Just like at the Democratic convention, the vice-president did enough to clear the bar and do herself no harmDonald Trump spent Thursday in Michigan raving about bacon, windmills, Al Capone, trans boxers, nuclear war and, of course, his crowd size. Weird! Kamala Harris and Tim Walz gave an interview on CNN that was ... radically normal.Just as she did a week ago at the Democratic national convention, the vice-president was comfortable and composed, solid and unspectacular, doing enough to clear the bar and doing herself no harm. She turned a much hyped first interview as nominee into a soon-to-be-forgotten pit stop along the campaign trail. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jonathan Freedland, with Elaine Godfr on (#6QBP2)
At the end of July, the TV news anchor turned rightwing politician Kari Lake won the Republican Senate primary in Arizona. She will face Democrat Ruben Gallego in November.So how will the Trump-inspired election denier do? Where does Kari Lake fit in with today's Republican party? And will her presence help or hinder Trump in that all-important border swing state?Jonathan Freedland speaks to Elaine Godfrey of the Atlantic to find out more about the Senate hopefulArchive: CBS News, 12 News, ABC 12, ABC 15, Fox News, CNN, NBC News Continue reading...
by Helen Sullivan (now) and Léonie Chao-Fong (earlie on (#6QBK2)
This blog is now closed. You can read our full story on the Harris-Walz interview on CNN here.Donald Trump's own platform could effectively ban [in vitro fertilization] and abortion nationwide", a spokesperson for Kamala Harris's campaign said in response to Trump's latest IVF comments.The Harris campaign statement continued:Because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, IVF is already under attack and women's freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country. There is only one candidate in this race who trusts women and will protect our freedom to make our own health care decisions: Vice President Kamala Harris.Congratulations to Donald Trump for realizing that his position and his record on abortion are wildly unpopular, particularly with women who will decide this election.But rather than give him credit for a disingenuous and unserious proposal that contradicts his own GOP platform, we'll credit him for something he actually did: overturning Roe v Wade, ending abortion access for millions of women across the country, and jeopardizing reproductive freedom for all of us. Continue reading...
Democratic nominees talk to CNN's Dana Bash on Thursday about fracking, the US middle class and weapons of war'In a primetime spot on CNN Thursday evening, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sat for their first interview together as the Democratic ticket, taking questions from anchor Dana Bash on a range of important issues, including their plans for day 1 if they win the race, the approach to the war in Gaza, and how Joe Biden passed the baton.With just over two months until voters will head to the polls on 5 November - and even less time before some will mail in their ballots - the Democratic candidates for president and vice-president made good on a promise to speak more candidly about how they will tackle the US's most pressing problems. Continue reading...
The North Carolina resident, who was on a multi-day trip, was located by helicopter after reports of a missing hikerA solo backpacker has been found dead near a rugged and remote trail along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon national park, authorities in Arizona said Thursday.The National Park Service said the 60-year-old North Carolina resident was located by helicopter Wednesday along a route connecting Lower Tapeats and Deer Creek camps. The two sites are accessible from the north rim on a river bend about 29 miles (46.6km) north-west of Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim. Continue reading...
by Niall McVeigh (now) and Katy Murrells (earlier) on (#6QB61)
Dan Evans and Jack Draper advanced, as did No 1 seeds Iga Swiatek and Jannik Sinner, but Katie Boulter was sent outIf you missed any of yesterday's results, by the way, you can catch up here:Tomas Machac has broken back against Sebastian Korda. The Czech is now serving at 4-3 down. And the first set of the day has - unsurprisingly - gone to Anna Kalinskaya, 6-2 against Anna Bondar. Continue reading...
Arizona officials are investigating the death of Denise Prudhomme, 60, who was discovered by a colleagueOfficials in Arizona are investigating the death of a Wells Fargo employee who scanned into her office on a Friday morning and was found dead at her desk four days later.According to local outlets, authorities said 60-year-old Denise Prudhomme entered her Wells Fargo office building located on the 1100 block of West Washington Street in Tempe, Arizona, at 7am on 16 August. Continue reading...
by Daniel Harris (earlier) and Beau Dure (later) on (#6QB0N)
ParalympicsGB won their first two golds of the 2024 Games in the pool thanks to swimmers Poppy Maskell and Tully KearneyCox's final is up at 2.50pm BST - she qualified for it in second place, but Caroline Groot of the Netherlands, who was fastest, set a new world record in the process.Earlier today, by the way, GB men dealt Germany a right tousing, beating them 76-55 in their first Group A game. Continue reading...
After July ruling that state's death penalty is legal, a man on death row has a week to decide how he will be executedA man on death row in South Carolina has until 6 September to decide how he would prefer to be executed by the state.South Carolina's prisons director has declared the state's supply of a lethal injection drug acceptable and said its electric chair was tested two months ago and its firing squad has the ammunition and training to carry out its first execution next month in more than 13 years, if needed. Continue reading...
