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Saginaw county in Michigan, a battleground state, will help decide how election falls as US voters remain largely split

Some aides think he should seize on any early advantage in battleground states but it is unclear if he will heed them

More than two dozen veterans' urns sat in a Seattle funeral home until given services with military honorsFor several decades, the cremated remains of more than two dozen US civil war veterans languished in storage facilities at a funeral home and cemetery in Seattle.The simple copper and cardboard urns gathering dust on shelves only had the name of each of the 28 soldiers - but nothing linking them to the civil war. Still, that was enough for an organization dedicated to locating, identifying and interring the remains of unclaimed veterans to conclude over several years that they were all Union soldiers deserving of a burial service with military honors. Continue reading...

Jumble of proposals include massive reform of Obamacare' and giving anti-vaxxer RFK Jr the helm of health agencies

The digital age has turbo-boosted extremism, and analogue democracy is struggling to keep upDonald Trump's record of refusal to concede defeat after the last US election should have disqualified him from running in this one. His criminal indictments should have meant banishment from mainstream politics. His campaign rhetoric - a rambling litany of bigotry and spite - should not have carried beyond the paranoid fringe.But what use are should and shouldn't against the brute force of can and does? Things that are supposed to be self-evident in a constitutional democracy have ceased to be obvious to millions of Americans. We don't need to wait for all votes to be counted to wish for a stronger cultural inoculation against tyranny. Continue reading...

Journalists and police challenged disinformation, intimidation and cash-for-vote schemes, while huge numbers turned up to voteHaving lived in Britain for 12 years, I returned to my native Moldova in 2022 because I was worried that Russia's war in Ukraine would spill into my country. Thanks to the Ukrainian resistance, the skies are still clear in Moldova. But in the past weeks leading up to the presidential runoff between the pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu and the Russian-supported former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, I felt as if I might lose my country once again.The scale of interference in these Moldovan elections has been unprecedented. As reported by excellent independent journalists in the country, our law enforcement agencies alleged the existence of a large-scale, vote-buying scheme in the first round, run by Ilan Shor - a Russian-backed fugitive oligarch, who denies any wrongdoing. Continue reading...

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California's Bay Area rallies behind the vice-president and envisions how great' it would be for the diverse community

Arizona is one of 10 states with abortion, a top voting issue, on ballots. Could a Trump presidency unravel measures?

Company announces death of billionaire who contributed millions to Republican party and former presidentThe billionaire Home Depot cofounder and outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, Bernard Bernie" Marcus, has died, according to a company statement. He was 95.Marcus, a former pharmacist, was described as a master merchant and a genius with customer service" who was unparalleled in generosity and goodwill" in the statement by the company. Continue reading...

The result for nearly half the country will be devastating, after a campaign with twists and turns, including attempted assassination

Church said leaders failed to inquire further' after learning Robert Morris, ex-Trump adviser, molested girl for yearsA Dallas-area Christian megachurch has removed four of its elders after an internal investigation into how the institution handled revelations of child sexual abuse by its founder, a former spiritual adviser to Donald Trump.An official at Gateway church announced during a service on Saturday that the ousted leaders either knew that Robert Morris molested a girl for several years beginning in 1982, when she was 12, or failed to inquire further" after being informed of it, the Dallas Morning News reported. Continue reading...

Woman arrested in connection with shooting of Jada Arnell Thomas, 26, after her performance in DallasA Dallas singer was shot on stage after she finished performing over the weekend, leading to the arrest of a woman in the crowd, according to authorities.Police said Jada Arnell Thomas, 26, was shot while signing autographs on stage after performing for the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in downtown Dallas. Continue reading...

Tiny community of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, has voted at midnight on election day since 1960

I was a music journalist who flew around the world for gigs. I even met my husband on Last.fm. So losing half of my hearing felt like a cosmic jokeThroughout my life, I've been able to steadfastly rely on art to save me, but none more so than music. Poetry, getting lost in a painting, watching Swan Lake - that's all well and good. But have you ever been a 12-year-old girl all alone at a new school, listening to Avril Lavigne? Frida Kahlo and a troupe of Russian ballerinas could perform bypass surgery on me and I'd still grovel at the altar of Bright Eyes for getting me through my first heartbreak, such is the lifesaving ability of some lyrics and a few chords.As a teenager, music was more than a hobby, it was how I connected with the world. Bands were my saints, vinyl my holy relics. My obsession only intensified; in my early 20s, I worked as a music journalist, interviewing bands, attending gigs and festivals with a hallowed media pass. My friendship group were all fellow music obsessives, and my social life revolved around live gigs, even flying from Australia to the UK just to see Belle and Sebastian perform. My obsession even nabbed me a life partner: I met my now-husband on the music forum site Last.fm, a fact that will be hilarious to explain to our two boys when they're old enough to understand scrobbling" and that they exist due to it. We even had our favourite artists' lyrics inscribed on our wedding rings (his: I'm so glad that you exist" - the Weakerthans. Mine: Time is just a symptom of love" - Joanna Newsom). Continue reading...

