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Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration party is in reach of becoming the biggest political force in parliament. Plus: the songs of summer

France can look in the mirror and ask what went wrong - or vote for the left to limit the National Rally's grip on powerFor all of my adult life, the Le Pen family has felt like a shadow hanging over my head. Jean-Marie, the father, used to make jokes about the Holocaust. He was a former French paratrooper in Algeria who was accused of torturing prisoners. Then along came his daughter, Marine, who looked less threatening but more ambitious. Then her niece, Marion, who proved even more reactionary.The Le Pen influence appeared to be growing, but I always had the naive idea that reasonable" people, from the right as well as from the left, would never let them win. It proved true in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election: the French then voted massively for Jacques Chirac. It proved true again in 2017 and 2022, when Marine also reached the second round and was defeated by Emmanuel Macron, the promising young outsider who wanted to dismantle the left-right dividing line. It's no longer true.Pierre Haski is a former foreign correspondent and a former deputy editor of the French daily Liberation. He is also president of the press freedom NGO Reporters without Borders Continue reading...

A finance bill was the trigger, but the backdrop is government debt and blinkered interventions from western institutionsThere is as yet no resolution after an unprecedented week in Kenyan politics. What began as protests against a rushed-through finance bill has revealed a crisis of legitimacy within the executive, the legislature and the police that were sent to do the government's bidding. And while the protesters have been very clear about their demands - reject the finance bill - outsiders who are accustomed to simplistic narratives about African politics have been scrambling and failing to understand what these events really mean.Kenya is experiencing a polycrisis of sorts. The finance bill is the immediate trigger: an annually produced document that lays out the government's fiscal strategy, and which normally passes without much comment. But this year it attracted an unprecedented level of attention because it contained several proposals for the taxation of everyday goods, including bread, sanitary towels and more. Kenyans were already struggling with the effects of a collapsing currency and the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis. However, the government was not merely looking to meet its financial obligations but to increase year-on-year spending from the last finance bill, which had already introduced a number of new taxes.Nanjala Nyabola is a writer, political analyst and author of Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya Continue reading...

A Guardian analysis of autopsy records reveals record-high overdoses in 2023. Harm reduction advocates are fighting to save lives on the streetsThey died in parks, cars, motels, alleyways, bus stops, bathrooms and tents. Some collapsed on busy city streets, others in remote desert terrain. The oldest victim was 81. The youngest was one day old.A new analysis by the Guardian reveals that fentanyl claimed the lives of more than 2,100 people living on the streets of Los Angeles county and in homeless shelters between 2014 to 2023.From 2022 to 2023, there was a 15% increase in deaths of unhoused people in which fentanyl was ruled to be one of the primary causes.The number of fentanyl deaths has surged over the last five years, with 633 fatalities among the unhoused in 2022, 255 in 2020 and 30 in 2018.Black Angelenos make up only 9% of the county's overall population, but accounted for 27% of all fentanyl deaths of unhoused people in the last decade. Continue reading...

Proposition 47 is back on the ballot, in yet another sign that crime will be a key topic this election yearCalifornia voters will get to decide whether a law that was heralded as a breakthrough in criminal justice reform will remain intact, the latest signal that anxieties and fear around crime has risen to the top of the state's political agenda in this election year.A measure to undo much of Proposition 47, the landmark 2014 law that downgraded several non-violent felonies to misdemeanors, officially made it onto the ballot on Friday. Continue reading...

The Reform leader plays on the politics of resentment - and that's attractive to a generation that has known so much precarityIn an election of few surprises, a shocking development has been Nigel Farage's sudden popularity among young people. Recent figures show the Reform leader - an antiquated figure who, with his pinstripes, tweeds and cigars, would be at home in a Thatcher cabinet - outperforms Labour on TikTok (in early June, Farage was beating Labour on a views-per-video basis by 30% - and the Tories by more than double). A YouGov survey on 18 June indicated that Farage's popularity among 18- to 24-year-olds dwarfs that of the Conservatives; and Reform has scored its highest polling numbers since it originated as the Brexit party in 2018.With young people often bashed for their woke" politics (including by the Reform leader himself), it may surprise some that Farage - who has spouted rhetoric about Muslims not having British values, and suggesting diversity in hiring is disastrous" - would resonate with this group. But his success relates to his courting of younger voters by aligning himself with misogynistic figures - most notably the influencer Andrew Tate - who have increasing cachet with young men in particular. In an appearance on the Strike It Big podcast (hosted by two 25-year-olds, who interviewed Tate as a guest last year), Farage described Tate as an important voice" for the emasculated". Continue reading...

