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Bans and taxes on the most popular and effective aid for giving up smoking could lead to a major health crisisImagine we'd found a way to get millions of people to switch from alcohol, which in this country kills 10,000 people a year, to another kind of substance: still addictive, still not risk-free, but when compared with the booze, pretty harmless. Coffee, say.A public health miracle is hailed. Liver units are empty. Heart surgeons spend more time on the golf course, and costly government prevention programmes close. Millions chink into NHS coffers. Continue reading...

Despite their huge untaxed duchy revenues, King Charles and Prince William are still trying to claim the moral high groundThe British public remains immensely forgiving of royal failings, understandably when the family is fragile and struggling with serious illness. Huge public sympathy has allowed for the revival of a doting, vintage style of reporting that only a year ago might have seemed as absurd as it is, in the longer term, unwelcome.A recent palace announcement to the effect that Prince William is now a global statesman" has been received, for example, with the same eager interest as his self-appointment as a homelessness expert, his decision to grow a beard and, a few days ago, his domestic hints: do remember to turn the palace lights out before you leave for another one down the road. Even a professionally made but excruciating video of sunkissed royals romping inspirationally in meadows was accepted, pretty much uncritically, as the new Windsor normal, and maybe it is. Continue reading...

This blog is closed, thanks for following along. You can find our latest US politics coverage here.Russia's foreign ministry sees no grounds for talking about resuming dialogue on strategic stability and arms control with the US at the moment, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing Russia's deputy foreign minister.Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow and Washington are exchanging signals on Ukraine" through closed channels at the military and political levels, according to Interfax. He also said that Russia was ready to listen to US president-elect, Donald Trump's proposals on resolving the crisis in Ukraine, adding that there could be no simple solution. Continue reading...

With votes still being counted from general election, a win would be critical for Trump to advance agenda

Thousands of people take to streets to protest threats to reproductive rights and pledges of mass deportationsProtests against Donald Trump erupted in the US on Saturday as people on both coasts took to the streets in frustration about his re-election.Thousands of people in major cities including New York City and Seattle demonstrated against the former president and now president-elect amid his threats against reproductive rights and pledges to carry out mass deportations at the start of his upcoming presidency. Continue reading...

Thousands of people gathered outside Trump Tower in New York to protest against Donald Trump's re-election as president. The rally targeted Trump's promise to carry out mass deportations from the start of his upcoming presidency in January. In Washington DC, protesters gathered in response to fears that the new administration could further threaten abortion rights after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022

Spokesperson for Trump's presidential transition effort said Bryan Lanza had not been speaking on behalf of president-elect

Mackenzie Michalski, 31, from Portland, Oregon, met 37-year-old man from Ireland at nightclub in BudapestFamily members of a 31-year-old American tourist who was killed while on vacation in Hungary's capital mourned their loss while a 37-year-old suspect was in custody Saturday.The victim, Mackenzie Michalski from Portland, Oregon, was reported missing on 5 November after she was last seen at a nightclub in central Budapest. Police launched a missing person investigation and reviewed security footage from local nightclubs, where they observed Michalski with a man later identified as the suspect in several of the clubs the night of her disappearance. Continue reading...

Coco Gauff wins the WTA Finals after a gripping three-set thriller against Zheng QinwenFirst set: Zheng 3-2 Gauff* (*denotes next server) A humdinger of a game bursting with huge shots and ferocious rallies. An inside out backhand wins Zheng the first point in her serve. Gauff is very quick, spanning the length of the base line like a woman in seven league boots. A inch-perfect forehand from Gauff, then Zheng hits long to give Gauff two break points. Zheng saves the game with a perfectly balanced cross court winner then a backhand down the line. Zheng saves a third break point, and Gauff is disgusted with herself after a limp forehand to give Zheng the advantage. But a cross-court forehand brings her back to deuce. Eventually though, Zheng wins out. They take a sit down.First set: Zheng 2*-2 Gauff (*denotes next server) Gauff is wearing a deeper purple, almost a royal purple, dress, and a matching headband. A double fault is followed up by two outrageous first serves. Zheng pulls back to deuce but brilliant defence from Gauff in a squeaky shoed rally gives her the advantage, and she soon pockets the game Continue reading...

