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Democrats aim for state court to block the rule requiring officials to hand-count ballots cast on election dayDemocrats sued the Georgia state election board on Monday over a new rule requiring officials to hand-count ballots cast on election day, asking a state court to declare it unlawful and block it from going into effect.The suit, filed in Fulton county superior court by both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic party of Georgia, takes aim at a rule adopted in a 3-2 vote by the state election board on 20 September. The rule requires the poll manager and a team of two other workers in each voting precinct to separate ballots into stacks of 50 and hand-count them. They must all agree on the total count and ensure that it matches the totals from the machine tabulation. If there is an inconsistency, they are required to determine the reason and correct it, if possible. Continue reading...

Velazquez was incarcerated for decades for a 1998 murder he didn't commit before starring in award-winning A24 filmA New York judge on Monday formally vacated the homicide conviction of a man incarcerated for almost 24 years before starring in the award-winning movie Sing Sing about the rehabilitative effects of a prison arts program.Jon-Adrian JJ" Velazquez fought back tears as he hugged friends and family outside the Manhattan district courtroom where he was exonerated for the 1998 murder of a retired policeman during an armed robbery at an illegal gambling den in Harlem. Continue reading...

After dismissal of case against Alec Baldwin in July, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's lawyer challenged charges against herA judge has denied a request from Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed to appeal her involuntary manslaughter conviction.After the shock dismissal of the case against actor Alec Baldwin in July, Gutierrez-Reed's lawyer challenged the conviction against her, arguing prosecutors withheld potentially critical evidence. But on Monday, the New Mexico judge, Mary Marlowe Sommer, denied the motions requesting a new trial or a dismissal of the charges, as well as her release from prison. Continue reading...

Republican nominee's proposal at Pennsylvania campaign rally compared to dystopian horror film The PurgeDonald Trump has been accused of invoking plotlines similar to The Purge - a dystopian horror film in which officially sanctioned murder is occasionally legal - as a possible solution to crime in the US after saying it could be eradicated in one really violent day".In what was seen as an extreme display of demagoguery even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a picture of an out-of-control crime spree that he said could be ended immediately" with one real rough, nasty day", or one rough hour". Continue reading...

Ryan Routh appears in court in Florida and pleads not guilty to federal charges including attempted assassinationThe man who authorities say spent 12 hours camped outside Donald Trump's golf course before the Secret Service spotted him with a rifle pleaded not guilty on Monday to attempting to assassinate the former president as well as other federal charges.Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, appeared briefly in the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday, days after a grand jury handed down a five-count indictment stemming from the second attempt on Trump's life since July. Continue reading...

No other musician could have landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash's yard to deliver a new tune, or renounced a debut in praise of the Vietnam war with decades of activist songs

Montana's Tim Sheehy claims he and wife lived in poverty but own book reveals he had $400,000 to build companyAt a recent campaign event in Whitehall, Montana, the Republican US Senate candidate Tim Sheehy told voters that a decade ago, when he set up the aerial firefighting company through which he made his fortune, he and his wife were living below the poverty line".My wife and I homeschool our kids," Sheehy said. We made that decision several years ago. She's a Marine, naval academy graduate, she could have a great job and even when our company was tiny, and we ... were below the poverty line and making no money, we said: No ... the most important job in the world is being a mother.' And she's doing that every day." Continue reading...

It would be a risky move, but some in Iran now see building a nuclear bomb as the only way to fend off Israeli attacksLast week, Iran's leaders found themselves in a familiar position. The Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was the latest in a series of assassinations of senior figures with ties to the regime.In a short statement eulogising Nasrallah, Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, declared that Israel had not become victorious" by carrying out the strike on Nasrallah, which he described as an atrocity". Khamenei insisted that Israel would face more crushing" blows in retribution. But those blows are to come from the groups of the resistance front" and not from Iran itself.Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is the founder of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a thinktank focused on economic policymaking in the Middle East and Central AsiaDo 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...

Second of Trump's four national security advisers says his boasts are a real myth - it's a real misunderstanding of war'A former US national security adviser during Donald Trump's presidency has dismissed the Republican White House nominee's boasts that he would broker an end to Russia's war in Ukraine if elected in November as a real myth".I don't really buy it," HR McMaster said Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation. I think it's a real myth - it's a real misunderstanding of war - to assume that you can get a favorable political outcome without a favorable military outcome. Continue reading...

