Review concluded two men drowned due to glaring training failures after raid to seize Iranian weapons bound for HouthisTwo US Navy Seals drowned as they tried to climb aboard a ship carrying illicit Iranian-made weapons to Yemen because of glaring training failures and a lack of understanding about what to do after falling into deep, turbulent waters, according to a military investigation into the January deaths.The review concluded that the drownings of chief special warfare operator Christopher Chambers and navy special warfare operator first class Nathan Gage Ingram could have been prevented. Continue reading...
If we treated this service as vital state infrastructure, it could make a huge difference to parents - and to the economyYou can't get much for 5.50 nowadays. A takeaway coffee and a muffin, maybe; a pint and a packet of crisps, outside London. But in parts of Canada, roughly that amount can buy you a day's childcare. Or it can, at least, if you can find a nursery place.The country is now three years into a post-pandemic social experiment, offering parents heavily (and expensively) subsidised childcare for what is by envious British standards a staggeringly cheap C$10 a day. The idea is that ultimately this multibillion-dollar state programme will pretty much pay for itself, thanks to the boost in GDP expected to be provided by more parents going out to work. But arguably, its biggest insight has been treating childcare less as some kind of perk the state sadly can't afford right now and more as what Chrystia Freeland, Canada's deputy prime minister, calls social infrastructure": an essential part of the national plumbing, like commuter trains or fast broadband or any other thrusting great multibillion-pound building project we are wearily prepared to believe will ultimately be worth it.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Advocates say multiple strategies must be used to lower prices as new drugs threaten to bankrupt health systemA new report finds some of politicians' most popular proposals are likely to only have a single-digit impact on drug prices.The report, compiled by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), examined seven different policies that ranged from capping drug prices to bringing greater transparency to the market. Of the seven, the most effective would only likely reduce drug prices by 5%. Continue reading...
Amid two hurricanes - one of which hit two swing states - conspiracy theories swirled, such as the weather being controlled to prevent Republicans from votingAlex Jones, the longtime conspiracy theorist liable for millions for defaming school shooting victims, started a broadcast this week with one of his favorite topics: weather manipulation.All right, I did a lot of research and a lot of preparation the last 30 years for what I'm going to be covering today," he said. Coming up, I'm going to do a big presentation for everybody on what's really going on with weather weapons." Continue reading...
GOP spent over $65m on ads, with Trump's most often aired ad targeting Harris for her support of gender-affirming careDonald Trump and the Republican party are pushing an agenda of division, chaos and hate" by spending tens of millions on ads attacking transgender people, advocates said, as the right wing intensifies its anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.The GOP has spent more than $65m on ads targeting trans people, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, with the former president's most frequently aired ad targeting Kamala Harris over her support for gender-affirming care. Continue reading...
The veteran reporter has long worried about a lack of diversity in the league. Now he is hoping to help the next generation of Black football journalistsIn the contact sport that is the NFL news beat, Jim Trotter breaks away from the huddle. At Sports Illustrated he hooked readers with his revealing profiles of reticent stars and his insider's perspective on the league's inner workings. At ESPN and NFL Media he was an even more marked outlier, the TV watchdog who insisted on holding league power brokers to account without giving a moment's thought to lost access or favor. At The Athletic, the expectation was that Trotter would keep up the good work after joining the company in May 2023 - the same month he became the second Black journalist to ever be recognized with the equivalent of the pro football writers' lifetime achievement award.But then, four months later, a bombshell hit the sports ticker: Trotter had filed a lawsuit against the NFL. I told them before I ever took the job that there was a very real possibility I was going to sue the NFL," Trotter says. I was told that it wouldn't be a problem. But once I told them I was going to file, I was given the option of delaying the suit and continuing to cover the NFL or being taken off the beat while the case was pending. I told them the case was too important for what I was fighting for to not go forward." Ultimately, The Athletic's splashy new NFL hire was dispatched farther afield. Continue reading...
The franchise plays in one of the world's largest sports markets but has yet to win an MLS title. The former Liverpool coach could help change thingsIn hiring Jurgen Klopp as its new global head of soccer, Red Bull has pulled off the biggest off-field personnel coup in the game. The Austrian conglomerate known for its energy drinks and sports ventures succeeded in securing Klopp's services when many others, including the United States men's soccer team, had failed, leading CEO Oliver Mintzlaff to describe it as the strongest signing of Red Bull's soccer history".Klopp will officially begin his role in January 2025, but between now and then the former Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund coach may take a glance at the network of Red Bull-operated teams and notice a franchise in Major League Soccer in need of some attention. Continue reading...
