastated by jobs moving overseas Continue reading...

US president’s crucial legislation suffers expected defeat thanks to Republican filibuster. Plus, the people trying to make millions with memesGood morning.Joe Biden suffered a painful blow on Tuesday as a crucial vote on his For the People Act – one of his administration’s top priorities – ended in a bruising defeat in Congress. Continue reading...

The first American to win the Champions League did so at a time when US soccer players were seen as little more than noveltiesThree years ago, the US men’s team were watching the World Cup on television instead of playing in it. But with the 2022 edition in sight, things are looking much more encouraging. Christian Pulisic’s successive victories in the Champions League and Concacaf Nations League finals are symbolic of the team’s revival. He is far from alone though. Alongside him stand the likes of Giovanni Reyna, Weston McKennie, and Sergiño Dest, all of whom play for some of the best clubs in the world. This kind of success in Europe was unprecedented just five years ago for Americans, before Pulisic established himself as a young phenomenon at Borussia Dortmund.But it wasn’t the first time we’ve seen an American lift the most coveted trophy in club soccer, nor is it the first time Dortmund have helped American soccer players break into European competition. Continue reading...

The UK has been weakened, but so too has the EU. Relations between them need not be this badFive years after the fateful referendum on 23 June 2016, what is the current balance sheet of Brexit? Answer: two weakened unions, the British and the European, and bad-tempered relations between them. Lose. Lose. Lose.The weakening of the British union is obvious. There will be another referendum on Scottish independence within the next few years. Scottish nationalists may win it with the argument that Scotland should leave the British union to rejoin the European one. A vote in Northern Ireland on Irish unification seems more likely than at any point since it was first provided for in the Belfast agreement in 1998. Boris Johnson’s government is full of rhetoric about keeping the union together but has no strategy for doing so. Continue reading...

Bank warns staff they have less than three weeks to take both Covid jabs or continue working from home

We are not angry, we are disappointed. And angry

The White House warned democracy was ‘in peril’ but while key Democrats stay committed to the filibuster, progress looks difficultAfter nearly six months of watching Republicans relentlessly make it harder to vote in the US, Democrats suffered a major blow on Tuesday after GOP senators used a legislative maneuver to halt a sweeping voting rights and ethics bill.The vote doesn’t kill the bill, but it marks one of the most significant setbacks for Democrats in Joe Biden’s presidency so far. Democrats heralded the legislation as their No 1 priority, even knowing they were unlikely to get any Republican votes for it. The bill would amount to the most significant expansion of the right to vote in a generation, requiring early voting and automatic and same-day registration, while prohibiting excessive manipulation of electoral district boundaries, a process often called gerrymandering. Continue reading...

Deb Haaland announces initiative to ‘uncover the truth’ of policies that forced Indigenous children to assimilateThe US government will investigate the troubled legacy of Native American boarding schools and work to “uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences” of the institutions, which over the decades forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities.The US interior secretary, Deb Haaland, has directed the department to prepare a report detailing available historical records relating to the federal boarding school programs, with an emphasis on cemeteries or potential burial sites. Continue reading...

Democrats demonstrated unity in the US senate as the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said he would vote in favor of advancing voting rights legislation known as the For the People act to the debate stage.The Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, denied any voter suppression was happening despite around 400 bills introduced in more than 43 states which could restrict the right to vote. The legislation would remove hurdles to voting.In the evenly split Senate, Republican votes mean the bill will not garner the necessary 60 votes to advance.

Greg Abbott’s decision surprises lawmakers after bill passed legislature with bipartisan supportThe governor of Texas has pulled a surprise move, vetoing a bipartisan bill that would have provided greater protections for dogs against human abuse.The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, vetoed a bill on Friday that would have made unlawful restraint of a dog a criminal offense, sending animal rights activists and legislators on both sides of the aisle into a fray and spurring the hashtag #AbbottHatesDogs. Continue reading...

The rent forgiveness program would pay landlords all of what they are owed while simultaneously giving tenants a clean slateCalifornia is pursuing an ambitious plan to pay off the entirety of unpaid rent from low-income tenants who fell behind during the pandemic, in what could constitute the largest ever rent relief program in the US.The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is negotiating with legislators and said the $5.2bn plan would pay landlords all of what they were owed while giving renters a clean slate. Continue reading...

