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Fervent Trump supporters from last elections air doubts over abortion and the man himself in state where turnout will be keyTerri Burl has come full circle.The local Republican party official was a founding member of Women for Trump in her corner of rural Wisconsin eight years ago when the then New York businessman's run for president was little more than a joke to political pundits. Continue reading...

Lori and George Schappell were joined at the skull with separate bodies and lived on their own since the age of 24The world's oldest living conjoined twins have died at the age of 62 in their native Pennsylvania.Lori and George Schappell died on 7 April at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, according to an obituary. A cause of death was not disclosed. Continue reading...

His cult-like status is likely to hand him victory in the coming elections, but at democracy's lossSuddenly, everyone loves India. But it's an affair, not a marriage. Whether it lasts depends on the consequences of this week's watershed election. At stake are the credibility of Indian democracy and, potentially, the country's future as a cohesive unitary state.Courting India as a counterweight to China, the US is ardently pursuing a deeper security relationship. The EU hankers after a free trade pact. Countries ranging from Australia to Norway to the UAE have already forged bespoke deals.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Have you heard the one about the missing Ocado delivery at Downing Street? It's side-splitting stuffBritish public life often tends toward sitcom, and you imagine that once the catastrophic economic fallout of her time in office has faded - in a generation or two's time - Liz Truss's 40-odd days in Downing Street might yet be viewed in those terms. Certainly, that seems the legacy she most craves.The first extracts from her farcical book, Ten Years to Save the West, reveal it to be written with all those gifts for Accidental Partridge" that she displayed in office (key quote: For too long, the political debate has been dominated by how we distribute a limited economic pie. Instead, we need to grow the pie so that everyone gets a bigger slice."). Her memoir's most immediately memorable scenes are ready-made for canned laughter. There's the one in which she spent her few days in power itching because of an outbreak of fleas in the prime ministerial apartment (a parting gift, she half-implies, of the Johnsons' dog, Dilyn); the one in which her promise to the nation of delivery, delivery, delivery" falls at the first hurdle of a missing Ocado order; the one in which she finds the fridge full of protein shakes labelled Raab", from her power-hungry colleague; and the onein which she struggles to get a mobile phone signal on a call with the US secretary of state and has to hang out of an upstairs window to hear about the invasion of Ukraine.There will never be asecond season. Continue reading...

Trump is walking a tricky tightrope trying to appeal to his evangelical base and moderate voters. His solution? A bunch of contradictory nonsenseIn recent years, Donald Trump has sold NFTs, sneakers, and bibles. Now the perennial marketer is busy selling a new and improved version of himself to voters. Meet Don 2.0: a reasonable man with moderate views on abortion. Continue reading...

Tropicana, once host to celebrities, criminals and 007, will be replaced by the city's new focus of attraction, a sports stadiumLas Vegas's famous Tropicana hotel is no more. Its guests were abruptly asked to leave earlier this month and its gold-domed casino closed - signaling the end of an icon of classic Sin City life where glamor, celebrity and crime seemed to go hand in hand.Now the old building will be elaborately demolished with explosives - a tradition of Nevada's desert gambling mecca - to make way for a sports stadium, symbolizing for many modern Vegas's image of sanitized mass tourism. Continue reading...

Focus on reproductive rights has yielded big wins and Democrats hope threat of more Republican bans will mobilize votersKamala Harris's Friday visit to Arizona was planned before the state's top court upheld a 160-year-old law that bans almost all abortions. But the news galvanized the vice-president's message, one that has already yielded stunning victories for liberals since Roe v Wade fell nearly two years ago.That message is simple: abortion bans happen when Republicans are in charge. Continue reading...

I was in a department store when an apparently random, and ultimately deadly, stabbing attack began. I hid in a cupboard, then found a fire escape

The reporter who covered the trial for the Observer recalls the twists and turns of the double murder trial - and how the jury reached its verdict with astonishing speedWhen the jury sent word they would deliver their verdict in the OJ Simpson double murder trial, the rest of America was caught by surprise, myself included. It had taken four hours to rule on nine months of evidence as to whether one of the country's most famous black men had killed his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her young friend, Ronald Goldman.It felt far too quick. The televised case in 1995 had been an astonishing spectacle, its twists and turns drawing vast numbers of viewers from the nation's daytime soaps. Continue reading...

