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I need my own space and have a limited tolerance for human company ... Might I actually be a moggy?The only time I have ever mentioned my bird-lover's slight - slight! - ambivalence towards cats in a public forum, it brought me the angriest virtual postbag of my career, so I hesitate to even mention them again. Cats are great! I feed my neighbours' cat! My niece is a cat! (By which I mean I view my best friend's cat as a niece-like figure; she is not a child identifying as a cat, a phenomenon some highly suggestible sections of the media got overheated about several news cycles ago.)But I'm daring to mention felines after reading an interview with a French veterinary psychiatrist in the New York Times. Over aperitifs in a cafe not far from the Eiffel Tower" (you can see why he chose to specialise in psychiatry - kir royale with the NYT sounds nicer than expressing a pug's anal glands), Claude Beata explained what cats, who like to keep themselves to themselves", went through during lockdown.Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The president-elect could spark tension between the culturally open cities staging events and a national government promoting insularityVery soon after the outcome of the US presidential election was clear, Fifa's president issued an old photograph of himself shaking hands with a beaming, football-clasping, Donald Trump.Congratulations Mr President! We will have a great Fifa World Cup and a great Fifa Club World Cup in the United States of America!" Gianni Infantino wrote on social media. It was the latest example of Infantino's oleaginous flattery of Trump, whom in 2018 Infantino called part of the Fifa team". And vice versa, it seems. Continue reading...

Voters have elected a Republican majority in the Senate. They have also been electing members of the House of Representatives and state governors

Elections have multiple causes, of course. Yet foreign policy was one of the reasons Americans gave Trump the largest Republican victory in decadesLast October, Joe Biden made the most significant address of a presidency defined by war. Sitting in the Oval Office, he asked Congress to approve $106bn in emergency aid mainly to arm Ukraine and Israel in their ongoing wars. He barely attempted to explain what the United States was seeking to achieve in either place, or how the fighting would come to an end. Instead, he claimed that American allies, and freedom itself, were under attack, and the United States had to help because of its very identity as a nation. We are, as my friend Madeleine Albright said, the indispensable nation,'" Biden intoned. Albright had served as Secretary of State in the late 1990s, at the apex of America's global dominance.The next day I attended a meeting of outside experts" convened by the National Security Council. The group, in fact mostly composed of seasoned national-security hands, showered praise on the administration for Biden's soaring speech. If the attendees had made up the US Congress, they would have rubber-stamped the aid that afternoon and probably added billions more. (The actual Congress balked at the request, approving it only after five months of uncertainty.)Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and Catholic University Continue reading...

It was a wild Sunday for kickers as their errors and heroics helped decide several games. Don't let anyone tell you the position is dullThe late, great coach Buddy Ryan once quipped, Football kickers are like taxi cabs. You can always go out and hire another one." If Ryan were alive today, he might think again. Kickers dominated Week 10 with a collection of horrors and heroics. A few examples of how they made their presence felt: Denver's Wil Lutz entered Sunday with a 95% success rate on field goals this season. So, when Bo Nix led the Broncos down the field and set Lutz up for a potential game-winning, Kansas City Chiefs-beating 35-yarder as time expired, the odds were in his favor. BLOCK. The Chiefs won 16-14 and remain undefeated. Continue reading...

Like most boxing fans I hate the idea of this deluded nonsense but there certainly seems to be a market for itMark Borkowski is the public relations maestro who has worked with everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to Diego Maradona to Jim Rose, an American exhibitionist who used to hang weights from his penis. Borkowski also helped Ian Botham recreate Hannibal's walk across the Alps with elephants, and, for his sins, was the mastermind behind Cliff Richard's Saviour's Day reaching Christmas No 1, despite minimal radio play. So who better to talk about the biggest sporting stunt of the year, Mike Tyson's fight against Jake Paul, which will be streamed into 300m homes via Netflix this weekend?Instinctively, as I told Borkowksi, I hate the idea. Most boxing fans do. It sells a myth that wasn't even close to being a reality in 2004, let alone 2024: namely that Tyson is one of the most ferocious warriors alive, not a 58-year-old who lost 26lb in May after an ulcer flare-up that left him throwing up blood and defecating tar. It risks Tyson's boxing reputation and his health. And, Netflix's lavish promotion aside, it feels more like a sham or a circus than a genuine sporting event. Continue reading...

