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Losing fertility, friends, family, work - midlife for women can be self-altering. But I found liberation on the other side of menopauseIn the first flush of my post-menopausal years, I didn't exactly experience the energy surge that Dr Christine Northrup mentions in her breakthrough book The Wisdom of Menopause. She refers to menopause as the mind-body revolution that brings the greatest opportunity for growth since adolescence". Talk about a positive spin.On one level, I was still mourning the loss of my fertility and feeling a bit like a husk of a person. I longed to get my sexy back, not realising that it would eventually be replaced by something equally as powerful - a lust for life. Continue reading...

Panos Anastasiou allegedly sent hundreds of graphic threatening messages to the court due to decisions he disagreed withA man from Alaska has been arrested and accused of threatening to kill six of the nine US supreme court justices and some of their family members, authorities have said - as a judge in Kentucky was shot dead on Thursday amid rising concerns about violence against public officials.Panos Anastasiou, 76, has been indicted on federal charges for allegedly sending more than 465 messages to the supreme court through a public court website. The messages contained graphic threats of assassination and torture, along with racist and homophobic rhetoric, according to the justice department. Continue reading...

The country's military prowess is obvious, but relying on it has become a way of avoiding the path it must now take: diplomacyThey probably thought the world would applaud. The Israeli planners behind one of the most spectacular intelligence actions in the country's history - targeting thousands of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and beyond by exploding the pagers in their pockets - would certainly have expected an ovation for the sheer audaciousness of it.A plan years in the making, seemingly involving a fake manufacturing company that secured the contract to supply communication devices to Hezbollah before discreetly modifying them into remote-controlled grenades - it's the stuff of Hollywood. But I suspect the Mossad wanted to be praised for more than its ingenuity and technical prowess.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Big Bear Alpine zoo removed some beasts as the Line fire was raging nearby - now the wildlife is heading back homeWith a major wildfire burning near his mountain town east of Los Angeles, Cowboy the barn owl was unaware of the danger and instead was having the adventure of a lifetime.Perched on the front seat of a truck, Cowboy - along with nearly 50 other animals - was being evacuated on 12 September from the Big Bear Alpine zoo in the face of the advancing Line fire, which blazed through more than 60 sq miles (155 sq km) of the San Bernardino national forest. Continue reading...

New York magazine politics writer profiled Kennedy during his presidential run and says their talks turned personal'A top politics writer for New York magazine has taken leave at the publication after it emerged that she allegedly had a personal relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr, a scion of the Kennedy dynasty who ran a high-profile independent campaign for the White House before endorsing Donald Trump.Olivia Nuzzi, who has written extensive long-form pieces about US politics, including RFK Jr, violated the magazine's standards around disclosing conflicts of interests, the publication said in a statement. Continue reading...

Fans in Tokyo react after the baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani made history as the first Major League Baseball player to exceed 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season. The Japanese player led the LA Dodgers to a victory over the Miami Marlins, hitting three home runs and stealing two bases to land the historic achievement. Already regarded as the best player in baseball whose accomplishments as a pitcher and batter outpaced even Babe Ruth, Ohtani reached new heights as an offensive player while taking the year off from pitching. The 27-year-old signed a $700m, 10-year deal with the Dodgers last December, one of the largest contracts in professional sports.

Deadline passed Friday morning for candidate to leave state's gubernatorial race, following CNN storyNorth Carolina's Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, was still in the race for governor on Friday morning after the deadline passed overnight for him to withdraw or be removed from the ballot.Robinson has faced increasing pressure to drop out from the gubernatorial race after a damning CNN story published on Thursday afternoon reported that he made lewd and sexually explicit comments on the pornography site Nude Africa between 2008 and 2012. Continue reading...

The UN's resolution this week has dramatically changed the legal context of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territoryThe United Nations general assembly's resolution on Wednesday advanced a dramatic legal shift, begun by the international court of justice (ICJ) in July, in how we understand Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. The US government's response suggests a refusal to recognize the new legal reality in which Israel now finds itself.The general assembly resolution, which largely tracked the ICJ ruling, was adopted by an overwhelming vote of 124 to 14, with 43 abstentions. The tally was even more lopsided than the numbers suggest, given that the No" votes were limited to Israel, the United States, a group of small Pacific states, and a handful of outliers such as Viktor Orban's Hungary and Javier Milei's Argentina. Britain abstained. Continue reading...