The US's pursuit of Assange under the Espionage Act created a dangerous precedent that threatens journalistic practicesJulian Assange's lengthy detention has finally ended, but the danger that his prosecution poses to the rights of journalists remains. As is widely known, the US government's pursuit of Assange under the Espionage Act threatens to criminalize common journalistic practices. Sadly, Assange's guilty plea and release from custody have done nothing to ease that threat.That Assange was indicted under the Espionage Act, a US law designed to punish spies and traitors, should not be considered the normal course of business. Barack Obama's justice department never charged Assange because it couldn't distinguish what he had done from ordinary journalism. The espionage charges were filed by the justice department of Donald Trump. Joe Biden could have reverted to the Obama position and withdrawn the charges but never did.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs Continue reading...

Do you have a friend you contact only when you need to be mean-spirited? Or someone you would categorise as a chaos friend? If not, you just might be one ...The New York Times recently explored the vexing problem of the medium friend'": people who aren't your ride or die, but more than mere acquaintances. How much of each other's bandwidth should you take up? Is there an imbalance in how you perceive your friendship?I am less interested in the problem than the expression (and the man in the article who, mind-bogglingly, ranks his friends in a spreadsheet). We are increasingly attuned to the importance of friendships for our wellbeing and becoming more thoughtful about how we make and maintain them. Perhaps it is time to try labelling friends, like plastic jars in tidy people's pantries on Instagram? Continue reading...

The US president has squandered his leverage over Netanyahu even as the Israeli leader continues to undermine himSince Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, Joe Biden has shown nearly absolute support for Israel and its leaders. His administration has sent hundreds of weapons shipments that have enabled the Israeli military to sustain its brutal war on Gaza; used US veto power at the UN security council to block multiple resolutions demanding a ceasefire; and undermined the legitimacy of both the international court of justice and the international criminal court because of their criticisms of Israeli actions. Biden has been willing to destroy the facade of an international rules-based order to protect Israel and the extremist government of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.You would think that Netanyahu would show deep gratitude to an ally like Biden who demonstrates such unconditional backing for nearly nine months, often acting against his own and larger US interests. Instead, Netanyahu has consistently ignored and defied Israel's most important ally - and paid no price for it. Now the Israeli premier is openly mocking Biden and his administration: on 18 June, Netanyahu released an English-language video claiming the US was withholding weapons that Israel needs to continue its war. On 23 June, Netanyahu continued venting his contempt of Biden and overall US support, telling the Israeli cabinet that the Biden administration has dramatically decreased arms supplies in recent months.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University Continue reading...

Emmanuel Macron's snap election gamble has backfired spectacularly as voters of the left and right united to reject himSooner or later, possibly as early as next week, France's far-right National Rally (RN) is going to take power. That's the main lesson of Sunday's first round of snap parliamentary elections, in which Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration nationalists amplified their European election score on a far higher turnout.President Emmanuel Macron's gamble of dissolving parliament and seeking a clarification" from voters after an ultra-short three-week campaign backfired spectacularly on his own supporters. His centrist coalition finished a distant third behind the RN and the leftwing New Popular Front (NFP) in the popular vote and looks set to keep fewer than 100 of its 249 seats in the 577-member national assembly. After Sunday's first ballot, Macron called for a broad rally in support of republican and democratic candidates" and against the extreme right. But few people are listening.Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

US aircraft maker reverses decision it made nearly 20 years ago to outsource part of production amid safety crisis