Imagine how isolated in their trauma Arab-American voters must have felt to turn to Trump. But that's what happenedI would be sceptical of post-election analyses in the wake of what is seen as a shock result. For both sides, voting patterns at this point are a sort of Rorschach test - people will see what they want to see. What I offer here is a mix of instinct and conjecture (what's new, I hear you ask). But it is based on one specific factor that doesn't come as a shock, and which was predicted to harm the Kamala Harris campaign. We can be certain that the Democrats lost voters because of Gaza. The numbers are stark. Another certainty is that those voters will still not be heard.In Dearborn, Michigan, the largest majority Arab American city, Joe Biden won in 2020 with around 70% of the vote. Early stats indicate that Harris received something like 40% of the vote. As concerns over the war were raised loudly and specifically, Harris not only continued to ignore and isolate these voices, but also the campaign sent Bill Clinton out to shush them. Harris never even visited the city. But guess who did? That's right, Donald Trump. And now he's won in Dearborn and taken all of Michigan.Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Immigration hardliner said last week that if Trump needs help running a deportation operation, I am standing by'US president-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), will be in charge of the country's borders in his new administration.Homan's areas of control will include the southern border, the northern border, all maritime, and aviation security", Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. Trump added that border czar" Homan will be in charge of the deportation of illegal immigrants. Continue reading...

Rick Scott has emerged as front runner for the role of Senate majority leader, as Trump urges Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine

This live blog is closed now, you can read our latest full report hereHere is a video report on the protests against Donald Trump in New York and Washington DC mentioned earlier:Protests against Donald Trump erupted in the US on Saturday as people on both coasts took to the streets in frustration about his re-election. Continue reading...

In phone call, Trump reminds Putin of US's sizeable military presence in Europe', Washington Post reportsDonald Trump spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.The US president-elect advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington's sizeable military presence in Europe", the Post reported. Continue reading...

Dariel Vasquez died when tree fell on him as he battled major brush fire along the New York-New Jersey borderA New York parks employee died battling one of a number of wildfires in New Jersey and New York amid dry conditions that have prompted air quality warnings in both states, authorities said on Sunday.The Eastern Dutchess county fire and rescue said the New York state forestry service reported that the worker died when a tree fell on him Saturday afternoon as he battled a major brush fire along the New York-New Jersey border, officials said. Continue reading...

Shooting at Tuskegee University is fourth reported at homecoming events in US within the last three weeksOne person was killed and 16 others were injured when gunfire erupted at Tuskegee University in Alabama on Sunday, the fourth reported shooting at homecoming events across the US within the last three weeks.The Tuskegee shooting occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning. The person who was killed was not affiliated with the university, and their parents have been notified, according to the university. Continue reading...

Trump to visit Oval Office on Wednesday as Biden says he will ensure a peaceful and orderly transition'Donald Trump was declared the winner in Arizona early on Sunday, completing the Republicans' clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats' wounds as it was announced that the president-elect is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the presidential handover.In a national campaign that was projected as being extremely close but he ended up winning handily, the result in Arizona gives Trump 312 electoral college votes, compared with Kamala Harris's 226. The state joins the other Sun belt swing states - Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina - and the three Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in voting Republican. All were expected to be extremely competitive but all went for Trump, though by fairly close margins. Continue reading...

A snap election triggered by Olaf Scholz will be crucial in shaping Europe's response to last week's events in the USSpying a possible silver lining to events in the US, some commentators have speculated that the re-election of Donald Trump may at least concentrate minds among mainstream European leaders. Faced with a rapidly emerging new world order, and with homegrown far-right movements making the political weather, their response has at times appeared sluggish and unconvincing. Perhaps the shock of Trump 2.0 will finally convey the fierce urgency of now.The sudden collapse of Germany's fractious SPDled coalition government, as the US election verdict became clear, certainly points to a quickening of the political tempo. Olaf Scholz is a famously cautious, meticulous politician, with a reputation for equivocating. Not last week. In summarily sacking his finance minister, Christian Lindner, and triggering the exit of the Free Democratic party (FDP) from the government, Chancellor Scholz launched a sequence of events that will lead to snap elections in the spring, or even earlier. Continue reading...