The Republican candidate for governor's own words have been landing him in trouble long before the latest reportsMark Robinson, North Carolina's tub-thumping Republican candidate for governor, had been trying to extricate himself from problems caused by his own words long before CNN dumped a truckload of dirt on him Thursday afternoon.Robinson has treated outrage over his ever-increasing litany of racist, sexist, homophobic and antisemitic offense as a badge of honor during the course of the campaign and his term as the state's lieutenant governor. But CNN's report tilled his pornographic internet history, unearthing comments that still managed the power to shock. Continue reading...

Company's shares rise on news former executive Elliott Hill will replace John DonahoeNike is bringing back the former senior executive Elliott Hill to replace John Donahoe as chief executive as the sportswear brand attempts to revive sales amid rising competition.Hill, who was at Nike for 32 years, was responsible for helping grow the business to more than $39bn (29bn) in sales, ultimately leading all commercial and market operations for Nike and its Jordan brand, before retiring in 2020, the company said. Continue reading...

Trump's escalating legal threats against lawyers, donors and others raise concern as Project 2025 seeks to curtail DoJDonald Trump's sweeping threats if he wins the presidency again to name a special prosecutor to go after" Joe Biden and take legal action against other foes would subvert the rule of law in America and take the country towards authoritarianism, former justice department officials and scholars have warned.Trump's escalating legal threats have targeted corrupt election officials" lawyers, donors and others he falsely deems out to steal November's presidential election, and have popped up variously on his Truth Social platform, at campaign events and at an elite police group he addressed this month in North Carolina. Continue reading...

The impact of the latest outrage in Lebanon is devastating for the citizens of a country caught between Israel and HezbollahBy Tuesday afternoon, the wails of Beirut - of the country - could be heard not only from its rooftops and balconies but also from its kitchens and living rooms, from its hospitals and coffee houses, from its grocery stores and barber shops, from its cars and pavements. The sirens of ambulances echoed through the city's streets. Emergency vehicles sped past terrorised pedestrians who were caught between calling their loved ones and discarding their electronic devices altogether. One of the first messages I received from a well-meaning friend was a plea to stay away from your phone". She had presumably used her phone to send it, and I had used mine to read it. You too," I texted back.About 4,000 pagers, and a large number of electronic devices, belonging to Hezbollah members were detonated by Israel in civilian and public spaces across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday. The attacks killed 37 people, among them two children, and wounded about 3,000 people. Security sources, according to Reuters, confirmed that Israel was responsible for the attacks, though Israeli officials have yet to comment. As for the mechanism, speculation abounds. Analysts suspect supply-chain tampering or manipulation of the devices before they reached Hezbollah's hands. Continue reading...

Senator Kennedy's remarks were just the tip of the iceberg. It is incumbent upon all of us to call out hate speech when we see itOn Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy told the only Muslim American witness during a committee hearing to hide [her] head in a bag".The intended purpose of Tuesday's historic Senate judiciary committee hearing was to bring attention to the rise in hate against Muslim, Jewish, and Palestinian Americans. The rise of antisemitism has sparked many hearings in Congress. In contrast, this was the first hearing since 7 October that addressed hate targeting Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian Americans. Fighting bigotry requires us to condemn it wherever we see it. For far too long, hate speech made against Arab, Muslim and Palestinian Americans goes ignored.Ilhan Omar is an American politician serving as the US representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district Continue reading...

The Republicans desperately need to distract voters away from abortion. They've now found the perfect new scapegoatAfter Donald Trump's disastrous debate with Kamala Harris on 10 September he decided to center his campaign on a single incendiary issue: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there."When Trump was corrected during the debate by the ABC moderator David Muir, who pointed out that his statement about the Haitian community in the Ohio town was erroneous, he insisted it was factual. Well," he said, I've seen people on television, people on television say, My dog was taken and used for food.'" But there were no such people on television". There were no dogs taken for food. Trump called Muir a foolish fool", and said, He's a guy with good hair, but not as good as it was five years ago." Continue reading...

A number of states have passed laws that force educators to navigate terrifying legal and professional minefieldsStudents across the country are settling into the new school year, connecting with friends and developing new knowledge and skills. Teachers are also hard at work, but in many places, their lesson plans will be far more complicated than they were last year.An alarming number of states have passed laws forcing educators to navigate terrifying legal and professional minefields - laws that restrict forthright lessons about history and current events, policies that make it illegal to discuss identity in our schools, and bans on books written by or about people from diverse backgrounds. More than 30 states have passed or introduced more than 100 anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bills, and 20 states have passed bills banning the discussion of race and gender in the classroom. In these polarizing times, many teachers are racked with anxiety about whether teaching in ways they know to be appropriate could subject them to discipline, harassment or even termination.Stacey Abrams is the founder of American Pride Rises and former minority leader of the Georgia house of representativesRandi Weingarten is president of the 1.8 million-member AFT, which represents people who work in education, healthcare and public services Continue reading...

Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, alongside established stars, have helped the league reach a new level of popularity as the playoffs approachAs the NFL's Colts clashed with the Packers in Wisconsin last Sunday, downtown Indianapolis was alive - but not because of football. Half a mile up the road from the Colts' empty stadium, Gainbridge Fieldhouse was filled to near capacity for the WNBA matinee between the Dallas Wings and Caitlin Clark's Indiana Fever. The game did not disappoint.Clark, this year's No 1 draft pick, scored a career-high 35 points to set the single-season rookie scoring record, and her free throws down the stretch helped preserve a 110-109 victory that locked Indiana into the playoff's sixth seed. The prospect of basketball turning out the masses on a football Sunday isn't a new concept in the Hoosier state, where the local NBA and men's college programs reigned before the Colts rocked up from Baltimore under cover of darkness. But the WNBA's hold on this crowd is new, and a testament to what has been a regular season unlike any other - with new faces and dominant figures pushing the league to new heights. Continue reading...

Test your knowledge of football, boxing, NFL, tennis and more from the past seven days Continue reading...

Julia Roberts and Chris Rock tune in as vice-president attacks Trump on abortion and pledges to sign border billKamala Harris sat down with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday for a virtual rally" that included a wide-ranging sit-down interview, during which Harris attacked her opponent's stance on reproductive rights and pledged to sign a border security bill thwarted by Senate Republicans, but largely kept her guard up with the legendary television interviewer.The event, helmed by one of the all-time masters of the television talkshow, was filled with celebrity cameos and heart-wrenching personal stories. It was live-streamed from Michigan, a key battleground state. Continue reading...

In disjointed Washington speech, nominee tells audience low numbers are because of the Democrat curse on you'Donald Trump has complained bitterly to Jewish donors that a majority of Jews vote against him in US presidential elections, suggesting that the Democratic party has a curse on you".The Republican presidential candidate made the remarks during a speech on Thursday at the Israeli-American Council national summit in Washington, where he used hyperbolic language to warn that victory for his opponent Kamala Harris would result in Israel being wiped off the map. Continue reading...

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Yes, I'm talking about silly clips - but if people think entirely staged pranks are real then I fear for us allWith advances in technology including AI and ChatGPT, and increasingly realistic fake images everywhere, media literacy is diving towards an all-time low. There are many areas where a lack of critical thinking has had and will have devastating effects on society. I'm here to talk about something that is not as serious but that does have one daily impact - annoying me.It happens when I'm scrolling TikTok, or X, or Instagram (or one of the many other apps I use to make sure my brain is never alone with itself), and the algorithm serves me up a video it thinks I'll like. It will be a video that lots of other people have watched, liked and commented on with a series of crying laughing emojis, or LMFAO" or omg so funny". So with this forward sizzle, I click, excited and open-hearted, ready to laugh. Continue reading...

Springfield mayor Rob Rue says the order will allow city officials to acquire resources to address potential threats'The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, has issued an emergency proclamation following the continued rise in public safety threats over false rightwing rumors about the city's migrant communities.On Thursday, Rob Rue released a statement, saying: Ensuring the safety of Springfield's residents is our top priority." He added: We are addressing these threats with the seriousness they warrant and are taking immediate steps to ensure the security of both our community and our employees. Our commitment to preventing harm is unwavering." Continue reading...

Six Rankin county officers known as Goon Squad' were convicted for hours-long attack involving racial slursThe US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into a Mississippi sheriff's department whose officers tortured two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said Thursday.The justice department will investigate whether the Rankin county sheriff's department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and whether it has used racially discriminatory policing practices, according to assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke. Continue reading...

Fred and Sheila McCoy to receive $25,000 reward for locating remains near highway where gunman opened fireA retired couple who decided to become bounty hunters for the week found the body that authorities believe to be the shooter who attacked people on an interstate highway and then disappeared, it emerged on Thursday.After the shooter fled, leaving a Kentucky community scared and on guard, Fred and Sheila McCoy decided to plunge into rugged terrain in search of what was widely anticipated to be the gunman's remains, as law enforcement were also searching. Continue reading...