Some of the 27 states that have the death penalty have not executed anyone in years but others still do - and the divide is rooted in historyThe execution of Brian Dorsey in Missouri on Tuesday, despite an extraordinary campaign asking for his sentence to be commuted, brought into focus the issue of the death penalty in the US - one of the few countries in the western world that still uses corporal punishment.Dorsey, 52, was executed for the 2006 murders of his cousin and her husband, after the number of people executed in the US rose to 24 in 2023, from 18 in 2022. Continue reading...

Prosecutors say they're leaning on the bread and butter of our white-collar work' - falsifying business recordsBack when candidate Donald Trump was just starting to fill stadiums across the US with loyal crowds of supporters, he held a fateful meeting that would set the course for the first criminal trial of a former US president, which kicks off Monday.At that August 2015 meeting, Trump spoke with David Pecker, then-CEO of American Media, the parent company of tabloid the National Enquirer. Pecker told Trump he could be the eyes and ears" for Trump's presidential campaign, on the lookout for any salacious stories people were telling about him. Prosecutors would later call this strategy a catch and kill" scheme. Continue reading...

The union leader has galvanized organized labor in a critical year, after securing a historic deal with the big three carmakers in 2023From Amazon and UPS to Starbucks and Hollywood studios, organized labor is making a comeback in the US after decades of decline. Shawn Fain thinks he knows why: Workers have realized they've been getting screwed for decades, and they're fed up."The United Auto Workers (UAW) president has emerged at the front of the pack of a new generation of labor leaders as a galvanizing voice in a critical year for the labor movement and American politics. Continue reading...

Christine Jenneiahn shot and mortally wounded a man who broke into her home at night and handcuffed her to a chairAt 85 years old, Christine Jenneiahn might have seemed particularly vulnerable to the man who broke into her Idaho home, pistol-whipped her and handcuffed her to a chair.But investigators say Jenneiahn saved herself as well as her son - whom authorities described as disabled - from the intruder by grabbing a revolver she had hidden under her pillow, shooting and mortally wounding the violent burglar. Continue reading...

The all-time leading scorer in college basketball is about to turn pro as viewing figures break men's recordsSince the NCAA women's basketball tournament final on Sunday drew more US television viewers than the men's final for the first time in history, it has been hailed as a watershed moment for women's sports in America. A vanguard of star players including Connecticut's Paige Bueckers, LSU's Angel Reese and Southern California's JuJu Watkins have lifted the profile of the women's game to unprecedented heights over the past few months while recalibrating expectations for how all women's sports can be covered, commercialised and consumed.But none of them have commanded the national consciousness quite like Caitlin Clark, the ponytailed once-in-a-generation talent from the University of Iowa whose modest 6ft frame belies her outsized impact on college basketball and American sports at large. Continue reading...

The Israel that I meet every day is made up of people who want to forge a path towards peace and security for all

Jose Andres sends cooks into disaster zones. He has led a backlash over Gaza against Netanyahu that no protest or politician could have matchedJose Andres is perhaps the most influential Spaniard in the world right now. After the Israeli drone strike that killed seven people who worked for his non-profit World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza earlier this month, Andres's criticism of Israel has carried more weight and garnered more attention than any statement from a Spanish or other European political figure could.It may seem strange that a chef raised in a former mining town in northern Spain who moved to New York as a 21-year-old with little money appears to wield such clout. But Andres is no ordinary celebrity chef.Maria Ramirez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in SpainDo 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...

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President's son argued he was being prosecuted for political purposes as he faces charges he lied about drug use to buy weaponA federal judge in Delaware refused Friday to throw out a federal gun case against Hunter Biden, rejecting the president's son's claim that he is being prosecuted for political purposes as well as other arguments.The US district judge Maryellen Noreika denied defense efforts to scuttle the prosecution charging Hunter Biden with lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days. Continue reading...

Airline's Perth-to-London flights will now stop over in Singapore to avoid Iranian airspace amid fears Tehran will strike Israel

Republican presumptive nominee struggles to articulate position on divisive issue after meeting with House speakerFacing the press alongside the House speaker, fellow Republican Mike Johnson, Donald Trump bragged: We broke Roe v Wade."The former president made the stark admission about his dominant role in attacks on abortion rights at the end of a week in which the rightwing Arizona state supreme court ruled that an 1864 law imposing a near-total ban could go back into effect. Continue reading...

