At least five people were killed and another 18 were injured in a shooting late on Saturday night at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs. The suspected shooter, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, is in custody, the chief of the Colorado Springs police department, Adrian Vasquez, said at a news conference on Sunday morning. He said Aldrich immediately began shooting when he entered the club on Saturday, and at least two patrons quickly confronted him and subdued him. 'We owe them a great debt of thanks,' Vasquez added
by Bryan Armen Graham in Al Rayyan, Qatar on (#661F7)
The USMNT’s young players have negotiated the off-field turmoil in Qatar. Now they must deal with injuries and loss of form in key areasShortly after the silence enveloping this sleepy neighborhood on the outskirts of Doha was broken by the late evening call to prayer echoing from the minarets, the United States men’s national team arrived at the Al-Gharrafa Stadium on Saturday night for their penultimate training session ahead of a tournament unlike any other.The modest 21,000-seat bowl in Al Rayyan – the Americans’ training headquarters for the length of their stay in Qatar – is eight miles from the soaring glass-and-steel skyscrapers and sprawling air-conditioned malls of the Doha corniche. But not nearly far enough, it turns out, to escape the swirling controversies about the first World Cup to be staged in an Arab country, which were only amplified to a deafening pitch in the run-up to Sunday’s opening match between the host country and Ecuador. Continue reading...
Police and emergency response vehicles attend the scene of a shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs in which five people were killed and 18 injured. A suspect is in custody and being treated for injuries after the attack at Club Q, the police spokesperson Pamela Castro told a news conference. A statement from Club Q on its Facebook page said it was 'devastated by the senseless attack on our community … We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack'
Boomers have overseen one of the greatest expansions of wealth in history – and created problems for the generations to comeI’m not exactly a baby boomer, but I’m pretty darn close. The standard definition of this generation is that they were born between the years after the second world war and 1964. I was born in 1965, close, so go ahead, call me a boomer if you want. I’m not ashamed. But there’s one thing I do know: the small business world will be much better off when the boomers ride off into the sunset.According to data from Wilmington Trust, baby boomers own 2.3m businesses in the country and employ about 25 million people, which means that a third of Americans depend on these businesses for their income and tens of millions more – vendors, suppliers, freelancers – also depend on these businesses for their livelihood. Continue reading...
The state rejected hardline rhetoric amid historic turnout by young and Latino votersArizonans rejected extremists.As their new governor, voters chose Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who oversaw the 2020 election, over Kari Lake, the extremist Trump-endorsed election denier who campaigned alongside white supremacists. They re-elected the moderate Democrat Mark Kelly to the Senate over the far-right Blake Masters, who equated abortion to “genocide” and espouses the great replacement theory. For secretary of state, voters chose Adrian Fontes, the former election official who vowed to protect voting rights, over Mark Finchem, a self-identified member of the Oath Keepers. Continue reading...
The expected Republican steamroll in the midterms never materialized, due to concerns over abortion rights and a mobilized Democratic baseWhen Republicans narrowly clinched control of the US House of Representatives, it was clear the “red wave” failed to materialize and Democrats avoided what many feared would be a hefty defeat.Considering the midterm elections historically tend to favor the president’s opposing party, Democrats performed well. Despite Biden’s low approval rating, his administration had the best midterm performance of any president in decades. Continue reading...
Finance chief Allen Weisselberg, whose plea deal depends on him telling the truth, claims he acted alone in Trump Organization tax fraud trial in New YorkOf all the sprawling legal contests facing Donald Trump, the one against his family company finally came into focus in a New York court last week.Alan Weisselberg, the longtime financial chief of the Trump Organization, told a jury that he had betrayed the trust of the Trump family when he dodged $1.7m in income taxes on company perks, including a Manhattan apartment, tuition for his grandchildren and luxury cars. Continue reading...