The war in Gaza has become a breaking point for the rules-based international order. That is also true in other occupied territoriesThere is a rising, bloody Palestinian death toll in the West Bank after two days of Israeli attacks by helicopters, drones and ground forces. In July, the line between law and politics had been sharply drawn when the UN's top court - the international court of justice (ICJ) - declared that Israel's occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, is against international law and should end. Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that this was a decision of lies". He knows power flows from the barrel of a gun. Illegal Israeli acts in the occupied territories are hardening, mostly with complete impunity, into political developments.The war in Gaza has become a breaking point for the rules-based international order. That is also true in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel argues that it has to take action to protect itself from what it claims are attacks using Iranian-supplied arms. Yet bombingcivilians from the skies looks like a way of terrorising a people into submission - and it is increasing. Between 2020 and October 2023, six Palestinians in the area were killed in airstrikes. This week, the UN said that 136 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since October 2023 - a sharp increase. These numbers are obviously dwarfed by the 40,000deadPalestinians in Gaza, with the majority of those identified being elderly people, children or women. Continue reading...
Internal justice department audit flagged 42 allegations from 2021-2023 requiring immediate attention' from FBIThe US justice department's office of inspector general said on Thursday the FBI failed to properly investigate some suspected child sexual abuse cases and did not report some allegations to state or social services agencies.A July 2021 report by the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, uncovered widespread and dire errors by the FBI that allowed the onetime USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar to continue to abuse at least 70 more victims before he was finally arrested. Continue reading...
by Miranda Bryant Nordic correspondent, and Erum Sala on (#6QB0J)
Universal Music says footage used in Minnesota featuring Abba songs and videos must be taken downAbba have demanded that Donald Trump stop using their music after the former US president played several of their songs and used footage of the group at a campaign rally.The Republican presidential candidate played hits including Money, Money, Money, The Winner Takes It All and Dancing Queen at his event in St Cloud, Minnesota, the US state with the highest Swedish population, on Tuesday, the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported. Continue reading...
Trump is trying to complete the right's master plan. He must be stoppedYou can be forgiven for thinking Vice-President Kamala Harris's first attack ad against Donald Trump seems a little far-fetched. Launched this week, the television spot has all the hallmarks of a YouTube video promoting an internet conspiracy theory. There's the obligatory scary music and the baritone narrator warning about a mysterious manifesto with the kind of cartoonish name that a Bond villain would label his blueprint for global conquest: Project 2025.And yet, this isn't a Dr Evil send-up: Project 2025 is very real, it is absolutely Trump's agenda and it wasn't some slapdash screed that came out of nowhere. It is the culmination of the 50-year plot that our reporters at the Lever have uncovered in our new audio series Master Plan - a scheme first envisioned by the US supreme court justice who created the foundation for Citizens United and the modern era of corporate politics.David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Lever. He served as Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign speechwriter Continue reading...
by Nathan A Rosenberg and Bryce Wilson Stucki on (#6QB2Q)
Numbers surged after changes to the agricultural census. Advocates say that's not what they've seen on the groundEarlier this summer, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released data that suggested that, after years of decline, the number of Black farmers has grown to more than 45,000.This is in stark contrast to the dire situation of Black producers in the 1990s, when a New York Times article predicted their coming extinction; Black farm numbers had fallen below 20,000 in that decade. Continue reading...
As former president fails to land attacks against Harris campaign, advisers hope to capitalize on upcoming debateDonald Trump's campaign insists that they're pursuing multiple strategies against Kamala Harris, but the true picture that is emerging is that the Trump senior advisers' grand plan, for now, is to pray that the former US president has a good night at the presidential debate next month.The game plan, in other words, has become one of hoping that Trump wins the debate so they can regain momentum - a stunning approach that shows the serious predicament for Trump and his campaign as he struggles to find ways to land effective attacks against the vice-president just months before the election. Continue reading...
Democratic presidential candidate will sit down with running mate Tim Walz and CNN's Dana Bash on ThursdayKamala Harris on Thursday will give her first major interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in what is being seen as a key test of her credibility after a prolonged honeymoon that has seen her surge ahead of Donald Trump in opinion polls.She and her running mate, Tim Walz, will face CNN's Dana Bash in a pre-recorded event that was scheduled following some criticism of Harris's reluctance to expose herself to media scrutiny following her ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket last month in place of Joe Biden, who withdrew from the race on 21 July. Continue reading...