They've turned the clock to the 1800s', said the US vice-president as she excoriated ex-president as architect of healthcare crisis'Kamala Harris pinned the blame for Arizona's abortion ban squarely on Donald Trump, who she described as the architect of this healthcare crisis" in a speech at a campaign event in Tucson on Friday.The state was left reeling after the Arizona supreme court ruled earlier this week that a civil war-era law banning abortion in the state with almost no exceptions is now enforceable. Continue reading...

This live blog is now closedA vote to amend Fisa's section 702 to prohibit warrantless surveillance in the House has failed.The amendment, introduced by Arizona Republican representative Andy Biggs, failed after the yays and nays votes tied at 212-212. Continue reading...

The 48-year-old became the first player to make the cut on 24 consecutive occasions after playing 23 holes on day twoNo one around the 14th at Augusta National on Friday morning seemed to have had too much sleep. There was Caroline, 56, who had been kept awake by her knee. She had twisted it by slipping on a set of steps last week, and it was still aching after all the walking she'd done on the opening day. And there was Josh, 15, who had been so excited he'd woken up two hours before his family needed to leave for the course. And there was Simon, 31, who had a skinful the previous evening, and had been dragged out of bed by his housemates.And there were a few thousand others, too. At 48, Tiger Woods still draws a gallery three times the size of anyone else here. The sun was just up above the pines, the sky was clear and the day stretched ahead like an open road. So however restless they felt about it the moment they woke, they, and everyone else, enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that, at this particular moment, there was nowhere else in the world they would rather have been than where they were: beside the teebox watching Woods get ready to hit his first shot of the second day of the 88th Masters. Continue reading...

Rule adds stronger requirements for cleaning up wells but does not ban leasing on public lands, as called for by environmentalistsOil and gas companies will have to pay more to drill on public lands and satisfy stronger requirements to clean up old or abandoned wells, according to a final rule issued on Friday by the Biden administration.The interior department's rule raises royalty rates for oil drilling by one-third, to 16.67%, in accordance with the sweeping 2002 climate law approved by Congress. Continue reading...

He's losing cash reserves and legal gambits, and his eponymous stock - DJT - took an embarrassing tumble this weekDonald Trump is doing his best Wizard of Oz imitation. These days, Trump is not looking like the winner" he needs voters to believe him to be. Like the title character in L Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy and the 1939 movie, there is less there than meets the eye. The 45th president's lead in the polls evaporates while his cash stash shrinks.His upcoming felony fraud trial in Manhattan looms. For the record, he is zero for three in his bids to adjourn the trial, and lawyers are expensive. Continue reading...

Representative Don Wilson forgot his handgun in bathroom before it was discovered and state police secured weaponA Colorado state legislator publicly apologized after leaving a loaded gun in the state's capitol building.Colorado state representative Don Wilson, a Republican, confirmed that he left a loaded 9mm Glock handgun in a capitol bathroom on Tuesday evening, according to a statement on X. Continue reading...

Number of people seeking permanent contraception increased after 2022 decision, in particular among women, research revealsRates of people seeking permanent contraception - such as tubal ligation or vasectomies - shot up after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, in the Dobbs decision.Although both procedures increased, the rate of increase was double for tubal ligations, commonly known as a woman getting her tubes tied". Continue reading...

Thirty years after I covered the trial of the century', its themes of race, misogyny, policing and celebrity still affect and define the nationIt wasn't the Kennedy assassination, but I remember exactly where I was on 3 October 1995 when a Los Angeles jury delivered its verdict in the OJ Simpson trial. A novice US correspondent for this newspaper, I was hunched over a primitive laptop, ready to press send on the piece that I had already drafted, confidently explaining to UK readers why the jurors had convicted an American sporting legend of double murder and the likely impact of their decision. The button I had to press was delete".The adrenaline-fuelled hour as I scrambled to write an entirely new commentary on the shock acquittal" was repeated in newsrooms across the US and around the world. As it turned out, the verdict was not a shock to everyone - but we'll get to that. Continue reading...

High school students don ski masks and target each other with water guns that look like firearms in senior assassins' gameMultiple police departments across Illinois are warning residents about the potential risks of a game called senior assassins" in which high school students don ski masks and target each other with water guns that look like firearms.In a Facebook post, the Gurnee police department said that on Tuesday a group of high school students from a neighboring community entered a local restaurant wearing ski masks and displayed water guns resembling firearms. Continue reading...

President's campaign has attacked Trump for using donations to pay his numerous legal bills - but Biden used funds similarlyCampaign donations to Joe Biden were used to help pay legal bills during the special counsel investigation of his retention of classified information when out of office, Axios reported on Friday.Citing a review of campaign finance records and two unnamed sources familiar with the matter", the site said filings by the Democratic National Committee showed it paid more than $1.5m to lawyers or firms representing Biden during Robert Hur's investigation. Continue reading...