Biden spent the last several months weathering the blame for an anticipated rebuke from voters – but instead found vindicationToday, Joe Biden will quietly ring in his 80th birthday over brunch with his family in Washington. It’s a milestone none of his predecessors reached while serving in the White House and one that looms large as he considers his political future.Yet the president enters his ninth decade at a moment of unexpected strength. Democrats defied history in the midterm elections, keeping control of the Senate and shattering Republican hopes of a “red wave” in the House. Continue reading...
Companies may claim to serve employees, communities and the planet – but two books show profit still comes firstAmerican CEOs are a self-assured bunch but it takes a certain level of hubris to conclude that your skills making money and climbing the corporate ladder also equip you to solve social and environmental challenges.While promising to save the world is increasingly part of the chief executive’s job description, two timely new books make clear that this grandiose notion remains little more than a self-serving fantasy. Continue reading...
As he enters prison, a disgraced former DEA agent who lived a decadent double life has claimed his own crimes were the tip of the icebergJosé Irizarry was cursed with a drug lord’s tastes and a civil servant’s salary.An agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Irizarry liked yacht parties with sex workers, jewelry from Tiffany, Louis Vuitton luggage and luxury cars. To finance his lifestyle – which came to include a BMW, two Land Rovers and three houses – Irizarry embezzled millions of dollars in government funds. Continue reading...
by Hugo Lowell and David Smith in Washington on (#65ZWE)
‘Extraordinary circumstances’ require appointment of Jack Smith to determine whether charges should be brought, Garland saysThe US attorney general Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to determine whether Donald Trump should face criminal charges stemming from investigations into the former’s president’s alleged mishandling of national security materials and his role in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.The politically explosive move comes just three days after Trump announced he is running for the White House yet again, despite a disappointing Republican performance in the midterm elections, especially among candidates backed by the ex-president. Continue reading...
Anti-abortion activist said supreme court justice revealed the landmark ruling on contraception and religious rights weeks earlierA civil rights group issued a call Saturday for US supreme court justice Samuel Alito to be investigated over allegations that the judge leaked a 2014 landmark ruling involving contraception and religious rights at a private dinner with wealthy political donors.The claim was contained in a New York Times article in which minister Rob Schenck, an anti-abortion activist, said he was told of the decision weeks before it was announced and had used the information to prepare a public relations push. Continue reading...
Cannabis farmers have ‘an unclear path to market’ as the state has yet to approve retail dispensariesA strong smell of weed hangs over many New York neighborhoods, the result in part of cannabis decriminalization in 2019 – but cannabis growers in the state are at an impasse when it comes to getting their crops to market.Almost 300,000 pounds of the drug, worth as much as $750m, from last summer’s production at 200 state-licensed farms are stockpiled, without a place to be sold and in danger of deteriorating, according to a Bloomberg report on Saturday. Continue reading...
The power of irate Taylor Swift fans means something might actually be done about the dominance of Ticketmaster and coMove over Karl Marx, it looks like Taylor Swift just radicalized the masses. Over the past few days there has been a lot of bad blood between Ticketmaster and enraged Swift fans over the disastrous rollout of tickets for the singer’s “Eras” tour. During the pre-sale process, which was only supposed to be open to around 1.5 million verified Swift fans, 14 million people, including bots, tried to get tickets. Pandemonium and heartbreak ensued. Things got even more heated on Thursday, the day before sales were meant to open to the general public, when Ticketmaster announced it was scrapping further sales due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand”. According to Ticketmaster, demand for Swift “could have filled 900 stadiums”. Continue reading...
