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As the new season approaches, it’s worth examining how shots from beyond the arc became one of the most important parts of modern basketballWhen the shot went up, so did the voice of ABC’s legendary broadcaster, Mike Breen. “Curry! Way downtown! BANG!” It all happened so fast. It was a regular season game in Oklahoma City on 27 February 2016. The Golden State Warriors were on a magical run that would see them break the single-season wins record, going 73-9, pre-playoffs. That year, Stephen Curry earned his second-straight MVP, unanimously. He achieved that feat because he’d turned the three-pointer into a weapon unlike anyone else in history.The game-winner against the Thunder on that February night marked the beginning of a new chapter in the NBA. Not only did it clinch another win for the Warriors, but it cemented the three-pointer as a play en vogue in the NBA. A season later, after the Thunder’s Kevin Durant defected from the team and joined Golden State, he hit an unprecedented, walk-up three-pointer over LeBron James to all but clinch the 2017 NBA finals. Durant later told GQ, “That was the best moment I ever had.” The modern game was unfolding before our eyes. Continue reading...

Two Democrat senators have called for a freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia unless it reverses a Riyadh-led Opec+ decision to cut oil production. They said the decision to reduce production would help Russia's war in Ukraine.'The only apparent purpose of this cut in oil supplies is to help the Russians and harm Americans. It was unprovoked and unforced, as an error,' the Connecticut senator, Richard Blumenthal, said. His statement was echoed by his Democrat colleague from California, Ro Khanna, who said: 'When Americans are facing a crisis because of Putin, when we're paying more at the pump, our ally, someone who we have helped for decades, should be trying to help the American people.'The Biden administration said it was reviewing its ties with the Gulf kingdom.Speaking to CNN, however, a Saudi minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said: 'Saudi Arabia does not politicise oil. We don’t see oil as a weapon. We see oil as our commodity. Our objective is to bring stability to the oil market.' Riyadh is not partnering with Russia, he added

Wildlife has an amazing ability to recover – but only if we keep vital legal protections in placeIn the latest of what can often seem like the “final nails in the coffin” of biodiversity across Europe, we heard in recent weeks that UK environmental protection is under threat. But while the global scale of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss remain alarming, vital new research, which I helped lead, shows there are also heartening examples of European wildlife bouncing back from the brink.For the past two years, we at the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology, along with colleagues at BirdLife International and the European Bird Census Council, have been investigating the fortunes of 50 European wildlife species over the past 50 years, from humpback whales to Iberian wild goats to white-tailed eagles. Each of these species are incredible comeback stories, and researching how they have recovered has been a refreshing and inspiring endeavour – the Eurasian beaver and European bison, for example, have both increased in average relative abundance by more than 16,000% since 1960. Continue reading...

Ex-EU envoy Gordon Sondland derides Democrats and Pompeo, and recalls fallout from testifying in Trump’s first impeachmentIn a new book, the former US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland defends his conduct around Donald Trump’s first impeachment, derides Democrats for their investigation of Trump’s attempt to extract political dirt from Ukraine – and calls his former boss a narcissist and a “dick”.Sondland also takes aim at Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, who is now a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Continue reading...

Flamboyant rightwing strategist and self-confessed dirty trickster expected to be a focus of committee’s latest sessionAt its hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, the House January 6 committee is expected to show footage of Roger Stone, shot by Danish film-makers.According to the Washington Post, the clips will show that Stone “predicted violent clashes with leftwing activists and forecast months before the 2020 vote that [Donald Trump] would use armed guards and loyal judges to stay in power”. Continue reading...

Members of Congress raise prospect of one-year arms sales ban unless kingdom reverses Opec+ decision to cut outputDemocrats in the US Congress have issued a fresh ultimatum to Saudi Arabia, giving the kingdom weeks to reverse an Opec+ decision to roll back oil production or face a potential one-year freeze on all arms sales.The threat came as Joe Biden reiterated his pledge to take action over Riyadh’s decision last week to cut oil output by 2m barrels a day, which Democrats have said would help “fuel Vladimir Putin’s war machine” and hurt American consumers at the petrol pump. Continue reading...

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay $965m to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided on Wednesday.The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns

Verdict is second big judgment against Infowars host over promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happenedThe conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965m to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided on Wednesday.The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.The Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

More than half claim they are more motivated to vote than in previous elections, with 50% of those people citing abortionMore than half of Democratic-leaning voters say abortion has become a crucial motivation for them to vote in next month’s US midterm elections, according to a recent poll.A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) conducted in September reveals that June’s supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade has put a fire under Democratic voters, with more than half claiming they are more motivated to vote than in previous elections, and 50% of those citing as their prime reason the ruling on abortion. Continue reading...

