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Domestic competition assigns state and regional team names in attempt to increase fan engagementIn 15-a-side rugby, the men’s US Eagles recently failed to reach the World Cup. But American sevens seems in contrasting health. On the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, the men’s and women’s national teams are on track to qualify for the next Olympics, in Paris.At home, Premier Rugby Sevens, a professional competition seeking to establish itself on the sporting map, says it is also well placed to progress. On Tuesday, it announced it will double (to 16) the number of men’s and women’s teams competing next year, its third, teams for the first time named for states and regions. Continue reading...

Mohammed Abouagela Masud accused by US of preparing the bomb that destroyed Boeing 747, killing 270 people in 1988. Plus, the oldest university student graduatesGood morning.A former Libyan intelligence operative accused of preparing the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 was taken into US custody after being abducted from his home by a notorious warlord and then detained by armed militia for two weeks, the Guardian has been told.What have the White House said? Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, told reporters: “Today is a good day because Masud will be facing justice for his alleged role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. I will say that this was done in a lawful manner according to established procedures. For more specifics on how it happened I would refer you to the justice department because they’re best positioned to be able to speak to that.”What did the justice department say? In a statement, Michael H Glasheen, the acting assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington field office, said: “The lawful arrest and presentment in court of the alleged bombmaker … is the product of hard work and partnerships across the globe.”How restrictive will those bans be? It remains to be seen. Conservatives across the country embroiled in conflicts over which exceptions – if any – should be allowed for abortion. “Exceptions in the case of rape and incest, we realise, are sometimes a necessary political reality. And we would not block a bill or oppose a bill that would prevent 95% of abortions,” explains Glenn. Continue reading...

Without a plan in place to minimise infection, a ‘moving on’ strategy leaves vulnerable people behindAs the season of Christmas work parties and drinks with friends begins, it feels a distance from the December of two years ago, at the height of the pandemic. We will hug our grandparents, hardly remembering a time when that was anything remarkable. Perhaps that’s why the news that Covid infections in the UK have passed 1m cases again has barely raised a murmur.Months of lockdowns and the grief of losing our loved ones, often without being able to say goodbye, was a collective trauma, and one that we have not dealt with as a nation. The ease of Matt Hancock’s rehabilitation suggests a public keen to bury the pain, keep calm and carry on. There is a noticeable – and understandable – urge to “move on” from the pandemic, even as it still happens around us. Ministers hardly help, talking of “post-Covid” just as ICU beds fill up again.Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

LeBron James joined an exclusive club when he started his 20th season this year. That type of longevity requires talent, interpersonal skills and a little luckKevin Willis remembers encouraging Tim Duncan to keep going. The two former All-NBA players, who won a championship together in San Antonio in 2003, chatted when Duncan’s career was winding down in 2016. “The Big Fundamental” was to retire after his 19 season, and Willis practically pleaded with Duncan to give it one more year so that he could enter one of the few NBA “clubs” that’s eluded him. The 20-plus-seasons club.Willis had been one of only eight members of the club, alongside Vince Carter, Jamal Crawford, Robert Parish, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That was it – until this season. Two more players are adding their names to that vaunted group. One is the undrafted Miami Heat lifer Udonis Haslem. And the other is maybe the greatest hooper of all time: LeBron James. Continue reading...

Dramatising the latest watercooler story doesn’t guarantee you box-office success. The stiffest competition may come from reality’s own high dramaJust before the curtain came up on Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, producer Eleanor Lloyd spoke to the audience about its breakneck transposition from real-life courtroom drama to stage show and the “high-wire act” that such theatre becomes. The part-verbatim show dramatises the case that was detonated soon after Coleen Rooney dropped her Instagram grenade and Rebekah Vardy filed for libel.Having run in the high court and been reported in the media only a few months earlier, here it was again, reprising the best lines, from chipolata-gate to Davy Jones’s Locker. Laying its public interest debate aside, it was indisputably the watercooler story of the spring and summer, its incredible WhatsApp turns holding us rapt. Continue reading...

