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Five people taken to hospital after crash at Huntington Beach in front of beachgoersA helicopter flying above a popular southern California beach suddenly began spiralling out of control, eventually losing altitude and crashing into a row of palm trees as beachgoers looked on.

Donald Trump says he has directed the defence secretary to release funds on 15 October. Key US politics stories from 11 October at a glanceDonald Trump claimed he had found a way to pay US military troops despite the federal government shutdown, saying he had instructed his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to release funds.Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: I am using my authority, as commander-in-chief, to direct our secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our troops PAID on October 15." Continue reading...

Troops can stay under federal control, as US senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth decry being barred access to Ice facilityThe national guard troops Donald Trump sent to Illinois can remain in the state and under federal control but can't be deployed, an appeals court ruled on Saturday.The appeals court granted a pause in the case until it can hear further arguments. Continue reading...

President claims he found a way to pay troops and directed Pentagon chief to release funds on 15 OctoberDonald Trump claimed on Saturday that he had found a way to pay US military troops despite the ongoing federal government shutdown, saying he had instructed his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to release funds.Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: I am using my authority, as commander-in-chief, to direct our secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our troops PAID on October 15." Continue reading...

After a one-of-one season without precedent in NBA or WNBA history, the unstoppable Aces star has made a credible entry into the GOAT discussion before her 30th birthdayA'ja Wilson's one-of-one season didn't end merely with confetti so much as a deeper confirmation. When her Las Vegas Aces finished off a four-game sweep of the Phoenix Mercury on Friday night to become only the second team in WNBA history to win three titles in a four-year span, the final horn felt less like a climax than a verdict: the best team of the era led by the best player of the era. When the dust settled the 29-year-old from Columbia, South Carolina, had achieved a quadrafecta no player in the NBA or WNBA had ever managed: winning the scoring title, the Most Valuable Player award, Defensive Player of the Year honors and MVP of the finals in the same year.Thanks to Wilson, a team who'd looked like the next great American sports dynasty before slipping from their perch a year ago was back at the mountaintop. But anyone who watched the front half of the season knows this was the least expected of Aces' three banners. For most of the year Las Vegas didn't give the appearance of a playoff team let alone a champion. They staggered through injuries and misfires, dropped coin-flip games and wore the tightness of a group playing beneath its standard. If dynasties are supposed to hum, this one coughed and sputtered. Continue reading...

Until recently, Daca allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children to live and work legallyThe Trump administration has once again put Dreamers on a rollercoaster ride.The federal government is sending mixed signals about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a popular program devised under Barack Obama that had until recently allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children to live and work legally without serious risk of deportation. Continue reading...

Major League Soccer is proving a fertile ground for a growing band of Australian players and coachesThere is perhaps no greater reminder that Australia is a faraway island nation with limited global influence than the fact so many Australians pore over a niche form of online football content known as Aussies Abroad'.While the likes of Ned Zelic and Paul Okon were hardly the first Australian players to move to Europe, their arrivals at Borussia Dortmund and Club Brugge in the early 1990s coincided with a surge of interest in how Aussie footballers were performing overseas. Continue reading...

Former president was diagnosed in May with aggressive form' of cancer and was already taking hormone medicationJoe Biden is receiving radiation therapy for his prostate cancer that was diagnosed in May, a spokesperson for the former US president said on Saturday morning.As part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, President Biden is currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment, the spokesperson said. The news was first reported by NBC. Continue reading...

Party sticks to its guns on healthcare and says it's willing to hold out - much to the delight of its progressive supportersWhen he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown with reporters from a closely read political newsletter this week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he were relishing his standoff with the Republicans.Every day gets better for us," he told Punchbowl News. As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republicans believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an array of concessions on healthcare and other issues. Continue reading...

