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Having strength in depth in numerous positions can be a curse for an international coach looking to build a cohesive team

Democrats say Republican chairman's report inflates Harris's role and overlooks Trump's for election purposesPartisan divisions over the chaotic 2021 pullout of western forces from Afghanistan have burst into the open ahead of Tuesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia after a Republican-led congressional report attempted to implicate Kamala Harris in the episode.A 250-page report from the House of Representatives' foreign affairs committee castigated the Biden administration for failing to anticipate the Taliban's rapid takeover and neglecting to prepare for the orderly departure of non-combatant personnel. Continue reading...

Campaign posts positions on economy, fundamental freedoms', safety and crime, and national security

Proposed contract hailed by the union as the best it had ever negotiated and is seen as early win for new CEOBoeing and its biggest union have reached a tentative deal covering more than 32,000 workers and averting a possible strike that was set for this week.The proposed four-year contract was hailed by the union as the best it had ever negotiated. It is also an early win for new Boeing CEO, Robert Kelly" Ortberg, who is tasked with turning around the struggling planemaker. Continue reading...

The American deserves credit for reaching his first grand slam final. But he was also aware that it may turn out to have been his best chance at a major titleIt was a picture perfect day for Taylor Fritz to win the US Open men's final. The weather was cool and still. The sunshine that streamed into Arthur Ashe Stadium stayed off the court, out of his face. But most significantly, an all-American crowd - which included pop singer namesake Taylor Swift, among other glitterati from sports and screen - was firmly at Fritz's back. It was shaping up to be an exquisite afternoon, the sort that can define a summer - or a life in Fritz's case. But then Jannik Sinner had to go ahead and spoil it.On Sunday the world No 1 made quick work of Fritz, dispatching the American in a clinical straight sets victory that lasted a little more than two hours on the way to claiming the US Open - the second grand slam title of his burgeoning career. While the Italian clambered into the stands to celebrate with his support team (Bravo, Jannik," the singer Seal cooed to him mid-hug. Forza"), Fritz sat slumped in his chair, hands on his head and ruminated about what could have been. Continue reading...

Republican officials see Trump's campaign as comparable in size to a midterm election rather than a presidentialRepublican officials are raising the alarm that Donald Trump's campaign has invested far fewer resources for its voter turnout operation in battleground states than previous presidential election races, and attempts to bridge the gap with political action committees have come too late.The Republican National Committee once envisioned an extensive field operation for the 2024 election, including having about 90 staffers in the must-win state of Pennsylvania. Continue reading...

Police say alcohol a factor as 73-year-old man arrested after accidentally driving truck into front of buildingAs many as 30 people were injured after a car crashed into an Elks Lodge restaurant in the Phoenix suburb of Apache Junction, authorities said on Sunday.Police in the Arizona city said 73-year-old Thomas Edward Kain was arrested after he got into his truck to leave the restaurant and accidentally drove into the front of the building at about 7pm Saturday. Continue reading...

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 16 in Syria while a Jordanian truck driver killed three Israeli workers at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. Plus: The massive US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy

Debate could allow Harris to deliver on her oft-repeated promise: that she will prosecute the case against TrumpKamala Harris and Donald Trump will arrive in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday for their first (and potentially only) presidential debate. The event will mark the first time that Harris and Trump have ever met face to face, and it comes less than two months after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race following his own fateful debate performance in June.The change at the top of the Democratic ticket appears to have unnerved Trump and his campaign advisers, who have struggled to land attacks against Harris. The debate will present Trump with his most significant opportunity yet to negatively define Harris in voters' minds, as polls show a neck-and-neck race in key battleground states. Continue reading...