Hospital closures here have devastated Black and brown communities, who see Medicaid expansion as the answerAround 4am last Christmas Eve, Kuanita Murphy's father suddenly became short of breath and briefly passed out. Without a medical facility nearby, Murphy had to drive him 45 miles east to Albany, Georgia, to the Phoebe Putney memorial hospital. The only hospital in their small town of Cuthbert, Georgia - Southwest Georgia regional medical center - had closed down three years earlier due to financial strain from failing infrastructure and an increase in uninsured patients.After waiting for several hours, Murphy's dad was finally admitted at noon into a hospital room for internal bleeding and a restricted heart valve. While he eventually underwent lifesaving surgery, Murphy said that he would have received treatment faster if Cuthbert had still had a hospital. Continue reading...
While many clubs have pivoted away from signing fading European stars, the additions of Marco Reus and Olivier Giroud show there is still a place for marquee signingsLA Galaxy. The name alone demands stars. The identity of that city followed by that team name - one that is part of soccer's galacticos lexicon - suggests a certain kind of franchise with a star player. Usually in the twilight of their careers, the arrival of these players in Major League Soccer attracts barbs as well as buzz.The criticism typically brands MLS as a retirement league," but as 35-year-old Marco Reus became the latest Hollywood signing to land in LA with the Galaxy it is evident that marquee signings are still an important part of American soccer. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Over $12bn in subsidies awarded for technologies like carbon capture experts call colossal waste of money'A handful of wealthy polluting countries led by the US are spending billions of dollars of public money on unproven climate solutions technologies that risk further delaying the transition away from fossil fuels, new analysis suggests.These governments have handed out almost $30bn in subsidies for carbon capture and fossil hydrogen over the past 40 years, with hundreds of billions potentially up for grabs through new incentives, according to a new report by Oil Change International (OCI), a non-profit tracking the cost of fossil fuels. Continue reading...
Harris and Walz to sit with CNN's Dana Bash on Thursday after weeks of demands from Republicans to take questionsThis Thursday, Kamala Harris will sit down for her first major interview since launching her presidential campaign after Joe Biden's dramatic departure from the race.It follows weeks of demands from Republicans and members of the media for the presidential hopeful to take questions. Continue reading...
Olympic star turns Sports Illustrated swimsuit model after saying she's targeting World Cup in England next yearIlona Maher, the US women's center who lit up the Paris Olympics and became the most followed rugby player in the world, was hailed as a feminist trailblazer" after becoming a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.Ilona Maher gracing the cover of our September digital issue is more than just a celebration of her athletic achievements - it's a powerful statement," said MJ Day, editor in chief of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, on Thursday. Continue reading...
There should be no sugar-coating the recent deaths of six teenagers. If we genuinely want to protect our kids, we need to take seriously the question of abolishing tackle footballSix teenagers have now died while playing school football in less than three weeks. This astonishing rash of football-related school deaths should be understood as nothing less than a public health emergency. It is also a clarion call to question why we are exposing our young people to such a dangerous activity at all, much less in institutions designed to care for and nurture them.The first four of these recent deaths were due to apparently heat-related causes and the latest two due to head trauma. Five of the athletes were high schoolers, the eldest only 16, and one was a 13-year-old eighth-grade student. The young athletes who died were Ovet Gomez-Regalado, age 15, in Kansas City; Semaj Wilkins, age 14, in Alabama; Jayvion Taylor, age 15, in Virginia; Leslie Noble, age 16, in Maryland; Caden Tellier, age 16, in Alabama; and Cohen Craddock, age 13, in West Virginia. Continue reading...
Officials at military cemetery say two campaign members verbally abused and pushed' a representativeOfficials at Arlington national cemetery have filed a report over the behavior of members of Donald Trump's campaign staff who reportedly shoved and verbally abused an employee during a crass" photo opportunity for the Republican presidential candidate.The officials confirmed that a confrontation took place at the Virginia cemetery on Monday after the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony for 13 US servicemen and -women killed in a 2021 suicide bomb attack outside Kabul airport in Afghanistan. Continue reading...
by Helen Sullivan (now); with Dani Anguiano ,Chris St on (#6QA3V)
This blog is now closed. You can find all of our US elections coverage hereMark Esper, a former defense secretary under Donald Trump, told CNN that he hoped the reported altercation between the former president's staff and an official at Arlington national cemetery was investigated, while saying that the grounds should never be used for partisan political purposes":Esper served under Trump from 2019 until shortly after the 2020 election, when Trump fired him. The former defense chief has since decried Trump as a threat to democracy". Continue reading...
The shooter had done extensive research and had also searched online for events and targetsNew details have come to light in the FBI's investigation into the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, including how the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, researched and planned the attack.In a call with journalists on Wednesday, a senior FBI official shared that the gunman had searched online for events of both the former president and Joe Biden and saw the Pennsylvania campaign rally where he opened fire last month as a target of opportunity." Continue reading...