Senator says he doesn't support forcing justice to retire so that Biden can pick replacement before finishing his termBernie Sanders said he opposes any move to force Sonia Sotomayor, the senior liberal justice on the US supreme court, to step down so that Joe Biden could nominate a younger liberal replacement before he finishes his term as president.Sotomayor, 70, is known to suffer from health issues, and some Democrats fear a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died during Donald Trump's first term - giving him a third opportunity to nominate a new justice and further shore up the top court's conservative bent. Continue reading...

Complexity of negotiating with Putin may benefit Kyiv, with US defence and security appointments criticalUkrainian politicians are expressing tentative hopes that the return of Donald Trump to the White House will not necessarily lead to a rapid and humiliating forced peace.An initial 25-minute post-election call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, during which the president-elect handed the phone to Elon Musk, is said to have been positive in tone and no specifics of any peace proposals were discussed. Zelenskyy also thanked Musk for making the Starlink satellite internet service available for use by his country's military, for whom it is a vital communications tool on the front line. Continue reading...

New Orleans team thanks pontiff after he accidentally posts messages on social media and adds hashtag #SaintsThe New Orleans Saints, with just two wins and seven losses in the season so far, appear to be getting some inadvertent spiritually-directed help from Pope Francis.The pontiff has been accidentally posting on social media about religious matters and adding the hashtag #Saints - the official hashtag for the National Football League team, which on X automatically adds the team's logo of a fleur-de-lis. Continue reading...

Americans recount political clashes inside the home and how they get past it - or don'tIn the 2024 election, women turned out for Kamala Harris, while men were instrumental in securing Donald Trump's win, according to early polling information. In some cases, those women and men were married to each other or otherwise romantically involved. In other relationships, it was the men who voted for Harris, while their female partners voted for Trump.Here, Americans who voted differently from their partners shared with the Guardian how such partisan views have affected their relationship, what it was like to cancel out" a loved one's vote, and why some kept their votes secret. Some requested to keep their identities anonymous to discuss personal matters. Continue reading...

The league has made the Argentinian star the crux of its push for growth. But now that his season is over will neutral fans bother to watch?Everyone loves an underdog story, although an iPad may have been angrily thrown across the room in the Garber household as Atlanta United shocked Inter Miami on Saturday evening. Tim Cook might have reacted in a similar way after posting how excited" he was to watch Lionel Messi and Co in the MLS playoffs. He won't be watching any more of him this year.These were the Messi playoffs. The league's entire postseason marketing focused on the GOAT, pre-empting a predicted march to MLS Cup glory after Miami had set a regular-season points record. Messi was everywhere: on billboards, in social media promos and TV ads. They even aired Inter Miami's first playoff game in Times Square. MLS had been building to this moment ever since Messi arrived in Florida. Continue reading...

Harris won Biden's home county in Pennsylvania by less than 1%, a steep drop from Biden's and Obama's winsFrom gold-high top sneakers to Women-for-Trump tank tops, iron-on Fight, Fight, Fight" patches to a poster depicting a 19th-century cowboy outlaw, sales of Trump merchandise at the Trump store in Scranton, Pennsylvania, tripled in sales in the days after the once and future president's landslide second-term win in the US election last week.In a hard week for Democrats, the goods flying off the shelves added insult to injury as Scranton has long been intimately linked to Joe Biden, lauded as his home town and symbol of his affinity with America's working class. Continue reading...

The era that began with the Great Disruptor's first term is over. Beware the emerging eliteIn hindsight, 2016 was the beginning of the beginning. And 2024 is the end of that beginning and the start of something much, much worse.It began as a tear in the information space, a dawning realisation that the world as we knew it - stable, fixed by facts, balustraded by evidence - was now a rip in the fabric of reality. And the turbulence that Trump is about to unleash - alongside pain and cruelty and hardship - is possible because that's where we already live: in information chaos. Continue reading...

The tumult of social media and rightwing propaganda have successfully cast progressives as one judgmental, woke' massThere is no need to pick only a few of the many explanations of Donald Trump's political comeback. Most of the endless reasons we have heard over the past five days ring true: inflation, incumbency, a flimsy Democratic campaign, white Americans' seemingly eternal issues with race, and what one New York Times essayist recently called a regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright". But there is another story that has so far been rather more overlooked, to do with how politics now works, and who voters think of when they enter the polling booth.Its most vivid element is about the left, and one inescapable fact: that a lot of people simply do not like us. In the UK, that is part of the reason why Brexit happened, why Nigel Farage is back, and why our new Labour government feels so flimsy and fragile. In the US, it goes some way to explaining why more than 75 million voters just rejected the supposedly progressive option, and chose a convicted criminal and unabashed insurrectionist to oversee their lives. Continue reading...