State's lieutenant governor Mark Robinson used description on pornography website, CNN reportsNorth Carolina's Republican gubernatorial nominee, Mark Robinson, referred to himself as a black NAZI!" on a pornography website's message board, according to a new CNN report about the current lieutenant governor who has already been marked by scandal and controversial comments.According to CNN's reporting, Robinson referred to himself as a perv" in archived messages because he enjoyed watching transgender pornography". The messages were made between 2008 and 2012 on Nude Africa", a pornographic website that includes a message board. Continue reading...

Schumer moves towards vote on government funding extension after Mike Johnson's package fails to passThe Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, on Thursday took a procedural step toward setting up a vote next week on a government funding extension as the House scrambles to avert a shutdown starting on 1 October.Schumer's move comes a day after the Republican-led House rejected a proposal by the speaker, Mike Johnson, that would have linked a six-month stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, with a controversial measure backed by conservatives mandating that states require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Continue reading...

Together with Minnesota senator Tina Smith, the representative is trying to address the US housing crisis'

No one was injured in Bedford escapade but child reportedly told officers she struck a mailbox' on her tripAn eight-year-old girl in Ohio took her mother's car and drove for more than 20 minutes along busy roads to get to a local Target store - where she promptly went shopping.The drama unfolded when Bedford police got a missing-child call that was followed up by another call concerning a small child driving east on Rockside Road", local TV station WJW reported. Continue reading...

Intimidating looking but relatively harmless arachnids native to east Asia spread across US north-eastThe invasive joro spider has been spotted for the first time in Pennsylvania.Six of the giant, colorful spiders, which were already spreading across north-east states including New York and New Jersey, were seen in the yard of a home in Bucks county on 5 September, according to the interactive tracking system JoroWatch. A state entomologist then visited to confirm the location and identification. Continue reading...

In response to a call-out, I was inundated with moving messages from dads about how much they loved their baby slingsThis week's viral paternity-leave campaign stunt, placing baby dolls in slings on statues of men such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thierry Henry in London, has got me thinking about shifting perceptions of fatherhood. Like the Pregnant Then Screwed campaign, which utilised Antony Gormley's iron men of Crosby beach, Merseyside, in a similar fashion, the message relies on a subversion. We are not used to seeing representations of masculinity like this in our culture. In our minds, great men - at least historically - do not wear their babies, even if the men we love do. Perceptions are changing, but I wonder how long it will be until we see a male MP with an infant attached to him in parliament, as Stella Creasy was reprimanded for doing in 2021.It has been six years since Piers Morgan lamented seeing Daniel Craig with his baby in a carrier, and Morgan seemed like a dinosaur even then. These days, it is a common sight, and baby-wearing celebrities from John Legend to Gordon Ramsay abound. Humans have been using the materials around them to secure infants to their bodies for thousands of years, and in many cultures have continued to do so, but it's only in the latter half of the 20th century that the practice has become increasingly normalised in western countries (BabyBjorn launched its first carrier in 1973) - and even more recently when it comes to men. Continue reading...

FAA looking into incident in which Boeing 737-900 had to make emergency landing due to cabin pressure issuesThe Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating a Delta Air Lines flight after pressurization issues caused some passengers to say they suffered ruptured eardrums and nosebleeds and forced the plane to turn around.On Sunday, the flight, a Boeing 737-900, was traveling from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Portland, Oregon, when it was forced to make an emergency landing back in Salt Lake City due to pressurization issues. Continue reading...

The Uncommitted National Movement says Harris campaign failed to meet deadline to meet with Palestinians

Republican-controlled ballot board approved the unclear language for measure about boundary-drawing commissionOhio voters will see misleading language when they go to vote on an anti-gerrymandering proposal this fall after the state supreme court greenlit the deceptive wording written by Republicans.The Republican-controlled Ohio ballot board approved the language on Wednesday in a 3-2 party-line vote, two days after the Republican-led state supreme court voted 4-3 to correct various defects the justices found in what the board had already passed. The court's ruling, however, did not require the ballot board to rewrite some of the most significant portions of the amendment. Continue reading...

