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A highway on the Big Island has become an impromptu viewing point, with thousands of cars jamming it upThe world’s largest volcano oozed rivers of glowing lava Wednesday, drawing thousands of awestruck viewers who jammed a Hawaii highway that could soon be covered by the flow.Mauna Loa awoke from its 38-year slumber Sunday, causing volcanic ash and debris to drift down from the sky. A main highway linking towns on the east and west coasts of the Big Island became an impromptu viewing point, with thousands of cars jamming the highway near Volcanoes National Park. Continue reading...

Virginia deputy Austin Edwards, 28, killed in California shootout after killing mother and grandparents and torching home – policeA Virginia sheriff’s deputy posed as a 17-year-old boy online and asked a teenage California girl for nude photos before he drove across the country and killed her mother and grandparents and set fire to their home, authorities said on Wednesday.Austin Lee Edwards, 28, was killed Friday in a shootout with San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies. The 15-year-old girl from Riverside, California, was rescued and is in counseling for trauma, family members and police said at a news conference. Continue reading...

New York congressman will assume role of minority leader early next year, inheriting position held for decades by PelosiHouse Democrats on Wednesday elected the New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries as their new leader, making him the first Black American to lead a major political party in Congress after Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker, announced that she was stepping aside to pave the way for a new generation.Jeffries, 52, will assume the role of minority leader when the new Congress is sworn in early next year, inheriting the position held for nearly two decades by Pelosi, a towering figure in Democratic politics who was the first woman speaker. Continue reading...

Last year’s death toll also marks a 31% increase from 2020 in LA’s epidemic that mirrors disturbing trends across the countryFentanyl deaths and hospitalizations have surged in Los Angeles county, with a 1,280% increase in fatalities from 2016 to 2021, according to a new report on the public health crisis.The LA county public health department released data on Tuesday revealing that 1,504 people suffered fatal fentanyl overdoses in 2021, nearly 14 times as many deaths as in 2016 when 109 people died. Last year’s death toll also marks a 31% increase from 2020. From 2016 to 2020, there was also a 308% increase in emergency department visits for fentanyl, from 133 cases to 542 cases. Continue reading...

Scientists scramble to re-establish the crucial monitoring that has been situated on the volcano since 1958The world’s premier measurement site for global carbon dioxide levels has been shut down because of a volcanic eruption in Hawaii, with scientists scrambling to re-establish the crucial monitoring that has been situated on the volcano since 1958.Lava has been shooting more than 150ft into the air from Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, since Sunday night and a river of molten rock is now not only menacing the main highway on Hawaii’s big island but also the Mauna Loa Observatory, a scientific station situated on the northern flank of the volcano. Continue reading...

Florida governor expected to challenge Trump for Republican nod in 2024 will publish The Courage to Be Free in FebruaryIn the clearest signal yet that Ron DeSantis is preparing a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, it was announced on Wednesday that the rightwing governor of Florida will publish a campaign-style book, mixing memoir with policy proposals.The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal, will be published by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins, on 28 February. Continue reading...

Jerome Powell warned there ‘was more ground to cover’ and rates would stay higher for an extended periodThe Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, indicated the central bank is preparing to slow the pace of interest rate rises as it tackles a 40-year high in inflation. But Powell warned there “was more ground to cover” and rates would stay higher for an extended period.In a speech to the Brookings Institution, Powell said that the Fed may increase its key interest rate by a smaller increment at its December meeting, only a half-point, after four straight three-quarter point hikes. Continue reading...

When Susan Hussey asked that of a black British charity boss, she echoed the words of many who alienate people of colour“Where are you from?” is a question that every person in my family has been asked, from my parents in the 1960s to my little nephew, crying on his way back from school. I’ve faced the question from schoolteachers who want to know if I speak English, dates trying to exoticise me – and a manager who laughed afterwards, knowing he should not have asked.“Where are you really from?” is the follow-up, if you don’t give someone what they want. While the question can come from a place of curiosity, it is hard to ignore the sinister undertones, especially when it’s repeated. Continue reading...

Advocacy groups for civil rights groups and the homeless criticized mandate: ‘Mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights’The mayor of New York City announced on Tuesday that he is ordering police and emergency services to more aggressively hospitalize those with mental illness who are on the streets, even if the hospitalization is involuntary and they pose no threat to other people.Mayor Eric Adams’ directive would give outreach workers, city hospitals and first responders, including police, discretion to forcibly hospitalize anyone they deem as not “meeting their basic human needs, causing them to be a danger to themselves”, Adams told a news conference. Continue reading...