The PM's unbending belief in Britain as a meritocracy blinded him to the realities of race, class - and his own flawed projectIn Nairobi's industrial South B district stands the Highway secondary school, alma mater of Rishi Sunak's father. It was established for Asian boys in 1962, one year before Kenya's independence, during a time when there were separate schools for whites, Asians and black Kenyans.Days after Sunak became prime minister, the principal told the Kenyan press that his premiership was an indication that with determination and focus, one can be anything in this world. We are not limited if the example of the UK premier is anything to go by." The celebration reflected an aspirational approach to life, emerging from deep within the postcolonial experience, that conceives of the world in terms of centre and periphery, and in which success is defined by proximity to that centre. Endeavour to excel", the Highway school motto, is hand-painted neatly on a blue sash on its walls. Continue reading...

The US president met with his family at Camp David, after a disastrous debate performance last week led to calls for him to drop out of the electionJoe Biden's family have urged him stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance last week, according to reports in the US media, as senior democrats and donors have expressed exasperation at how his staff prepared him for the event.The president gathered with his family at Camp David on Sunday, where discussions were reported to include questions over his political future. It came after days of mounting pressure on Biden, after a debate in which his halting performance highlighted his vulnerabilities and invited calls from pundits, media and voters for him to step aside. Continue reading...

Planemaker set to be offered plea deal, angering loved ones of the 346 people who died on 2018 and 2019 flightsThe US Department of Justice is set to charge Boeing with fraud, but plans to offer the planemaker a plea deal, according to sources familiar with the matter - have infuriated the loved ones of hundreds of passengers who died in two fatal crashes five years ago.Boeing will be granted until the end of this week to decide whether it will plead guilty to the charge and avoid trial, officials told families of those on board the fatal Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 that claimed 346 lives. Continue reading...

Park staff say they have not been able to locate calf, who fulfilled Lakota prophecy and is named Wakan GliA rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone national park has not been seen since its birth on 4 June, according to park officials.In a statement released on Friday, the National Park Service (NPS) confirmed that a white buffalo calf was born in Lamar Valley earlier this month, adding that the park's buffalo management team had received numerous reports of the calf on 4 June from park visitors, professional wildlife watchers, commercial guides and researchers. Continue reading...

Many want the president to quit his re-election bid following a catastrophic debate. His team must ask what is best for the USThe Democrats have no good options. The question now is which is the least dangerous of the bad ones. Democratic voters did not want Joe Biden to run again. Almost 70% judged him too old to serve anotherterm as president when polled last year. Privately, many senior Democrats and donors sharedtheir qualms. But with Mr Biden determined to stand, the consensus was to rally round. Now, after last Thursday's catastrophic debate, the party is panicking. Only four monthsfrom the election, there is frenzied discussionof potential replacements.That would almost certainly require MrBiden's agreement. His wife, Jill, seen as key to his decision, seems to be urging him on. He is said to believe that only he is capable of beating Mr Trump again. Few agree. The lack of a formal mechanism to remove him does not preclude the effects of political gravity. Slumping polls, drying up funds and private, or even public, demands for his departure from senior Democratic figures could yet change his mind. A growing chorus of previously supportive media figures is urging him to quit. Continue reading...

There are only 18 seats at stake in the province this week, but the next UK government has a big political task on its hands thereCompared with the contests in the rest of the UK or in France, the one in Northern Ireland may seem like this week's electoral sideshow. Devolved government there has finally been resumed. The Brexit protests have died down. And there are only 18 seats in Northern Ireland anyway, out of Westminster's 650. The chance of the Northern Ireland results affecting the post-election balance of power, as they did in 2017, are vanishingly small this time.All true. Yet the election in Northern Ireland matters all the same. It matters for Northern Ireland's people, of course, not least because one in four of them are on an NHS treatment waiting list, a higher figure than in most of Britain. It matters too because, although the devolved institutions have resumed operation, there is too little by way of creative, cross-community, cooperative government to show for it. And it matters because, at least among unionists, the wounds of Brexit have not been fully healed. Continue reading...

Republican senator warns of retribution: Pandora's box opened by the Democrats is going to be applied'South Carolina's Republican senator Lindsey Graham warned of retribution against Democrats amid Donald Trump's ongoing criminal cases.In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday, Graham, a staunch Trump ally, said without evidence, The Democrats keep calling president Trump a felon. Well, be careful what you wish for. I expect there will be an investigation of Biden's criminality at the border." Continue reading...