Democratic ex-House speaker says outgoing GOP Senate leader knew what had happened' on day of Capitol attack

The European Commission president's new team reflects her ruthlessness in crushing critics, rewarding loyalty and showing who is the bossWith six executive vice-presidents balancing political families, geography and gender, Ursula von der Leyen has cemented her personal power in her second term as European Commission president while subtly tilting the EU executive to the right politically and to the east geographically.The new 27-member commission unveiled on Tuesday illustrates her commitment to making the European economy greener, more competitive and more secure, and her ruthlessness in wielding power to crush critics, reward loyalty and punish those who do not cooperate with her. Her eviction of the powerful French industry commissioner Thierry Breton, who had criticised her personal governance style, and the demotion of Hungary's Oliver Varhelyi to the health and animal welfare job in a snub to the nationalist Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, illustrate her determination to show who is the boss. Continue reading...

Josh Shapiro tried to celebrate law allowing convenience store sales of canned boozy drinks but left empty-handed

Brian Jeffrey Raymond of California was found guilty of drugging and raping women in his government apartmentsA former CIA officer who drugged and sexually assaulted dozens of women was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced.Brian Jeffrey Raymond, 48, of La Mesa, California, drugged more than two dozen women and performed nonconsensual sexual acts or made sexual contact with at least 10 women, the justice department said in a press release. Continue reading...

The head coach was supposed to bring a wave of fresh thinking to Denver. But he is losing games and confusing his young quarterbackIt was only last season that Sean Payton rocked up in Denver and set a blowtorch to everything that came before, labelling Nathaniel Hackett's spell in charge of the Broncos one of the worst coaching jobs" in NFL history. It would be nice to know where he thinks his first two games of this season stack up in the rankings.The Broncos have started the season 0-2. Push the timeline back further and Denver have only won two of their last eight games, with both wins coming over a team quarterbacked by Easton Stick. Through two weeks this season, the Broncos' offense has laid an egg in four out of eight quarters. Payton, once at the vanguard of offensive football, looks someone out of ideas - or at least out of time. His offense is stuck in 2013, and is led by a rookie quarterback, Bo Nix, who looks in over his head. The advanced metrics this season put Denver's offense ahead of only the awful Carolina Panthers, a team who benched their quarterback this week, in part, because they are worried he has trouble seeing over the line of scrimmage. Continue reading...

Move to tackle long hours and support staff wellbeing comes months after deaths of two Bank of America workers

Ken Wilson had been trying to conserve electricity in order to lower his utility bill, but it was still stubbornly highA California man has realised that he has inadvertently been paying his neighbor's electricity bill - for at least the last 15 years.Ken Wilson, who lives in Vacaville between Sacramento and San Francisco, had been worried that his bill was higher than other people's, which did not make sense to him because he often sought to save power, he told local TV station KMAX/KOVR. Continue reading...

The kids, parents and chaperones were on a school field trip when a wagon overturned, critically injuring threeAbout 25 children and adults were injured on Wednesday when a wagon carrying them overturned at a western Wisconsin apple orchard.The children, parents and chaperones were on a field trip to the orchard in Lafayette when one of two wagons being pulled by a tractor turned sideways and rolled over, the Chippewa county sheriff, Travis Hakes, told reporters. Continue reading...

Kahawa 1893 prioritizes small producers and premium beans, while also offering consumers a virtual pot' to support its suppliersWhen she was a child growing up in Kenya, Margaret Nyamumbo learned about a custom that took place on her grandfather's coffee farm: every few weeks, the women who worked there would gather around a table and drop money into a large pot. Anyone who had contributed had the right to later retrieve funds in the form of a small loan.This so-called table banking" system, which is a custom in Kenya, helped women involved in the coffee trade support one another. Kenyan women, who historically are denied land ownership and therefore the ability to take out loans, provide 90% of labor on coffee farms but own just 1% of the land. Continue reading...

George Papadopoulos and others involved in Intelligencer, increasingly popular source of news in rightwing circlesAmid the recent crackdown on Russian influence in American media, a group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines.Working alongside contributors for Kremlin state media, the former Donald Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos, his wife, Simona Mangiante, and others have become editorial board members of the website Intelligencer, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for those in the rightwing ecosystem. Continue reading...

The energy drink with 200mg of caffeine per can has gained a cult following in the US due to its wellness-coded imageOn Dakota Johnson's first day on set to film her directorial debut Loser Baby, she grabbed a can of Celsius and started drinking. She said she spent much of the rest of the shoot with a Celsius in her hand. She recalled feeling exhilarated, and though she also found it hard to sleep, surely that was just inspiration from the creative process flowing through her body.Then her costume designer let her in on a secret: Celsius is an energy drink that contains 200mg of caffeine per can. That's why she was staying awake all night. Continue reading...