The midfielder looks liberated when he steps on to the field for his country. How he handles expectation will be crucial to his team’s chances at this World CupIn America, the French actor Isabelle Huppert once said, Europe disappears: “They have everything. They don’t need anything. Deep down to them we are a sort of elegant Third World.” The history of American sport reads as one iteration of this blazing autonomy: from the development of baseball as a derivative of regional English games like stoolball and tut-ball to the evolution of rugby union into American football and the creation of basketball from the manipulation of a soccer ball indoors, the US has specialized in fashioning its own kind of sporting modernity out of Europe’s raw cultural materials, often consigning these older sports to the scrapheap of national memory.But globalization – the great success story of American free-market economics – and the unstoppable rise of football have, in recent decades, forced the US to confront a discomfiting reality: in the world’s most popular sport, the global hegemon remains a middleweight at best. The country that has everything now finds that it doesn’t: emerging (almost) every four years from a middling confederation into the glare of the World Cup, the spotlight deflected for once towards other countries, the America that wants for nothing – so confident, so culturally self-reliant – now finds itself in need. It needs to prove that it has footballing muscle equal to its muscle in every other domain. It needs to show that it belongs. And it needs, perhaps more than anything, to convince the world that it can produce a player in the men’s game equal to Haaland, Neymar, Salah, or Mbappé. Continue reading...
The writer was no stranger to self-mythologising. But the prices fetched at her estate sale were more about glamour seeking substanceJoan Didion is a figure mythologised in near-messianic terms. Her intelligence, originality, craft, humour, candour and style formed a singular, fascinating essence. That essence is what gives value to the items auctioned in her estate sale this week. The sale, at Stair Galleries in New York, offered (very wealthy) members of the public the opportunity to buy her sunglasses (a Celine tortoiseshell pair sold for $27,000), blank notebooks ($9,000), several typewriters (one sold for $6,000), hurricane lamps (a group sold for just over $4,000), her writing desk ($60,000), a stack of her favourite books ($26,000) and various paintings.What each item of the sale offered most of all, though, was a sense of proximity to a beloved but elusive figure, who, despite her liberal use of personal anecdotes and disclosures, always maintained a sense of distance in her writing. A woman described by her friend the writer Susanna Moore, as “both enchanting and reproachful”.Rachel Connolly is a London-based journalist from Belfast Continue reading...
Eight years before America hosts the finals, players including props who conceded key penalties against Chile and Portugal remain young and full of promiseIn Dubai on Friday night, at a frenetic last-minute ruck, the US prop Jack Iscaro conceded the penalty Portugal kicked for a 16-16 draw, enough to secure a place at the Rugby World Cup in France and condemn the Eagles to watch from home.The Americans were in the final qualification tournament because in Colorado in July they lost a similarly tight game to Chile. Then, a last-minute penalty that might’ve saved the game was reversed, because the prop Chance Wenglewski made an illegal clear-out. Continue reading...
Republicans are now soul searching over how they lost a very winnable Senate and bracing for two tumultuous years in the House – and many blame TrumpMike Lindell was full of passionate intensity. Wandering the white and gold ballroom of the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the mustachioed pillow-maker predicted that Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House would clear the Republican field.“After he announces today, I think [Florida governor] Ron DeSantis will end up just endorsing him,” Lindell, a rabid Trump cheerleader and conspiracy theorist, told the Guardian early on Tuesday evening. “I can’t imagine anybody wasting the time, effort and money of the people. We need to unite our country and there’s only man who can do that and he’ll be up on that stage. Period.” Continue reading...
Jurors hear closing arguments in seditious conspiracy trial of founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates of far-right groupFor weeks leading up to 6 January 2021, the Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates of the far-right group discussed using violence to overturn the 2020 presidential election’s outcome, and when rioters started storming the US Capitol they saw an opportunity to do it, a federal prosecutor told jurors on Friday as the seditious conspiracy case wound toward a close.Prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy said in her closing argument to jurors after nearly two months of testimony in the high-stakes case that Rhodes’s own words show he was preparing to lead a rebellion to keep Democrat Joe Biden out of the White House. Rhodes and his co-defendants repeatedly called for “violent overthrow” of the US government and sprang into action that day, she said. Continue reading...
Jack Smith will oversee investigations into Trump – but why did the attorney general take this step against the ex-president?On Friday, when announcing the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel overseeing investigations of Donald Trump’s alleged election subversion and retention of White House records, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the selection would ensure “independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters”.So why did Garland take this step against the former president? Continue reading...