The mainstream media is obsessed with science and boring old facts. We unhealthy eaters need to be reassured that everything is fine and a little of what you fancy still does you goodThe recent headline that a Daily croissant can take a toll on your heart in under a month" was like a dagger to mine, just as my beloved local baker had got really good at vegan ones. Not that it has to be a croissant: researchers at Oxford investigated the impact on heart health of a diet high in saturated fat for just over three weeks. It's bad, if you had any lingering doubt.This comes on the back of admittedly unsurprising, but personally devastating health stories such as the one saying that eating croissants when you are stressed reduces arterial elasticity" - a very stressful read. I also felt targeted by research on how unhealthy snacking sabotages the benefits of a healthy diet (this week a woman in a cafe asked if I was having a party" when I put in my cake order; I was not). Then there is the continued drip-feed of doom about sedentary living and poor sleep, and general angst-provoking news about environmental contaminants.Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Sources say campaign is concerned that Trump may engage in the kind of self-sabotage that turned off voters in 2020Donald Trump's campaign is most concerned going into the debate against Kamala Harris with the former president's mood, afraid that the mercurial Trump could engage in the kind of self-sabotage that turned off voters in the 2020 presidential election, according to people familiar with the situation.The campaign's internal refrain is whether they get happy Trump" or angry Trump", the people said, as they count down the days to perhaps the final presidential debate this cycle. Continue reading...

How should the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee define success? Is it strictly in terms of medals?For Team USA, the Paralympics took a parallel course to the Olympics.In the first few days, successes seemed astonishingly rare. Swimmers were taking a few silver medals, but not much gold, and it appeared that the team may have evolved from experienced" to aging." Continue reading...

Plaintiffs in lawsuit allege they were terrorized for more than 90 minutes as at least 40 vehicles encircled the busA jury trial opening in Austin, Texas, on Monday will seek to hold Trump supporters accountable for allegedly ambushing a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign bus on the state's main highway in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.Plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege they were terrorised and intimidated for more than 90 minutes as they took a bus tour canvassing for the Democratic ticket in the final days of the election. Continue reading...

As Trump utters the last phrase of the oath of office - so help me God' - the first phase of what Project 2025's authors call the playbook' begins

Georgia senator Raphael Warnock urges Congress to pass laws to deal with this' after deadly school shooting in his stateAmericans are all sitting ducks" unless Congress passes more substantial gun control, US senator Raphael Warnock said Sunday, four days after two students and two teachers at a high school in his home state of Georgia were shot to death, allegedly by a teenager wielding a military-style rifle.Warnock's comments Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press came in direct response to statements from Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, who had previously said the killings at Appalachee high in Winder, Georgia, demonstrated how it was a fact of life" that US schools present soft targets" to a psycho [wanting] to make headlines". Continue reading...

New England have lost an all-time great quarterback and coach over the last few seasons. But there are encouraging signs as they start to rebuildThe post-Bill Belichick era for the New England Patriots is off to a sunny start. The Patriots went on the road Sunday and beat the Cincinnati Bengals, a widely anticipated playoff team, 16-10. New coach Jerrod Mayo, a Belichick disciple turned replacement, got a soothing Gatorade bath in his debut game. The Patriots were eight-point underdogs, and their win was the most surprising result of Week 1 action.On some level, the Patriots' life after Belichick figured to be bleak. The coach who brought the franchise six Super Bowls is spending this year doing broadcasting gigs, and there's no recapturing the magic that Belichick and Tom Brady conjured together for nearly two decades. But through a different lens, the Patriots of old died when Brady walked out the door in free agency in 2020. There was nothing left to preserve by the time the Patriots parted ways with Belichick at the end of last season and hired Mayo, his former linebacker and assistant coach. A fresh start was, at that point, the only reasonable choice. Continue reading...