The Guardian's picture editors select photographs from around the world

The pop star has reminded us to shun would-be astronauts such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But what about people who hang toilet paper the wrong way?Olivia Rodrigo does not want to hear about Uranus. Or your planned trip to Mars, for that matter. The pop star recently told Netflix that she has an oddly specific question" that she asks guys on first dates. I always ask them if they would want to go to space ... If they say yes, I don't date them," Rodrigo explained. I just think if you want to go to space, you're a little too full of yourself."Amen to that. Obviously, if you're an astronomer, a passion for space travel makes sense. But interplanetary adventures seem to have turned into the ultimate status symbol for obscenely rich individuals jaded by their ability to buy anything on Earth. Certain rocket ship enthusiasts also seem less interested in advancing science and more interested in having a wider territory to colonise and monetise. Continue reading...

District two, where Black people comprise 48.7% of the population, was carved after a 2023 supreme court ruling

Trump launched insults at his final rally as Harris ended her campaign calling for people to get out the vote'. Plus, Nate Silver's final election forecast

The state has 19 electoral votes and Donald Trump and Kamala Harris held a blitz of rallies on eve of electionTo celebrate his anniversary this year, Phil Haegele joined the back of a long line at a polling station with his wife on a warm autumn afternoon and waited to cast his ballot for Donald Trump.It was the first time that Haegele, a 47-year-old plumber, cast an early ballot. But he had heard on the radio that a judge had extended early voting in Bucks county, a battleground in south-eastern Pennsylvania where he lives. He proceeded to get bombarded with probably 50 text messages" encouraging him to come out and vote, so he did. Continue reading...

Luke Meyer, who had worked as a regional field director, reportedly co-hosts a podcast that promotes racist ideologyA Donald Trump staffer who worked as a regional field director for the western Pennsylvania Republican party was fired on Friday after it was revealed that he was a white supremacist.Politico reported it had identified Luke Meyer, 24, a Pennsylvania-based field staffer who worked for five months for the former president, as the online white nationalist who used the pseudonym Alberto Barbarossa. Continue reading...

A dastardly plot is afoot to burn it all down by any means necessary. Sound familiar?Well ... we finally got to 5 November. Of course, you know the story. Once upon a time, there was a bad guy who wanted to set fire to a country's political system. Metaphorically, but also literally. I mean, he wasn't subtle, this guy. This Guy, I should say, because his name was Guy Fawkes. Why - who did you think I was talking about?Because time's a great healer, Britons now celebrate the thwarting of this truly awful Guy's insurrection with fireworks, fires and organised effigy-burning. But the good version of those things - not the kind we do when we go out of a football tournament in the later stages. We're still working on teasing out the family fun in those particular moments.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The race is still on the tightest of margins, yet our data also shows some odd and surprising demographic trendsThe final six public polls that have been released pretty much tell the same story as each other and the previous polls in October. The race to become the 47th president of the United States is on a razor-thin margin. Three of those last six polls were actual ties; one has Kamala Harris ahead by three points; the others have Donald Trump up by one point and two points.My own firm, John Zogby Strategies, just released a final survey for our clients of 1,005 decided voters nationwide showing Harris leading with 49.3% of the vote and Trump polling at 45.6% of the vote - a margin, or difference, of 3.7 percentage points.John Zogby is senior partner at the polling firm of John Zogby Strategies and is author of Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read the Polls and Why We Should Continue reading...

Gut bacteria changes from toxic forever chemicals' can decrease kidney function, research also suggestsA new study links toxic PFAS forever chemical" exposure in young adults to reduced gut health, which researchers suspect is a driver of kidney disease later in life.Kidney disease is one of the well-established health problems linked to PFAS exposure, and the new research suggests changes in gut bacteria and associated metabolites caused by the chemicals seems to be responsible for up to 50% of a decrease in kidney function seen over a four-year period. Continue reading...