Joyce DeFauw gets bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University over seven decades after she first stepped on campusJoyce DeFauw of Illinois has given a whole new meaning to the term super senior, used for students who take longer than the usual four years to get their undergraduate degrees.On Sunday, the 90-year-old received a bachelor’s of general studies from Northern Illinois University more than seven decades after she first stepped on campus, becoming what officials believe to be the eldest person to ever graduate from the school. Continue reading...

I’m sure we’ll survive not seeing each other for a couple more weeks, when the rush of December gives way to lazy days

Well-known cougar was tranquilized by officials in the back yard of a Los Feliz home after showing signs of distressLos Angeles’ most famous mountain lion, known for roaming across freeways and making a sprawling urban park his home, was captured Monday by wildlife officials who want to examine the big cat after he killed a dog that was being walked in the Hollywood Hills.The cougar, dubbed P-22, wears a GPS tracking collar as part of a National Park Service study and is regularly recorded on security cameras strolling through residential areas near LA’s Griffith Park, a wilderness and picnic area. Continue reading...

Arrest just 24 hours before founder of cryptocurrency exchange was to testify before US CongressThe Bahamas police have arrested former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the country’s attorney general said in a statement on Monday, adding that the Bahamas has received formal notification from the US of criminal charges against him.Bankman-Fried is expected to be extradited to the US, the attorney general’s office for the Bahamas told Reuters, but declined to comment on what the charges were. Continue reading...

Declaration comes as Bass, first female mayor of Los Angeles, was sworn in by Kamala Harris and feted by Stevie WonderKaren Bass, the new mayor of Los Angeles, began her first day in office by declaring a state of emergency to grapple with the city’s homelessness crisis, bidding to move swiftly to help thousands of unhoused people off the streets.Bass called the declaration “a sea change in how the city tackles homelessness”, making good on a campaign pledge to call the emergency the day she took power. The issue dominated her mayoral race against the billionaire developer Rick Caruso and the crisis has continued to worsen despite vast public spending increases. Continue reading...

‘Gate of the Exonerated’ will be inscribed in sandstone at the northern end of the park following a three-year effortNew York City is naming a gate in Central Park in honor of the five men who, as teenagers, were wrongfully convicted of the 1989 rape of a jogger and spent years in prison before being exonerated. The city’s public design commission unanimously approved the project on Monday.“Gate of the Exonerated” will be inscribed in sandstone at the northern end of the park following a three-year effort that grew out of discussions within the community, John Reddick of the Central Park Conservancy told the board. Continue reading...

The effort to remove Gen AP Hill’s monument was complicated as his remains were interred beneath itThe city of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy for most of the civil war, removed its last city-owned Confederate statue on Monday, more than two years after it began to purge itself of what many saw as painful symbols of racial oppression.It took just minutes to free the statue of Confederate Gen AP Hill from its base, before a crane using yellow straps looped under the statue’s arms lifted it on to a bed of tires on a flatbed truck. After the statue was removed, the crew got to work removing the base. Continue reading...

Kevin de León, who has resisted resigning after the debacle, was involved in an altercation in which he appears to push an organizerKevin de León, the embattled Los Angeles city council member involved in a racism scandal that threw city hall into upheaval, is facing criticism again after video footage captured him in a physical fight with an activist.De León, who has resisted calls to resign, made his first in-person appearance at a council meeting in nearly two months on Friday. Hours later he was involved in an altercation at a holiday toy giveaway in which video appeared to show him shoving a local organizer. Continue reading...

Prosecutor Jack Smith is seeking ‘any and all communications in any form … to, from or involving’ the former president

Army veteran Steven Pringle turned his life around with bike shop where he fixed bikes, sold new ones and gave many awayA Michigan army veteran who turned his life around with a bike shop died in a crash while delivering free bikes to children in Florida affected by Hurricane Ian, his family said.Steven Pringle, 57, was killed in Punta Gorda, Florida, on 23 November, a few weeks after a profile in the Detroit Free Press described how his passion for fixing bikes had touched many people in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Continue reading...

