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Ron Klain says he didn't agree with pressures for Biden to drop out but is optimistic about Harris's prospectsSenior Democrats' successful efforts to push Joe Biden out of the presidential race were unfortunate, nasty and public" and did the president a disservice", Biden's former White House chief of staff said - even as the new nominee, Kamala Harris, continued to fundraise strongly, campaign vigorously and show signs of catching Donald Trump in polling.I was disappointed that people in the party called for [Biden] to leave the race, and I thought they got out of control," Ron Klain said. Continue reading...

The face of Japanese skateboarding edged out USA's Jagger Eaton and Nyjah Huston in an awesome display of street skillsYuto Horigome has never been afraid to leave things late. In danger of missing the podium entirely after bottling one trick after another on a sweltering Monday afternoon, the 25-year-old face of Japanese skateboarding roared from behind in the final reel to retain his Olympic men's street title ahead of the US pair of Jagger Eaton and Nyjah Huston, who took silver and bronze respectively.Amid oppressive heat beneath a cloudless sky in the temporary La Concorde stadium, Horigome once again came up clutch when it mattered most. He completed a flawless slide down the 10-stair round rail on his fifth and final trick to slide into gold position by a tenth of a point over Eaton, a bronze medalist three years ago in Tokyo. The near-perfect score of 97.08 left the door open for both Americans, but each wiped out on his final attempt to the relief of Horigome, who became the first double Olympic champion in skateboarding's brief history as a medal sport. Continue reading...

Timelapse video from 25 July captured California's Park fire creating what appears to be a fire tornado'. The fire, burning north-east of the city of Chico, forced thousands of residents in Butte County, about 100 miles north-east of Sacramento, to evacuate their homes. The fire, which stretched over four counties, was believed to be caused by arson, after authorities say a man was seen pushing a burning car into a ravine

Court reinstates ban after lengthy legal battle in a decision pro-choice advocates call violation of human rights'Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic nominee for president, urged Americans to vote after a six-week abortion ban took effect in Iowa on Monday.This ban is going to take effect before many women even know they're pregnant," Harris said in a video posted to YouTube. What this means is that one in three women of reproductive age in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban." Continue reading...

Democratic campaign co-chair Gretchen Whitmer says candidate's presidential pick is coming soon

Team was on the verge of giving up search for Scott Hern, who was stranded in the wilderness without food or waterAn Ohio man who went missing for two weeks in a rugged Kentucky forest was rescued just as search efforts for him were nearing their end.Scott Hern had become lost in the Red River gorge, and the Wolf county volunteer technical rescue team was on the verge of giving up searching for him when it heard him scream for help and finally found him. Continue reading...

Would-be assassin detected 30 minutes earlier than what officials previously said due to communication failureDonald Trump has agreed to participate in a victim interview with the FBI regarding his attempted assassination earlier this month, the bureau told reporters on Monday.This comes as authorities continue their investigations into the 13 July shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthews Crooks fired eight shots from an assault rifle which hit and injured the former president, killed a rally attendee and injured several others. Crooks was killed by government snipers moments after the shooting began. Continue reading...

President also says presidential immunity for crimes should be removed and ethics rules for justices should be stricterJoe Biden unveiled a much-anticipated series of sweeping changes to the US

Former friend releases messages largely from 2014-2017 in which Republican VP nominee also says: I hate the police'Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump's running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a morally reprehensible human being" and said: I hate the police."The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood. Continue reading...

Games in Philadelphia and Columbus are no longer harmless fun. They're warm-ups for league matches being staged overseas

As soon as the Games start, it kicks in: the armchair expertise, the deep well of totally imagined knowledge, the phantom athleticism. I'm not sure this is the spirit of global togetherness the events are supposed to fosterIt was 2012 and, now I look it up, actually my birthday, and I was having a standup row with an American journalist because the Australian Anna Meares had just won gold in the women's cycling sprint event. Let me count the ways in which the Olympics had driven me mad. First, gripped by a patriotic fervour that even Kemi Badenoch would probably have found a bit much, I was enraged that Victoria Pendleton had come second. Enraged. I hated Australia, I didn't understand why American journalists were even allowed to watch the proud sportsters if they weren't going to root for the British ones.Second, I was incandescent about the injustice of an adjudication, on a rule that I'd only learned five minutes before. Pendleton had crossed a lane line, which is forbidden, yet it looked like Meares had pushed her, then the judges said Meares hadn't, then the race was redone, then Meares won, and five-minutes-ago me didn't even know you were allowed a rematch, but now I was the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of cycling tort and I wanted to put Meares in prison. Continue reading...