Balloting would have provided a rare opportunity for the world's governments to vote on complicity in Israeli war crimesSomething unusual happened this week at the UN: the US government decided not to run for a second term on the human rights council. Taking a year off is mandatory after a country serves two three-year terms, but the Biden administration chose to bow out after a single term. That is extremely unusual. What happened?Various rationales are circulating, but one, in my view, looms large: Israel. Or more to the point, Joe Biden's refusal to suspend or condition the massive US arms sales and military aid to Israel as its military bombs and starves the Palestinian civilians of Gaza. Continue reading...
The ex-president ignited a firestorm in Aurora by amplifying a local conspiracy about Venezuelan immigrants in his debate with HarrisWhen crossing the state line from Wyoming into Colorado, drivers have recently been confronted with a giant billboard that reads: Venezuela ahead, BE PREPARED!"The xenophobic political ad - funded by Donald Trump's largest individual campaign donor - is, in part, a reaction to the more than 40,000 migrants who've arrived in the Denver metro area over the last two years, many of them Venezuelan families fleeing poverty and violence. Continue reading...
In the stretch of desert between Arizona and Mexico, Trump's unhinged discourse has pushed the Democrats to the right on border issues. Could mass deportations be achieved without harm? I went to find outIn a nondescript parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, the toxic politics of immigration are omnipresent. I am here for the launch of a Republican car rally, where 100 vehicles clad in rightwing regalia have congregated in the dry heat in this southern part of the state, about 60 miles from the border with Mexico. Trump, who launched his political career in 2015 by describing Mexican migrants as bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists," has since plunged the discourse to even lower depths. From unhinged falsehoods about the consumption of pets in Springfield, Ohio, to the brandishing of thousands of signs reading Mass Deportation Now!" at the Republican convention earlier this year, any nuanced leadership on the right has been largely superseded by a disturbing lust for cruelty.Among the drivers here is a Trump supporter named Lupe Hernandez, a Mexican American who tells me she arrived in the US with a visa in November 1963 on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated. But she has cousins, nephews and nieces who came to the US without paperwork decades ago. They are all good, hardworking people, she says. I ask how she feels about Trump's plans for mass deportation, given it could mean these members of her own family would be targeted for forced removal. She is happy about it, she says: They could be deported, but they can apply to come back." Continue reading...
Incarcerated people are barred from reading a collection of their own letters - and 10,000 other texts - in a state where hundreds remain isolated after a decade or moreIt was a Tuesday in May when Lupe's wife texted me: Lupe said he received the book but they denied it because it contained information that could disrupt the system."Texas prisons are among the most prolific banners of books in the world, with nearly 10,000 banished titles under their belt. But this was unprecedented, in no small part because the author wasn't some Pulitzer prize winner, Nobel laureate or acclaimed civil rights activist. The author was Lupe. Continue reading...
Mauricio Pochettino's first USA squad could just as conceivably been called by his predecessor. But what could be seen as underwhelming could instead be revealingMauricio Pochettino arrived in the US men's national team job with as sterling a resume as anyone to take charge of the program, and boasted in his introduction to US media that he believed the team could win the 2026 World Cup, due to be hosted at home along with Canada and Mexico.It sounded like the start of a revolution. His first squad, named last week, was anything but. Continue reading...
The world must show it cares about the conflict, but relieving civilian suffering should take the place of military interventionIt is the most sickening league table on Earth. Which of the world's three current major wars has resulted in the most deaths? On the latest figures, the Russia-Ukraine war has left more than 200,000 dead in two and a half years, overwhelmingly soldiers. The Hamas attack and ensuing Israeli assault on Gaza has registered 43,000 mostly civilian deaths, according to official figures (though in July a Lancet article estimated the Gaza toll could reach as high as 186,000 as a result of its destroyed public infrastructure).The Sudanese civil war, which began last year, has death toll estimates that vary wildly. According to medics in the region, the number of people killed could be between 20,000 and an even more horrifying 150,000. This follows some 2 million deaths over two wartorn decades in South Sudan and Darfur. It is estimated that since April 2023, more than 7 million Sudanese have been driven from their homes and face starvation in the desert. Their stories rarely feature in the news.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Former president Barack Obama made a passionate case against Donald Trump and in favor of vice-president Kamala Harris during a rally at a Pittsburgh college campus aimed in part at spurring young people to show up for the November 5 election.