Andrey Rublev came back from two sets down to beat Arthur Rinderknech in a thriller, and there were also wins for Aryna Sabalenka, Madison Keys and Alexander ZverevOn Grandstand, Ruse and Krejcikova have exchanged breaks at 1-1, while Dimitrov breaks Hijikata at the first time of asking for a 2-0 lead. There's a real calmness about how he conducts himself in rallies, but I just can't see a way he beats one of the top three over five.Already, Townsend is giving Badosa something different to what she usually gets, loopy lefty forehands at varying pace. But at 1-1 0-15, Badosa misses an overhead with almost the whole court at which to aim ... then makes amends by drilling a forehand winner, and when Townsend nets a forehand, there are two break points on the agenda. And Badosa only needs one, dominating the rally with some sizeable groundstrokes and responding to another loopy one by upping the pace of her own shot; her opponent can't respind and the Spaniard leads 2-1. Continue reading...
Police close investigation into Barbara and Rosario Poma over possible manslaughter linked to Florida massacreThe Orlando police department has closed its investigation into the former owners of the Pulse nightclub without filing any charges. Victims' families and survivors of the mass shooting that killed 49 patrons at the LGBTQ+ club had asked law enforcement to investigate them for criminal culpability.No charges will be filed against the former owners, Barbara and Rosario Poma, because probable cause did not exist for involuntary manslaughter by culpable negligence, the Orlando police said this week in an emailed statement. Continue reading...
by Laurence H Tribe and Dennis Aftergut on (#6QAGE)
Trumpism's route to the White House is paved with bricks of election theft in the battleground stateThe latest election-protecting lawsuit filed this week in Georgia goes straight to the heart of the contest in the country over the survival of freedom's most basic institutions: our vote and the rule of law. The suit is also vital to the more immediate outcome of this election, and whether Donald Trump can find a way to win by any means necessary.Trump and his Maga allies seek to permanently dismantle the architecture of government established by our founders 235 years ago. The route there this November runs through Georgia, a key battleground state where undoing any electoral victory by Kamala Harris would be vital to Trump's return to power. Trump and his acolytes will do whatever it takes to win. That includes not certifying the people's actual vote.Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law SchoolDennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy Continue reading...
by Tumaini Carayol at Flushing Meadows on (#6QADN)
The 21-year-old's decision to dodge four weeks of hard court events left her ill prepared for a typically tough encounterLate on Tuesday night in Arthur Ashe stadium, Emma Raducanu wiped away tears as she digested another bitter loss in the first round of the US Open. Her tight, frantic three-set defeat against Sofia Kenin, at the tournament that yielded her career-defining victory three years ago, was even more painful given how tight the encounter had been.While Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, had been in poor form coming into the final grand slam tournament of the year, she rose to the occasion of facing a distinguished opponent and played a fantastic match. Continue reading...
Ruling on multibillion-dollar Save program, which aims to lower monthly payments, has no immediate effect on borrowersThe US supreme court decided on Wednesday that it will not reinstate the Biden administration's multibillion-dollar student loan repayment plan, Save, which aims to lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers.The plan was blocked by a federal appeals court earlier this summer as a result of a legal challenge led by several Republican states. Continue reading...
Emmanuel Macron's refusal to accept a minority left government was a mistake. Having lost the election he needs to give groundThough he made a number of appearances during theOlympics, Emmanuel Macron largely retreated to his holiday residence in southern France for the duration of the Games. From there, having called a political truce as Paris put on a triumphant sporting spectacle, the president hoped to plot a path out of the self-inflicted chaos created by his decision to call asnap election in the middle of the summer.No such luck. The Olympic athletes are long departed, and the traditional September rentree looms. But no newgovernment is in place - the longest such hiatus since immediately following the second world war -and bitter acrimony reigns. This week, MrMacron used his presidential prerogative to rule out any candidate for prime minister put forward by the NewPopular Front (NFP), the leftwing alliance thatbya short head came first in the July poll. Continue reading...
The non-dog-eating, brain worm-surviving independent candidate dropped out of the race, sort of, but he was less of a joke to strategistsHello, good day,First, an apology. We missed some big election news in July, when the town of Omena, in northern Michigan, elected a horse called Lucky to be mayor. Lucky becomes the first horse to hold the position - the largely ceremonial role was previously held by Rosie, who is a dog. We wish the 16-year-old stallion all the best for his time in office. Continue reading...
Find out who is leading the way at the Paralympics, and drill down to see which events each country has won medals forAs is traditional, the table prioritises the number of gold medals won. On this basis in 2021, China led the Paralympics field with 96 golds, with Great Britain second on 41 and the United States third with 37. If countries have the same number of gold medals, the order is then dictated by which has the most silvers, and finally bronze if the numbers are still identical. Continue reading...
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