Flight 2477 to Boston landed in DC to conduct a deep clean' after crew and passengers began vomitingA United Airlines flight was forced to divert after a passenger fell so ill on board that it caused what one crew member reportedly called a biohazard" - and made crewmates and other passengers start vomiting.The plane, Flight 2477 heading from Houston to Boston on Sunday, ended up landing in Washington DC so it could undergo a deep clean", the New York Post reported. Continue reading...

New law limiting confinement was scheduled to take effect after 26 died in city jails in two yearsNew York City mayor Eric Adams over the weekend declared a state of emergency in local jails to prevent them from enacting a new law limiting solitary confinement in the lock-ups.The law was scheduled to take effect Sunday after at least 26 people had died in New York City jails since January 2022. Adams' emergency declaration came Saturday. Continue reading...

Steffens, the highest scoring woman in Olympic history, describes situation as a medical emergency'

Make sure you don't miss a thing with our full, updating guide to the dates and times of all the events at Paris 2024Support the GuardianSearch for every event and start time at the Paris Olympics with our comprehensive live schedule. From the football pitch to the pool, via track and field and much more, use our filter tool to pinpoint the sports and disciplines you want to follow most so that you don't miss a thing. Continue reading...

The American is one of the breakout athletes in Paris, thanks to an irreverent social media presence that has won her sponsors and millions of fansIlona Maher might not have the professional resume of Australia's Maddison Levi, Great Britain's Ellie Kildunne or New Zealand's Portia Woodman-Wickliffe. But the 27-year-old from Vermont is surely one of the biggest stars of the Olympic women's rugby sevens competition that kicked off Sunday at the Stade de France, at least among people under 30.One of the breakout social media personalities of the Tokyo Games three years ago, Maher has gone on to amass more than 1.4m Instagram followers with 1.6m more on TikTok, a combined reach that far outstrips more established US Olympic stars like Katie Ledecky and Noah Lyles. And those figures have only swelled in the three days since the Paris Games opened. Continue reading...

The convention celebrated Trump's vision of immigration as a disease. The GOP idea of a cure would mean I, and millions of others, would not existThe Republican party has made it clear it doesn't like pronouns. But two in particular have become the seething core of the worldview it holds: they" and them".Just hours after the former president was shot at on 13 July, Cory Mills, a Republican US representative from Florida, posted on X: First they tried to silence him. Then they tried to imprison him. Now they try to kill him." Continue reading...

It is becoming clear that much of the stakes of the November contest will revolve around questions of gender - and specifically, questions of familyIt's possible," writes Jessica Winter in the New Yorker, that if JD Vance had his way, citizenship in the United States would be conferred not solely by birthright but by marriage and children." This is no exaggeration. In a now viral 2021 clip, JD Vance said: Let's give votes to all children in this country, but let's give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power - you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic - than people who don't have kids. Let's face the consequences and the reality: If you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."This position now represents large swaths of the Republican party, which has taken on an angry and aggressively prescriptive approach to family life.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Campaign says it saw unprecedented grassroots support' as about 66% of total fundraising came from first-time donorsKamala Harris raised $200m in the week since she was endorsed by Joe Biden, her team said, as the vice-president appears to be drawing increased enthusiasm to her campaign.Harris for President said about 66% of the total came from first-time donors, as the campaign said it had seen unprecedented grassroots support". Continue reading...