Harris campaigns in early-voting Arizona and Obama appeals to the youth in Pennsylvania; Trump calls for CBS to be stripped of its licence Continue reading...
Malfunction at Mollie Kathleen gold mine left one person dead and trapped visitors for hours undergroundTwelve people have been rescued from a former Colorado gold mine after an elevator malfunction left one person dead, four injured and trapped the group underground, authorities said on Thursday.The group had been stuck for hours on Thursday as officials tried to determine how to safely rescue them. Colorado governor Jared Polis confirmed Thursday evening that everyone had been brought out of the mine. Continue reading...
by Helen Sullivan (now); with Cecilia Nowell , Chris on (#6RC9Y)
This blog is now closed. You can find all of the Guardian's US elections coverage here.Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman have settled their lawsuit against far-right site the Gateway Pundit, who they accused of defaming them following the 2020 election.Here's more on the agreement, from the Guardian's Sam Levine:The Gateway Pundit, the far-right news website that played a critical role in spreading false information about the 2020 election, has settled a defamation lawsuit with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing.Notice of the settlement was filed in circuit court in Missouri, where Freeman and Moss had sued the site for defamation. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing. Continue reading...
Ex-president campaigns in Pennsylvania and says fellow Democrat actually cares about making your life better'Barack Obama made his first appearance on the campaign trail for Kamala Harris on Thursday, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania and at an event for Black voters, where he urged men in particular to support the vice-president.In comments directed specifically to Black men in the swing state during an event at one of Harris's campaign offices, Obama questioned their unwillingness to vote for her - a September NAACP poll showed that over one quarter of Black men under 50 say they will vote for Donald Trump. Continue reading...
by Maya Yang (now); Fran Lawther, Anna Betts, Martin on (#6RBXG)
This blog is now closed. Find the full report on Hurricane Milton hereFootage coming in from the Tampa area as Hurricane Milton makes landfall shows the devastating consequences of what Joe Biden has called the storm of the century".Reporters with NewsNation have captured video from Tampa Bay, where the storm sucked water back from the coast. At the mouth of Tampa Bay, a weather station has recorded a wind gust of 100mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Continue reading...
FCC chair denounces ex-president's threats and denies possibility of broadcast station's licence being revokedAmerica's top broadcasting regulatory body, the Federal Communications Commission, has denounced Donald Trump after the former US president demanded that CBS be stripped of its licence for airing an edited answer in a primetime interview with Kamala Harris.He also called the network a threat to democracy" and targeted other broadcasters for having their licences revoked also. Continue reading...
The famously loose-lipped presidential candidate couldn't help but insult a key battleground state's largest cityDonald Trump attacked the city of Detroit in a speech he was giving while stumping for votes in Detroit.The former US president and Republican nominee was speaking on Thursday at the Detroit Economic Club in the city, which is the biggest city in Michigan - one of the most crucial swing states in the 2024 US election. Continue reading...
Widow of Bobby Kennedy who brought up 11 children after his 1968 assassination and later devoted herself to social causesEthel Kennedy, who has died aged 96, was one of the most active and best-known US political wives of the 20th century. As her husband, Robert F Kennedy, campaigned first for the Senate and then for the presidency, she supported him while also bringing up their children. The 11th and last of them, her daughter Rory, was born after Bobby was assassinated in 1968. From the 1970s onwards, Ethel devoted herself to social causes and was latterly co-chair of the Coalition of Gun Control.Her life had been touched by tragedy earlier, when her parents died in a plane crash in 1955. Her brother-in-law, President John F Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. Two of her children died prematurely - David of a drug overdose at the age of 28 in 1984 and Michael in a skiing accident in 1997, when he was 39. Her husband was shot at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles following his victory in the California primary for the US presidential race. Continue reading...
Rescue shelters across the US provided housing for animals that were evacuated before the hurricane struckHurricane Milton, the category 3 storm that battered many parts of Florida, displaced not only residents but also already vulnerable animals in shelters.Shelters in the state, particularly in cities on the west coast such as Tampa, Sarasota and others, had to scramble to figure out where to relocate their animals ahead of this week's storm. Luckily, rescue shelters in other parts of the country have joined in the effort to help those down south. Continue reading...