Officials dismiss reports family would discuss president quitting race and say summit was scheduled before debateJoe Biden was meeting with his family on Sunday, a discussion believed to include talk about his political future even though it was already scheduled to take place before his calamitous presidential debate on Thursday with Donald Trump.The meeting at Camp David came as pressures mounted on Biden following the vast fallout of the debate, in which his halting performance highlighted his vulnerabilities in a close election and invited calls from pundits, media and voters for him to step aside. Continue reading...

Many of us won't get a choice. But dying rites are not just for those of faith

A 13-year-old was killed Friday in Utica after police stopped two youths in connection with armed robbery investigationVideo released late Saturday shows an officer in upstate New York fatally shooting a 13-year-old boy who had been tackled to the ground after he ran from police and pointed a replica handgun at them.The teen was killed late Friday in Utica after officers in the city about 240 miles (400km) north-west of Manhattan stopped two youths a little after 10pm in connection with an armed robbery investigation, police said. Continue reading...

60% of respondents, Republicans and Democrats, say president should be replaced, while 11% were unsureA majority of voters want Joe Biden to stand down following his dismal debate performance, yet aren't convinced there is a suitable alternative Democratic candidate, new polls have found.In a Morning Consult poll, 60% of respondents, Republicans and Democrats, said the president should be replaced by his party for November's election, while another 11% were unsure. Continue reading...

Since the pandemic, remote properties have been marketed for off-grid living. But a life spent gardening and eating cormorants is not for meI have just been to the Hebrides, because trudging across tussocks in the rain is my ancestrally transmitted idea of fun. The weather was fine, actually, and the midges hadn't reached peak summer blood lust, which meant we could indulge in that universal holiday activity: fantasising about living in the destination.On one walk, we stumbled across the perfect beachfront cottage, utterly isolated, accessible only on foot or by quad bike. Was it the perfect end-times home, we wondered; was there enough growing land, a fresh water source, high ground for spotting marauding - possibly mutant - attackers? Continue reading...

AAF to publish dossiers of employees they consider hostile to ex-president, with goal of ultimately replacing themArmed with rhetoric about the deep state", a conservative-backed group is planning to publicly name and shame career government employees that they consider hostile to Donald Trump.This blacklist" of civil servants, which will be published online, is intended to advance Trump's broader goals, which, if elected, include weeding out government employees and replacing them with loyalists. Continue reading...

Education superintendent and Moms for Liberty ally drafts law requiring all reading be developmentally appropriate'South Carolina has implemented one of the most restrictive book ban laws in the US, enabling mass censorship in school classrooms and libraries across the state.Drafted by Ellen Weaver, the superintendent of education and close ally of the far-right group Moms for Liberty, the law requires all reading material to be age or developmentally appropriate". The vague wording of the legislation - open to interpretation and deliberately inviting challenge - could see titles as classic as Romeo and Juliet completely wiped from school shelves. Continue reading...

For centuries these strays have been looked after and respected as part of Turkish culture. Now they've been dragged into the president's culture warsWhen I first moved to Istanbul in 2010, knowing almost no one and grappling with an unfamiliar language, it was the local street dogs who first drew me into my new life. Chico, an elderly alsatian, and Herkul, a labrador mongrel, lived on a corner near my apartment where they watched the life of the neighbourhood pass by with a vigilant serenity.Locals fed them, and I learned to my amazement that some even clubbed together to pay the dogs' vet bills if they were sick or injured. Greeting them each day became a ritual, and when I first went to a pet shop to buy treats, using my halting Turkish to explain that I was getting them for dogs, but not my dogs", the shopkeeper replied: Ahh, for the street dogs," as though nothing were more natural.Alexander Christie-Miller is a writer and journalist, and author of To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of IstanbulDo 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...