Call me a grinch, but at no other time of year are we told quite so much how to behave, dress or eat. It's time this frankenseason was reined inI read yet another roundup of summer trends last week with narrowed eyes and my traditional wasp-chewing expression of disapproval. We are supposed, apparently, to greet this year's wet, brat, hot rat summer" with gladiator mullets, Nigella's sgroppino gelato and boat raves"; we should be monetising our feet and chopping wood. I hope you are taking notes.What gave me wasp-face (surely ripe for inclusion in a summer trend listicle, along with my other key seasonal trends, this and every year: underboob sweat, climate dread, toenail shame and excess salt consumption)? It's not the list itself I take issue with, except the inclusion of boats, which are hateful. It's the idea that July and August are so special that we need instructions to ensure we are doing them right. Continue reading...

Vice-president emphasizes bodily autonomy and affordable care as experts expect Democrats to remain on offenseKamala Harris is staking out health, and especially reproductive rights and affordable healthcare, as a central issue in her historic campaign for the US presidency, experts say.The first ad for the Harris campaign, released on Thursday, prioritized bodily autonomy, safety from gun violence, and affordable healthcare alongside issues like child poverty and the rule of law. Continue reading...

Former head of US border security says claim terribly misleading' and statistics show nine of 10 convicted traffickers are US citizensA former head of US border security has accused Donald Trump of exploiting" the pain of the opioid epidemic to wrongly vilify migrants as responsible for the surge in American deaths from fentanyl during recent years.But the Trump campaign is expected to double down on the deception now that the vice-president, Kamala Harris, whom Republicans describe as Joe Biden's border czar" and accuse of inaction over a surge of illegal immigration, is likely to be the Democratic presidential candidate in November. Continue reading...

New attack line on Trump seems to be sticking, simplifying Biden's threats to democracy warnings. Plus, US beat Germany at soccer in ParisGood morning.US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird.What are the polls saying? Harris is showing an uptick on Biden but still behind Trump. According to averages based on New York Times/Siena College polls, Trump is averaging 48% compared with Harris on 46%.What attack lines are Republicans deploying against Harris? Several Republicans on Sunday tried to portray Harris as a dangerous liberal" with far-left politics.What's been the latest trigger for escalating tensions? The diplomacy came amid growing anger in Israel over the strike on the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which Israel seized in 1967 and annexed from Syria in 1981. On Sunday, thousands attended funeral processions for the 12 children.What has the UN said about the prospect of war? The UN's special coordinator for Lebanon, as well as the UN peacekeeping force, urged maximum restraint". Both sides, they said, must put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire", which risks a catastrophe beyond belief". Continue reading...

The former BYU star drew comparisons with Steph Curry coming out of college but he never established himself in the NBA. Now he has a chance at goldJimmer Fredette was a comet in college. He won the National Player of the Year in 2011 and was the leading scorer in the NCAA as a senior for BYU. He wowed in the NCAA tournament, often taking on opponents one-on-five, and drew comparisons to Stephen Curry for his sharp shooting.But Fredette's pro career didn't pan out as he, and his many fans, hoped. Instead of becoming a multi-time NBA All-Star like Curry, he struggled to find his footing after being drafted 10th overall in 2011, playing for Sacramento for two-and-a-half seasons and then bouncing around the league before playing in Greece and China. But the 35-year-old has found a new calling as the face of USA's men's 3x3 basketball team. He will make his Olympic debut when the Americans begin their campaign against Germany on Tuesday. Continue reading...

New Jersey school to revert to its previous name after Menendez found guilty of taking cash and gold bribesA New Jersey school named after Bob Menendez intends to change its name after the state's Democratic senator was convicted of federal bribery charges on 16 July.Robert Menendez elementary in West New York plans to revert to its previous name - Public School No 3 - before the start of the upcoming academic year, the New Jersey Globe recently reported, attributing the information to the city's mayor, Albio Sires. Continue reading...