More than 200 facilities were evacuated before Milton made landfall, and Tampa general deployed its aquafence'Hospitals across Florida are coming back online after evacuating patients, closing facilities and canceling surgeries ahead of Hurricane Milton.The category 3 hurricane made landfall near Sarasota, Florida, on Wednesday evening and was expected to be one of the most powerful in Florida's history. At least 10 storm-related deaths have been reported and the death toll is still expected to rise. Continue reading...
Republicans denounce comparison of 27 October event to notorious 1939 rally made by Democrats and Jewish leadersDonald Trump's decision to hold a rally in the heart of Manhattan on 27 October, nine days before election day, has been slammed by New York Democrats, with one comparing the booking to an infamous Nazi rally held at the same venue in the lead-up to the second world war.But it has also triggered a backlash to such sentiments, with Republicans saying such rhetoric heightens tensions even more in a presidential election campaign which has already seen two attempts on Trump's life. Continue reading...
Agents were honored' to give back the piece as hundreds of thousands of stolen cultural objects remain unreturnedA Claude Monet pastel looted from a Jewish couple by Nazis in the second world war was returned to the family's descendants, officials said on Wednesday.Adalbert Bela" and Hilda Parlagi purchased the artwork, titled Bord de Mer, at an Austrian art auction in 1936. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Parlagis had to flee and they left their possessions in storage. Continue reading...
Tempest brought up to 10ft of storm surge and left millions at risk from flooding after hitting Florida on WednesdayHurricane Milton has killed at least nine people and left extensive property damage across Florida, hitting some areas previously affected by Hurricane Helene last month.Here are the key takeaways from what we know about its impact and what experts are saying about a hurricane that it had been feared could be one of the worst in the state's history. Continue reading...
Trump and Vance see the natural disasters not as tragedies but as opportunities to advance their far-right conspiracy theoriesWhipping up hurricanes to merge with great replacement theory took hardly a week, about the time it takes for hurricanes themselves to form. The overheated atmosphere warmed the waters that were drawn up into the winds to churn them into a menacing storm.After Hurricane Helene hit, Donald Trump unleashed a whirlwind of humid lies: the federal government was deliberately preventing aid and even water from reaching areas that held Republican voters, not getting anything"; Kamala Harris spent all her Fema money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants"; and Fema was offering only $750 in disaster relief - all false, all debunked by the Republican governors in the affected states. The Republican congressman Chuck Edwards of North Carolina felt compelled to issue a statement to his constituents not to listen to untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and hearsay about hurricane response efforts" and the outrageous rumors spread online". Continue reading...
Drone footage taken on Thursday morning shows the damage caused by Hurricane Milton in the city of Venice, Florida. The hurricane swept acrossthe US state, whipping up deadly tornadoes, destroying homes and knocking out power to more than 3 million people
by Martin Pengelly in Washington and Baltimore on (#6RCD0)
But ex-governor Larry Hogan faces a tough challenge against Angela Alsobrooks for the crucial Senate seatAt a conservative thinktank on 14th Street in Washington DC, awaiting Larry Hogan, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Maryland, one staffer turned to another. It's nice having something to vote for, for a change," the staffer wryly said. Shortly after, the former governor arrived for his speech at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (Jinsa), part of his campaign to win in a state that hasn't elected a Republican senator since 1980.When he left the executive mansion in Annapolis last year, Hogan told his friendly audience, he had governed for eight years as a popular moderate but had not been looking for another job - And frankly, I didn't yearn to be a part of the divisiveness and dysfunction in Washington," he said. Continue reading...
Peter Dodge, a meteorologist who died last year at 73, given 387th' flight as tribute to his dedication and researchPeter Dodge, a meteorologist who flew into hurricanes on Miss Piggy", a P-3 Orion operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had his ashes dropped into Hurricane Milton's eye as it was approaching Florida.Dodge was a Noaa meteorologist of 44 years and died in 2023. Noaa hurricane hunters dropped his ashes inside Milton's eye on Tuesday in a tribute to his life studying powerful tropical storms. Continue reading...
Saginaw Valley State University has about 7,000 students - and Trump won Michigan in 2016 by only 11,000 votesSo few students wanted to join the campus Republican party when Abigail Sefcik began studying at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) that she was rapidly voted in as its president.The group was only four or five people. Nobody else wanted to do it," she said. Continue reading...