From a barbershop and a cigar bar in Atlanta, many Black voters say they remain undecided after an underwhelming debateInside a barbershop in Atlanta's affluent Buckhead neighborhood, eight Black men gathered to talk politics on the day before the presidential debate. Most were business owners around town, social media stars and notable conservatives.All but one. Continue reading...

After the president's disastrous debate performance, some want to drop him as the party nominee. But it's not so simpleIf anyone were to doubt the menace of Donald Trump, they had only to watch his performance in Thursday night's debate.His bullying lies were not just lies - they were frightening opposites of the truth, uttered with the vigor and certainty of someone who has now mastered the dark art of demagoguery.I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious. I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down you get back up.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Political allies are also surprised at move, which cancels nearly entirety of state's funding and will affect economyRon DeSantis stripped more than $32m in arts and culture funding from Florida's state budget over his hatred of a popular fringe festival that he accused of being a sexual event", critics of the rightwing governor say.DeSantis justified his unprecedented, wide-ranging veto of grants to almost 700 groups and organizations by saying it was inappropriate" for $7,369 of state money to be allocated to Tampa fringe, a 10-day festival that took place earlier this month with a strong message of inclusivity, and its sister event in Orlando. Continue reading...

We've been making short-term decisions about our planet for a long time. The consequences are horrific to beholdThe slashing rain turned the dirt roads into muddy creeks, the bus's wipers shoved the torrent back and forth across the windshield, and Don Schreiber handled the wheel like Sandra Bullock in Speed as he wisecracked from under a big gray moustache. The vehicle swerved and slid in the storm, lightning flashed on the horizon, thunder shook the air. Whether the old yellow bus would make it back to the ranch house, get stuck or slide and flip depended on his driving.Don, in his white Stetson and a blue and white checked western shirt, was our tour guide on this land in northwestern New Mexico that he knew intimately and had dedicated his retirement to protecting. When he and his wife Jane Schreiber bought the ranchland about 200 miles north-west of Santa Fe in 1999 to retire to, they - like many westerners - found that they owned the land, but not the subsurface rights. The fracking boom came, and gas companies began gouging holes for gas wells, laying pipelines and cutting roads across the fragile desert soil. Big trucks rolled across the land night and day to service the wells that studded the landscape. At the well we stopped at, the pressure gauge was broken.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...

Tournament soccer should be a party but exorbitant ticket prices, high temperatures and ill-considered venues have hurt the atmosphereThe official X account of Copa America put out a post during the opening Group C game between Uruguay and Panama. Look who's here," it read. Attached were photos of young, glamorous social media influencers posing as they enjoyed the game from the executive boxes.The post soon went viral and has been viewed more than 7m times. Not by fans expressing joy, but rather by the Americas joining together to ask: Who?" Continue reading...

The unrelenting pursuit by America exposed how far officialdom will go to hide the truthIt was a messy ending to an often chaotic story. Julian Assange was released last week from Belmarsh prison to board a flight to the US-governed Pacific island of Saipan. There, under a special deal with the US authorities, he pleaded guilty in court to illegally securing and publishing classified documents in exchange for a prison sentence of five years, which he had already served in British prisons. And so, for the first time in 12 years, Assange found himself a free man.Having to plead guilty to espionage was a necessity for Assange to gain personal freedom. But it raises wider questions about journalistic freedom. Assange has been charged with espionage not because he spied for a foreign government but because he did what many journalists do: he published classified material that the US government did not want the public to see. The charges Assange faced rely almost entirely on conduct that investigative journalists engage in every day", Columbia University's Jameel Jaffer, an expert on free speech, observed in 2019 when the indictments were first brought. That is why the indictment should be understood as a frontal attack on press freedom".Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

After Princess Anne's accident, concerns over a too small royal family may be over-inflatedEven before Princess Anne's head injury, with a king and princess both on long-term sick leave, royal family experts were arguing that its professional component, having previously been too big, is now dangerously small. If there ever was an intervening just right, nobody spotted it at the time.Mercifully, given the family's impressive birth rate, there is no suggestion it will have to resort, as in the past, to importing foreign workers who may not even speak the language. But if the labour shortfall is not yet acute or even noticeable, royal authorities allude to struggles that have perhaps been under-reported: vacant patronages, event planners who can't lay their hands on a duke. The royal biographer, Hugo Vickers, wrote months ago that the King's cancer diagnosis is a reminder of what a foolish idea a slimmed-down monarchy is".Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