Not everything has worked but few other nations would have had the temerity to stage an opening in such fashionLet's face it, it was a failure. The rain, as if unleashed by a vengeful Olympian god upset at seeing what had become of the original Games, failed to derail the extravaganza devised by Thomas Jolly, as Poseidon's storms had failed to prevent Odysseus from reaching Ithaca. The saboteurs who paralysed most of France's TGV system on the eve of the opening ceremony failed too. One way or another, hundreds of thousands of drenched onlookers found a way to line the banks of the Seine to salute athletes and artists alike. And so did the rightwingers who had choked in their cafe creme when they'd heard that French-Malian Aya Nakamura was to perform on the big night, which she did, horror of horrors, with the Republican Guard in full parade garb, closing her skit with a Charles Aznavour song.Argentina had done even better. France's new sporting villains, since Chelsea footballer Enzo Fernandez posted a video of the Copa America winners singing racist and homophobic chants aimed at Les Bleus in the Argentinian dressing room, managed to fail even before the Olympic cauldron had been set alight by Teddy Riner and Marie-Jose Perec. What's more, they were sent packing from the sevens tournament by Antoine Dupont's team, in the Stade de France - and while Argentina's populist leader Javier Milei was the awkward guest of president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace. It couldn't have been worse; yet, somehow, it couldn't have been better. WE DID IT!", exclaimed a jubilant Macron on his X account. Continue reading...

We created a new kind of orchestra to fight for Ukraine all over the world

Top diplomats from Japan, the US, Australia and India met on Monday to discuss security concerns and joint support to reinforce maritime safety and cybersecurity in the Indo-Pacific region amid growing tensions with China. Penny Wong said they are facing 'the most confronting circumstances in our region in decades'. Continue reading...

In today's newsletter: The US vice-president has changed the race for the White House - but pitfalls still lie ahead Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. In the week since Kamala Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee, the contest for the presidency has been transformed. Money has poured in, the polls have tightened, and the campaign is about something fundamentally different. The same Democrats who were almost catatonic over Joe Biden's chances of victory because so many voters saw him as too old to do the job now believe that Donald Trump can be defeated.But none of that means that Harris is sure of taking the Oval Office - or even that she is the favourite. Today's newsletter explains how she has changed the race, and how much she still has left to do. Here are the headlines.Social care | Teachers, NHS staff and other key workers who balance part-time work with caring for loved ones are quitting their jobs to avoid being hit with huge cash penalties for breaching carer's allowance rules, according to a study by Carers UK. The report details carers being forced to take desperate measures to avoid breaching tight earnings limits, including quitting their jobs, cutting their hours, turning down pay rises, one-off cost of living payments and performance bonuses, and even working free hours each month.Israel-Gaza war | Global leaders were engaged in intensive diplomacy on Sunday to dissuade Israel from increasing attacks on Lebanon, in response to a rocket strike that killed 12 children in the occupied Golan Heights. Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he would determine the type" and timing" of the response to Hezbollah's attack.Immigration and asylum | A woman has died trying to cross the Channel in an overcrowded dinghy, as a number of small boats made the dangerous journey over the weekend.Home Office | Environmental groups are among 92 civil society organisations who have warned the home secretary Yvette Cooper against the steady erosion of the right to protest" in the UK, and called on her to reverse the previous government's crackdown on peaceful protest.Venezuela | Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela's presidential election by the government-controlled electoral authority - a result that appeared to dash opposition hopes of ending 25 years of socialist rule and looked certain to be bitterly contested. Continue reading...

If the world closes its eyes to the daily horrors inflicted on Palestinians, it runs the risk of cheapening life everywhereOn Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation after his speech to US Congress. It was a moment that seemed to usher in a new phase of the war in Gaza - one in which it is not only tolerated as an unfortunate necessity, but is seen as something for which unquestionable support will continue without limits, without red lines and without tactical discretion. Israel's relentless erasure of families, homes, culture and infrastructure - without end or indication of when any of it will satisfy its goals - is now just a part of life.At the same time, the presumptive Democratic contender, Kamala Harris, makes a nonsensical appeal that we cannot allow ourselves to become numb" to what is happening and that she will not be silent", when the only thing that matters is that the US continues to arm and fund Israel. Continue reading...