‘He doesn’t know that I’m his wife,’ Lisa Marshall said. So when Peter proposed again, she decided to go for itA married couple from Connecticut hosted a second wedding ceremony when the groom, who has a type of dementia, proposed to his wife again after forgetting they were already married.Despite struggling to remember his marriage due to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Peter Marshall, 56, has never forgotten the love he has for Lisa, 54, his wife of 12 years, whom he has recently mostly regarded as his favorite caregiver given his deteriorating memory. Continue reading...

Sam, first openly gay football player to be drafted by an NFL team, voiced his support for Nassib’s announcement

Firefighters in Arizona, California, Oregon, Utah and New Mexico are battling blazes amid dry, hot conditionsDozens of wildfires were burning in hot, dry conditions across the US west, including a blaze touched off by lightning that was moving toward northern Arizona’s largest city.The mountainous city of Flagstaff was shrouded in smoke on Monday and ash was falling from the sky as a blaze was encroaching on the city. The national forest surrounding Flagstaff announced a full closure set to begin later this week – the first time that has happened since 2006. Continue reading...

Human Rights First report records 3,300 incidents of kidnap, rape, trafficking or assault linked to Trump-era Title 42 health protocolNearly 3,300 migrants stranded in Mexico since January due to a US border policy have been kidnapped, raped, trafficked or assaulted, according to a new report by the campaigning group Human Rights First.The report documents cases of migrants and asylum seekers stuck in Mexico since Joe Biden took office on 20 January. The number of cases has jumped in recent weeks from roughly 500 such incidents logged in April to 3,300 by mid-June. Continue reading...

Just like this would-be New York councillor, many young people document every intimate aspect of their lives. Some of that footage will inevitably become publicYou have to be something of a masochist to want to get into politics – and Zack Weiner is an unapologetic masochist. Last week, the 26-year-old, who is running for a place on the city council in New York, was something of a nonentity: he had zero name recognition and his campaign had raised just over $10,000 (£7,200), most of which he had donated himself.Perhaps the most notable thing about Weiner was the fact his dad is the co-creator of the kids’ TV show Dora the Explorer. But that changed when a video of a man engaged in consensual sadomasochism was posted on Twitter by an anonymous account that claimed the man was Weiner. On Saturday, the New York Post ran a story about the video, complete with salacious screengrab. Pretty soon it made international headlines. Continue reading...

Sign of investor confidence that country’s housing market will continue to grow amid rocketing pricesInvestment firm Blackstone has struck a $6bn deal to buy a company that rents out over 17,000 single-family homes across the US, a sign of investor confidence that the country’s housing market will continue to grow amid rocketing prices and a housing crunch.Related: Migrants turned away at border under Biden face shocking abuse in Mexico Continue reading...

I’ve known this album for only 20 of its 50 years, but it has seen me from childhood to adulthood, and its genius only grows“I couldn’t look at people without weeping,” Joni Mitchell said, about the time she wrote Blue, her best-loved album, which is 50 years old today. Like every aspiring literary sad girl, I know Blue by heart, though I have loved it for only 20 of its 50 years. I haven’t been to California, either, nor did I live through the sexual revolution, or know the pain of giving up a child for adoption. Yet this album has seen me from childhood through to adulthood; its essence has fused with my own.In her essay The Joni Mitchell Problem, Meghan Daum wrote of the album’s unparalleled adulation: “The clause ‘Joni and Me’ has been written upwards of 10 million times, mostly in diaries with flowers drawn in the margins … there is nothing original about being a late 20th-century-born female who feels that every life event … was accompanied by a Joni song that was custom written for the occasion.” Continue reading...

New York Times commissions test of 60in worth of tuna sandwiches but researchers were unable to pinpoint a speciesA lab test commissioned by the New York Times failed to identify any tuna DNA in a series of Subway tuna sandwiches.Related: Subway bread is not bread, Irish court rules Continue reading...

Chatter about the most unlikely of political comebacks has spread among Trump supporters

The former president has urged others to support Manchin’s proposed changes to Biden’s landmark legislation. Plus, the new Norwegian sex guide causing quite a bit of frictionGood morning.Barack Obama has thrown his weight behind the voting rights proposal of the conservative West Virginia Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, calling it a “product of compromise” as the landmark legislation faces a crucial vote in the US Senate on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Last week, a stranger threatened to beat up me and my husband at a store. Apparently, this happens all the time. Why?Last week, a stranger threatened to beat up me and my husband in the checkout area of a grocery store. What set him off was that my husband, en route to return an unwanted item, had brushed past him. The man announced that he was going outside to wait for us and – screaming, snarling, raising his fists – stared at us through the window. Was I surprised that a muscular guy in his 30s was threatening to punch out two grandparents? The woman behind the checkout counter wasn’t. She said, “Stuff like this happens every few days.” In fact, not long before, in another supermarket, another city, an elderly man raged and shouted at me, claiming that I was standing too close, and the cashier said, “He comes in here and does this all the time.”Related: ‘Sorry, I sucked’: Covid has ruined great friendships - and it’s time to make up | Emma Beddington Continue reading...