The former city council president faced intense pressure to step down, including from Joe BidenThe embattled former president of the LA city council stepped down from the board , days after a recording surfaced documenting her and two other Latino council members using racist language to mock colleagues and constituents while they planned to protect Latino political strength in council districts.Nury Martinez announced her resignation in a statement on Wednesday, hours after the state attorney general announced an investigation into possible criminal charges involving the meeting where she made the remarks. Continue reading...

Treasury inquiring into whether Florida governor improperly used interest on Covid relief funds to transport people to MassachusettsThe US treasury department is investigating whether the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, improperly used funds to transport migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on chartered flights.The Treasury Office of Inspector General (TIG) is inquiring into whether DeSantis used the interest earned on funds from the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds (SLFRF) program that his state received as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan. Continue reading...

Court order keeps ban on hold while judges consider whether Republican-backed effort violates state constitutionThe Indiana supreme court issued an order Wednesday that prevents the state from enforcing a Republican-backed abortion ban while it considers whether it violates the state constitution.The supreme court took over the case after a county judge blocked the ban last month, spurring the attorney general to appeal the decision. The court denied a request from the state attorney general’s office to set aside the preliminary injunction, setting a hearing on the lawsuit filed by abortion clinic operators for 12 January. Continue reading...

National security strategy reveals president’s resolve to build international alliances to strengthen democracy

Judge denies request from Trump’s attorneys that planned testimony be delayed in defamation lawsuitDonald Trump will have to answer questions under oath next week in a defamation lawsuit lodged by a writer who says he raped her in the mid-1990s, a judge ruled Wednesday.US district judge Lewis Kaplan rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers that the planned testimony be delayed. The deposition is now scheduled for 19 October. Continue reading...

Moderna vaccine has been approved for children six years and older, while children as young as five can get PfizerThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday authorized Covid-19 vaccine boosters for children who are five years old and above.The Moderna vaccine has been approved for children six years and older, while children as young as five can get the Pfizer vaccine. Continue reading...

Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate insists his disability is temporary, while his opponent Mehmet Oz has mocked him for itJohn Fetterman, the Democratic candidate whose health has been mocked by his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, during a rancorous race for Pennsylvania’s US Senate seat, has admitted the stroke he suffered in May “changes everything” about his life.In a televised interview with NBC, in which he used a closed captioning machine to be able to read the questions put to him, he insisted his disability was temporary, and that in January “I’m going [to] be much better – and Dr Oz is still going to be a fraud”. Continue reading...

Duo say police, in separate incidents at Atlanta airport, singled them out for drug search and questioning because of their raceThe comedians Eric André and Clayton English have sued Clayton county police, alleging racial profiling at Atlanta’s main airport in a program supposedly aimed at finding illegal drugs but in which officers regularly confiscate passengers’ cash.André, creator and host of The Eric Andre Show, and English, a standup comedian and actor, say that in separate incidents, Clayton county police officers at Hartsfield-Jackson international airport racially profiled and illegally stopped them to question if they had illegal drugs.This article was amended on 12 October 2022 to delete a repeated name in a caption. Continue reading...

Platforms like Twitter and Instagram control the largest megaphones in world history. Do we want them to have that power?Twitter and Instagram just removed antisemitic posts from Kanye West and temporarily banned him from their platforms. It just goes to show … um, what?How good these tech companies are at content moderation? Or how irresponsible they are for “muzzling” controversial views from the extreme right? (Defenders of West, such as the Indiana attorney general, Todd Rokita, are incensed that he’s been banned.) Or how arbitrary these giant megaphones are in making these decisions? (What would Elon Musk do about Kanye West?)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

It’s clear to me, as a victim of press intrusion, that the only way to truly root out wrongdoing is to forge ahead with the second part of the Leveson inquiryI suspect that as you are reading this, your mobile phone is somewhere close by. If it is, scroll through your messages and read or listen to the content.Now read or listen to them again through the lens of a tabloid journalist – out of context – looking for a story, looking for clues as to your whereabouts, activities, associations, relationships, private thoughts, feelings, opinions, arguments, arrangements. Has someone implicated you in something? What story could they possibly be writing? What could be misconstrued, misinterpreted, manipulated. Continue reading...