Research shows a public less nationalistic, less ideological, with its own sense of national pride - and a media and political class out of syncOnce again the gap between politics and media, on one hand, and the general public, on the other, continues to be revealed in its scale. Survey after survey bring us the news that things are changing. That the British public is becoming more progressive in attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers, immigration, unions and industrial action, net zero targets and, most recently, British history.The National Centre for Social Research's British social attitudes survey shows a country that has become less nationalistic and jingoistic and, most sharply, less proud" or very proud" of British history. Along with that, there were also declines in pride in Britain's democracy, its political influence and its economic achievements. The only two spheres where pride remained constant and high were sport, and art and literature.Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The seven-time Super Bowl winner's debut on Fox was mediocre at best as he stumbled with his lines and offered little in the way of insightAs the third quarter of the Cowboys' dismissal of the Browns got under way on Sunday afternoon, Fox play-by-play anchor Kevin Burkhardt turned to his new on-air partner Tom Brady for guidance on what Cleveland needed to do to spark their limp offense into life. How do they move the ball and get something going here?" Burkhardt asked, an issue on which the man widely considered the greatest quarterback of all time would, one assumes, have an original thought or two to offer the viewers at home. With a confident nod, Brady replied: In order to move forward they need to stop from going backward." Burkhardt laughed, but from the expression in his eyes you could tell he was crying inside. Is this what $375m buys you these days?Brady's TV debut was perhaps the most hotly anticipated sports broadcasting event of the year, a story the media has covered with breathless intensity in the run-up to the NFL's kickoff weekend. The former New England Patriots legend signed a $375m deal with Fox in 2022 to become their lead Sunday football analyst for the next 10 years, and he spent much of 2023 preparing for his new role - studying the work of other analysts, consulting the wise old heads of the sport for tips on how best to manage the transition from field to commentary box, calling games live in private as practice. As if his godly playing reputation and the fortune Fox is giving him for his insights have not already raised expectations enough, Brady has also assumed the analytical position at a time when the pressure of comparison on Fox has perhaps never been greater. By stepping into the seat next to Burkhardt, Brady has displaced Greg Olsen, who drew rave reviews in the lead color role last season for his on-screen fluency, charm, and rare ability to blend narrative and data into a compelling explanatory whole. Continue reading...

National and swing-state polling indicates a narrow race, with support for Trump remaining solid despite his change of Democratic rivalDonald Trump and Kamala Harris are in effect tied heading into the final weeks of the election campaign, according to a national poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College, raising the stakes of Tuesday's presidential debate.Trump is up one percentage point, 48%-47%, over Harris, according to the survey released on Sunday, a difference that is within the survey's three-percentage point margin of error, meaning a win for either candidate in the election on 5 November is well within reach. Continue reading...

Three firefighters injured and more than 35,000 structures endangered by Line fire amid days-long heatwaveTens of thousands of homes and buildings were threatened Sunday by an out-of-control wildfire burning in the foothills of a national forest east of Los Angeles, amid a days-long heatwave that pushed temperatures into the triple digits across the region.State firefighters said three firefighters had been injured and more than 35,000 structures were threatened, including single and multi-family homes and commercial buildings, while authorities issued evacuation orders for several areas. Thunderstorms expected later in the day could make conditions even more challenging. Continue reading...

Mayor of nearby city says seven hurt from gunfire and vehicle accident by interstate in area south of LexingtonAs the manhunt for the gunman in a mass shooting on a Kentucky interstate Saturday continues, officials have ruled out road rage as a motivation behind the attack - which left seven people injured.In a news conference on Sunday, Laurel county sheriff's office deputy Gilbert Acciardo said a person being sought by investigators for having possibly been involved in the shooting was not in a vehicle".This article was amended on 8 September 2024. An earlier version incorrectly said that London is about 100 miles north-west of Frankfort, instead of south-east. Continue reading...

We have to do everything possible to ensure that he's not re-elected,' ex-congresswoman saysThe former congresswoman Liz Cheney called Donald Trump an unrecoverable catastrophe" on Sunday and urged fellow Republicans to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in November's election.We see it on a daily basis - somebody who was willing to use violence in order to attempt to seize power, to stay in power, someone who represents unrecoverable catastrophe, frankly, in my view, and we have to do everything possible to ensure that he's not re-elected," Cheney said in an interview on ABC News This Week, a show on the network that is hosting Tuesday's debate between Trump and Harris. Continue reading...

Trump recently gave garbled answer to question on childcare, while Vance said extended family should help outWith the Republican presidential ticket led by Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance recently drawing scrutiny over their answers to questions about how they would address the high cost of childcare in the US, the far-right Project 2025 manifesto offers some suggestions to them.The plan calls for shifting funding for childcare to in-home family care because it claims children who go to childcare are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and neglect. Continue reading...