Fema chief calls action reprehensible' while Florida governor calls it a weaponization of government'A employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has been fired from her job and is being investigated because she told a disaster relief team she was directing in Florida after Hurricane Milton to avoid homes displaying election campaign signs supporting Donald Trump, conduct that the agency head on Saturday called reprehensible".Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the federal agency, posted on X: More than 22,000 Fema employees every day adhere to Fema's core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors." Continue reading...

Progressives would do well to try to understand how millions of Americans turned to him because he offered real hope of prosperity, security and fewer warsHow can anyone vote for someone so... fill in the blank... racist, sexist, unconstitutional, hateful, unhinged? This is the question asked frequently in the UK and here in the States, where I have spent the past three weeks trying to understand the Trump phenomenon.Behind the question is an implied superiority; that we, the clever people, have identified the monster that is Donald Trump, but the deluded masses are too stupid to see it. But what I have found at the Trump rallies I've been to is not stupidity, but frustration, pain and a longing for respect.

Trump refused to welcome Biden in 2021 after his defeat by the Democratic nominee, insisting he had won the election

Tallies are 83% complete, with Trump at 52.7%, but 602,000 uncounted votes give Harris a chance to catch up

The Republican's second presidential term heralds a more inward-looking US where resentment has replaced idealism and nobody wins without someone else losingA dozen years ago - an eternity in American politics - the Republican party was reeling from its fourth presidential election loss in six tries and decided that it needed to be a lot kinder to the people whose votes it was courting.No more demonising of migrants, the party resolved - it was time for comprehensive immigration reform. No more demeaning language that turned off women and minorities - it needed more of them to run for office. Continue reading...

American Exchange Project helps high school seniors travel and meet youths from different sociopolitical backgroundsFor Baltimore native Jessica Osei-Adjei, a week-long trip to Anchorage, Alaska, last summer was more than just her first time traveling solo.I went hiking on a glacier, camping and paddleboarding for the first time," she says. I'm not really an outdoorsy person but doing that was definitely worth it."Trump wins the presidency - how did it happen?With Trump re-elected, this is what's at stakeAbortion ballot measure results by stateA masculinity researcher on the Democrats' fatal miscalculation'Election deniers use Trump victory to sow more doubt over 2020 resultWhat a second Trump presidency means for big US tech firmsWho could be in Trump's new administration Continue reading...

This election has blown a hole in the worldviews of both leftists and centrists. The pandemic may be a more important factorDonald Trump has won, and most shockingly, he won the popular vote. Unlike in 2016, which could be explained as a rejection of Hillary Clinton concentrated in the crucial midwestern states, this year he won convincingly. He has increased his share of the vote, as a percentage of the overall national popular vote, in each of the three elections he has run.Who voted for Trump and why? Many analysts of all political stripes have ready-made explanations for what happened, explanations that usually conveniently reflect the exact beliefs of the analyst. Unfortunately for them, the most common narratives do not stand up to scrutiny. The election results have blown a hole in the worldview of both the center and the left.Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC Continue reading...

Experts say president-elect's bombastic attitude and economic messaging helped flip traditionally blue countiesThe raucous early morning celebration in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood was of a magnitude not seen since the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died eight years previously. In the immigrant-saturated suburb of Westchester, too, Latinos partied beyond daybreak as Donald Trump's return to the White House was confirmed.Wednesday morning's revelry in south Florida reflected a stunning victory for Trump in the previously solid blue, Hispanic-majority county of Miami-Dade that had not been won by a Republican presidential candidate in more than 30 years. Continue reading...

The masks were never exactly on to begin with - social media was a hotbed of bigotry long before Trump's victory. But winning has emboldened his followersWell that didn't take long, did it? As soon as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the election, social media saw a major spike in gleeful misogyny. And it seems Trump's army of angry incels have found a favourite new catchphrase to taunt women with: Your body, my choice."Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Trump's courting of Arab American voters and the Biden-Harris Gaza policy turned votes away from the DemocratKamala Harris received at least 22,000 fewer votes than Joe Biden did four years ago in Michigan's most heavily Arab American and Muslim cities, a Guardian analysis of raw vote data in the critical swing state finds.The numbers also show Trump made small gains - about 9,000 votes - across those areas, suggesting Harris's loss there is more attributable to Arab Americans either not voting or casting ballots for third-party candidates.Trump wins the presidency - how did it happen?With Trump re-elected, this is what's at stakeAbortion ballot measure results by stateA masculinity researcher on the Democrats' fatal miscalculation'Election deniers use Trump victory to sow more doubt over 2020 resultWhat a second Trump presidency means for big US tech firmsWho could be in Trump's new administration Continue reading...