More than 50,000 customers in Mississippi and Alabama left without electricity as search and rescue teams go door to doorTornadoes damaged homes, destroyed a fire station, briefly trapped people in a grocery store and ripped the roof off an apartment complex in Mississippi while two people died as a tree hit their mobile home in Alabama, authorities said on Wednesday.The National Weather Service (NWS) had warned that strong twisters capable of carving up communities over long distances were possible as the storm front moved east from Texas. They were fueled by record high temperatures and threatened a stretch of the US where more than 25 million people live. Continue reading...

Jacob Wohl, 24, and Jack Burkman, 56, targeted Black voters with phony telephone messages before 2020 electionTwo men convicted of fraud for targeting Black voters with phony robocalls before the 2020 election must spend 500 hours registering voters in low-income neighborhoods of Washington DC, an Ohio judge ruled.The calls told people they could be arrested or forced to receive vaccinations based on information they submitted in votes by mail.Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

Workers could be prevented by congressional decree from striking over paid sick leave and quality-of-life issuesRailroad workers have expressed dismay at Joe Biden’s proposed solution to a looming strike that threatens to derail the US economy, which they say belies his image as the most pro-union president in generations.As a 9 December deadline looms for the long-running labor dispute between the US’s largest railway companies and their unions, Biden has called on Congress to intervene and block a strike that could cost the US economy about $2bn a day by some estimates. Continue reading...

‘If we decide to get into it, we’ll put 1,000% in,’ says former South Carolina governor and Trump’s US ambassador to the UNThe former Republican South Carolina governor and Donald Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will use the coming Christmas holidays to decide whether to launch a run for the White House in 2024.Speaking in her home state and at her alma mater, Clemson University, on Tuesday, Haley said: “We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is. If we decide to get into it, we’ll put 1,000% in, and we’ll finish it.” Continue reading...

More than 3,000 readers responded to our callout, and urged a ‘less is more’ approach when reporting on the former presidentDonald Trump’s announcement of a third run for the presidency has renewed a discussion in newsrooms on how best to cover the former president. That conversation is happening inside the Guardian, too.Beginning with his 2016 campaign, much of the US media took to Trump like a moth to a flame, covering him like a celebrity – one whose propensity to espouse lies and conspiracy theories riveted audiences. But Trump proved an expert at manipulating that coverage, which often unwittingly amplified those same lies. Continue reading...

Rightwing provocateur says he helped arrange for white supremacist to attend dinner with Trump and Kanye WestAs fallout from Donald Trump’s meeting with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes continues, a far-right activist has claimed the meeting was a set-up, meant to “make Trump’s life miserable”.NBC News reported that in an attempt to “send a message” to the former president, Milo Yiannopoulos, a rightwing provocateur and former Breitbart editor, helped arrange for Fuentes to travel to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for a dinner between Trump and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. Continue reading...

Jury convicts leader of rightwing group which supported Trump’s attempt to overturn 2020 electionStewart Rhodes, the founder of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia, has been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a charge arising from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.With the verdicts on Tuesday, Rhodes and his co-defendant Kelly Meggs became the first people in nearly three decades to be found guilty of the rarely used, civil war-era charge at trial. Continue reading...

The US team are through to the last-16, while enacting their coach’s grand vision: youth, energy and a high-pressing possession-based styleGregg Berhalter knows all about the magnified importance of fine margins in the World Cup. As a US defender he was denied an equalizer in the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup when a handball on the line by Germany’s Torsten Frings went unpenalized. The US lost 1-0.If Iran had shown more composure in the box on Tuesday they might have pinched the point they needed to finish above the US, and instead of looking forward to a round-of-16 tie against the Netherlands on Saturday the American head coach would have faced an uncertain future. Continue reading...

Firearm-related homicides among Black women more than tripled since 2010 and gun suicides have doubled since 2015, study findsThe US gun death rate last year hit its highest mark in nearly 30 years and the rate among women has been growing faster than that of men, according to a new study.The increase among women – most dramatically, in Black women – is playing a tragic and under-recognized role in a tally that skews overwhelmingly male, researchers said. Continue reading...