Joseph Kromelis, nicknamed the ‘walking man’ as he was often spotted in the city on foot, died after being set on fire in MayChicago’s famed “walking man” has died nearly seven months after authorities said an unprovoked attacker set him on fire in a horrifying example of a crime aimed at the homeless.Joseph Kromelis, 75, died after being set on fire in May, said the local medical examiner’s office, the local news station ABC7 reported. Continue reading...

Viktor Bout says he has become a member of the Liberal Democratic party of Russia (LDPR), which is pro-Kremlin and has a long history of recruiting controversial figures. His announcement comes just days after he was exchanged for the US basketball star Brittney Griner in a prisoner swap.Speaking to reporters, Bout said he joined the LDPR 'because the party stands for the Russian world' and 'our great motherland. It was a natural choice'

New evidence from Proof disputed prosecution’s case that Darrell Lee Clark and Cain Joshua Storey murdered with premeditationTwo Georgia men were released from prison – and one of them was completely exonerated – after spending more than two decades behind bars, when a true crime podcast revealed new evidence that all but destroyed the case authorities had built against them.Darrell Lee Clark and his co-defendant Cain Joshua Storey were released from custody last week, after spending more than 25 years imprisoned for the 1996 shooting death of 15-year-old Brian Bowling, a friend of the pair, according to a press release from the Georgia Innocence Project. Continue reading...

Interest rate hikes mean that workers and consumers take the hit. Here are other tools to address inflationThe Fed is meeting on Tuesday. This week, presumably, it will announce that it’s raising interest rates once again in its continuing attempt to stem inflation by slowing the economy.But shouldn’t it be obvious by now that higher interest rates aren’t doing the trick?Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Far-right congresswoman says the violent crowd would have won on January 6 if she and Steve Bannon had planned itThe far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has bragged that had she and the former Donald Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon been in charge of organizing the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, the violent crowd would have won, and everyone in it “would’ve been armed”.The notorious provocateur made her comments about the deadly January 6 attack during a speech to a gala of the New York Young Republicans Club on Park Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday night. Hatewatch monitored the event on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Continue reading...

Critics say Republican Doug Ducey’s scheme is illegal because makeshift barrier is being erected on tribal and federal land. Plus, California’s new wolf pack

The neighborhood is home to 4,400 unhoused people. Its restroom options fall short of the UN standard for refugee campsThis story was supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting ProjectThe sun is rising over Skid Row as a crane slowly lifts a shiny, two-unit toilet from the back of a truck and on to the sidewalk. The new bathroom – rectangular and off-white with a ventilated roof – is replacing another unit that has stood on this corner for over 15 years. Continue reading...

Kroger and Albertsons seek deal through FTC but employees say previous merger experience has them deeply concernedThousands of workers at two of America’s biggest supermarkets are warning of potential mass layoffs as the giant firms push for a merger.Kroger, the second largest grocery chain in the US, and Albertsons, the fourth largest, are pushing for a merger through the Federal Trade Commission, which is reviewing the proposal. Continue reading...

Since the sea was enclosed in 1982, it has been ravaged by profiteers – many of whose lobbyists are circling in MontrealThe sea covers 71% of the world’s surface. Two out of every five people live near to or depend on the sea for their livelihood. If the sea were a country, it would be the sixth biggest economy. Ocean-based activities, including offshore energy, shipping, tourism and fishing, account for more than 5% of global GDP, while the World Bank claims that future economic growth will be led by “blue growth”.Yet the “blue economy” receives little attention from politicians or economists. A waffling section in the first draft of the Cop27 agreement in Egypt, mentioning informal meetings, quickly disappeared. Another United Nations circus is taking place Montreal this week, known as Cop15, which seeks to protect biodiversity. The danger is that ministers and diplomats will again be diverted from the economic causes of the crisis and let capital and finance continue to plunder nature. Continue reading...