Even his colleague has dubbed Jesse Watters's claim about Ocasio-Cortez and Stephen Miller creepy'Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and United States homeland security adviser, is one of the most influential people in the Trump administration. He is also such a hate-filled little man that members of his own family are publicly rebuking him.During Donald Trump's first term, in 2018, Miller's uncle, Dr David Glosser, wrote a piece for Politico calling Miller an immigration hypocrite". Glosser noted that if Miller's hardline immigration policies had been in force a century ago, our family [Jewish refugees who fled to the US from Europe to avoid persecution] would have been wiped out".Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, allegedly used ChatGPT to create scenes of a city burning and to confide an obsession with firesJust after midnight on New Year's Day, a 29-year-old Uber driver named Jonathan Rinderknecht allegedly ignited what became the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history.Nearly 10 months after the disaster, Rinderknecht's arrest this week brought some closure to residents. Investigators say he was a troubled young man obsessed with fire, who tried to hide his role after setting a small blaze that reignited days later into a deadly inferno. Continue reading...

Gregory Aymond gave confidential testimony as church closes in on $230m settlement with clergy abuse survivorsAs New Orleans' Roman Catholic archdiocese closes in on a proposed settlement with clergy abuse survivors worth at least $230m, its outgoing archbishop, Gregory Aymond, testified under oath for the first time in the church's bankruptcy case during a confidential court session on Friday.Aymond's sworn testimony was given under a protective order, and those who attended the session were barred from discussing it. But Billy Gibbens, a high-profile criminal defense and civil lawyer, confirmed in an interview with WWL Louisiana that he was there representing the archbishop as his personal attorney. Continue reading...

Agriculture and other sectors are suffering under the administration's policies, adding up to a grim outlookUnpaid forced leave and mass firings are hardly the first things to spring to mind as hallmarks of a golden age of the American worker.Yet these were the possibilities floated by Donald Trump this week as he addressed a government shutdown that began on 1 October and is showing no imminent sign of ending as Democrats and Republicans attempt to stare each other down in a dispute over funding priorities. Continue reading...

The president and his Maga allies have used the rightwing influencer's killing to justify attacks on critics, experts sayDonald Trump and Maga allies have capitalized on the killing of rightwing influencer Charlie Kirk to expand attacks on liberal groups, donors, Democrats, and others by tarring many critics as the enemy within" and radical left" in a move that legal scholars and historians call authoritarian and anti-democratic.Kirk's killing by a lone gunman spurred Trump and top allies to quickly launch conspiratorial charges against a bevy of political foes and an investigation of billionaire liberal donor George Soros. They also threatened legal action against TV network ABC after their late-night star Jimmy Kimmel's suspension over clumsy comments about Kirk ended. Continue reading...

Maga supporters are upset the president didn't receive the peace prize. One thing's for sure: it's all about himIn this mortal existence, we all have dreams. As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut, until I found out there's no Taco Bell on the International Space Station. That's the thing about dreams: they often lead to cruel disappointment. Such is the fate of President Donald Trump, his hope of winning a Nobel peace prize dashed - not by a lack of fast food, but by common sense.The 2025 award instead went to the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running for president by her nation's courts. Machado acknowledged Trump in her acceptance of the honor, saying she appreciated his support of Venezuelan democratic reform. At least he's keeping an eye on democracy somewhere.Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist Continue reading...

Immigration lawyer Kim Xavier says stricter enforcement and delays are leaving even legal immigrants in limbo and fearKim Xavier, a senior associate at CoveyLaw, an immigration law firm based in New York, has spent much of the last year bracing herself for any Friday announcements that might affect her clients.So when Donald Trump announced on a recent Friday that he will impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, the timing was not totally surprising. Continue reading...

Joshua Wayne Cole to admit in court to making online posts about shooting people at an LGBTQ+ parade in TexasA Texas man has agreed to plead guilty to going on social media and threatening to shoot people at an LGBTQ+ parade as vengeance for the murder of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.Joshua Wayne Cole signed federal court filings indicating that he planned to plead guilty to a charge of interstate threatening communications at a hearing tentatively set for 16 October, about a month after he was arrested in connection with online posts threatening to open fire on a Pride parade in Abilene, Texas. Continue reading...