While disappointed, leaders say Democratic party stuck with status quo' instead of listening to voter concernsFollowing Donald Trump's decisive victory in this week's presidential election, leaders of the anti-war group Uncommitted National Movement expressed their disappointment over the results, highlighting the Democratic party's failure to listen to its base and prioritize progressive policies. Since the movement formed last winter, its leaders have urged the Democratic party to heed their demands of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to adopt an arms embargo on Israel, or risk losing their votes.While a full picture of how Arab and Muslim Americans voted in the presidential election is still being captured, this election showed a shift among communities that had long formed the Democratic base. A majority of Muslim Americans voted for the Green party candidate Jill Stein at 53%, according to a nationwide exit poll of more than 1,500 Muslim Americans by the civil rights group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), followed by 21% for Trump and 20% for vice-president Kamala Harris. Continue reading...

One post from ex-members of neo-Nazi group says we're happy' with Trump's plans to slash national security jobsWhile Donald Trump has cultivated his reputation as a feared strongman, internal chats and online talk across a spectrum of terrorist organizations calling the US government their enemy show that many see advantages to the president-elect's incoming administration.Key to those beliefs are Trump's own promises that once in office, he plans to reduce the global US military footprint and purge the so-called deep state" national security agencies of workers he considers disloyal to him. Continue reading...

President-elect said to be considering immigration and foreign policy hardliners - plus the controversial RFK JrDonald Trump's second administration has begun to take shape amid fears over extremist appointments and how far right the US will go while Republicans control the White House and probably both chambers of Congress.The range of names being put forward varies from members of Trump's inner circle to the world's richest man, tech mogul Elon Musk. Alongside plutocrats and technocrats are hardline ideologues on immigration and foreign policy and the controversial figure of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a leading vaccine conspiracy theorist. Continue reading...

Accusations and recriminations abound as Democrats try to figure out what went wrong after an electoral trouncingJoe Biden stood before the American people, millions of whom were still reeling from the news of Donald Trump's victory in the presidential race, and reassured them: We're going to be OK."In his first remarks since his vice-president and chosen successor, Kamala Harris, lost the presidential election, Biden delivered a pep talk from the White House Rose Garden on a sunny Thursday that clashed with Democrats' black mood in the wake of their devastating electoral losses. Biden pledged a smooth transfer of power to Trump and expressed faith in the endurance of the American experiment. Continue reading...

YouTuber Jake Paul versus the 58-year-old boxing legend - a grizzly pantomime? Or a grim harbinger of the future?The trailer for Netflix's latest multimillion-dollar venture starts with a dramatic drumbeat, the slap of glove on pad, and a familiar Brooklyn drawl. He's a manufactured killer," says Mike Tyson, with almost cartoon relish. I am a natural-born killer."The camera then cuts to the man he will face in the early hours of Saturday UK time, the influencer Jake Paul. We're going to war," predicts Paul, who made his fortune filming pranks such as I Sunk My Friend's Car And Surprised Him With A New One before an even more lucrative pivot into boxing. And he's getting knocked out." Continue reading...

Bans and taxes on the most popular and effective aid for giving up smoking could lead to a major health crisisImagine we'd found a way to get millions of people to switch from alcohol, which in this country kills 10,000 people a year, to another kind of substance: still addictive, still not risk-free, but when compared with the booze, pretty harmless. Coffee, say.A public health miracle is hailed. Liver units are empty. Heart surgeons spend more time on the golf course, and costly government prevention programmes close. Millions chink into NHS coffers. Continue reading...

Despite their huge untaxed duchy revenues, King Charles and Prince William are still trying to claim the moral high groundThe British public remains immensely forgiving of royal failings, understandably when the family is fragile and struggling with serious illness. Huge public sympathy has allowed for the revival of a doting, vintage style of reporting that only a year ago might have seemed as absurd as it is, in the longer term, unwelcome.A recent palace announcement to the effect that Prince William is now a global statesman" has been received, for example, with the same eager interest as his self-appointment as a homelessness expert, his decision to grow a beard and, a few days ago, his domestic hints: do remember to turn the palace lights out before you leave for another one down the road. Even a professionally made but excruciating video of sunkissed royals romping inspirationally in meadows was accepted, pretty much uncritically, as the new Windsor normal, and maybe it is. Continue reading...