The king and Anglican leaders should take note that if the country is changing, so should its institutionsEngland and Wales are no longer Christian: shock. Christians a minority for the first time since the dark ages. We are among the most godless nations on Earth. According to the 2021 census, the number of us ticking the Christian box has fallen to less than 48%. While Christian Pentecostalism is booming, barely 12% are members of the national Church of England. More of us now go to a mosque each week than to a parish church. Those of “no religion” have tripled since the millennium, to 37%.Ethnic minorities now comprise 18% of the population, and form majorities in cities such as Birmingham and Leicester. This means Muslims and Hindus have made up some ground for religion, as such. In one sense, the picture that emerges from this census is improving. Daily headlines may condemn racism and discrimination, but this should not conceal the advances in diversity, equal rights and opportunities compared with England and Wales in the 20th century. According to Opinium research, more of us regard our society as being more tolerant now than it used to be. In few overseas cities do you see such a mix of races as on a our streets or television screens. The politics of Northern Ireland seem so archaic only because it is one part of the UK where religion was until recently a matter of life and death. Continue reading...

Republican candidate’s reference to his out-of-state home opens him to same attacks that dogged Mehmet Oz in PennsylvaniaIn a campaign speech earlier this year, Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Georgia, said: “I live in Texas.”Walker will face the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock, in a runoff next Tuesday, a contest triggered after Warnock received the most votes on election day but did not pass 50% of the vote. Polling puts the two candidates near-level, with early voting at record levels. Continue reading...

The Portland Thorns forward on pushing herself to the limit, learning from Christine Sinclair and the upcoming World CupWelcome to Moving the Goalposts, the Guardian’s free women’s football newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version once a week, just pop your email in below:In October Sophia Smith sat in front of the gathered media in Washington DC and calmly outlined her ambition: to become the best player in the world. It is quite a claim but then she had already had a pretty good year: She was the 2022 NWSL MVP (the youngest ever), was awarded the same accolade for the season’s final, which her club Portland Thorns won, and scored in the final. Continue reading...

Trial was biggest test yet for authorities after attack that shook foundations of democracy. Plus, Senate votes to protect same-sex marriagesGood morning.Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia, has been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a charge arising from the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.How significant is the case? Harry Litman, a former US attorney turned legal analyst, said the guilty verdicts represented “a huge, huge victory for the [justice department] in a challenging and deeply important, even historic, case”.Public support for same-sex marriage is at an all-time high of about 70%. But according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, if the supreme court did overturn the right, at least 29 states would be able to enforce bans. Continue reading...

Republican officials face two lawsuits, likely court intervention to force their vote and potential criminal penaltiesAfter officials in a rural Arizona county refused to certify election results by a legally mandated deadline, they now face two lawsuits, likely court intervention to force their vote and potential criminal penalties.The rare, likely illegal move by the officials sets up quick court battles as state officials race to certify the election statewide, a process set for 5 December. Candidates and outside parties wishing to sue over the election results await these final results before their court cases can commence. Continue reading...

If one of the NFL’s most powerful men had taken ownership of a controversial image from the civil rights era, he really would be a football maverickOf the NFL’s 32 team principals, only Jerry Jones mugs for TV cameras during games, entertains reporters afterward, and has a stadium that’s a monument to his stature in the game. Even the most casual football watcher would recognize the 80-year-old oilman as the face of the Dallas Cowboys – America’s Team – the cultural institution Jones won three championships with in the 1990s.Where late Raiders owner Al Davis exerted his authority over the league through the court system, Jones came to power through good ol’ fashioned hucksterism, overstating everything from his roster’s Super Bowl prospects to his own indispensability as Cowboys general manager. And while Jones’s ingratiating southern boy routine has no doubt had a heavy hand in lifting the league’s fortunes and making the Cowboys the world’s most valuable sports firm (with a reported worth of $8bn), it has yet to explain why the face of America’s Team can’t own his singular role in one of the more ignominious moments in this country’s past. Continue reading...

‘I have to hope this is all part of their plan,’ says Steve Goncalves, whose daughter, Kaylee, was one of four victims stabbed to deathThe lack of any arrests in the killings of four University of Idaho students and relatively infrequent updates from police have left the father of one of the victims feeling “a little defeated”.In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, Steve Goncalves also said his family had held off burying his daughter, Kaylee Goncalves, who was stabbed to death with three schoolmates in an off-campus home in a crime that horrified the nation, because they fear the unidentified killer or killers might show up as false mourners. Continue reading...