Message represents latest threat to use the office of the presidency to exact retribution if he wins second termWith just days to go before his first - and likely only - debate against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump posted a warning on his social media site threatening to jail those involved in unscrupulous behavior" this election, which he said would be under intense scrutiny.WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again," the former president wrote, again trying to sow doubt about the integrity of November's election, even though cheating is incredibly rare.Guardian staff contributed reporting Continue reading...

Harris campaign seeks to press advantage on powerful motivator, especially in states with abortion on the ballotAs Kamala Harris and Donald Trump prepare to meet on the debate stage in Philadelphia, the battle over abortion rights has vaulted to the center of the 2024 presidential election campaign, the first since the supreme court's decision overturning Roe v Wade.At the party's convention last month, Democrats spotlighted the harrowing stories of women placed in medical peril as a result of post-Roe abortion bans in their states. Last week, the Harris campaign launched a 50-stop reproductive freedom" bus tour across several battleground states, kicking off in Trump's back yard", miles from the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in south Florida. Continue reading...

California congressman says focus of Harris campaign should be on unity and reaching out to skeptical votersCongressman and Kamala Harris campaign surrogate Ro Khanna said he doesn't support the trend among his fellow Democrats of calling Republicans weird" on the election trail.I'm not, in candor, a fan of calling each other weird' or names, I don't think that advanced American democracy," the California US House representative said during a live event with the Guardian at the Texas Tribune festival Saturday in Austin. I think we have to - in this country, and as a party - not just win, but deserve victory. And to deserve victory means to offer a vision that is going to bring this country together with a common purpose." Continue reading...

Aunt says her sister texted saying she spoke with school and urged them to immediately' find her son and check on himThe mother of the teenaged boy who has been charged with murder over the fatal shooting of four people at his Georgia high school called the school before the killings, warning staff of an extreme emergency" involving her son, a relative said.Annie Brown told the Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray's mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and urged them to immediately" find her son to check on him.Guardian staff contributed reporting Continue reading...

As the final grand slam of the year comes to a close, here are some of our favourite images from the fortnight at Flushing Meadows Continue reading...

At 49, I'm already well into my late career', according to an idiotic graphic from the job search giant Indeed. But that's not the way life works any moreAt 49, I've just learned I'm in my late career" era, according to a recent marketing graphic from the job search giant Indeed. That's what work is like for us 45- to 55-year-olds, following Exploration" (21-25), Establishment" (25-35) and Mid-career" (35-45).Late career! I have only been doing this for 14 years (the less said about the decade lost to the law the better) and this bald characterisation has given me full-on existential vertigo. It's worse than when my best friend told me last year I was probably peaking", which I obviously heard as freewheeling towards death". Why even bother staggering on?Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

As once-prolific nicknamer Trump fails to land a hit, Democrats set good manners aside in favour of ridiculeIn Trump in Exile, her recent book on the former president's life after losing power, the reporter Meridith McGraw describes how aides to Donald Trump set about destroying Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who threatened to lure Republican voters away.One Trump adviser referred to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals," McGraw writes. Rule number five: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." Continue reading...

Interviews with both prime minsters show there's a narrow path towards a better EU-UK relationshipA curious feature of Brexiter psychology is how the ruinous outcome they once actively sought for Britain is now blamed on tricksy European negotiators, led at the time by Michel Barnier.And so it was wearingly predictable that his re-emergence as the likely new French prime minister would produce a tide of their usual foam-flecked outrage. We thought we'd seen the last of Monsieur Barnier' after the Brexit negotiations - where he was determined to get Britain the worst possible deal," said the Tory MP John Hayes, even as the former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg declared that Barnier was no friend of the UK". Continue reading...