We revisit the key moments of a political struggle that holds US democracy itself in the balance

AP's David Scott talks about how the newsroom predicts who won, the red mirage', and one county's whiteboardThe way the US counts votes is unique. In fact, there is no one central vote-counting system but rather tens of thousands of them in local precincts all across the country.To help determine who has won where, the Guardian and many other newsrooms rely on the Associated Press, which has been calling US elections since 1848. (Some television networks, such as CNN, use their own analysis of results to make race calls.) Continue reading...

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris delivered their closing arguments, holding duelling rallies across the battleground states well into the night, on the last day of campaigning before the US election.Harris was in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state and crucial to the Democratic campaign. She held the final rally of her campaign at the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Introduced by Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga, Harris emphasised her message of hope. 'We finish, as we started, with optimism, with energy, with joy,' she said. 'We need to get to work.'Trump struck a darker tone in the same state, with threats to put tariffs on all imports from Mexico unless it stopped people from entering the US. The Republican candidate also held hours-long events in North Carolina and Michigan

There will be countless tributes to the revered producer, but for me he evokes happy days growing up and the chaos of family partiesI don't have a lot of memories, especially from when I was young, but most that I do have involved music. And many of them relate to Quincy Jones, who has died aged 91. His music was woven through my childhood.Michael Jackson was ever-present, especially the music on his stratospheric three albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, all produced by Jones. Jackson cut through racial divides, but there was also something very Black about the way he was celebrated in my household. In that simpler time, before the controversies that dogged his later life and legacy, Michael Jackson is just incredible" was a constant refrain. At family parties in the 90s and 00s, aunts and uncles would claim that he invented" the moonwalk and was the highest-selling musician ever". I never thought to factcheck any of this, because mixed with pride back then was an unmoving, objective certainty that held Jackson up as a reason why we were proud to be Black. He seemed not just African American, but a borderless kind of Black. Continue reading...

Hockey has a rocky history in Salt Lake City but fans are flocking to see its new franchise. The team hopes it can build long-term stabilityThe fact has become very clear to us this year that, economically, hockey just does not work in this market," Larry H Miller told a press conference in March 1994, announcing that he'd sold the minor league Salt Lake Golden Eagles to a group in Detroit headed by the then-owner of the NBA's Detroit Pistons. The Golden Eagles needed 7,000 people a game in the Delta Center, Miller told reporters that day, and if you look at the paid attendance, we're not quite halfway there." The fact was, Miller said, the natural, homegrown fanbase just isn't here."A couple of days later, some members of that small fanbase grumbled to the Salt Lake Tribune that, despite the financial picture, things could have turned around. Now is the time for hockey," Pat Kremers, president of the Screamin' Eagles Booster Club, told the paper, noting that the explosion in roller hockey and street hockey is just beginning." Others were more concerned about what would - or more specifically, wouldn't - come next. Now that there isn't any hockey in Salt Lake, how will there be any interest generated?" Darren Wack, the owner of Hockey Haven, a sports store, asked the paper's reporter. Continue reading...

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have tied with three votes each in the tiny New Hampshire town that traditionally kicks off voting on election day. Since the 1960s, voters in Dixville Notch, close to the Canadian border, have gathered just after midnight to cast their ballots. Votes are then counted and results announced - hours before other states open their polls. According to CNN, four registered Republicans and two undeclared voters took part in the vote just after midnight on Tuesday

We should know how some swing states voted before morning - and in certain scenarios the winner - whether Trump or Harris - should be apparentBy late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday, we may know who is going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don't yet know. Or we may know who's been projected as the winner but be bracing ourselves for weeks of legal action and protest. It's going to be that sort of night.A reminder of the basics: whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is the next president will be decided by the electoral college, rather than a straight count of the national vote - meaning that the winner will be the person who gets to a simple majority of 270 of the 538 electors on offer across the 50 states, whether or not they get more votes than their opponent nationwide. Continue reading...

In east Germany, our history is shrouded in lies and silence. Until we break their hold, support for extremism will flourishIt was the autumn of 1989. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans were fighting for their first chance to live in a democracy, after more than half a century of dictatorship, first Nazi then Soviet. There was a touch of magic in this new beginning; the possibility of redemption, confidence, happiness. People wanted to be part of the world again: to be free, to get going again, to do their own thing.Now, 35 years later, support for the far right in eastern Germany is growing steadily - and its rise seems unstoppable. How did this happen to a society of apparently newly optimistic go-getters?Ines Geipel is an academic, author and former GDR athlete. Her latest book is Behind the Wall: My Brother, My Family and Hatred in East GermanyDo 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...