Man named to lead investigations into ex-president is experienced prosecutor most recently at international criminal courtJack Smith is the man the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed on Friday to be an independent special counsel overseeing parallel justice department investigations into Donald Trump’s hoarding of top secret documents and involvement in the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, and he has been a criminal prosecutor for almost 30 years.Smith has previously served as the chief of public integrity for the US justice department and dealt in particular with cases involving corruption, bringing cases against prominent Republicans and Democrats. In 2015 he was appointed first assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. He is a registered independent, not aligned with either of the two dominant political parties in the US. Continue reading...
Nicholas Joseph Gutierrez was arrested after the Wednesday incident, but has been freed while the case is being investigatedA 22-year-old southern California driver who plowed into a group of Los Angeles county sheriff’s department recruits on a run, injuring dozens, has been released from custody as authorities investigate the incident.Nicholas Joseph Gutierrez had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder of a peace officer after the Wednesday morning crash, which the sheriff said investigators think was a “deliberate act”. The Diamond Bar resident was released late on Thursday. Continue reading...
US attorney general Merrick Garland has named Jack Smith as special counsel who has the job of determining whether Donald Trump will face charges as part of any Department of Justice investigations. The politically explosive move comes just days after the former US president announced he was running for the White House again.
Miracle Moore dialed 911 and followed emergency dispatcher’s instructions – and now wants to be a doctorA 10-year-old girl aptly named Miracle has earned plaudits as a hero from government officials in her home town after she helped her mother give birth to her baby sister at home with little more than some coaching from a 911 operator.Miracle Moore dialed up emergency help after her mom went into labor three weeks early at their home in Jennings, Missouri, north of St Louis, on 22 October. There wasn’t time to get her mother – Viola Fair – to a hospital, so the emergency response dispatcher who received Miracle’s call explained the protocols her mother should follow to birth her baby as safely as possible, according to media reports in and around Jennings. Continue reading...
New York Democrat, 52, is favorite to succeed Nancy Pelosi after declaring candidacy for House minority leaderHakeem Jeffries of New York was on course on Friday to be the first Black party leader in Congress, declaring his candidacy for House minority leader after securing key endorsements to succeed Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker who announced her withdrawal from leadership on Thursday.Democrats will cede control of the House in January, after midterm elections in which Republicans performed less well than expected but still took the lower chamber. Continue reading...
THe US House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to hold that influential post, has announced she will be stepping down as the Democratic leader in the chamber after Republicans secured a narrow majority after the midterm elections. It marks the end of a historic leadership career highlighted by her ability to hold a fractious caucus together and challenge the world's most powerful men – including the former president Donald Trump. Here is a look back at her long and defiant career Continue reading...
Breaking Republican strangleholds over state capitols gives Democrats an advantage in the fight for voting, abortion and LGBTQ+ rightsWhile Democrats staved off a red wave in Washington during the midterm elections, the party’s most significant victories came far away from the US Capitol. They were in state legislatures across the country with consequences that will be felt for years to come.Over the last decade, Republicans have quietly amassed power in state capitols, investing in races for state legislatures that can be decided by just a few hundred votes. It’s an investment that has paid off wildly. Since state legislatures draw electoral districts in many places, Republicans have used that advantage to entrench their power, drawing district lines that further guaranteed their majorities. They have also used those majorities to pass measures that make it harder to vote, strip LGBTQ+ protections, loosen gun laws and restrict access to abortion. Continue reading...
Twitter’s billionaire owner may think his tactics will leave him with committed employees. The evidence suggests otherwiseIf you passed by the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Thursday, you would have seen a stream of insults projected on to the side of the building: “Elon Musk: mediocre manchild, pressurised privilege, petty racist, megalomaniac …” Inside, employees had received a message asking them to sign a pledge to work “long hours at high intensity” or leave their jobs. This came on the back of large-scale layoffs and an all-company email sent at 2.30am declaring “there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn”.Musk’s uncouth approach to managing people is long documented. Take allegations made about his behaviour at Tesla, where he reportedly yelled at one engineer “You’re a fucking idiot! … Get the fuck out and don’t come back!”, according to Wired. Other colleagues told the magazine that he would publicly humiliate and demote people, and that staff were discouraged from walking too near his desk as he was prone to “unpredictable rages”. “He was shouting that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was an idiot, that he’s never worked with someone so incompetent,” one former employee told the magazine about her sacking.André Spicer is professor of organisational behaviour at the Bayes Business School at City, University of London. He is the author of the book Business Bullshit Continue reading...
