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Conspiracy theorist said to have been key promoter of false rumour about immigrants ex-president repeated in debate

The funk and soul singer, who has died aged 77, was part of Black family life in the US while being a cult sensation in the UK - and his smooth but never slick music rightly enduresThe online tributes to Frankie Beverly in the wake of his death on Wednesday offered a fascinating study in contrasts. Black Americans wrote about his band Maze as a fact of life, invoking memories of family parties, summer barbecues and picnics to which they had inevitably provided the soundtrack: Any time I heard Golden Time of Day or Happy Feelings, I knew it was a good time to be had in my neighbourhood", as actor and director Tyler Perry put it. Indeed, over time, Maze's music seemed to take on a symbolic quality: they were the band film-makers reached for if they wanted musical shorthand for Black family life on their soundtrack; when Beyonce wanted to put a distinctly African American stamp on the Coachella festival, it was Beverley's music she turned to, covering the 1981 single Before I Let Go.To British soul fans, Beverly was something else entirely: a connoisseur's choice. The flop singles he released with the Butlers in the 60s were highly prized by northern soul DJs and collectors. And, in the 80s, Maze became the ultimate if-you-know-you-know band among denizens of the underground soul scene. Championed by taste-making DJs Robbie Vincent and Greg Edwards, they never had a huge hit, but could pack out huge venues. In 1982, before any of their records had even made the charts, they sold out the Hammersmith Odeon. Three years later, as their biggest single, Too Many Games, stalled just inside the Top 40 - its sales boosted by its instrumental B-side Twilight, a massive floor-filler on the soul scene - they sold out six consecutive nights at the same venue. Continue reading...

Panel in San Francisco to discuss role artificial intelligence could play in 2024 election, including manipulated mediaGuardian US is co-hosting an event on 12 September with Bay Area public media outlet KQED and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism focused on the impact artificial intelligence could have on elections and democracy.The panel will discuss worries over the role AI could play in this year's elections and beyond, including manipulated or deepfaked media and false information spread on platforms. These disruptions could increase as the November elections near. Continue reading...

Ex-secretary of state excoriates Israeli PM and says campus protesters had blank stares' when talking about PalestineIn a new book, the former US secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton hits out at Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, for taking zero responsibility" for the surprise attack by Hamas on 7 October last year.In an important way, Netanyahu is nothing like [Golda] Meir," Clinton writes, referring to the Israeli prime minister who was in power when Egypt attacked in 1973, and whom Clinton says she admired for the way she mixed humor and gravitas". Continue reading...

Tyreek Hill said he 'could have been better' in a press conference, following a police incident three days earlier that saw him pulled out of his car by his arm and head. Hill acknowledged he could have rolled his window down when the police first approached his vehicle and said: 'I've got to follow rules. I've got to do what everyone else would do.' But he held firm in his position that the police escalated the situation beyond necessary. Speaking about the bodycam footage which showed officer, Danny Torres, pulling the NFL star out of his car, Hill asked the question: 'What would they do if they didn't have bodycams?' Torres has been placed on administrative duties since the incident.

Conservative group posts flyers with photos and names of students and faculty, calling them anti-Israel'Students and faculty at Atlanta's Emory University have been targeted by an outside group posting and handing out flyers labeling 14 of their colleagues anti-Israel". The flyer, titled Security Alert", included the names, ages and mugshot-style photos of each of them, arranged under the word Arrested".Campus Reform, a national group of conservative students, put its logo on the flyer, which refers to arrests made during last April's protests seeking Emory divestment from Israel. Charges for most of that day's 28 arrests remain unresolved and awaiting trial, after several faculty leaders have been unsuccessful in efforts to get Emory president Gregory Fenves to ask prosecutors to drop them. Continue reading...

Staffers claim June mass layoffs at civil rights non-profit was a union-busting tactic that destroyed lives'Workers at the civil rights non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have voted on a motion of no confidence in its chief executive, Margaret Huang, following a mass layoff of staffers in June 2024 that they characterized as a union-busting tactic.The SPLC union announced this week that 92% of members who voted on the motion supported the no-confidence motion, with the union calling for Huang's removal, the reversal of the layoff of 25% of the organization's staff, and a call to involve the union in the hiring of a new CEO. The union also started a public petition to rally support for their demands. Continue reading...