Athletes paid $1m to take enough performance-enhancing drugs to win records? Truly we get the TV sports we deserveHow encouraging to learn of another shot in the arm for the Enhanced Games. If you're not familiar with it, this is the sporting event scheduled for inauguration next year in which openly drug-taking athletes will be able to take part in a better version of the Olympic Games". I know - imagine being able to watch track and field but with athletes who dope. Who among us can even picture it?None of which is to sound as offhand as World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe did a few weeks ago when he was asked about the Enhanced Games, and judged: It's bollocks, isn't it? ... I really don't get sleepless nights over it, it's not going to be a page turner is it?" I wouldn't bank on that. By way of background, the project is the brainchild of Aron D'Souza, some weirdo businessman who doesn't even drink coffee (of course), and is partly funded by biohacking Palantir horseman Peter Thiel and AI/psychedelics/crypto investor Christian Angermayer (double of course). Continue reading...

Family of man killed alongside Nicole Brown Simpson says the hope for true accountability has ended' with OJ Simpson's deathOJ Simpson's death did not bring closure to the family of Ronald Goldman, who was killed alongside Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson in Los Angeles in 1994.The only thing that is important today are the victims, and it's just a reminder for myself and my family that Ron has been gone all these years - and that we continue to miss him, all these years," Fred Goldman, Ron's father, told the Daily Beast. He also said there's no such thing" as closure for him. Continue reading...

Ex-president could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state', former adviser Fiona Hill tells authorAs president, Donald Trump made it very clear" that he thought Ukraine must be part of Russia", his former adviser Fiona Hill says in a new book about US national security under threat from Russia and China.Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia," Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US National Security Council between 2017 and 2019, tells David Sanger, a New York Times reporter and author of New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West. Continue reading...

The case was big news when it was filed last year, but it's been overshadowed by a litany of other alleged crimes by the ex-presidentAs the criminal cases mounted against Donald Trump last year, one could be forgiven for not giving much thought to the New York case that charged him with 34 felony counts for falsifying business records.The episode was a bombshell when the Wall Street Journal first reported it in January 2018. Trump paid the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 on the eve of the 2016 election to keep quiet about an affair. He funneled the payment through his lawyer, Michael Cohen, and then lied about the purpose of the payment in his business records. By the time the case was filed last year, it had largely faded in the public psyche - buried under Trump's efforts to steal the 2020 election and an avalanche of other lies. Continue reading...

The racist abuse directed at Francesca Amewudah-Rivers shows how casting decisions have been hijacked by the culture warsIt's a young actor's worst nightmare: to land the role of a lifetime and then find yourself thrown into a media frenzy of vitriol. Over the past two weeks, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers has been the target of an intense and hateful backlash after she was cast in an upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet, opposite Tom Holland's Romeo. The critical comments made about her casting are unquestionably racist, colourist and misogynistic, and they have highlighted how difficult it can be to be a dark-skinned black woman in the public eye.This past summer I played Rosalind in a production of As You Like It, a dream role. It came with huge responsibility, and I can't imagine also being faced with what Francesca has had to go through recently. Nor have I, as a mixed race, light-skinned woman, suffered these same experiences. Casting has become a political act in film, theatre and TV, and the online discussions that follow casting announcements can become seedbeds of hate that primarily benefit social media companies, driving comments and clicks. Actors become the faces of these online controversies, and while they suffer the consequences, social media companies are never held responsible for the abhorrent comments fuelled by their sites. Continue reading...

Progressive groups hail long-brewed move against influential donor but protest lack of summons for Harlan CrowThe big-money rightwing donor Leonard Leo said he would not comply with a subpoena issued by the US Senate judiciary committee, as it investigates undisclosed gifts to conservative supreme court justices that have stoked an ethics crisis at a court already held in historically low public esteem.Referring to Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the committee, Leo said: I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse [a Democrat from Rhode Island] and the left's dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition." Continue reading...

Ca-Maine Foods, largest fresh egg producer in US, temporarily halts production at one Texas facility after discovering virusAvian influenza has been detected among chickens in Texas and Michigan, following news of the virus infecting livestock and then a person for the first time in the US and potentially leading to supply chain issues.The developments have led to a heightened focus on the potential risks of the virus, especially in the wake of the devastating coronavirus pandemic. But experts are saying that there is little chance of transmission between humans at this point. Continue reading...