Dynamic pricing, crypto detritus and corporate doublespeak have made the task of buying 2026 World Cup tickets a grim case study in the monetization of emotionWhen the first tickets for the 2026 World Cup went on sale last week, millions of fans joined online queues only to discover what Gianni Infantino's assurance that the world will be welcome" really means. The cheapest face-value seat for next summer's final, somewhere in the gods of New Jersey's 82,500-seat MetLife Stadium where the players are specks and the football's a rumor, comes at a cost of $2,030 (oxygen tank not included). Most upper-deck seats range from $2,790 to $4,210, according to customers who finally glimpsed the prices that had been closely guarded. The much-touted $60 tickets for group-stage games, propped up by Fifa as evidence of affordability, exist only as comically tiny green smudges on the edge of digital seating maps, little more than mirages of inclusivity.Fifa had kept the costs under wraps until the very moment of sale, replacing the usual published table of price points with a digital lottery that decided who even got the chance to buy. Millions spent hours staring at a queue screen as algorithms determined their place in line. When access finally came for most, the lower-priced sections had already vanished, many presumably swallowed by bots and bulk-buyers (and that's before Fifa quietly raised the prices of at least nine matches after only one day of sales). The whole process resembled less a ticket release than a psyop to calibrate how much frustration and scarcity the public will tolerate. Continue reading...

The US results still aren't matching performances, but now there are more reasons for optimism than everMauricio Pochettino has said multiple times through the United States' up-and-down 2025 that he does not care about results yet. The most important place to win - in fact, the only important place to win, according to him - is at the 2026 World Cup. The results would ideally match the performances, sure, but they don't have to. Not yet.That's a good thing, because once again on Friday night the US performance was met with a result that was probably less than the Americans deserved. A 1-1 draw with Ecuador in Austin, Texas saw the US control the flow of the game most of the time, winning most of the individual defensive battles and on occasion constructing some truly attractive moves forward against Ecuador's disciplined defensive shell. Continue reading...

Earlier, Pentagon chief shared that location would host contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots'. This blog is now closed.

White House had described doctor visit as routine yearly checkup' although president had annual physical in AprilDonald Trump - the oldest person ever to be elected US president - had what he has described as a semiannual physical" at the Walter Reed national military medical center on Friday.The visit, which the White House announced earlier this week, comes as Trump is preparing to travel to the Middle East on the heels of a ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, described it as a routine yearly checkup", although the president had his annual physical in April. Continue reading...

AFL-CIO fights issue in court as union leader warns of devastating effects' for AmericansThe White House announced layoffs of federal workers on Friday, making good on a threat it had made in response to the US government shutdown, which now appears set to stretch into a third straight week.Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that RIFs have begun", referring to the government's reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go. Continue reading...

Company to sell some medicines at a discount to US's Medicaid health plan in exchange for tariff reliefDonald Trump announced a deal with the British-based drugmaker AstraZeneca for a most-favored-nation" drug-pricing model aimed at making prescription medicines more affordable and avoiding the administration's tariff threats.The company will sell some medicines at a discount to the government's Medicaid health plan in exchange for tariff relief, similar to a drug-pricing pact reached last week with Pfizer. Continue reading...

Police chief calls explosion near Bucksnort, south-west of Nashville, devastating' and says we have some deceased'Nineteen people are missing and feared dead following a huge explosion at a military munitions plant in Tennessee.The powerful blast ripped through the explosives manufacturing plant in rural Tennessee on Friday morning, rattling homes miles away and bringing emergency services to the scene, authorities and residents said. Continue reading...

President accuses China of very hostile' moves and says additional tariffs could come on 1 November or sooner'Donald Trump has threatened to impose additional US tariffs of 100% on China from next month, accusing Beijing of very hostile" moves to restrict exports of rare earths needed for American industry.Wall Street fell sharply after the US president reignited public tensions with the Chinese government, and raised the prospect of another acrimonious trade war between the world's two largest economies. Continue reading...

Marimar Martinez, 30, was charged with impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon in fracas preceding shootingA Chicago woman shot multiple times by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents was recently indicted by a grand jury on federal charges of impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon.Prosecutors allege Marimar Martinez, 30, rammed the vehicle of federal agents with her own before they shot her, which they say was an act of self-defense. They also claim Martinez was armed. Continue reading...