Free school meals increase attendance rates, improve nutrition, help low-income students and cut down on bureaucracyChildren with stamped wrists. Debt collectors hounding parents. Untouched food thrown away while an adult says: You have no money." In a dystopian thriller, these scenes might be dismissed as on-the-nose. But they're all real humiliations inflicted over unpaid accounts in US public school cafeterias.Contrast these chilling scenes with a different one: a proud, middle-aged former teacher in a suit, surrounded by beaming schoolchildren, signing into law a program that will feed every student in his state. The most adorable bill-signing in US history - and a vision for how simple it could be to improve our kids' lives - came courtesy of Tim Walz. Continue reading...

Trump stoking bigotry and calling journalists enemies of the people' is reminiscent of Hitler. It's hard to imagine - until it isn'tClaud Cockburn, my grandfather, knew when it was time to leave Berlin.A young British journalist, he'd worked as a correspondent for The [London] Times in that city in the 1920s before transferring to New York and Washington DC. Returning to Germany in July 1932, he saw storm Troopers slashing and smashing up and down the Kurfuerstendamm", and war propaganda: huge exhibitions of the Front', soldier figures standing in a real-life size trench playing with a dummy machine gun", he wrote. Continue reading...

UN chief condemns dramatic violations of international humanitarian law'. Plus, Republicans dismayed by Trump's debate

Branded stadiums turn community hubs into billboards. Memories are still made, but the corporate influence dulls the purity of the experienceThe Cleveland Browns held an oddly celebratory press conference last week to announce the sale of the naming rights to their stadium to Huntington Bank, a regional bank headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For the next 20 years, what was once Cleveland Browns Stadium will be known as Huntington Bank Field. Never mind that Huntington Bank Field is a laughably generic name that does not even attempt to maintain continuity with the arena's two most recent monikers, both of which labeled it a stadium rather than a field; the real catch is that the Browns haven't even decided whether to renovate their current home on the shore of Lake Erie or build a new stadium in Cleveland's southwestern suburbs.Under the terms of the deal, the Browns' home will be Huntington Bank Field wherever it ends up: the stadium now has a fixed name but a curious air of ephemerality hangs over its address. Continue reading...

The world's most important knowledge platform needs young editors to rescue it from chatbots - and its own tired practices

We analysed the voting patterns of far-right groups on eight issues including pay and tax. Their rhetoric is hollowIn the US and Europe, the far right is often portrayed as the defender of the working class, the representative of forgotten" people or the post-industrial left-behinds". The working classes, so the argument goes, have flocked to the far right because the left" has betrayed them. Moreover, far-right parties, it is claimed, have moved to the left on socioeconomic issues such as employment rights, replacing social democratic parties as the new working-class parties".Despite the popularity of this narrative, including among social democratic elites in Europe, workers have not flocked to far-right parties, but rather to the mainstream right and the Greens. And now, our new study shows that while far-right parties might talk leftwing, they still back rightwing anti-worker policies.Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today. Gabriela Greilinger is a PhD student at the University of GeorgiaDo 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...

Rabid Trussonomics or naked nativism? With the race down to four runners, here's my guide to a party reeling in two directionsReams of commentary will be written about the battle for the Tory leadership, because newspaper pundits confuse blowing hard on cold ashes with real manual labour. But if reading it all seems too much like hard work, then this column is for you. Today's piece won't be about What the Conservatives must do to become fit for government", since I don't want them back in government, ever. No, the purpose of our inquiry is to suss out what kind of opponent the party's next leader will be: the fights they'll pick, the parliamentary votes they'll force and the hurdles they'll heave into the path of better politics. And I believe the best way to do that is with a game involving two words. As you glance across the contenders, ask yourself this: are they a moron or a bastard?I am not in the business of throwing insults, but using two technical terms with specific definitions that draw upon three decades of rightwing history. Continue reading...

Andrew McCabe says Trump-Putin interactions raise questions', as Harris says Putin would eat Trump for lunch'Donald Trump can be seen as a Russian asset, though not in the traditional sense of an active agent or a recruited resource, an ex-FBI deputy director who worked under the former US president said.Asked on a podcast if he thought it possible Trump was a Russian asset, Andrew McCabe, who Trump fired as FBI deputy director in 2018, said: I do, I do." Continue reading...