James Brennand, 25, charged with aggravated assault after shooting of Erik Cantu, 17, at McDonald’s in San AntonioA now-former San Antonio police officer was charged on Tuesday with two counts of aggravated assault by a peace officer for shooting and gravely wounding a teen eating a hamburger in his car in a McDonald’s parking lot. The teen had begun driving away when the officer opened fire.James Brennand, 25, was charged in the 2 October shooting of Erik Cantu, 17, according to a police statement. He turned himself in to police on Tuesday night and remained in custody, said the police chief, William McManus. Continue reading...

Three of the USA team talk about what must happen after the Sally Yates report revealed ‘systemic’ abuse in the NWSLWelcome 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:This past week, the US Women’s National Team took on a challenging international window amid the fallout of Sally Yates’s 172-page report investigating “abusive behavior and sexual misconduct” in the NWSL. Released on 3 October, the report detailed abuse of various nature, at multiple clubs, and illustrated issues more pervasive than even the athletes involved had realised. Continue reading...

Richard Trahant was fined $400,000 for violating confidentiality rules around a bankruptcy filing by the local archdioceseA New Orleans attorney who represents victims of clerical sexual abuse faces a $400,000 fine after alerting a local Catholic high school that a priest who worked there once admitted to fondling and kissing a teen girl he met at another church institution.The lawyer, Richard Trahant, said he would appeal against the hefty sanction handed to him on Tuesday, which stemmed from a federal judge’s ruling that his alert violated confidentiality rules governing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese. Continue reading...

Calls for sustained efforts to help people experiencing ‘prolonged suffering’. Plus, Saudi Arabia to face consequences

In their vicious efforts to extinguish Ukraine, the Russians have reached an unprecedented state of weakness and cluelessness

After Roe v Wade, women in anti-abortion states can’t access life-saving medication for everything from chronic pain to lupus to ulcersMaybe the pharmacist at the Tucson, Arizona, Walgreens was acting out of religious conviction. Maybe they were afraid that they could get arrested. We may never know. What we do know is that on 26 September, two days after Arizona’s abortion ban went into effect, Emma Thompson, a 14-year-old girl with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, was denied her prescription for methotrexate.Thompson had been on methotrexate for some time; this was a longstanding prescription that she was getting refilled. The drug, a potent anti-inflammatory drug, is used to treat a wide array of issues, from autoimmune disorders, like Thompson’s, to arthritis and cancer. It’s estimated that 60% of all rheumatoid arthritis patients are prescribed the drug, and for Thompson, it was working well. After a childhood spent in and out of hospitals, enduring years of debilitating pain, her doctors had finally found a medication and a dosage that seemed to be working for her. Her symptoms abated enough that she was able to attend school. “It’s her first year and she’s in high school and it feels like a dream,” said Thompson’s mother, Kaitlin Preble. “She’s not in a wheelchair, she has a social life and friends for the first time, and a life all young people should have.” Continue reading...

The congressman won a swing upstate New York district with a progressive platform – and says Democrats can use his playbookWhen Democrat Pat Ryan got elected to New York’s 19th – a largely rural district in upstate New York that swung for Trump in 2016 and only narrowly elected Biden in 2020 – people were surprised.His contender in the August special election, Marc Molinaro, was a well-known local politician who entered the political arena when he was just 18, becoming the mayor of Tivoli, which is in the district, at 19. Molinaro was the favorite to win: leading in the polls, by as much as 10 points, right up to the moment Ryan claimed victory. Continue reading...

Older people disparage them for lacking resilience, but it takes grit to challenge a destructive status quo at workSteven Bartlett, the entrepreneur and superstar podcaster, ruffled a few younger feathers recently when he described Gen Z as “the least resilient generation I have ever seen”. He added: “I just fear that when I’m hiring people in that generation, I almost need to go an extra length just to check they can cope with a high-intensity culture where demands might come on a Saturday – because the world doesn’t just stop on a Saturday and Sunday.”His initial take is not a unique one. For many of their older fellow citizens, Gen Z are a source of irritation and disappointment. They’re too sensitive. They’re too easily offended. And they lack the inner toughness required to deal with the challenges and inevitable setbacks of everyday work and life.Bruce Daisley is the former vice-president of Twitter Europe and author of The Joy of Work and Fortitude: Unlocking the Secrets of Inner Strength Continue reading...