Fossil fuels, fisheries and farming: the world’s most destructive industries are protected – and subsidised – by governmentsIn every conflict over the living world, something is being protected. And most of the time, it’s the wrong thing.The world’s most destructive industries are fiercely protected by governments. The three sectors that appear to be most responsible for the collapse of ecosystems and erasure of wildlife are fossil fuels, fisheries and farming. In 2021, governments directly subsidised oil and gas production to the tune of $64bn (£53bn), and spent a further $531bn (£443bn) on keeping fossil fuel prices low. The latest figures for fisheries, from 2018, suggest that global subsidies for the sector amount to $35bn a year, over 80% of which go to large-scale industrial fishing. Most are paid to “enhance capacity”: in other words to help the industry, as marine ecosystems collapse, catch more fish.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Governor Kristi Noem’s executive order prohibits employees and contractors from using the app on government gadgetsKristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, on Tuesday issued an executive order banning state employees and contractors from accessing the video platform TikTok on state-owned devices, citing its ties to China.TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. It has been targeted by Republicans who say the Chinese government could access user data such as browsing history and location. US armed forces also have prohibited the app on military devices. Continue reading...

House must now pass legislation as Democrats hurry to get it Biden to sign into law before Republicans take over the chamberThe US Senate has passed the Respect for Marriage Act, legislation to protect same-sex unions that Democrats are hurrying to get to Joe Biden to be signed into law before Republicans take over the House next year.The House must now pass the bill, a step the majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said could come as soon as Tuesday 6 December. Nearly 50 House Republicans supported the measure earlier this year. In the Senate, support from 12 Republicans was enough to override the filibuster and advance the bill to Tuesday’s majority vote, which ended 61-36. Continue reading...

The Americans enter the business end of the tournament on a tailwind of confidence after the Chelsea player put his body on the lineIt was never going to be easy. Then again, neither has the grinding pressure of being American soccer’s chosen one. But when the right opportunity arrived, Christian Pulisic surrendered his body for his team and finally took hold of his signature moment on the international stage.With the temperature of this geopolitical proxy war between the United States and Iran at the Middle East’s first World Cup having risen to a boiling point, Pulisic turned the volume down with a goal the United States desperately had to have, making the difference in a tense and riveting win-or-go-home showdown for the Americans. When Sergiño Dest directed a header toward goal off Weston McKennie’s floated pass in the 38th minute, an onrushing Pulisic burst through a thicket of white shirts and struck home what proved to be the winner while barreling into the Iranian keeper. Pulisic then lay sprawled in the goalmouth for nearly four minutes. Continue reading...

Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy break silence over meeting and say no room in party for antisemitism or white supremacyThe top two Republicans in Congress have broken their silence about Donald Trump’s dinner last week with the rightwing extremist Nick Fuentes, saying the Republican party has no place for antisemitism or white supremacy.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and Kevin McCarthy, who may become House speaker in January, had not commented previously on the 22 November meeting. Continue reading...

This was a game too far for Iran. Their World Cup campaign was short but will not be wrenched from the memory easily, the harrowing domestic context colouring their every step. When the dust has settled they should take huge pride in having remained competitive despite such a varied and extraordinary set of external pressures; the team’s reaction at full time, many of them falling to the floor, told of the toll recent weeks have taken.It is the USA who will join England in qualifying from Group B, though, and they will face the Netherlands on Saturday. They needed the win and deserved it, Christian Pulisic scoring seven minutes before half-time but sustaining an injury in the process. It was a cool, controlled performance and a fixture whose pre-match storylines seemed endless passed without any flashpoints. Continue reading...

The beloved Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ club has a storied past, a painful present and a hopeful futureFor two decades, Club Q was the center of gravity for the region’s LGBTQ+ community and provided a place to organize, share resources and, most of all, take refuge.“It is the mecca of this area. Everyone felt safe there. Everyone could go there and be themselves and not have something like this happen,” said Jessica Laney, an organizer with Pikes Peak Pride, referring to the 20 November shooting that killed five people and injured dozens more. “Club Q had their finger on the pulse of everything going on in the queer community in Colorado Springs and Denver and beyond.” Continue reading...

Citing ‘catastrophic’ risk to US economy, Nancy Pelosi announces impending vote to bind unions to September negotiationsThe US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced that her fellow members of Congress plan to vote this week on imposing a new contract for railroad workers to avert a looming labor strike.Pelosi made the announcement late on Monday afternoon just after Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene to prevent a strike, a possibility if an agreement between the freight rail industry and unions is not made by 9 December. Continue reading...

Mike Pence, Chris Christie and several Republican senators were also critical, to varying degrees, of former presidentSeveral Republican lawmakers and prominent Jewish conservatives have condemned Donald Trump for meeting with white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, in a rare distancing from the ex-president.Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and several Republican senators were critical, to varying degrees, of Trump, who has come under fire after dining with Fuentes last week. Continue reading...