Parents are under too much pressure to make every meal an organic delight, but healthy, affordable produce would helpI made a rediscovery last week: cucumbers can actually taste of something. After years of eating insipid, watery, condom-clad specimens from supermarkets, I had all but stopped buying them. That is, until my husband's colleague gave us some from his allotment, and a childhood memory of snaffling cucumber sandwiches was suddenly reactivated. Fresh white bread, salted butter, pepper, cucumber: it's a combination once so delicious Oscar Wilde made them a running joke in The Importance of Being Earnest.And so to the story that children are struggling to name common vegetables, with less than a third of primary school-age children able to identify a courgette or a beetroot. This didn't come as a surprise, really: what is there to get excited about when the taste is barely memorable? Supermarket courgettes suffer from a similar issue to cucumbers: they don't taste of anything. Don't even get me started on tomatoes. Many of us have become so wholly detached from our food's origins that we are, for some reason, happy to accept this, as well as forgetting - and not passing on the knowledge - that fruit and veg comes from the trees and the earth. Continue reading...

At least a dozen department employees are believed to have improperly viewed the files, prompting an investigationA criminal investigation is under way after staff at the US Department of Veterans Affairs illicitly accessed the medical records of Tim Walz and JD Vance, the Democratic and Republican vice-presidential nominees.At least a dozen employees - including one doctor and one contractor - at the department's healthcare body, the Veterans Health Administration, are believed to have improperly viewed the files, according to the department's investigators. Continue reading...

Another thumping home defeat highlights a weak club that did not know what it wanted in the summer, or lacked the nous to get what it wanted over the line

Democrat Elissa Slotkin worries about Harris's chances as mail-in voting has begun in swing state Biden won in 2020A Democratic representative in a key battleground Senate race in Michigan told supporters she was concerned about Kamala Harris's chances in the state's presidential election.I'm not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan," Elissa Slotkin said at a fundraiser earlier this month, according to Axios. We have her underwater in our polling." Continue reading...

He has sold gold sneakers, Bibles, commemorative coins and digital trading cards - and now the former president is flogging a range of timepiecesName: Donald Trump's watch collection.Age: Brand spanking new. Continue reading...

Stellantis slashes growth forecast, with Aston Martin maker also warning of problems as car industry's woes deepen

The Freedom party hasn't only harnessed discontent at home - it is drawing on once-fringe ideas that have spread around the worldWe will kick upwards and clamp down on those who don't mean well for us", said Herbert Kickl in May 2023. Under Kickl's leadership, the Austrian Freedom party (FPO) has scored its biggest election victory since it was founded in 1956 by Anton Reinthaller, an Austrian Nazi who had served as a lieutenant general in the SS. Not only is the FPO now more popular than ever, it is also at the height of its radicalism.The FPO's victory in Sunday's national elections is being celebrated by far-right movements and influencers across Europe. No wonder: it demonstrates how successful they have been at normalising and internationalising their extreme ideologies, conspiracy myths and policy proposals.Julia Ebner is an Austrian academic and author who leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of Oxford's Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion. She is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and author of The Rage, Going Dark and Going MainstreamDo 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...

US vice-presidential candidates will be on their biggest debate stages of their careers for the CBS-hosted eventWhen Tim Walz and JD Vance square off as vice-presidential picks on Tuesday, it will be the biggest debate stage for both of the politicians who are newly becoming household names.Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, have been honing their public speaking skills - and their pointed barbs at each other - in TV appearances and at events around the country in the past few months. Continue reading...

As Republicans spew lies about Haitian residents, the city is drawing armed strangers and opportunistic politiciansFor decades, Springfield, a small city in Ohio, adjacent to a highway that runs from Maryland thousands of miles west to Utah, was a place where no one especially felt the need to visit.But not today. Continue reading...

Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amine has reportedly been killed in an Israeli attack in the south. Plus, New Zealand reclaims haka world record

After an inauspicious start, the Ohio senator has become a tribune for Trump's biggest issues: immigration and the economyWhen Donald Trump tapped JD Vance, the US senator and never-Trumper turned Maga superstar, as his vice-presidential pick, the Rust belt populist was in for a rude awakening.In a viral video, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz called Vance and the Maga movement just weird", an insult that quickly became a meme. The reintroduction of his past remarks on the impropriety of childless cat ladies" being involved in government spread almost as fast as an online joke about the Ohioan having intimate relations with a couch. Continue reading...

The worst bit was the maths. I'm 49 and haven't worked out two-thirds of anything since 1992Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is somewhat illusory". Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as common sense" and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people".It's no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure Covid! They think low-traffic neighbourhoods are a communist plot and call the police about KFC running out of chicken! We all think those other guys are the stupid ones.Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

There are problems with the road trip documentary following the comedian and an old friend who is transitioning, but there's honesty and messiness that people should seeLet's admit it: cisgender people are really curious about us trans women. They want to know things such as: what's it like to have a surgeon rearrange your genitals? How did you know you were really a girl all along? Does it suck having to be on the downside of sexism now?For our own part, trans women are curious about cisgender folk, too. We want to know things like: do you actually think I'm female, or am I just a deluded guy in a dress to you? If I try to have a beer at your bar, will you violently assault me? Am I ever going to get to use a public bathroom again? Continue reading...

The Super Bowl champions are off to an unbeaten start. But turning Patrick Mahomes into a checkdown artist seems reductive at bestAny coach in any sport will tell you that a win is a win: no matter how you get there, it's a good thing. But how good can the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs feel about their 4-0 start this season after Sunday's scratchy 17-10 win over the Los Angeles Chargers?Yes, the Chiefs are undefeated, but their point differential of +20 shows just how vulnerable they've been and they could easily be 1-3 - or worse - if a few plays had gone differently in each of their games this season. This Chiefs team looks like last season's, when they had to hope for Patrick Mahomes to get hot at the right time in an uneven offense with mystery receivers. Continue reading...

New cars are no longer being equipped with CD players - who can doubt that the end of the format is nigh?Music formats die slow, lingering deaths. The CD has been succumbing for more than two decades - sales peaked in 2000 - but now it may have suffered its final, fatal blow: the last model of car to include a CD player has already been built. According to Which magazine, as of this year Subaru Forester SUVs will no longer accommodate CDs, and the only new vehicle you can buy with a CD player in it is the Isuzu D-Max, which is actually a truck.Because they are replaced infrequently, cars have always extended the life of old audio technology, serving as travelling museums of sound. The first car with a factory-installed dashboard CD player appeared in 1985, but it would take many of us years to catch up. Long after my family had switched to exclusively CDs in the house, our secondhand car still just had a cassette player, and its door wells were filled with classic tapes such as The Wheels on the Bus and Other Songs. When that car finally went for scrap the cassettes went with it, and an era abruptly came to an end.Tim Dowling is a regular Guardian contributor Continue reading...

There should be leadership but instead we see grandiose initiatives and a reluctance to address fundamental flaws

Existential threat' is a thin excuse: the out-of-control force that is pushing the Middle East to the brink is Israel itselfA common defence of Israel's belligerence, both within the Palestinian territories and in the wider region, is the claim that it must act in this way because it is surrounded by countries that are trying to annihilate it. Like many of the arguments that attempt to justify Israel's disproportionate response to 7 October, it is not only incorrect but also an inversion of reality. The events of the last few months and the assault on Lebanon over the past few days demonstrate that it is Israel which is a threat to its neighbours.On last Monday alone, Israeli airstrikes killed 558 people in Lebanon - half the number who died in a whole month of war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. Among the dead were 50 children, as well as humanitarian workers, first aid responders and government employees. Lebanon's prime minister, Najib Mikati, says a million people could soon be displaced. The strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday levelled six apartment blocks in Beirut. A Gaza in microcosm is quickly unfolding - thousands fleeing for safety, traumatised children, high casualties, an escalation where there is no limit on the civilian lives that can be sacrificed to achieve Israel's goals. Continue reading...

VP and Trump are making frequent stops in state, with Harris visiting two days after visiting US-Mexico borderKamala Harris held a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favour either candidate.Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris's rally takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse. Continue reading...