Campaign toils to convince Republicans to vote early, crucial to winning the election, while ensuring they don't annoy TrumpDonald Trump's attacks on mail-in voting have increasingly caused heartburn for the Trump 2024 campaign as they attempt to undo the self-sabotage by ramping up operations in key battleground states encouraging Republicans to vote early and by mail ahead of the presidential election.The former US president has continued his crusade in recent months: in December he called for the end of mail-in voting entirely, before claiming in an interview last month that any time the mail is involved, you're going to have cheating". Continue reading...

Aid workers say very little' change after Israeli promises to allow more aid into besieged strip. Plus, OJ Simpson's death prompts varying reactions Don't already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning,A promised increase of aid into Gaza has so far failed to materialise, say aid workers, as the US's aid chief, Samantha Power, confirmed that famine was beginning to take hold in parts of the besieged coastal strip.What is the latest with the Hamas-Israel ceasefire negotiations? Hamas has indicated it does not have 40 captives who are still alive who meet the humanitarian" criteria for a proposed hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire agreement with Israel.What about Iran's potential retaliatory strike on Israel? The US is seeking to deter Iran from carrying out a strike against Israel, by reiterating US commitments to Israeli security. It comes after Israel's bombing of an Iranian consular building in Damascus on 1 April, which killed an Islamic Revolutionary Guards general and six officers.The death toll continues to rise: After Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostage on 7 October, Israeli military actions have killed about 33,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.How did people react to his death on Thursday? The sports world reacted to OJ Simpson's death with silence and derision, with the NFL using agency copy and former teams not mentioning Simpson on social media. Elsewhere, people used his passing to talk about domestic violence, race relations, the media and more. Continue reading...

The really exciting part was the number of people who didn't wear protective eyewear. Plus: Liz Truss fails to pace herself'Two days out from the earthquake that rocked New York City and the aftershocks continue in the form of everyone's incredibly boring anecdotes about where they were and what they thought was going on when it happened. Was it a washing machine? Was it construction? Would you like to hear from a woman who didn't feel it at all?! Oh, boy, I was in the parking lot and ..." says a man from a storage facility in New Jersey when I call for a quote. Per advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in the face of catastrophically dull earthquake stories you should drop, cover, and hold your hands over your ears. Continue reading...

Thinking of Rafah as a final red line' is a mistake' - the situation in Gaza is already beyond the bitter edges of human crueltyIs an Israeli invasion of Gaza's southern city of Rafah about to commence? Perhaps. On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, proclaimed that Israel had set a date to invade the city, where an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge from six months of relentless bombing and incalculable destruction.Leaks to the Israeli media are also pointing ominously to an Israeli government procurement of 40,000 12-person tents, suggesting a repugnant plan of further displacing almost half a million Palestinians, this time into government-issued tents that will probably be plopped down in the middle of nowhere.Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The 1994 murders of Simpson's ex and her friend Ron Goldman are inextricable from society's failure of domestic abuse victimsOJ Simpson is dead, and Nicole Brown should still be alive. Simpson, the longtime batterer and stalker of Nicole Brown Simpson, and the man who all but confessed to her gruesome stabbing murder in June of 1994, died on Wednesday of cancer. He passed at his home in Las Vegas, surrounded by his children and grandchildren", according to a statement issued by his family. He was 76.Simpson died in bed, receiving medical care to make him comfortable, at the end of his natural life. He had reached old age; we can infer that when he took his last breaths, he was surrounded by well wishes and love. His was a very different death from the one he allegedly inflicted on his former wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman. They did not die in bed; they probably died screaming. And for Nicole, at least, her death was the culmination of a years-long campaign of terrorism that OJ had waged against her since they met; it was the moment their whole relationship had been leading to.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

A judge signed off on Stanley Burkhardt, who was investigated for a series of Louisiana killings, to transfer to a halfway houseA former child sex crimes detective who admitted to molesting children during his New Orleans policing career, has been in and out of prison for images depicting the sexual abuse of minors, and has been investigated in connection with a series of killings, has gotten another opportunity at relative freedom.After a parole violation caused him to spend the last few years in intensive therapy at a federal prison in North Carolina for people who, like him, have been deemed sexually dangerous, Stanley Burkhardt was recently transferred to a halfway house, according to records reviewed on Thursday by the Guardian. Continue reading...