The former Auburn football coach earned a small fortune thanks to Black athletes. As a US senator he has shown them little but contemptTommy Tuberville wasn’t the best available football coach in Alabama when Republicans tapped him for a US Senate run in 2020. He wasn’t, in fact, even the best available former Auburn coach. What he was was a silver fox with name recognition who had pledged allegiance to Donald Trump and to toe the party line. A useful idiot, in other words.After trouncing former US attorney general Jeff Sessions in the Republican primary and winning election to the Senate by double digits, Tuberville has proven as much a far-right team player as advertised; not surprisingly, he believed the Big Lie and was one of the dozen Republican senators who were prepared to vote against certifying Joe Biden as US president. And yet the 68-year-old really didn’t distinguish himself in his new career as a Trump surrogate until this month. Continue reading...

Allegations of abuse have plagued ice hockey in Canada for some time but there seems to have been little urgency about addressing the issue until now“Our board frankly does not share the view that senior leadership should be replaced on the basis of what we consider to be substantial misinformation and unduly cynical attacks,” then-interim Hockey Canada board chair Andrea Skinner told parliamentarians last Tuesday – just days before her own resignation, and exactly a week before the organization’s CEO and entire board of directors stepped down. “I appreciate that others disagree with us, but our positions are based on the information that we have and understanding that Hockey Canada has an excellent reputation.”What new information arose between Skinner’s statement and the mass resignations a week later? In the wake of Skinner’s testimony, multiple corporate sponsors, including Nike, Bauer, and Tim Horton’s walked away from Hockey Canada’s men’s program. Multiple provincial hockey governing bodies did, too. And the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, suggested that perhaps the federal government, from which Hockey Canada receives significant annual funding to oversee the sport at a minor level across Canada, ought to simply create a new body to do the job. All that was indeed technically new. Continue reading...

Three-belt world champion fought back from a tortured childhood and hopes to avenge her only defeat on Saturday“I’m never going to allow any of the kids in my family to go through what I went through,” Claressa Shields says quietly as she turns her intense gaze on me. The 27-year-old American, who fights Savannah Marshall in a riveting bout which headlines the historic all-women boxing card at the O Arena on Saturday night, has already told me about her harrowing past. She grew up in abject poverty in Flint, Michigan, in an area which remains one of the most deprived in America, and she was raped systematically from the age of five.Shields pauses and then, with blazing eyes, continues to remember everything she endured. “I know what it was like. I know how it can make you very, very angry. I don’t want those kids to have the anger I had because I was very, very mad growing up. If I hadn’t have found boxing, who knows where I’d be at, with the anger I had inside of me.” Continue reading...

I of course don’t know what happened between Jolie and Brad Pitt, but the social media vigilantes have clearly decided they doHollywood certainly loves its remakes. Earlier this year, all eyes were on the messy and misogynistic Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial; Depp won and Heard was publicly torn apart. Now the long-running legal battle between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt has escalated and it looks, depressingly, as if Jolie is going to get the Heard treatment.Here’s where things stand: Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt six years ago but the divorce hasn’t yet been finalised because the actors are still arguing over custody of their children and assets (they have a lot of both). Pitt has accused Jolie of selling a stake in their winery, Château Miraval, in an underhand manner to a Russian oligarch. Somehow the invasion of Ukraine got dragged into all this, with Pitt arguing that the Russian ties hurt the winery’s brand.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

Moves by Opec+ to reduce production seen as siding with Putin over the US just as midterms loomJoe Biden said there “will be consequences” for Saudi Arabia after its decision last week to side with Vladimir Putin and cut oil production.“There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done, with Russia,” the US president said in an interview on CNN. “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be – there will be consequences.” Continue reading...

Igor Danchenko, who played a vital role in creating the Steele dossier, has been indicted on five counts of lying to the FBIA Russian analyst who played a major role in the creation of a flawed dossier about Donald Trump fabricated one of his own sources and concealed the identity of another when interviewed by the FBI, prosecutors said Tuesday.The allegations were aired during opening statements in the trial of Igor Danchenko, who is indicted on five counts of making false statements to the FBI. Continue reading...

Unconscious children rushed to hospital but are now stable, weeks before new CO detector law goes into effect in AllentownA malfunctioning heater sent a dangerously high level of carbon monoxide into a Pennsylvania daycare center early on Tuesday, sickening dozens of children – some of whom were unconscious as they were rushed to the hospital – and several adults.More than 30 people were hospitalized. All were listed in stable condition. Continue reading...

There is much Australia, along with the rest of the world, can doBorn in Australia, some of my earliest childhood memories comprise of attending rallies that my parents – who fled Iran as political refugees in 1985 – organised, where we’d shout “down with the dictator”. Fast forward to 2022, the same chants continue, albeit on the dangerous streets of Iran.What started as a mass uprising condemning the killing under police custody of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini for a dress code violation has now amalgamated into widespread calls for a complete regime change in Tehran. With 60% of Iran’s population aged below 30, the current uprisings demonstrates the significance of Iran’s generation Z, defying all rules and restrictions under an oppressive regime. They can no longer be suppressed by religious clerics and are bravely rebelling against the regime. Continue reading...