Study explains THC can help young adults with depression or anxiety but otherwise could worsen sleep problemsMany insomniacs swear by cannabis as a way to help them sleep - while many scientific studies have found that THC actually exacerbates sleep problems.A new study published last week in Addiction might explain why. Continue reading...

Americans voted for the far right without necessarily wanting to endorse a far-right mandate. Trump will claim one anywayThe blame game's in full swing. Armchair campaign strategists just know that Kamala Harris should have thrown Joe Biden under the bus, or gone on Joe Rogan, or - the perennial favorite among self-declared centrists - trashed identity politics. Of course, it matters a great deal to find out why people who voted for Democrats in 2020 failed to turn out; of course, there needs to be an explanation (not freewheeling speculation) about Trump's gains among Latino men in particular.Yet one larger question deserves at least as much attention: why does anything recognizable to international observers as a center-right option seem to have disappeared from our politics? Why was the only 2024 choice between the far right and a vaguely progressive (not progressive enough for progressives, to be sure) center party?Jan-Werner Muller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Carre Otis speaks after court reverses decision and rules lawsuit accusing Gerald Marie of rape in Paris can proceedThe American model Carre Otis has said she is elated" her sexual assault lawsuit against the former modeling agency boss Gerald Marie and New York talent agent Trudi Tapscott was revived by a federal appeals court more than two years after a crushing dismissal.Definitely mixed feelings and really elated," Otis told the Guardian in her first interview since the ruling earlier this week, when asked how she felt about the US second circuit court of appeals reversing a lower court's decision. Continue reading...

We must lay up our supplies - of love, care, trust, community and resolve - so we may resist the stormHere we are in a crisis in which almost everything we love is going to be under siege in the US in ways that will affect the world in many ways. Most of all this will be because a Trump administration is going to go to war on climate action domestically and internationally - on nature itself and the ways we protect it and thereby protect the systems on which human life depends.I was asked to talk about hope. First of all, hope does not mean saying this is not bad, and it does not mean saying that we can defeat it. It just means saying we will keep showing up. That we will not give up. That we will assess our powers and weaknesses and recognise that the future we face looks grim, but we do not know how it will unfold, and neither do those we oppose. How it will unfold depends in no small part on what we do. People too often think hope is smiles and sunshine, when it's fury in the face of danger and oppression, and pressing on in the storm. Continue reading...

After some big roles in Donald Trump's last administration, here are those likely to feature this time roundDonald is not the only Trump back in the picture after his election win.On Tuesday night, members of the former and future president's family posed with him at his Florida estate in celebration of his re-election. Dad, we are so proud of you," wrote Tiffany, Trump's younger daughter, posting the photo on X. It was also shared by his 17-year-old granddaughter, Kai, captioned: The whole squad." Continue reading...

The right funding now can protect the frontlines of the climate crisis from the worst effects of extreme weather eventsAs we approach Cop29 in Baku, world leaders are due to set a new climate finance goal - a sum set aside to help poor countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects of the climate crisis. Their negotiations take place against a backdrop of increasingly severe weather events. This year alone, we have witnessed deadly heatwaves across north Africa, Mexico, India and Saudi Arabia; a historic drought across southern Africa; catastrophic wildfires in the Brazilian Pantanal wetlands; record-breaking hurricanes in the Caribbean and the US; and plenty more. The climate emergency knows no borders and spares no one.These events serve as stark reminders of the pressing need for world leaders and all of us to protect vulnerable communities on the frontline of the climate crisis. For many developing countries, particularly in Africa, the cost of climate impacts is staggering. African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP because of climate extremes, while some are diverting as much as 9% of their national budgets to overcome the fallout from them. The latest report by the World Meteorological Organization estimates that Africa south of the Sahara alone will need $30bn-$50bn annually over the next decade just to meet the costs of protecting communities facing unprecedented climate-related disasters. We will not be able to reduce poverty, eliminate hunger and build a prosperous and resilient global community without addressing the climate crisis.Ban Ki-moon is a former secretary general of the United Nations and co-chair, Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens Continue reading...

President-elect wants to end the wars in Ukraine and Middle East to focus on China. How he will try to get there is unclearIn the first Trump term Richard Moore, then the political director of the UK Foreign Office and now the head of MI6, admitted half of Britain's diplomats woke up each morning dreading what they might read on the president's Twitter feed.The sheer unpredictability of Trump's caprice, and his faith in his quixotic charisma, made it hard for diplomats to operate. It would often taken feverish consultations with Trump's senior aides, including some in the Pentagon, before a plan - such as a premature withdrawal of 2,500 US troops from Afghanistan - could be finessed. Continue reading...