The US country singer and actor has died aged 88. The Texas-born Grammy winner wrote songs including Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down and Me and Bobby McGee. He was a member of the supergroup the Highwaymen and starred in 70 films over his career Continue reading...

It will be complicated recovery' in five states, says disaster relief agency, with hurricane killing at least 91 people so farThe head of the US disaster relief agency has called Hurricane Helene, which has killed nearly 100 people, a true multi-state event" that caused significant infrastructure damage" and had been made worse because of global heating.The storm killed at least 91 people, according to state and local officials in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Officials feared more bodies would be discovered. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. You can read our full US politics coverage hereRon DeSantis is making a concerted effort to maintain draconian limits on abortion access in Florida that have led to accusations the rightwing Republican governor is conducting a state-sponsored intimidation campaign" against abortion rights and trampling on civil liberties in the state, writes the Guardians's Joseph Contreras.A near total ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy took effect in Florida in May after the state supreme court ruled that the right to an abortion was no longer covered by the privacy clause in the Florida constitution. Continue reading...

Governor vetoes bill that would require generative AI safety testing after tech industry says it'd drive companies awayCalifornia governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed a hotly contested artificial intelligence safety bill after the tech industry raised objections. Newsom said that requiring companies to stress test large AI models before releasing them could drive AI businesses from the state and hinder innovation.California is home to 32 of the world's 50 leading AI companies," the governor said in a statement accompanying the veto. The bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions - so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology." Continue reading...

Lindsey Graham pushes back on ex-president's remarks as Minnesota's Emmer says we should stick on the issues'Senior Republicans distanced themselves Sunday from comments made by Donald Trump at campaign stops over the weekend that opponent Kamala Harris was born mentally disabled" and had compared her actions to that of a mentally disabled person".Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pushed back on Trump's remarks, which came in what Trump himself admitted was a dark" speech. Continue reading...

National security spokesperson John Kirby reiterates ironclad' support for Israel but mourns' civilian deaths

As Benjamin Netanyahu flouts the will of his nation's essential ally, the death of Hezbollah's leader in Lebanon has deepened the region's crisisWhen the US and France launched a call for a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon on Thursday, they were confident that Benjamin Netanyahu backed it. A day later, still in New York for the UN general assembly meeting, the Israeli prime minister approved the airstrike on Beirut that killed the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.Many in Lebanon - as well as in Israel, Syria and elsewhere - will not mourn a man with so much blood on his hands. But they are terrified. More than 1,000 people in Lebanon have reportedly been killed in the past week. Almost a fifth of the population is said to be displaced; families are sleeping in the streets. Withbombs still falling, and the threat of a ground invasion looming, Mr Netanyahu said that Israel's work was not completed.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...

Fulton county officials had agreed on an external team, but the board wants a team tied to the stop-the-steal movementAfter voting this month to require a hand count of paper ballots on election day, the Trump-aligned trio of Georgia state elections board members turned their attention back to one of their favorite topics: how to keep an eye on Fulton county.Georgia's most populous county is always on their mind. For people who still chant stop the steal" almost four years after the 2020 election, Fulton county remains the problem. Earlier this year, the state board entered into a voluntary agreement with Fulton county to embed an external monitoring team into the election apparatus for the 2024 contest. Continue reading...

DoJ unseals indictment against William Braddock III, alleging he made threats against Anna Paulina Luna in 2021The justice department has charged a Florida man for threatening to call up my Russian-Ukrainian hit squad" to kill his political opponent, the Republican congressional representative Anna Paulina Luna, in 2021.The department unsealed an indictment against 41-year-old William Robert Braddock III of St Petersburg, Florida on Thursday, alleging that on 8 June 2021 he made multiple threats to hurt and kill Luna - identified as Victim 1 in the indictment - in a phone call with another individual, Victim 2. Continue reading...

Florida voters report law enforcement personnel visits that appear to be part of drive to block passage of Amendment 4Ron DeSantis is making a concerted effort to maintain draconian limits on abortion access in Florida that have led to accusations the rightwing Republican governor is conducting a state-sponsored intimidation campaign" against abortion rights and trampling on civil liberties in the state.A near total ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy took effect in Florida in May after the state supreme court ruled that the right to an abortion was no longer covered by the privacy clause in the Florida constitution. Continue reading...