In today's newsletter: A guide to what we'll know, and when - with a serious warning attached: it might drag on for days Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. This time tomorrow, we may know who's going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don't yet know. Or we may know who's projected to win, but be bracing ourselves for weeks of enervating legal action and protest. It's going to be that sort of night, I'm afraid.There's been a bit of a sense in the last few days that momentum has been shifting towards Kamala Harris, but most respected polling dorks are treating that narrative with the same caution they viewed the one before that, which suggested a rush towards Donald Trump. The smart way to approach it is to remember that there is literally no need to make a prediction because we will have actual numbers very soon, and then get into a flotation tank and stick on some Sigur Ros.Education | University tuition fees in England are to go up for the first time in eight years, taking annual payments up to a record 9,535 per student, the government has announced. The inflation-linked rise, amid warnings of a deepening financial crisis in the sector, was coupled with an increase in student maintenance loans.Conservatives | Kemi Badenoch has appointed Robert Jenrick shadow justice secretary, with Mel Stride shadow chancellor and Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary, as she began to put together a frontbench team. But there were questions over whether Jenrick, who lost to Badenoch in the leadership contest, had initially sought another post.Brazil | Federal police in Brazil have formally charged the alleged mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, accusing him of arming and funding the criminal group responsible for the crime.Social care | Care workers from countries such as India, Nigeria and the Philippines who faced losing their immigration status in the UK if they left their employers have been promised new protections under the migrant care workers charter.UK news | A teenager has been remanded in custody after he appeared in court charged with attempting to murder a 13-year-old girl and possessing a samurai sword. The 14-year-old was arrested after a girl was found with life-threatening injuries near Hull on Friday morning. Continue reading...

Republican nominee attacks critics and vilifies migrants while Democratic rival lays out positive vision for America

Kamala Harris is joined by Oprah and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia, while Trump celebrates an endorsement from podcaster Joe Rogan hours before polls open on 5 November

A rare moment of wistful self-reflection on the last day of campaigning in the US election gave way to trademark rants and insults

This live blog is now closed, you can follow the latest on our 2024 US election day live blog hereHere is a look back at some of the more memorable pictures of the 2024 US presidential campaign:In an interview with NBC News, Donald Trump did not rule out banning certain vaccines if he was elected to a second presidential term. Continue reading...

Voters from Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin voice their hopes and concerns on the eve of the 2024 US presidential election - and some seem to have had enough. 'I came here so I would not have to listen to any of it. I just want to get drunk today,' said Tabitha Carnow, a tourist in Las Vegas

Influential podcast host posts endorsement on X alongside link to interview with the great and powerful' Elon Musk

Democrats only need to flip a handful of seats to get back control of the lower chamber - here's what to keep an eye on

As voting day approaches in America, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain neck-and-neck in the polls. Keep up with our guide to Australian TV coverage, live results, where to watch and more

Robert F Kennedy Jr, a potentially influential figure if Trump wins the US election, has called fluoride an industrial waste'Donald Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected, former independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr declared on Saturday.Kennedy, a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Trump has promised will take care of health" in his administration, made the declaration on X, claiming that fluoride was an industrial waste" linked to a variety of health conditions. Continue reading...

More and more divided' Shasta is grappling with baseless conspiracy theories of voter fraud and election denialismResidents of one of California's most conservative counties are bracing for a contentious election, as the community grapples with a thriving election denialism movement that has amplified conspiracy theories about voter fraud and made life increasingly difficult for election workers.In recent weeks, some residents of Shasta county, home to 180,000 people in the state's far north, have urged the county not to certify the election results while one official warned that if Donald Trump is cheated" out of the election, there would be a price" to pay. Continue reading...

Prosecutors had called sweepstakes a scam that violates state election law and asked for it to be shut down

Ex-president hurtles through four rallies across three states as vice-president puts focus on Pennsylvania

Storm expected to bring heavy rain to US Gulf coast later this weekForecasters posted a hurricane warning in the Caribbean on Monday afternoon after a late-season disturbance south of Cuba strengthened into Tropical Storm Rafael and set its sights on the US Gulf coast.The 17th named storm of an overactive Atlantic hurricane season will bring heavy rain to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands before strengthening to a hurricane and probably hitting Cuba, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Continue reading...

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investigates discovery of remains of common dolphinThe butchered remains of a dolphin were found on a New Jersey beach, and federal authorities are investigating.The Marine Mammal Stranding Center, which responds to reports of dead or distressed marine animals that come ashore in New Jersey, said the remains of a common dolphin were found on Wednesday on the beach in Allenhurst, just north of Asbury Park. Continue reading...