On Sunday the 45-year-old had to watch a man half his age – and with an even more remarkable origin story – thoroughly outplay him in his native Bay AreaIt was a surreal Bay Area homecoming for Tom Brady, to say the least. There was the most successful quarterback in history, on the field for the entirety of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 35-7 blowout loss to the San Francisco 49ers, still competing long after the game had effectively been decided. Sunday will be remembered as the day one of the all-time greats was thoroughly outplayed by Mr Irrelevant.As the meme puts it, you can never count out Touchdown Tom. We were all reminded of this just last week when Brady engineered his 44th fourth-quarter comeback win. That was a league record, one of the many that he owns, and maybe the most fitting. Brady is the football version of a superhero (or supervillain, depending on one’s rooting interests) who always jumps back to life soon after being declared dead. Heck, despite the loss, the 6-7 Bucs are still on top of the NFC South and penciled in for another playoff appearance. Continue reading...

I’ve reported on conflicts for 20 years, and I’m not afraid to be blunt about Russia’s disgusting war of aggression on UkraineI took quite a lot of photos on my phone when I was in Ukraine this year, but this one jumped out at me as I was scrolling through them. Here we have Dante – the Italian poet, philosopher, writer – with his marble head poking up out of the sandbags. It’s in a park on Volodymyr Hill in the centre of Kyiv.It’s not just an arresting image. Dante is a harbinger of the Renaissance; he’s a symbol of culture and learning. And that is the opposite of war, which is a regression to dark times. This is what Ukraine and Kyiv are having to labour under – and so Dante finds himself stifled by sandbags. Of course, one also thinks of the Divine Comedy and the seventh circle of hell, which is violence. That’s what the people of Ukraine have been enduring: a modern circle of hell.Clive Myrie is a journalistDo 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...

You’d have to ignore the hair-clogged plughole for a start. But I guess that’s where pheromones come inHome alone last week, I did what I only do in private: flipped open my laptop and surreptitiously signed up to another unnecessarily complex streaming service to watch the romcom series The Flatshare. It’s not that I think enjoying romance is shameful; I just live with someone whose comfort viewing skews to stuff exploding and Kevin McCloud raising an eyebrow at architraves.I adore a good romcom, but the reviews were adamant: The Flatshare is not that. I switched off my limited critical faculties and surrendered to a fondue-gooey viewing experience. It has a sketchy plot, damp-squib sexual chemistry and supporting characters limited to one personality trait, as if rationed. Then there’s the loopy premise: the leads share a flat and a bed (one gets it during the day, the other at night) without meeting. Fine by me. Continue reading...

Senator adds to chorus of detractors against Arizona lawmaker who left Democratic party and declared herself an independentThe popular progressive US senator Bernie Sanders would consider supporting any Democrat who might mount a challenge against his chamber colleague Kyrsten Sinema after she recently left the party and declared herself an independent like him, arguing that she has “helped sabotage” some of Congress’s most important legislation.Sanders’s comments on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union added to the chorus of detractors against the Arizona lawmaker who has undermined the agenda of the Joe Biden White House and other progressives, including by voting down raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and reforming the Senate filibuster so that voting rights legislation can pass. Continue reading...

LaBelle's shock is caught on video as she yells, 'Wait!' before security officials escort the singer off the stage during her Christmas concert in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The moment came after authorities received a bomb threat. Local media reported that the venue, which seats around 2,500 people and was at near-capacity, was later searched by K9 units. No explosive devices were discovered

Kristin Kassner won against Republican opponent Lenny Mirra after a recount shrunk candidates’ narrow vote deficit to oneA recount in a political race in Massachusetts has flipped a state house of representatives election from Republican to Democrat by a single vote.Democrat Kristin Kassner won against her Republican opponent and five-term incumbent Lenny Mirra earlier this week after a recount that shrunk the candidates’ narrow vote deficit to one. The candidates were all vying for a seat based in the North Shore area, which is a coastal region between Boston and New Hampshire. Continue reading...