Last kick of the game gives Os Lobos a 16-16 draw, enough to book place in Pool C with Australia, Wales, Fiji and GeorgiaTo Portugal, the deserved and considerable glory of a second-ever place at the Rugby World Cup. Os Lobos reached France in 2007. In 2023 they will join Australia, Wales, Fiji and Georgia in Pool C.To the USA, the not-quite unknown ignominy of missing the finals, thanks to this dramatic draw in Dubai. The host country in 2031 have played at every finals bar 1995 but the Eagles will not be at the big show this time. Continue reading...
Prison staff were unable to find a suitable vein to inject Kenneth Eugene Smith before the midnight deadlineAlabama’s execution of a man convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher’s wife was called off on Thursday just before the midnight deadline because state officials could not find a suitable vein to inject the lethal drugs.Alabama department of corrections commissioner John Hamm said prison staff tried for about an hour to get the two required intravenous lines connected to Kenneth Eugene Smith, 57. Continue reading...
Legislation that limits what universities can teach about racism and sexism violates first and 14th amendment, judge rulesA federal judge in Florida halted part of a state law that limits what colleges and universities can teach students about racism and sexism, calling it “positively dystopian”.Issuing a temporary injunction on the law on Thursday, US district court judge Mark Walker said it violates first amendment rights to free speech, and 14th amendment rights to due process on campuses. Continue reading...
Lake-effect snow, caused by frigid air picking up moisture from warmer lakes, prompts driving ban and state of emergencyA dangerous lake-effect snowstorm has paralyzed parts of western and northern New York state, with more than 1ft of snow already on the ground on Friday morning in places and a driving ban keeping people off the roads in the Buffalo area.The worst snowfall was expected in Buffalo, where the National Weather Service said up to 4ft might fall in some spots through Sunday, with periods of near-zero visibility. Continue reading...
The electoral support at the state and local levels for more climate action comes as world leaders meet at Cop27While the economy and abortion rights drove momentum behind the midterm election this year, voters in cities and states across the US also turned out to pass a number of climate ballot initiatives .Among the measures passed were a historic multibillion-dollar investment into environmental improvement projects in New York state, including up to $1.5bn in funding for climate change mitigation. This election also saw a $50m green bond act pass in Rhode Island, and in Colorado, the city of Boulder approved a climate tax as well as a ballot measure that will allow the city to borrow against that tax to fund climate projects. Continue reading...
After six hostile years, Britain is realising that, even after Brexit, it can’t turn its back on its European neighboursThe soap opera of British politics in recent months may have eclipsed something more consequential for the UK in the long run than the revolving doors in Downing Street. The relationship between the UK and the rest of Europe is slowly and quietly changing.It is too early to speak of a turning point, but there is at least a chance that we will look back on 2022 as the year when Britons and other Europeans finally escaped a downward spiral that has, since the Brexit referendum, poisoned not just the relationship between the UK and the EU, but bilateral relationships between the UK and many EU countries. Things might not be getting better, but they have at least, for now, stopped getting worse. In the sad world of UK-EU relations, this is progress.Helene von Bismarck is a German historian and author who specialises in the UK’s interactions with the world Continue reading...