After its festive ad campaign tried to spread some holiday cheer, the fashion house Balenciaga has been judged the sinnerVery early days of course, but at this stage you’d probably judge that John Lewis’s Christmas ad campaign was going better than Balenciaga’s. This is a fast-developing festive cancellation shitstorm, so forgive me if I have missed any major staging posts across the past few days. But as of this morning, the luxury fashion house has: issued a mushrooming series of apologies for an ad series featuring children holding handbags crafted from teddy bears dressed in bondage outfits; deleted its entire Instagram history; had a confected industry award withheld from its resident creative genius; been exposed for an earlier ad campaign that featured casually placed … hang on, let me get my hazmat gloves … US supreme court documents relating to a case involving child abuse images; served a blame-shifting $25m lawsuit against the producer of that ad; held crisis talks with Kim Kardashian who has herself issued some archbishop of Canterbury-style statement about her shock and disgust about the BDSM cuddly toy ads; and become the lightning rod for a raging attack on liberal values, from anyone unfashionably accessorised with common sense to standard alt-right suspects, to the full QAnon wingnuts.Honestly, you try to spread a little holiday cheer by getting some sad-looking children to hold up your bondage teddy bear handbags, and this is the thanks you get. Short of shooting the ad campaign in the basement of the pizzeria in which Hillary Clinton was conspiracy-theorised as masterminding a paedophile ring, it’s hard to see where Balenciaga could have been more extra, creatively speaking. I bet they wish they’d just done a big picture of Santa, sticking some of their gopping sock trainers under the tree of a bolshie Surrey injectables trainee, but the insistence that the market is something more edgily high-art than the reality is the fashion industry’s central creed. Continue reading...

Why do big brands think they have to be edgy? And yes, I am also talking about you BalenciagaYou know what I would like a major manufacturer of tampons to do? Make tampons. You know what I wouldn’t like them to do? Make creepy sex jokes on Twitter. This is a not-so-subtle reference to Tampax, which caused large swathes of the internet to see red after an off-colour tweet last week. “You’re in their DMs,” Tampax tweeted. “We’re in them. We are not the same.”I spend a good 60% of my waking hours on Twitter. Maybe you don’t. If we are not the same then you might have no idea what on earth Tampax was on about. (Good for you!) Essentially, its joke was a mashup of two popular memes. The plain English translation reads: “You’re flirting with them via direct message, I’m in their vagina. Ha ha, I’m better than you.”Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The protesters’ cry of ‘woman, life, freedom’ is inspiring, but many people in the US quit listening after the first wordIt’s been more than two months since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested by Iran’s so-called guidance patrol for incorrectly wearing her hijab, died in police custody. The official report blamed her death on heart failure, but eyewitnesses and her family insist that she was so severely beaten that she suffered a fatal brain injury. Since then, protests have raged across Iran despite the brutality of the government’s response. Over 400 people have been killed; an unknown number of journalists and demonstrators have been imprisoned or disappeared. Hundreds have been blinded by rubber bullets and metal pellets fired into crowds of protesters. Popular athletes – soccer star Voria Ghafouri and champion climber Elnaz Rekabi – have been detained for criticizing, or appearing to criticize, the government.Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have begun targeting children. At least 58 young Iranians have been murdered, five of them within one recent week. The government seems to believe that terror for one’s children is the most effective way to keep dissidents at home and off the streets. Continue reading...

When I drive him to his first day of high school, I’ll insist he talk to me to keep him off his new phone just a bit longer. I’ll relish that sliver of time

Federal government has continued to focus ‘disproportionately’ on international terrorist threats despite spate of racist shootingsThe FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are failing to properly address the threat of domestic terrorism, predominantly from white supremacist and anti-government extremists, according to a Senate committee report released on Monday.The Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee spent three years investigating domestic terrorism and the federal response. Continue reading...

The world’s largest active volcano has erupted for the first time in 38 years. While the eruption of Mauna Loa wasn’t immediately endangering towns, officials have told about 200,000 people living on Hawaii’s Big Island to prepare to evacuate in the event lava flows started heading towards populated areas.The US Geological Survey warned an eruption 'can be very dynamic, and the location and advance of lava flows can change rapidly'

Low vaccination rates seen as hurdle to easing strict zero-Covid policy. Plus, Biden’s labor credentials under scrutinyGood morning.Chinese health officials have announced a drive to accelerate vaccinations of older people against Covid, as police patrolled several cities to stamp out the protests against the country’s strict zero-Covid policy.Why is China still having severe lockdowns? In what could be read as a rare criticism of the country’s health system, a recent comment article published in China’s state-run People’s Daily quoted a pharmaceuticals analyst as saying that a full reopening might “threaten a health system that currently has far fewer ICU beds than those of other developed countries”. Continue reading...