Residents evacuate after Boulder View fire rips alongside Scottsdale, and wildfires in California and Oregon rageA wildfire north-east of Phoenix has, as of Saturday, threatened scores of homes, forced dozens of residents to evacuate and required more than 200 firefighters to battle it.No structures have been damaged as the wildfire has traversed nearly 6 sq miles (15 sq km) on the cusp of the Boulder Heights subdivision of Scottsdale, said Matthew Wilcox, spokesperson for a multi-agency wildfire response team. Continue reading...

Pressure mounts as the New York Times and some of Biden's strongest backers join the callAmid a howling chorus of derision over Joe Biden's substandard debate performance against Donald Trump, one voice seemed to resonate more powerfully than others.At 6.15pm on Friday - roughly 19 hours after the two presidential candidates left the stage in Atlanta the previous evening - the verdict of the New York Times's editorial board dropped online to the newspaper's subscribers. Continue reading...

The first lady is a key player in the administration - and critics fear she has been shielding her husband beyond a reasonable pointThrough a week in which Joe Biden's re-election hopes seemed to crumble, Jill Biden has been at his side. At times, she's appeared more than a resolute first lady, standing in as his compere, guide and primary political aide.The president's wife of 45 years - they met on a blind date, set up by Biden's brother, in 1975 - may now hold the key to whether Biden accepts mounting pressure from Democrat party donors and abandons a faltering re-election bid or risks another debate with Donald Trump in September with even higher stakes. Continue reading...

Swimmer off Fernandina beach was rescued by Nassau county marine unit after distress call from boat on FridayA shark attack off Florida's Atlantic coast left a man with a severe bite to his right arm" on Friday, authorities say, leaving him in critical condition from blood loss.The Nassau county sheriff's office marine unit, which was patrolling off the coast of Fernandina beach near the Florida-Georgia border, said it had received a distress call from a boat on Friday and had applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Continue reading...

Michelle Peters, 47, of Lebanon has been charged with first-degree domestic assault and armed criminal actionA Missouri woman has been accused of secretly putting weed killer and insecticide in her husband's Mountain Dew drinks.In a statement released earlier this week, the Laclede county sheriff's office announced that 47-year-old Michelle Peters of Lebanon, Missouri, has been charged with first-degree domestic assault and armed criminal action. Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak goes soggy and Keir Starmer is short of change, but at least Steve Baker and Ed Davey are having fun

The presidential debate was further proof of the fragility of the country's constitution. Radical reform is crucial, whoever wins in NovemberIt wasn't so much what Joe Biden said, it was how he said it. His voice was weak and shaky, he lost his way, forgot what he was saying. He sounded feeble. He sounded old. Very old. And the storm of white-hot criticism that rained down on his head from friends and foes alike after the 2024 election's embarrassing and disastrous first presidential TV debate with Donald Trump was blistering. It was sad and painful to watch.Republicans were jubilant. They think it's all over bar the voting. They claimed Biden had only one objective: to prove, at 81, that he was fit to lead as president for a second term - and he failed. Many Americans will agree. Except they already thought he was too old. It's unclear as yet how much this flop will sway undecided voters. Proud, stubborn Biden will fiercely resist pressure to stand down. And no leading Democrat is publicly willing as yet to wield the knife. That may change. Continue reading...

Storm Lake police question how to enforce a troubling' state law after 30 years of gaining trust with residentsSince becoming the police chief of Storm Lake, Iowa, four years ago, Chris Cole has done everything he can think of to convince people who come from around the world to work in his town that he is not their enemy.Cole and his officers have hosted barbecues in parks and get-togethers at taquerias. They've dubbed a Hummer H2 seized from a drug dealer the YumVee", and driven it to events around town, its trunk full of ice cream, soccer balls and other sports gear for kids. And in a town where Spanish is widely spoken, Cole has found time every day to study the language and uses it in conversation when he can. Continue reading...