Are you really going to believe the attorney general of New York would commit this over $600 a year?' says one lawyerA prosecutor installed by Donald Trump may have been able to secure an indictment against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, but actually obtaining a conviction may be an uphill battle, legal experts say.Even before a grand jury handed down the indictment on Thursday, there was already deep skepticism about possible charges. Career prosecutors in the US attorney's office for the eastern district of Virginia had looked at accusations James committed mortgage fraud and concluded there was no probable cause to charge the case. Lindsey Halligan, Trump's handpicked interim US attorney, nonetheless went ahead and presented the case to the grand jury. Her decision to do so reportedly caught top justice department officials off-guard. Continue reading...

The US president long refused to use his influence over the prime minister. Last month, that appeared to changeAfter nearly nine months in office, Donald Trump seems to have had enough of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, undermining his ambition to establish himself as a global peacemaker. Over the past few weeks, the US president finally decided to use his leverage to force Netanyahu to accept a new ceasefire and stop two years of genocidal war in Gaza.On Thursday, Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of Trump's peace plan for Gaza, including an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and a partial withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory. It's unclear what guarantees the US gave to Hamas and Arab mediators to ensure that Netanyahu would not resume the war after the hostage-prisoner swap - if negotiations on later stages of the deal are stalled. That's what happened earlier this year, when Netanyahu accepted a truce that took effect in January, but then refused to move into the second phase of negotiations with Hamas, and violated the ceasefire after two months.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University Continue reading...

Prosecutor who sought charges was installed amid Trump frustrations with pace of investigations against rivalsA federal grand jury has indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general, for bank fraud and making false statements. Two charges were brought against James, who had brought a civil fraud case against the Trump Organization in 2022 that Trump claimed was a malicious prosecution.Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, personally presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, the person said. US attorneys do not typically present to a grand jury. Continue reading...

Other universities still mulling proposal while MIT's president said it would compromise academic freedom

Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul among Democrats decrying president's weaponization' of justice department

The Knight Institute is defending free speech at a school now synonymous with compromising on itWhen he first learned that federal agents had detained Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil in the lobby of his university housing complex, Jameel Jaffer knew he was in for a fight.Jaffer is the director of a Columbia-affiliated institute devoted to the defense of the first amendment, and Khalil, a green card holder, had been a fixture at the pro-Palestinian encampments on campus. Months earlier, Jaffer's organization had hosted a symposium about the free speech rights of noncitizens. The institute had been established to defend the very constitutional principles the Trump administration was now openly flouting - and that Columbia seemed too scared to defend. Continue reading...

More than three in four store managers report more empty shelves since the Trump administration's global tariff rollout, new poll suggestsUS store managers are reporting more empty shelf space since the global tariff rollout by the Trump administration.More than three-quarters of managers in one recent survey reported an increase in bare shelves. And over half (51%) of the store managers surveyed by warehouse software company GreyOrange also reported that they have reduced their workforce in the last six months, which may affect the shopper experience. Continue reading...

First lady had pleaded for children in letter that Donald Trump delivered to Russian president at meeting in AlaskaMelania Trump said on Friday that eight Ukrainian children have been reunited with their families after ongoing talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.The US first lady in August wrote a letter to Putin and had her husband hand-deliver it during his meeting with the Russian president in Alaska. Continue reading...

Court to rule on whether president can deploy guard in Portland, Oregon, against mostly small, nightly protestsNational guard troops were seen patrolling in Memphis for the first time on Friday, as part of Donald Trump's controversial federal taskforce, amid fierce legal challenges as he was blocked from sending troops to Chicago and a court ruling is awaited in Portland, Oregon.At least nine national guard troops began their Tennessee patrol at the Bass Pro Shops, an outdoor gear chain, located at the Pyramid, a commercial landmark in Memphis. They were being escorted by a Memphis police officer and posed for photos with visitors who were standing outside. Continue reading...