Keifer, a medical student at the University of Kentucky and reproductive justice advocate, put her studies on hold to compete in Paris. Now she is a double Olympic championIf it was the last time Lee Kiefer took the competitive piste, it's hard to imagine a better way to go out. The 30-year-old medical student from Lexington, Kentucky, wrote herself into fencing history on Sunday night, roaring to a second straight Olympic gold medal in the women's individual foil with a dazzling 15-6 win over younger teammate Lauren Scruggs in a rare all-American final.Scruggs, the precocious 21-year-old Queens native and rising Harvard senior, made history of her own in defeat, becoming the first Black American fencer to win an individual medal in a women's event. But the Olympic debutante proved no match for a defending champion driven by a self-belief that comes only with experience. Continue reading...

Adam Peaty shares silver as Andy Murray and Dan Evans save five match points to progress to round two in the men's doublesIt's also a huge night for Australia's women's football team. The Matildas are enormously popular at home, but they opened their Olympic campaign with a tame defeat to Germany in front of a sparse crowd. Victory over Zambia, the lowest ranked side in Group B, is essential.Meanwhile, Australia's qualification hopes have been helped by the extraordinary situation that has engulfed defending champions Canada, who have been docked six points and seen their coach banned for a year. Continue reading...

Kevin Durant, LeBron James and co dismantle their world No 4-ranked Serbian opponents in a riotous Paris Olympics pantomimePerhaps the pivotal moment in this game - tonally, if not competitively - came right at the end of the third quarter. Anthony Edwards sends Nikola Jovic to the shoe shop with an outrageous feint and slip, drains a simple two, and as he peels away he sees pretty much the entire bench doing impressions of him, spinning and reeling, consumed in fits of laughter. That, in hindsight, was probably the point at which a potentially tricky Olympic basketball opener against the world's No 4 side dissolved fully into riotous, uproariouspantomime.So no, it's fair to say Team USA did not get the memo. They are not burdened by your expectations. They are not keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they measure up against 1992. They have not been reading your angsty tweets (with the exception of KD, who almost certainly has). The result: three quarters of pure business, one quarter of pure pleasure, a potential medal rival not simply dispatched but shoved disdainfully aside, a game that was basically conceived at its outset as a series of memes. Continue reading...

National security council says attack that killed 12 children and teenagers should be universally condemned'The Biden administration formally placed blame on Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for the rocket strike that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.National security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the attack was conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control. It should be universally condemned." Continue reading...

Tactic calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are now more engaged with electionUS Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. Is Donald Trump OK?" the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: Trump is old and quite weird?" Continue reading...

The VIPs have hooked themselves to the US star's cultural celebrity, desperate to bathe in her reflected gloryThe loge boxes and the VIP seats lie empty for most of the morning. After all, this is precious croissant and champagne time, and nobody wants to waste it on gymnasts no one has heard of. A few minutes before the start of the second subdivision, they shuffle out of the lounges and executive suites and down the steps, pursued by the flashing red dots of a thousand phone cameras.We have Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg. We have Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. We have John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, Greta Gerwig and Jessica Chastain, the Jonas Brothers, the now-ubiquitous Anna Wintour, whose main leisure activity these days seems to be sitting in the front row of blue-chip sporting events with an austere expression, like a woman being dragged to watch her nephew's nativity play. Continue reading...

Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis try to paint Harris, a centrist Democrat, as having far-left politicsRepublicans took to the airwaves Sunday to criticize a surging Kamala Harris, calling the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a dangerous liberal" as US conservatives' lines of attack on the vice-president began to solidify.In appearances across CNN and Fox News, senior Republican figures Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis each attempted to paint Harris - who is typically seen as a centrist Democrat - as having far-left politics. Continue reading...

We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing ... and that never happened,' says lead sharpshooter on local Swat teamLocal police officers on a special tactical team who were assigned to help protect Donald Trump on the day the former president was wounded during a 13 July assassination attempt in Butler county, Pennsylvania, have said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened," Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in nearby Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News. Continue reading...

Mike Lynch uses first interview since acquittal in June of fraud charges to call for overhaul of extradition lawThe British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has said he thought he would die in a US jail if he had not been cleared of defrauding Hewlett-Packard over a multibillion-dollar business deal.In his first interview since his acquittal last month on charges related to the $11.1bn (8.6bn) purchase of his company Autonomy in 2011, the man once lauded as the UK's answer to Bill Gates said that his lung condition meant he doubted he would have survived a prison term. Continue reading...