This blog is closed, thanks for following along. You can find our latest US politics coverage here.Russia's foreign ministry sees no grounds for talking about resuming dialogue on strategic stability and arms control with the US at the moment, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing Russia's deputy foreign minister.Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow and Washington are exchanging signals on Ukraine" through closed channels at the military and political levels, according to Interfax. He also said that Russia was ready to listen to US president-elect, Donald Trump's proposals on resolving the crisis in Ukraine, adding that there could be no simple solution. Continue reading...

With votes still being counted from general election, a win would be critical for Trump to advance agenda

Thousands of people take to streets to protest threats to reproductive rights and pledges of mass deportationsProtests against Donald Trump erupted in the US on Saturday as people on both coasts took to the streets in frustration about his re-election.Thousands of people in major cities including New York City and Seattle demonstrated against the former president and now president-elect amid his threats against reproductive rights and pledges to carry out mass deportations at the start of his upcoming presidency. Continue reading...

Thousands of people gathered outside Trump Tower in New York to protest against Donald Trump's re-election as president. The rally targeted Trump's promise to carry out mass deportations from the start of his upcoming presidency in January. In Washington DC, protesters gathered in response to fears that the new administration could further threaten abortion rights after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022

Spokesperson for Trump's presidential transition effort said Bryan Lanza had not been speaking on behalf of president-elect

Mackenzie Michalski, 31, from Portland, Oregon, met 37-year-old man from Ireland at nightclub in BudapestFamily members of a 31-year-old American tourist who was killed while on vacation in Hungary's capital mourned their loss while a 37-year-old suspect was in custody Saturday.The victim, Mackenzie Michalski from Portland, Oregon, was reported missing on 5 November after she was last seen at a nightclub in central Budapest. Police launched a missing person investigation and reviewed security footage from local nightclubs, where they observed Michalski with a man later identified as the suspect in several of the clubs the night of her disappearance. Continue reading...

Coco Gauff wins the WTA Finals after a gripping three-set thriller against Zheng QinwenFirst set: Zheng 3-2 Gauff* (*denotes next server) A humdinger of a game bursting with huge shots and ferocious rallies. An inside out backhand wins Zheng the first point in her serve. Gauff is very quick, spanning the length of the base line like a woman in seven league boots. A inch-perfect forehand from Gauff, then Zheng hits long to give Gauff two break points. Zheng saves the game with a perfectly balanced cross court winner then a backhand down the line. Zheng saves a third break point, and Gauff is disgusted with herself after a limp forehand to give Zheng the advantage. But a cross-court forehand brings her back to deuce. Eventually though, Zheng wins out. They take a sit down.First set: Zheng 2*-2 Gauff (*denotes next server) Gauff is wearing a deeper purple, almost a royal purple, dress, and a matching headband. A double fault is followed up by two outrageous first serves. Zheng pulls back to deuce but brilliant defence from Gauff in a squeaky shoed rally gives her the advantage, and she soon pockets the game Continue reading...

Fema chief calls action reprehensible' while Florida governor calls it a weaponization of government'A employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has been fired from her job and is being investigated because she told a disaster relief team she was directing in Florida after Hurricane Milton to avoid homes displaying election campaign signs supporting Donald Trump, conduct that the agency head on Saturday called reprehensible".Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the federal agency, posted on X: More than 22,000 Fema employees every day adhere to Fema's core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors." Continue reading...

Progressives would do well to try to understand how millions of Americans turned to him because he offered real hope of prosperity, security and fewer warsHow can anyone vote for someone so... fill in the blank... racist, sexist, unconstitutional, hateful, unhinged? This is the question asked frequently in the UK and here in the States, where I have spent the past three weeks trying to understand the Trump phenomenon.Behind the question is an implied superiority; that we, the clever people, have identified the monster that is Donald Trump, but the deluded masses are too stupid to see it. But what I have found at the Trump rallies I've been to is not stupidity, but frustration, pain and a longing for respect.