The Israeli PM wants to bolster his position and ward off global pariah status. But he has shifted gears before and may do so againIn Gaza, children, journalists and rescue workers who have seen their peers and colleagues killed in front of their eyes for the past two years have started to rejoice at the prospect that their living nightmare could finally be over. So, too, have the families of Israeli hostages who thought they might never see their loved ones again. We can only share in their relief. And still, the reasons to be wary of the ceasefire's long-term prospects are endless.We have been here before. I'm haunted by a video from back in January, in which 28-year-old Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif removes his press vest and helmet live on air before being hoisted aloft by a joyous crowd as he announces news of a ceasefire. That deal led to several successful exchanges of Israeli and Palestinian captives and brought two months of relative respite to Gaza - before Israel tore up the agreement by launching more than 100 airstrikes on the besieged territory in one night, killing more than 400 Palestinians. Five months later, Israel bombed a press tent outside a Gaza City hospital, killing Sharif and five other journalists. Continue reading...

Agencies like Ice are way ahead of Donald Trump, who wants the military to treat cities like training grounds'Even without the national guard, law enforcement agencies of the federal government have been using military hardware and tactics on civilian targets.At a low-rent apartment complex on Chicago's south shore, people started hearing the boots hit the roof around one in the morning. The oh-dark-thirty immigration enforcement raid in the early hours of 1 October featured an air assault from helicopters. Officers went door to door in the building, using charges to blow the hinges off doors and flashbang grenades to clear apartments. They hauled men, women and children from the building in zip ties and often little else, ostensibly to capture undocumented gang members. Continue reading...

Deportations are likely to cause employers to let go of US workers, and reduce the labor forceThe government shutdown may have prevented the publication of September's job report, but we can be reasonably confident that when the numbers are known, they will further underscore the Trump administration's policy incoherence and remind us of all of the damage he is prepared to inflict on the American economy.The president will most likely be apoplectic over data confirming that the economy is generating very few new jobs (the payroll processor ADP estimated a loss of 32,000 private sector jobs in September). Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the jobs numbers, after a lackluster report published in August. Continue reading...

Israeli troops begin pulling back from parts of Gaza. Plus, stories from survivors who were trapped on Everest

The South American nation performed better than ever in World Cup qualifying, with strength in depth that make them difficult to play againstLast September, in the sweltering night heat of Guayaquil, Ecuador finished off their Conmebol World Cup qualifiers with a 1-0 victory over table-leaders and defending champions Argentina. Enner Valencia, the 35-year-old journeyman and the nation's all-time scorer, sealed the win with a penalty in his 100th appearance. The Estadio Monumental roared with ecstasy and emotion.Both sides had already sealed qualification for 2026 and the visitors were playing without Lionel Messi, who had also said goodbye to qualifiers after his final game in Buenos Aires a few days prior. But none of these narratives mattered to Ecuadorian fans. They were acknowledging a magnificent campaign as La Tricolor ended second in the table, their best-ever finish since Conmebol qualifiers moved to a single table. And this despite starting the campaign with a three-point penalty due to the use of documents with false information to register Byron Castillo in the previous cycle. Continue reading...

As many as 40 academics have been dismissed in aftermath of shooting, allegedly without due processA climate of fear" is still shrouding college campuses across the US, academics have warned, after a string of professors were fired or punished for their comments after Charlie Kirk's assassination.As many as 40 academics have been dismissed in recent weeks, according to the American Association of University Professors. Many were targeted by rightwing campaigners, who seized on remarks they wrote or shared, and pressured their employers to take action. Continue reading...

Investors fear that the collapse of the car parts company - and the size of its debt - could portend wider problemsFinancial problems at the maker of spark plugs, wiper blades, brake calipers, brake shoes, tow hitches and motor oil has caused intense anxiety on Wall Street in recent weeks.Car parts are not usually something that causes finance chiefs to lose much sleep. But the potentially multi-billion dollar financial crisis surrounding First Brands has them rattled. Continue reading...

Erin Scott O'Brien says grandfather Charles Paddock brought back artifact with him from second world warThe ancient Roman grave marker recently found in the back yard of a New Orleans home had evidently been inherited and left there by the granddaughter of a US soldier who fought in Italy during the second world war.In statements that all but solved an international historical mystery, Erin Scott O'Brien told two local media outlets that her grandfather, Charles Paddock Jr, kept the 1,900-year-old artifact in a display case at his home in New Orleans' Gentilly neighborhood before his death in 1986. Continue reading...