Court filing addresses ex-president’s bid to return 103 documents with classification markings to special master for reviewThe US justice department has asked the US supreme court to reject Donald Trump’s attempt to re-include 103 documents with classification markings in the special master review that is examining whether materials the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort are protected by privilege.The justice department argued in a 34-page brief that the supreme court should reject the former president’s motion and keep the 103 documents out of the special master’s purview since Trump did not show he was being irreparably harmed and that his arguments about jurisdiction lacked merit. Continue reading...

White House calls recording of council members in a meeting last year ‘unacceptable’ and ‘appalling’Joe Biden has called for the resignation of three Los Angeles city council members who were caught on tape making racist comments in a meeting last year.The profanity-laced recordings, which emerged on Sunday, document three Latino city council members and a labor leader discussing the city’s redrawing of council district boundaries amid the redistricting process, as well as the need to re-elect Latino members and protect economic interests within Latino districts. Continue reading...

City leaders voted on Tuesday to expand Detroit’s contract with ShotSpotter, after weeks of divisive debateThe city of Detroit is moving forward with a $7m expansion of its contract with ShotSpotter, after weeks of debate on its work with the controversial surveillance company.The Detroit city council voted five to four on Tuesday to expand the geographic footprint of ShotSpotter in the city throughout the next four years. Continue reading...

‘In light of the Opec decision, I think that’s where he is,’ says John Kirby, spokesman for Biden’s national security council

Participant used a 3D printer to make firearm parts in bulk that he then exchanged for gift cardsThe attorney general of New York has changed the rules of a state gun buyback program, after a participant exploited the system by using a 3D printer to make firearm parts in bulk that he then exchanged for $21,000 in gift cards.The seller, who identified himself by a pseudonym, said he traveled from West Virginia to a gun buyback on 27 August in Utica, New York, to take advantage of a loophole in the program – and to demonstrate that buybacks are futile in an era of printable weapons. Continue reading...

The state’s wildlife agency is offering a reward of $51,000 for tips leading to conviction in the case to help protect the animalsSix endangered wolves found dead in north-east Washington this year were poisoned, officials announced on Monday, and a reward is being offered for tips leading to a conviction in the case.Washington state’s department of fish and wildlife said the agency had been investigating wolf deaths within the territory of the Wedge pack in Stevens county since authorities there discovered four dead wolves on 18 February. Continue reading...

The Russian president is making civilians suffer for the successes of Ukraine’s counteroffensiveThe missiles that have rained down on Ukrainian cities far from the frontline since Monday morning, striking playgrounds and other civilian targets, are retaliation for the blast at the Kerch bridge between Russia and Crimea. But it is Vladimir Putin’s rage at the broader success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has shifted the war from a grinding military stalemate into a more dangerous phase. The Russian president has realised that he is losing on the ground; that major democracies will not easily be bullied out of supporting Kyiv; and consequently that he can no longer count on Ukraine’s eventual capitulation. His response – annexation and mobilisation – has only increased the pressure on him, creating higher expectations among hawkish domestic elites of how far he will go, and alienating broader political support. The first deaths of mobilised soldiers were reported this week.While Russia cannot sustain this rate of attack – 80 missiles on Monday alone – the civilian deaths and damage to water and power facilities will continue. Though the assault has so far stiffened resistance, rather than sapping morale, the approach of winter and the deterioration of infrastructure will take their toll on civilians. Ukraine will have to choose between deploying air defence systems to protect cities, or employing them in its counteroffensive. Continue reading...

Former Hawaii congresswoman and 2020 presidential hopeful says party is dominated by those espousing ‘cowardly wokeness’The former congresswoman and 2020 presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has announced her departure from the Democratic party, calling it an “elitist cabal of warmongers”.In a video announcement posted to Twitter, she said: “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic party that is under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism.” Continue reading...

Voters in five states will dramatically shape abortion policies for millions of women this NovemberWhen the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, it put the matter of regulating abortion entirely in the hands of the states. This November, voters will weigh in on ballot initiatives that will decide the future of abortion in five of those states: California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont.Reproductive rights proponents are hoping to replicate their historic win in Kansas, where a reliably conservative state successfully defeated an anti-abortion ballot initiative in August.[A]n individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means Continue reading...