The Democratic nominee wants to boost startups - which are doing just fine - but what about the 6m existing firms?Kamala Harris has announced initiatives to help small businesses in the US. It's a smart - and welcome - move given that 46.4% of all private sector employees work for small businesses. I do worry, however, that she is targeting the wrong issues.Among the vice-president's proposals is to cut down" on government bureaucracy, creating a standard deduction" for small businesses and making it easier" for businesses to get occupational licenses to operate across state lines. She wants to suggest new steps" for more investments in rural businesses with an expansion fund" that would make it easier for businesses in those areas to get access to capital. She also wants to mandate that one-third" of federal contract dollars go to small businesses. Continue reading...

There must have been something in the air in 1964. Many of the people who shape our world are turning 60 this yearMagical," special," a total badass": step forward Kamala Harris, the 59-year-old dynamo who has rebranded her country at lightning speed, offering it up as a nation synonymous with optimism, hope and patriotism. For the rest of us, Kamala's gift is her joy and vibrancy - and the way she is smashing it just months away from her seventh decade, holding up 60 in all its power and glory. Welcome to the new golden age.Hers is the vibrancy of a woman who owns her power, a woman who is manifesting her experience and expertise, a woman who knows her time has come. No more waiting in the wings while Sleepy Joe calls the shots - and blows them. No more hiding that smile, or keeping down the laughter. She's here, she's got the platform. What's more, the VP now looks positively youthful when compared to 78-year-old Donald Trump and 81-year-old Joe Biden. Barack Obama may have been younger than Kamala by 12 years when he ran for president, but today Kamala's 60 looks like the first blush of youth thanks to the energy-sapping Trump/Biden effect. Continue reading...

Whenever mainstream politicians begin to mutter about infiltrators, fifth columnists and failed assimilation, that smell of sulphur is fascism in the airThe problem with fascism" as a description of any modern political tendency is that the term is a weapon of mass destruction that flattens the landscapes that it wants to describe. Fascism is so freighted with historically specific meaning that using it for other times and places can seem sloppy and excessive. And yet, juxtaposing the politics of contemporary south Asia with fascism, in its Nazi variant, serves a double purpose: it connects modern Indian majoritarianism with one of its ideological ancestors and it helps us name and identify the ideological kernel of fascism that survived to fight another day.India's ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is the political arm of a Hindu militia, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925, around the time Adolf Hitler began to find his political bearings in a routed, angry Germany. The RSS is a nationalist militia that defines India as a Hindu nation; only Hindus can be members. While there are many similarities between the RSS and the fascist paramilitary organisations of the prewar decades, from uniformed drills and distinctive salutes to a persistent anxiety about masculinity, at the core of both is a feral ethnic nationalism that aims to mobilise a racial or religious majority against an allegedly encroaching minority.Mukul Kesavan is an Indian historian, novelist and political and social essayist Continue reading...

Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, will go head to head with Donald Trump, a convicted criminal, in Philadelphia on Tuesday in their first - and maybe only - debateIt will be a study in contrasts around age, gender, race, temperament and policy. It will also be the first time in US presidential history that a former courtroom prosecutor will take the debate stage alongside a convicted criminal with the White House at stake.Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has served as a trial lawyer, district attorney and state attorney general in California. Former US president Donald Trump, her Republican rival, has been convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal. Continue reading...

Like other celebrity wellness entrepreneurs, the former model seems to peddle nonsenseElle Macpherson's gratitude journal must have written itself last week. Most days, any leader in the wellness industry is right to feel gratitude for the gigantic profits to be made seemingly out of human gullibility: the welcome for her latest venture suggests that the market for experimental self-care may have been wildly underestimated.Since the exclusive revelation of Macpherson's cancer journey" in the Australian Women's Weekly, there can hardly have been enough time in the day, without contracting the work out to a gratitude assistant, to record the amount of joy experienced by a model turned entrepreneur when her apparent rejection of evidence-based medicine is widely presented - with only limited space for objections - as a tale of fully vindicated heroism. Continue reading...

US secretary of state will be most senior US official to have travelled to London since Labour's election victoryThe US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will head to London next week to discuss the Middle East and Ukraine, the state department announced on Saturday, in advance of a US visit by prime minister Keir Starmer.Blinken's visit to London on Monday and Tuesday will be the most senior by a US official since the Labour party won the general election in July, ending 14 years of Conservative rule. Continue reading...