The social media firm is struggling to retain workers after Musk demanded they sign a pledge committing to being ‘extremely hardcore’. Plus, lab-grown meat officially safe to eat in the US
To Republicans, Pelosi has long taken on a kind of mythic malice. But progressives, too, were not enamored of herAs the new House Republican majority stumbles into power, with all the chaotic, embittered bumbling of a rich man’s son who can only seem to fail upwards, another, peculiar kind of political transition is taking place: Nancy Pelosi, 82, is leaving the House speakership, almost certainly for the last time.Perhaps no individual has come to symbolize the Democrats more to the people who do not like the party. To Republicans, Pelosi has long taken on a kind of mythic malice. To the Fox-watching white male, Pelosi symbolizes liberal elitism, a vague but totalizing specter of corruption, and that particular kind of liberal decadence that can be evoked by the name of the city that makes up nearly all of her longtime congressional district: San Francisco. She’s a woman in power, and she’s long been supportive of gay rights, and she opposed the Iraq war. She’s been a reliable opponent of conservatives’ favorite culture war crusades: she supports gun control and opposes Confederate statues. In an association facilitated by misogyny, her very face is a shorthand for liberal extremism, a visual code that denotes secularism, taxation and frightening new pronouns. Continue reading...
Seven US voters offer their take on the recent elections that produced mixed results, and Trump’s 2024 announcementAs America digests the final results of the midterm elections, seven US voters share their reactions to a Democratic-controlled Senate, the Republican win of the House and Donald Trump’s announcement that he will run for president again. Continue reading...
by Victoria Bekiempis in Nyack, New York on (#65Z81)
Sean Maloney, head of the influential Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, lost by less than 1% – and redistricting may have been part of itJack Dunnigan stood behind the counter of Pickwick Bookshop, a venerable store he owns, with its homey smell of nobly ageing paper, in the picturesque, liberal riverside town of Nyack about 30 miles north of downtown New York City, and sighed.“I had a feeling he was going to,” Dunnigan said of the local Democratic congressman and national party stalwart Sean Maloney’s loss to his Republican challenger, Mike Lawler, in the midterm elections. Continue reading...
by Bryan Armen Graham, Aaron Timms, Beau Dure and Tom on (#65Z6N)
Our writers give their verdicts on Gregg Berhalter’s men, including key players, strengths and weaknesses and where the journey will endThe Cleveland Guardians. A very young group bursting with promise that’s probably still a few years away. A mostly empty trophy case, too, despite occasional blips of success over the years. BAG Continue reading...
Millions of workers in the US work throughout the night, and the impacts can be profound on their healthRoger Reinhardt works third shift at a beer production facility in Michigan from 10pm-8am, four days a week. He initially started working nights because it was the only shift available when he started working but he has continued doing it for the extra pay.But is not not easy. Continue reading...
Focusing on activists detracts from what we should be angry about – failure to tackle the most urgent problems of our ageDisruptive political activism, from strikes to boycotts to road occupations, always makes enemies. That’s part of the point: confrontations and controversies mean publicity. More ambitiously, stunts and provocations by activists are also meant to remind the public that the status quo itself is built on disruptions. Even supposedly cautious governments are constantly altering the distribution of power and wealth, and the environment itself.Four years since the founding of Extinction Rebellion, known by its highly committed members as XR, climate activists in Britain and many other countries are still launching waves of protests: blocking roads, throwing food over famous artworks, gluing themselves to surfaces in public places and spray-painting banks that invest in fossil fuels. New groups have appeared with XR-style tactics and goals: Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, Animal Rebellion, Youth Climate Swarm. A steady stream of activists from teenagers to pensioners are prepared to face arrest and imprisonment in order to press governments, businesses and voters to change their behaviour. Continue reading...
Four-member panel focused on whether they have uncovered sufficient evidence that Trump violated civil and criminal statutesThe House January 6 select committee has created a subcommittee to examine the scope of potential criminal referrals it might make to the justice department over the Capitol attack as well as what materials to share with federal prosecutors, its chairman and other members said on Thursday.The special subcommittee – led by Congressman Jamie Raskin, overseeing a four-person group that also involves Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren – has been chiefly focused on whether they have uncovered sufficient evidence that former US president Donald Trump violated civil and criminal statutes. Continue reading...
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