Basketball star is being debriefed at San Antonio army facility as plight of other Americans held in Russia continuesBrittney Griner, the American basketball star who has been released from almost 10 months of detention in Russia in a prisoner swap with the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, is undergoing physical and mental evaluation at a Texas army facility as part of her rehabilitation to the US.The two-time Olympic gold medalist is being debriefed at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. She arrived back in the US on Friday morning and was immediately taken for what was being described as “extensive health evaluations”. Continue reading...

Republican representative for Missouri Vicky Hartzler tearfully asked colleagues in the House of Representatives to vote against the Respect for Marriage Act, which forces states without marriage equality laws to recognise LGBTQ+ marriages from other states. Hartzler has faced a backlash for calling the bill 'misguided and dangerous', including criticism from her nephew on TikTok. Andrew Hartzler called his aunt a 'homophobe', saying 'you're just going to have to learn how to co-exist with all of us'. Vicky Hartzler has not yet responded to her nephew's video, which has been 'liked' over 200,000 times on TikTok

Investigators booked Allen Tayeh on counts of malice murder and arson after body of attorney Doug Lewis was found inside buildingA Georgia divorce attorney was recently shot to death – and his office was set on fire – by a client’s estranged husband in an extreme example of how contentious US family court cases can get, according to authorities.Police in the community of Lawrenceville allege that Allen Tayeh went to the office of a lawyer representing a woman in the process of divorcing him and shot the attorney, Doug Lewis, there on 7 December. Continue reading...

Romantic victimhood allows us to believe we’re forever the wounded party – and that men are incapable of changeThere is a genre in ascendancy at the moment that I’ve labelled “romantic victimhood”. Content that falls within this category – ranging from literary screeds to TikTok confessionals – only ever characterises the players in two roles: villain or victim.The villain is always a man. It is usually a man in a relationship with a woman, although sometimes it is a man dating a man. Nevertheless: man = villain. The victim is his romantic interest. They recount his behaviour, with the benefit of hindsight, and detail upsetting incidents, usually ones where they felt slighted in some way. These are typically imparted in the register now employed to describe a harm, which combines sombre, stark delivery with therapeutic jargon. The harm is not anything as easily categorisable as outright abuse, or sexual assault. It is a hurt, perhaps one of many, that have added up to create an ultimately “bad relationship”.Moya Lothian-McLean is a contributing editor at Novara MediaDo 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...

Critics say Republican Doug Ducey’s scheme is illegal because makeshift barrier is being erected on tribal and federal landA makeshift new barrier built with shipping containers is being illegally erected along part of the US-Mexico border by Arizona’s Republican governor – before he has to hand over the keys of his office to his Democratic successor in January.Doug Ducey is driving a project that is placing double-stacked old shipping containers through several miles of national forest, attempting to fill gaps in Donald Trump’s intermittent border fencing. Continue reading...

Germany’s Olaf Scholz wants a return to the prewar order. While Russia peddles fantasies of a global empire, that dream is unachievableVladimir Putin should expect more Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory, such as those on two military airbases last week. US attempts to dissuade Kyiv’s leaders from taking the war to Russia in retaliation for Putin’s merciless missile and drone attacks on their people and cities were bound to fail eventually.It was asking too much. The strikes by newly developed, homemade, long-range drones, one of them only 150 miles from Moscow, are of a different order from previous attacks in Crimea and other Russian-occupied areas. They take the war to a more expansive, dangerous level – and represent the escalation that Nato allies fear most. Continue reading...