Two years ago legislation was introduced to require gun insurance. It didn’t survive the legal minefield in place to fight such mandatesOn 28 July 2019, a gunman opened fire on a crowd at the Gilroy garlic festival, killing six-year-old Stephen Romero, 13-year-old Keyla Salazar and 25-year-old Trevor Irby, and injuring 17 others.The mass shooting sent shock waves through the community, located 30 miles south of San Jose in California’s Bay Area, as it elicited all-too-familiar calls from elected officials that “thoughts and prayers” were no longer a sufficient response. Continue reading...

Carl Nassib has become the first active NFL player to come out as gay, making the announcement in a video posted to Instagram on Monday. 'I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that I’m gay. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now but finally feel comfortable enough to get it off my chest,' said the Las Vegas Raiders defensive end. Nassib, 28, also announced a $100,000 donation to the Trevor Project, which works to prevent suicides among LGBTQ+ youth in America

Viktor Orban has used a new law to equate gay people with paedophiles. He’s not the first to use this tacticLast week, the Hungarian parliament banned any portrayal of homosexuality or transgenderism to minors, in educational material or on television. Appending this to a law protecting children from child abuse, the country’s president, Viktor Orbán, drew an explicit connection between homosexuality and paedophilia. In so doing, he resorted to a canard that much of the world has long dispensed with, but that is enjoying a troubling new emergence in the global battles against “gender ideology”: the danger posed by homosexuals and trans people to children.“The logic of the government is to find an enemy and pretend that they are saving the country from this enemy,” said the Hungarian LGBTQ+ leader Tamás Dombos in a presentation to the United States Congress last week. Dombos described the new law as “a conscious and diabolic political strategy” by the government to divert public attention from its messy response to the Covid crisis. The law is also a salvo in a tough upcoming election, and an effective way of staking what I term a “pink line”: a nativist boundary protecting, in this case, Hungarian “values” against the immoral imperialism of George Soros and Brussels. Continue reading...

Kim Yo-jong’s intervention appears to have thwarted any prospects for early resumption of negotiationsKim Jong-un’s influential sister appears to have dismissed hopes for a breakthrough on nuclear talks with the US, warning Washington that it faced “disappointment” if it believed engagement with North Korea was a possibility.Kim Yo-jong, a senior figure in the ruling party who is considered one of the North Korean leader’s closest confidantes, said any US expectations for a resumption of talks were “wrong”, according to the state-run KCNA news agency. Continue reading...

Foreign forays prompt questions about why US non-profit health systems are indulging in such nakedly commercial venturesAcross the street from the Buckingham Palace Garden and an ocean away from its Ohio headquarters, Cleveland Clinic is making a nearly $1bn bet that Europeans will embrace a hospital run by one of America’s marquee health systems.Cleveland Clinic London, scheduled to open for outpatient visits later this year and for overnight stays in 2022, will primarily offer elective surgeries and other treatments for the heart, brain, joints and digestive system. The London strategy attempts to attract a well-off, privately insured population: American expatriates, Europeans drawn by the clinic’s reputation, and some Britons happy to pay. The hospital won’t offer less financially rewarding business lines, like emergency services. Continue reading...

Lake Tanganyika sustains life for millions but ever more erratic weather threatens the entire CongoFor thousands of years, Lake Tanganyika was an exquisite sight that soothed and supported generations of Congolese people. Those living by its shores in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have snoozed in hammocks under the tropical sun, watching their children splash in Africa’s oldest, deepest and longest lake. In the evenings, when boats head out for fishing trips, local people would light campfires on the beaches to fry their catch and dance to rumba.But in the past two months, storms, torrential rain and flooding have killed at least 13 people and destroyed 4,240 homes and 112 schools along the DRC’s Lake Tanganyika coast. In less than a generation, the stretch from Uvira to Moba, 250 miles long, has become a place of catastrophe for the local people, who are dependent on the lake for food, trade, transport and their livelihood. Continue reading...

Longest-serving envoy Cui Tiankai says relations between the countries ‘at a crossroads’China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, has announced he will leave Washington after eight years, saying US-China relations are at a “crossroads” as the US recalibrates its engagement policies.Cui, whose departure has been the subject of speculation for months, wrote a farewell statement calling on Chinese people in the US to defend their right to be there, and to “shoulder a great responsibility and mission” in furthering the bilateral relationship. Continue reading...