Debate was watched by nearly 16 million more people than June event that saw Biden drop out, with a marked rise in younger and middle-aged viewers, ratings showAn estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a 31% increase from the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden that eventually led to the president dropping out of the 2024 race.

On this year's Video Music Awards black carpet, pop's biggest stars opted for lace, 90s glamour and the barely there Continue reading...

Lawyers for Christina Cardenas say she was sexually violated during search when she tried to visit husbandThe wife of a California prisoner will receive $5.6m after being sexually violated during a strip-search when she tried to visit her husband in prison, her attorneys said Monday.After traveling four hours to see her husband at a correctional facility in Tehachapi, California, on 6 September 2019, Christina Cardenas was subject to a strip-search by prison officials, drug and pregnancy tests, X-ray and CT scans at a hospital, and another strip-search by a male doctor who sexually violated her, a lawsuit said. Continue reading...

Several blazes ravage state after record-breaking heatwave last week with temperatures topping 100FAs least 13 people have been injured in three major southern California wildfires that broke out this week during a scorching heatwave. Firefighters battling the blazes, already stretched to the limits by a challenging summer, were among the injured.The Bridge fire in the Angeles national forest, located north of Glendora, exploded from about 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) on Tuesday to 34,000 acres that evening, according to the Los Angeles Times. Continue reading...

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Key advisers admit Trump unlikely to have persuaded undecided voters to back him after unconvincing display

Officials warn of life-threatening storm surge and flooding as evacuation orders in place in some parishesFrancine made landfall in south Louisiana on Wednesday as a category 2 hurricane as officials warned of life-threatening storm surge, flooding and 100mph winds.There were evacuation orders in some parishes, as communities braced. Continue reading...

Presidential candidates mark 23rd anniversary of September 11 terrorist attacks, day after heated TV debate

Local election offices reportedly received mailed ballots days after the deadline to be counted in nearly every state'State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation's mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the US Postal Service (USPS) that it hasn't fixed persistent deficiencies.The officials said in a letter that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. Continue reading...

Nathan Clark calls Republicans hate-spewing' for falsely claiming Aiden Clark was murdered by Haitian immigrantThe father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus has asked Donald Trump and JD Vance to stop using his son's name for political gain".During a city commission meeting on Tuesday in Springfield, Ohio, Nathan Clark, the father of Aiden Clark, addressed the forum alongside his wife, Danielle. Speaking at the meeting, Clark said: I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone," the Springfield News-Sun reports. Continue reading...

US Soccer are jumping into the unknown by appointing a great club-level coach who has no international experienceA stodgy homegrown coach dismissed after a long tenure turned stale, replaced with an alluring foreign star who made his name among the elite of Europe? We've been here before.The appointment of Mauricio Pochettino as the new US men's head coach is exciting, bold and appears close to a best-case scenario given the middling status of the USMNT in world football and the shiny resume of a tactician who's successfully managed in the English Premier League, La Liga and Ligue 1. Continue reading...

The biennial battle between Europe and the US always delivers drama and deserves a bigger audienceThe Solheim Cup's propensity to deliver drama remains its most endearing attribute. There was European rage in 2000 as Annika Sorenstam was accused of playing out of turn at Loch Lomond. Alison Lee was reduced to tears after an infamous clash with Suzann Pettersen in 2015. Madelene Sagstrom was in the same condition after picking up Nelly Korda's ball, too quickly, six years later. In 2013, an epic row broke out over a European penalty drop. Golf's routinely anodyne world changes tack at Solheim Cups.Wednesday saw the latest example of friction. Stacy Lewis, the US captain, referred to issues" with the European base, a house that backs on to the practice range. Their team room kind of exploded on to the driving range a little bit," said Lewis. But we reeled it in. It's all good. We adjusted the way the range was set up a little bit and moved the US team further down so Europe could do what they wanted basically. Continue reading...