Heinrich and his cronies seem unlikely insurrectionists but their connections run back to Bismarck’s timePresent-day Germans have a reputation, in Britain at least, for being law-abiding, solid, even stolid citizens who generally toe the line. Like most stereotypes, this caricature is hopelessly inaccurate. Anyone surprised by last week’s foiled “coup” ignores German history and the insurrectionary exploits of one Wolfgang Kapp.Abetted by an aristocratic soldier, Gen Walther von Lüttwitz, he launched the so-called “Kapp putsch” in 1920 against the national government in Berlin. The aim was to overthrow the Weimar Republic that replaced the Second Reich at the end of the first world war – and so avenge the mythical “stab in the back”. His putsch flopped. Continue reading...

A campaign to warn teenagers about their biological clock is approaching the issue the wrong way roundSo often, the answer to big societal challenges gets boiled down to the school curriculum. High levels of obesity? Let’s get schools to teach healthy eating. Too many people in debt? Financial literacy should be taught to every pupil. Concerned about the dangers of social media? Digital literacy lessons for all.Of course there’s nothing wrong with making sure children and young people are informed about how to keep themselves healthy and safe. But there is a danger not just of overloading schools but of kidding ourselves that the answer to structural and social phenomena is a bit more education.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...

MPs will again show their respect by falling silent in the House of CommonsIt takes a lot to silence the House of Commons. However, 80 years ago, the Islington South MP, William Cluse, did exactly that. On 17 December 1942, MPs responded to the British government’s first public acknowledgement of the Holocaust with a spontaneous moment of silence – a first for the chamber.Anthony Eden, the then foreign secretary, read a declaration based on reports from the Polish government-in-exile, detailing the atrocities taking place in Nazi-occupied Europe. Eden reported that: “From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe … None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labour camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions.” As he detailed the crimes being committed by the Nazis in occupied Europe, the house listened in stunned silence. Continue reading...

Department of Justice viewed deal to exchange basketball star for Russian arms dealer as a mistakeJoe Biden has faced pressure from within his own administration, as well as his political opponents, in securing the release of basketball player Brittney Griner from Russia, according to reports.On Thursday, Biden hailed the “intense and painstaking negotiations” that led to the release of Griner in a prisoner swap deal with the arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport in February for possession of a small amount of cannabis oil, while Bout, nicknamed ‘the merchant of death’, was serving a 25-year sentence in federal prison for fueling conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. Continue reading...

As an interviewee in the Netflix series, the scale and fury of the backlash to the comments on race and royals is revelatoryThe howl of exasperation from tabloid commentators – who spoke almost in unison last week like a dismissive Greek chorus – was that Netflix’s Harry and Meghan documentary series contains no new revelations. The supposed dearth of suitably titillating details left Britain’s ever‑growing legions of royal commentators, and even some TV reviewers, pouting and foot-stamping like 12-year-olds told to do their homework, as if access to salacious royal gossip is our birthright and the Sussexes are contractually obliged to provide it.What was quietly and purposefully revelatory about the documentary went largely uncommented upon. The more open-minded of the 2.4 million people who clicked through to the first episode experienced a simple but central revelation: they heard the voices of a young woman of colour and her husband, who have been subjected of an unprecedented campaign of abuse and vilification, telling us what that all felt like. Continue reading...

The tributes that have poured out after the journalist’s death are no surprise. He used his privilege, power and position in football for goodEveryone has a Grant Wahl story.This was never more true than on Friday night, when messages of love, support, shock, and grief poured out across social media with the news of his sudden death while covering the World Cup in Qatar. Continue reading...

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler voted against bill protecting same-sex marriage but Andrew Hartzler, who is gay, was unimpressedThe backlash to the Republican member of Congress who broke down in tears in her opposition to the same-sex marriage bill has included a familiar face – her nephew, who has called the lawmaker a “homophobe”.On Thursday, Vicky Hartzler, a Republican representative from Missouri, shed tears as she urged colleagues in the US House of Representatives to vote against the Respect for Marriage Act, which forces states without marriage equality laws to recognize LGBTQ+ marriages from other states. Continue reading...