A Florida police officer found a dog tied up by the side of a road in Tampa before Hurricane Milton made landfall. Florida highway patrol posted a message saying they rescued the dog found on I-75. 'Do not do this to your pets please,' police said in a message posted with the video.The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles later reported that police took the dog to a vet, where it was given a clean bill of health
In the early days of Kamp Studios, Kim Collins and Amy Morgenstern were barely making rent. Now they're a favorite of interior designers across the countryIf there was a low point in the history of Kamp Studios, it had to have been the day in 2010 when Kim Collins and Amy Morgenstern found themselves lugging every single quarter, dime, nickel and penny they had scrounged up from their apartment to pour into a coin-counting machine at a Brooklyn branch of TD Bank. The women, then partners in both work and life, were barely making rent while trying to keep their plastering business afloat. We were practically the only customers in the bank and that machine was very, very loud," Collins says. It was mortifying." They used the $117 they collected that day to buy groceries.Plasterwork is famously labor-intensive, messy and physically demanding - but these weren't the only factors that made getting a foothold in the homebuilding space challenging for Collins and Morgenstern. According to a 2024 survey by the construction workforce management platform Lumber, women make up 10% of the construction industry, and only 4% of on-site workers are women. With the exception of the interior designer or architect, who are sometimes women, we are usually the only women working on a job site," says Collins. Continue reading...
by Oliver Laughland, Tom Silverstone, Bruno Rinvolucr on (#6RC85)
With border crossings reaching record highs in recent years, US immigration has returned as the election's most toxic issue. As Donald Trump continues to push a policy of mass deportation, and Kamala Harris responds by shifting further to the right, what happens to the people caught in the middle trying to seek a better life? The Guardian's Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to Arizona's southern border with Mexico to investigate Continue reading...
If people knew more about geoengineering, they might not believe Marjorie Taylor Greene's latest unhinged theoryMarjorie Taylor Greene, who has earned the dubious honour of being one of the most unhinged US politicians in recent memory, has an important message for the American people: they control the weather. Last week, in the wake of the devastation from Hurricane Helene, the far-right representative from Georgia tweeted the following: Yes they can control the weather. It's ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can't be done."Who is they? Good question. Greene might have meant the non-binary deep state that secretly controls the world. Or, considering she has previously insinuated that California wildfires were started by energy companies, in conjunction with the Rothschilds, using a space laser, in order to facilitate high-speed rail projects, she might have meant Jewish people. She certainly won't elaborate. She's been asked to clarify her antisemitic Jewish space lasers" comment plenty of times and likes to tell reporters to fuck off".Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
The bureau shamefully allowed itself to be used as a prop in political theater, orchestrated by the Trump administrationMaybe it was always obvious that the whole thing was a sham. Back in 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and others accused then supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, the powerful testimony of Blasey Ford before the Senate judiciary committee briefly seemed like it might derail the nomination. This was the height of #MeToo, remember: at the time, many women were coming forward with their own stories of sexual violence, and the accounts were numerous enough and had sufficient moral authority that powerful people felt it necessary to pretend that they cared.Republican Senators wanted to confirm Kavanaugh quickly: the judge, who was then seated on the DC circuit, would provide the crucial fifth vote to overturn Roe v Wade, as well as supporting efforts to enshrine various other Republican policy agendas into law. Women, however, were causing a scene: two cornered then Arizona senator Jeff Flake in an elevator and screamed at him that he should be ashamed of himself. On a livestream of the altercation that went viral on social media, it looked like he was. All this made things somewhat awkward for the Republicans: they wanted to vote for Kavanaugh, but they wanted political cover to do so. This is where the FBI came in.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
We're living in a second Gilded Age of extreme inequality. Kamala Harris's campaign should strike a more populist noteOn 5 October, at Donald Trump's second rally of the 2024 election in Butler, Pennsylvania, he enthusiastically introduced Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who is plunking down millions of dollars to help the former president.Musk urged the crowd to Fight! Fight! Fight!" - echoing words Trump uttered after the attack on his life there. Musk then shouted: President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution!" and he must win to preserve democracy in America!" Musk ended his rant with the dark prediction: If they don't [vote], this will be the last election." Continue reading...
Woody Johnson fired Robert Saleh just five weeks into the season. But there are plenty of other teams whose futures look bleakOwnership: Culture is a nebulous term in sports, one of those know-it-when-you-see-it things, but few things are more evident than the Jets culture being rotten under Woody Johnson. They have not made the playoffs since the 2010 season, pirouetting from short-term fixes to visions of long-term rebuilds, without the patience to see the team through difficult spells. It is a short list of owners who would axe a coach five weeks into a season because they were maybe-possibly embarrassed in front of their friends, but if any owner would, it's Johnson. Continue reading...
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