Shifts in production' expected if baseline tariffs on imported goods are imposed to benefit US auto manufacturingIn 1964 the new US president was angry about European trade. Specifically about chickens. In response to Europe's poultry trade barriers, Lyndon B Johnson imposed a 25% tariff on light trucks.That chicken tax" is still in place 60 years later. The rules have contributed to the Ford's F-Series pickup truck's unbroken 42-year run as the bestselling vehicle in the US, and have locked European manufacturers out of a hugely profitable market for two generations. The chicken tax could also serve as a model for Donald Trump's second term in the White House. Continue reading...

Trump has promised to turn back migrants at the southern border, but US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes

Five people wounded on Friday in stabbings in Chinatown and police suspect other stabbings on Thursday are linkedSeattle police have arrested a man following a two-day spate of random stabbings that injured 10 people, including five on Friday, authorities said.Police made an arrest following a series of attacks on Friday and said it is plausible they are connected" to several other stabbings that unfolded on Thursday, Eric Barden, the city's deputy police chief, told reporters at the scene. Continue reading...

This live coverage is ending now, thanks for following along. You can read all our US elections coverage here.

Trump appointee Stephen McGlynn rules that ban enacted in wake of deadly Highland Park attack is unconstitutionalA federal judge in Illinois who was appointed during Donald Trump's first presidency has struck down the state's assault weapons ban as unconstitutional.Judge Stephen McGlynn also issued an order barring the state from enforcing the ban, though Illinois has time to appeal the ruling after he stayed it for 30 days. Continue reading...

Two men had also planned to go to Texas and kill asylum seekers as well as border agents who would try to stop themTwo men who co-founded a militia group have been convicted of attempting to murder federal agents ahead of a trip to Texas where they intended to shoot people attempting to cross the US-Mexico border.Jonathan S O'Dell, 34, of Warsaw, Missouri, and Bryan C Perry, 39, of Clarksville, Tennessee, also planned to shoot any federal agents who tried to stop them as they targeted migrants, according to the prosecution. Continue reading...

Vice-president Kamala Harris's running mate Tim Walz says the 2024 US election outcome is 'hard to understand'. The governor of Minnesota vowed to 'keep fighting' Donald Trump's 'hateful agenda'. Walz appeared to choke up during the speech in his home state. Harris and Walz lost by a landslide to the Republicans in the election on 5 November

A network of organised disinformation sows doubt, kills policy reform and keep us at odds as we debate Trump-maniaHistorians will long scratch their heads that a Republican candidate who - despite an inability to string a coherent sentence together, being grossly underqualified and rife with extramarital affairs - would go on to not only win election but become one of the most popular presidents in US history.The first candidate to grasp how to use new media" in a presidential campaign effectively and who - rather than getting to work in Washington after the election, as expected, immediately took off on vacation to play golf. Continue reading...

Congress likely not to renew extended ACA coverage next year and Trump's concepts of a plan' for US healthcare are unknown

The gender gap among young people was predictably vast. But the numbers still defied expectations, as the political scientist Melissa Deckman explains

Wildfires in southern California have destroyed more than 130 structures in two days. Firefighters have been working to contain the flames fanned by fierce gusts of winds. About 100,000 people remain under evacuation orders as the fire threatens 3,500 structures in suburban neighbourhoods, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo, about 50 miles north-west of Los Angeles

FBI investigating after people report texts saying they were selected to pick cotton and go to nearest plantationJust hours after Donald Trump's election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been selected" to pick cotton and needed to report to the nearest plantation". While the texts, some of which were signed a Trump supporter", varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.A spokesperson for the president-elect told CNN that his campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages". It is not yet clear who is behind the messages, nor is there a comprehensive list of the people to whom the messages were sent, but social media posts indicate that the messages are widespread. Continue reading...

Immigration advocates say ruling could separate families for years, while Mexico vows to continue measures to stop migrants from reaching US borderA federal judge has struck down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens.The program, lauded as one of the biggest presidential actions to help immigrant families in years, allowed undocumented spouses and stepchildren of US citizens to apply for a green card, the right to permanent legal residency, without first having to leave the country. Continue reading...