Texas group the Informed Consent Action Network has capitalized on fear surrounding supposed vaccine mandatesJust as the Covid-19 vaccine rollout began in earnest in the United States, the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican) sent its subscribers a “legal update” on its war against employers and schools planning to require the shots.An unspecified number of organizations had supposedly dropped their mandates – one just after Ican took them to court – and the Texas-based anti-vaccination nonprofit was prowling for more plaintiffs. Continue reading...

Rahim Fortune’s intimate photographs deal with his father’s death from a rare disease, as well as racial politics and the mystery of abandoned buildings Continue reading...

Analysis: low valuations have made British firms easy prey and Morrisons will not be the only targetTakeover bids from private equity houses have become so common this year that even investment bankers are starting to sound weary. “Another week, another private equity offer,” is how analysts at Canaccord Genuity reacted to the weekend’s news of an approach for Morrisons.The supermarket has rejected the £5.5bn bid from US buyout firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, but investors expect a bidding war. It will not be the only one, as private equity outfits sitting on huge piles of cash look to the UK. Continue reading...

Defensive end makes announcement in Instagram video: ‘I finally feel comfortable enough to get it off my chest’Carl Nassib has become the first active NFL player to come out as gay, making the announcement in a video posted to Instagram on Monday.“I’m at my house here in West Chester, Pennsylvania,” said Nassib, a defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders. “I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that I’m gay. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now but finally feel comfortable enough to get it off my chest. I really have the best life, I’ve got the best family, friends and job a guy can ask for. Continue reading...

Former president calls Democrats’ proposal a ‘product of compromise’ and says the future of the country is at stakeBarack Obama has backed conservative West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin’s voting rights proposal, calling it a “product of compromise” as the landmark legislation struggles towards a crucial vote in the US Senate on Tuesday.The former US president weighed in, as did his wife and former first lady, Michelle Obama, decrying Republican efforts in many statehouses across the country to bring in new laws that restrict voting, and urging Congress to pass federal legislation “before it’s too late”. Continue reading...

Approaching milestone of 150 million Americans vaccinated but Biden falls short of target to send 80m doses abroad

Moises and Daniel Monterrubio walked a 2,800ft line above 1,600ft gulleys in Yosemite national parkTwo brothers from San Francisco say they have set a record for the longest highline ever walked in both Yosemite national park and California, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.Earlier this month, they and a group of friends spent nearly a week stringing a single, 2,800ft (853-meter) line from Taft Point west across a series of gulleys that drop 1,600ft. Continue reading...

Spaniard inspired by former champions’ tales of bouncing back from disaster to win first major two weeks after Covid infectionTwo weeks ago, Jon Rahm was playing the golf of his life at the Memorial at Muirfield Village, equalling the tournament’s 54-hole record at 18 under par and opening a six-stroke lead over the field, only to be informed on live television while coming off the 18th green that he would have to withdraw after testing positive for the coronavirus.The guidelines of the PGA Tour and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the US public health agency – require 10 days of self-isolation after a positive test, limiting Rahm’s ability to practise before the US Open. Only because he was able to return two negative tests within 24 hours was he permitted to cut his quarantine short and arrive at Torrey Pines Golf Course for the season’s third major before Tuesday. Continue reading...

Do we need to go to offices? Work 9 to 5? At this unique moment in history, employers can rethink everythingThere have been few moments in the history of work as pivotal as the one we find ourselves in now. It took a pandemic to normalise remote working, and, despite the fears of many CEOs, most organisations saw no demonstrable loss of productivity. Now, the global workforce is demanding its right to retain the autonomy it gained through increased flexibility as societies open up again. Pre-pandemic, it was not uncommon for an employer to ask staff to justify their need to work from home. Post-pandemic, employees may ask employers to justify the need to come into the office.Yet many organisations are still resisting this more flexible future. They argue that employees’ wellbeing is compromised by remote working, and that unless they are brought back into the office, many more will suffer from “Zoom fatigue”. Continue reading...

Trucker allegedly tried to resell the nuts valued at over $100,000A California man has been arrested for allegedly stealing and attempting to resell over 42,000lb of pistachio nuts valued at over $100,000.Alberto Montemayor, 34, a trucker, was arrested and booked in Tulare county in connection to the incident, according to a Facebook post from Tulare county sheriff’s office. Continue reading...