US Swifties who were waiting for their idol's statement are hopeful' about its impact as Republicans criticize the moveAddy Al-Saigh had already gone to bed on Tuesday night when her phone woke her up with a notification: Taylor Swift had added a post on Instagram.The pop star had endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Al-Saigh was thrilled. Continue reading...

Donald Trump was unable to resist the vice-president's goading. Her commanding performance is another welcome campaign milestoneIf presidential debates don't really matter, as some have contended, Kamala Harris would not have been on the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. Yes, the spectacle can lead to excessive focus on their impact. But Joe Biden's disastrous performance, which triggered his withdrawal from the race, showed how these choreographed political events can catalyse, if not create, voters' sentiment about candidates.Only weeks before the nation makes its choice, Ms Harris's success was critical. Debates are often remembered, as in Mr Biden's case, when things go wrong. The vice-president didn't merely clear the very low bar set by her boss - basic competence - but soared over it. Her desire to stick it to Donald Trump may not have elucidated matters for undecided voters who say they want to know more about her and her policies. She did mention a few, including measures to codify abortion rights and promote an opportunity economy", but was keener to focus on the broad messages.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...

GOP lawmakers and analysts virtually unanimous that Trump was second best to Harris in first presidential debate

House speaker's bill to avert October shutdown combined stopgap funding with controversial election security' planThe House Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, hastily scrapped a planned vote on his government funding package on Wednesday after at least eight members of his own conference signaled opposition to the plan, raising more questions about how Congress will avert a partial shutdown before the end of the month.Johnson had combined a six-month stopgap funding bill with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Continue reading...

From the likes of Fox News has come a masterclass in post-debate pretzel logic. Surely the excuses must run out soonShort of sticking two pencils up his nose and muttering the word wibble", Trump's appearance on the debate stage on Tuesday night was never going to prove, decisively, to those on the fence, that he is unfit for high office. Unlike Biden's disastrous turn two and a half months ago, chaos is part of Trump's appeal - and if his thoughts are garbled, it signifies nothing beyond business as usual. And yet, even for Trump, aspects of his debate performance in Pennsylvania came so close to the edge on Tuesday that the next day what seemed most astonishing wasn't that Harris had performed so well but that so many apparently sentient human beings were still shilling for her unhinged opponent.Heading into the encounter, one had the strangest sense both of the height of the stakes and also of the sheer entertainment value of the encounter. I found myself wondering about Harris's nerves - how a person handles them in such a unique situation. In the debate's opening moments, the vice-president did indeed seem nervous. But she settled, and about 15 minutes in, it started to happen: while Harris's keenly controlled anger rose to a point, Trump, mouth bunching, eyes disappearing into his head, unravelled. Continue reading...

From JD Vance's childless cat ladies' comment to the sign-off in Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris, kitties are front and centre in this campaign. Will cat-lovers help win it for the Democrats?Take a shot at a cat, and you'd better not miss. It all started in 2021, with a remark by JD Vance, long before he became the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate. To be fair to the guy, Vance lives in a low-consequence universe, where you can hate Trump one minute and love him the next, with no ding to your credibility, so he must have been gobsmacked in July when he was called on this historic remark.It's just a basic fact," he had told Tucker Carlson back in 2021. You look at Kamala Harris, [transportation secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] - the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?" This elision of parenthood and long-termism is the acceptable face of the childlessness taboo in politics: you can call it dumb, but you can't call it misogynistic, since it isn't gendered. Continue reading...

What links Lady Gaga, Tom Cruise and the woman who's running for the US presidency? A presence that outstrips their actual size ...Name: Tall Energy.Age: Evergreen. Continue reading...

Parent of ex-president's Truth Social media company off 75% from peak, a week before Trump can finally sell sharesDonald Trump's tiny social media empire slumped to fresh lows on the stock market, hours after his primetime presidential debate with Kamala Harris.Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of the former president's Truth Social platform, dropped 17% as of Wednesday morning. Continue reading...