Under Biden, immigration has stabilised, inflation has been tamed and crime is down, but his VP is forging a new way'As Joe Biden walked on the set of The View, one of America's most popular daytime television programmes, he was greeted by Hail to the Chief and a studio audience erupting in wild applause and cheers. They love you!" said the co-host Joy Behar. The US president replied wryly: It's always better when you're leaving."During the ABC show, filmed live in a New York studio where digital screens showed images from Biden's career, he claimed to be at peace" with his decision not to seek re-election in November. Yet he also insisted that he could have beaten loser" Donald Trump. And the co-host Whoopi Goldberg criticised the way Democrats forced Biden's hand: I didn't like the way it was done publicly." Continue reading...

Demi Moore's gory satire The Substance made me think about self-image, bodily autonomy - and our worrying obsession with cosmetic surgeryI was thinking about breasts as I watched The Substance. Coralie Fargeat's body-horror fable features Demi Moore as a newly 50, supposedly fading fitness star who makes a pharmaceutical Faustian pact allowing her to create a nubile 20-year-old (played by Margaret Qualley) to replace her half the time. Breasts aren't Fargeat's main focus - it's an ass more than a tit movie - but there are plenty on show. One (minor spoiler alert?) plops bloodily to the floor at a climactic moment and if that - miles from the most harrowing bit - sounds too revolting, it's not the film for you.I was thinking about breasts, because I had just read about the 64% increase in reductions in the US since 2019 (not including post-surgical reconstructions or gender-affirming top surgery). Many are on women under 30, and under-19s represent a small but fast-growing part of the market", the New York Times reported. Women, apparently, want yoga boobs" or the girlish coquette" look - a braless life.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...

Minneapolis house featured in 1984 movie offers once-in-a-lifetime experience with interiors based on late music starPrince fans will have a chance to party like it's 1999 in the very Minnesota house made famous by Purple Rain as the movie celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.The white, two-story Minneapolis home looks unassuming from the outside, but it is a sign o' the times as the newest limited-time Airbnb Icons rental - properties created and run by Airbnb and designed to give guests a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Continue reading...

Cuddly White House pets have been swapped out for stories of dog killing, whale decapitating and bear pranksAnimals have always played a role in political lore in the US, whether it's a series of beloved and cuddly White House pets or Teddy Roosevelt's love of horses that helped cement his robust public image.But as the US's traumatic 2024 election has played out, amid warnings of democracy under threat, multiple attempted assassinations of Donald Trump and fears of civil unrest, it seems that the political treatment of animals in US politics has also taken a disturbing turn. Continue reading...

Special counsel prosecutors who investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election set things straightThe Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion," said the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, AKA the Mueller Report. A Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton."Robert Mueller, the special counsel, did not criminally charge Trump but did not give him a clean bill of health, contrary to misleading claims made by Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general, in a 24 March 2019 letter - AKA the Barr Report.Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation is published in the US by HarperCollins Continue reading...

Legal wrangling remains as Blue Cross Blue Shield pledges to seek reduction, if not elimination, of jury awardThe movement to hold US medical insurers to account scored a notable legal victory recently when a Louisiana civil court jury ordered the state's most prominent health insurance company to pay up more than $400m after underpaying claims to a surgery center that often works with cancer patients.But the insurer - Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Louisiana - has vowed to seek to reduce, if not entirely eliminate, the jury's award to the St Charles Surgical Hospital and Center for Restorative Breast Surgery on appeal. BCBS can ask both the state's fourth circuit court of appeal as well as the Louisiana supreme court for relief. Continue reading...

Cherrypicking what has worked from decriminalisation abroad is far preferable to building more prisons for drug offendersWhat can a German do but a Briton cannot? What can a New Yorker, a Chicagoan and a San Franciscan do, but a Londoner cannot? What can Canadians, Dutch, Portuguese, Chileans, Uruguayans, Maltese all do? The answer is they can legally smoke cannabis. In California there are now courses for cannabis sommeliers. In Britain they would be thrown in jail.Half a century ago, Britons prided themselves on being in the vanguard of social progress. In such matters as health care, sexuality, abortion, crime and punishment, they considered their country ahead of the times. Now it limps nervously in the rear. Continue reading...