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Ex-president appears to defend earlier call for death penalty and struggles to account for comments on vice-president

Harris spoke passionately about women's personal experiences post-Roe, as Trump repeated his usual extreme rhetoric

The deliberate policies of the EU and its member states have turned the Mediterranean into a mass grave - as we watchIn 2019 the city of Paris offered me the Grand Vermeil medal, an honor for bravery, to recognize work I've done as a captain in civilian search-and-rescue (SAR) operations to rescue people at risk of drowning while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.I declined the award. I don't see sea rescue as a humanitarian action, but as part of an anti-fascist fight, and I didn't want to uphold hypocrisy. Paris is a city whose police steal blankets from people they force to live on the streets while suppressing protests and criminalizing people who defend the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.Pia Klemp is a German biologist and human rights activist Continue reading...

We would like to hear from US voters living in swing states and their thoughts on how the debate wentPresidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump went head to head in a debate on Tuesday that involved false claims and heated rhetoric. With no other debates officially scheduled, it may be the only time the two will face-off in an attempt to persuade undecided voters and those living in swing states ahead of polls opening on 5 November.If you live in a swing state such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, we would like to hear what you thought of the debate. How do you think it went and do you feel the candidates addressed the issues important to you? What was your favourite moment? Did anything from the debate change your mind in any way? Continue reading...

Consumer price index rose at annual rate of 2.5% as inflation continues to fade but people still grapple with higher pricesPrice growth continued to soften in the US last month, falling to its lowest level since February 2021 as the Federal Reserve prepares to cut interest rates for the first time since the start of the pandemic.As inflation continues to fade, the consumer price index rose at an annual rate of 2.5% in August - down from 2.9% in July, and below the 2.6% expected by economists. Continue reading...

Harris spoke in lucid paragraphs, but Trump spouted lurid, loopy stuffThe Trump-Harris debate was the most unsurprising thing that ever happened, except maybe for the part when, unlike previous debates, the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, pressed Trump to actually answer the question or noted that what he said was extremely not true at all.The former prosecutor and current vice-president Kamala Harris got on stage and spoke in lucid paragraphs that were clearly the result of careful preparation. She shared the stage with the adjudicated rapist who spoke in loose phrases that flapped and looped and circled around and usually reverted to some version of millions of immigrants who are criminals and terrorists are why this country is in terrible shape worse than anyone thought possible and we are going to have world war three", a litany of fear and rage and vagueness we've heard for eight years.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell's Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility Continue reading...

Trump tried to paint Harris as the candidate of the status quo, but he failed because he came across as a messTo say that Kamala Harris nailed it in Tuesday night's debate is an understatement. She knocked it out of the park. She combined civility with firmness. She made Trump look and sound like the blubbering idiot he is.This was Harris's first presidential debate. It was Trump's eighth - including his debates with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. But Trump was worse than he has ever been. All he did was attack. His only weapon was fear. His only means were lies. Continue reading...

Kamala Harris kept Donald Trump on the defensive as he devolved into bizarre and false tangents about crowd sizes, abortion and immigration. Plus: how to get a better night's sleepGood morning.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump faced off in a presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, with Harris landing a number of blows as Trump spouted bizarre falsehoods about abortion and immigration.What were the most memorable moments? After Harris wrapped up one remark with a jab about Trump's crowd sizes, Trump began to ramble - about immigrants eating people's pets. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," Trump said. They're eating the pets of the people that live there." ABC moderators interjected to say that the city manager of Springfield, Ohio, had told the network there were no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed by individuals within the immigrant community.How did the moderators do? ABC's moderators David Muir and Linsey Daviswere largely praised for factchecking Trump's falsehoods and rerouting discussions back to the questions. When Trump falsely accused Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, of calling for abortion in the ninth month and execution after birth", Davis responded: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born."Another boost for Harris: After the debate concluded, Taylor Swift endorsed Harris on Instagram, signing the post as childless cat lady" in a jab at misogynistic comments made by the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance. Continue reading...

Fort Lauderdale mayor says legislation will provoke tsunami of lawsuits' but do nothing to help homeless crisisA Florida law that criminalizes sleeping in public spaces and will take effect next month is expected to provoke a tsunami of lawsuits" but do nothing to alleviate the state's homelessness crisis, the mayor of Fort Lauderdale has warned.Dean Trantalis says his city is scrambling to find a way of complying with the bill signed by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in March, and which becomes law on 1 October, requiring municipalities with insufficient shelter capacity to establish encampments for unhoused persons. Continue reading...