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Coco Gauff, Matteo Berrettini and Casper Ruud all progressed to the last eight of the women’s and men’s singles respectivelyA terrific combo of backhand slice cross-court/forehand bang down the line gets Berrettini 15-all, then from 30-all he closes out for 2-4. He’s having to fight hard for his holds here.Davidovich Fokina’s barnet has come bang out of 1994. Continue reading...

Police say killing followed altercation outside journalist’s home and suspect is being pursuedPolice were looking for a suspect on Sunday after a Las Vegas investigative reporter was stabbed to death outside his home, authorities said.Las Vegas police officers found Jeff German dead with stab wounds around 10.30am on Saturday after authorities received a 911 call, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Continue reading...

Tiffany Smiley, a trained nurse, wants to win in Washington state, where a 1991 law protects abortion accessA Republican Senate nominee in Washington state said on Sunday she was against abortion – but supported a state law that guarantees the right to abortion until fetal viability.Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Tiffany Smiley said she supported the law despite the US supreme court decision earlier this summer, in Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned the right to abortion, a right previously guaranteed for almost 50 years. Continue reading...

Chief financial officer Gustavo Arnal, 52, fell from skyscraper on Friday, days after the company said it was closing several storesThe chief financial officer of the troubled home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond fell to his death from a New York skyscraper known as the “Jenga” tower on Friday, police said, just days after the company said it was closing several stores.Gustavo Arnal, 52, joined Bed Bath & Beyond in 2020. He previously worked for the cosmetics brand Avon, in London and Walgreens Boots Alliance. He also had a 20-year stint with Procter & Gamble, according to his LinkedIn profile. Continue reading...

Cameron Carter, 19, who had never travelled on a plane before, was left unable to contact his family throughout ordeal

Eliza Fletcher is still missing after she was forced into a vehicle while jogging near University of Memphis campus, police sayPolice in Tennessee said on Sunday an arrest had been made in connection with the abduction of a jogger on Friday.Memphis police said Cleotha Abston, 38, had been charged with especially aggravated kidnapping and tampering with evidence in the disappearance of Eliza Fletcher. Continue reading...

Congressman says of former vice-president, ‘I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily’The January 6 committee assumes the former vice-president Mike Pence will testify before it, a panel member said on Sunday.“I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily,” Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, told CBS’s Face the Nation. Continue reading...

Former president also calls Joe Biden’s Philadelphia address the ‘most vicious, hateful, divisive speech’Speaking in Pennsylvania on Saturday, at his first rally since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for top-secret material taken from the White House and since Joe Biden used a primetime address to warn that Republicans were assaulting US democracy, Donald Trump lashed out.The former president said: “The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.” Continue reading...

Donald Trump lashed out at the US president, calling him an ‘enemy of the state’, following his recent primetime address in which he said Republicans were assaulting US democracy. Speaking in Pennsylvania on Saturday, at his first rally since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for top-secret material taken from the White House, the former president said: ‘The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do’

Everyone loves Sylvia – except the man who was rash enough to push past her on the bus

It’s a monstrous thought, but politicians who disparage net zero as a ‘new religion’ and wind power as ‘medieval’ are tipped for cabinet postsWhat a strange, heady, anxious summer that was. For all the talk by many journalists and politicians about the cost of living crisis as something that will decisively arrive in the autumn, it is already here. At the same time, the landscape of this small corner of northern Europe is parched and straw-coloured, while those terrifying images of flooding in Pakistan have illustrated the climate emergency’s even more nightmarish flipside. The pandemic, it turns out, was merely one more crisis on the way to something completely convulsive: payback for our fragile dependence on fossil fuels, and a way of living that is no longer sustainable. With perfect timing, next weekend will see the return to London’s streets of Extinction Rebellion, whose protests will trigger the usual sneers from climate deniers while hammering home 2022’s awful sense of urgency.Meanwhile, as if the immediate future is being decided by a TV scriptwriter who specialises in the bleakest comedy, Liz Truss is seemingly about to move into Downing Street, after two months of surreal and largely pointless debate in which the climate crisis has barely figured. She and Rishi Sunak may have paid lip service to the government’s nominal target of achieving net zero by 2050 – but, whatever their other differences, they have largely spoken with one voice on climate policy: the cursory, slightly bored tone of people who think of it as an optional extra.John Harris is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Biden gave a rare primetime address on the most important challenge facing America – and the media coverage was just more he-said/she-said reactionJoe Biden’s message Thursday evening was clear. American democracy is under attack.This was a rare primetime address on the most important challenge facing the nation.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

Fewer employers are offering paid parental leave – but there are ways to give time off that benefit both your employees and your businessFor US employers, offering parental leave – where one or both parents are allowed to take extended time off to tend for a new child – can be a tricky issue.Not so in the UK, Japan, Germany, France and most other rich countries around the world, where parents – including fathers in some cases – can take significant time off after a child is born, with part of their compensation being covered by the government. Continue reading...

Situation is notable as the company has cultivated a liberal brand ethos and anti-union moves are likely to dent that public imageWorkers at Trader Joe’s successfully won union elections this year at stores in Hadley, Massachusetts, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, but workers now have numerous filed unfair labor practice charges against the specialty US supermarket chain, alleging the company has violated labor laws in trying to prevent further stores from unionizing.The move comes as a wave of unionizing efforts sweeps through sections of the US economy, including at household names like Starbucks and Amazon. The situation at Trader Joe’s is especially notable as the firm has cultivated a liberal brand ethos and anti-union moves are likely to dent that public image. Continue reading...

The man who liberalised the Soviet Union died last week, beset by a sense that his country had been betrayed – by the west and historyThe German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger labelled him “the hero of retreat”. But does retreat produce heroes? A lost man haunted by the death of his beloved wife and torn apart by a sense of guilt and anger for the tragic death of his beloved country. This is how Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s first and final president, vividly appears in Vitaly Mansky’s documentary Gorbachev. Heaven. This was also my experience several years ago when I visited Gorbachev in his foundation’s empty offices. This stark, poignant impression of Mikhail Sergeevich, who died last week at 91, will forever stay with me.I recall two other Gorbachevs. The first I saw on TV in my native Bulgaria in 1985. I was a 20-year-old studying philosophy at Sofia University and Gorbachev had just been elected general secretary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. His arrival to power, not to mention his opening policy gambits, was as surprising as snow in July. The very fact that the Soviet nomenklatura elected somebody who was younger than 70 and able to finish a sentence was a miracle. Even more supernatural was the sense of an opening that he brought – an infectious feeling that something impossible only yesterday was possible today and that even more might happen tomorrow. Continue reading...

Marble Freedom Trust, advocacy group headed by Leo, has received vast $1.6bn donation to push conservative causesAs the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas prepared to take questions from members of the rightwing legal advocacy group the Federalist Society, a few years back, he turned to the moderator.Thomas joked that the nondescript man in the blue suit and white shirt was the “No 3 most powerful person in the world”, and then fell about laughing. The target of the judge’s mirth, Leonard Leo, grinned and remarked: “God help us.” Continue reading...

Blair officials saw intelligence files showing ‘no evidence’ against UK detainees, according to a new bookTony Blair’s government was given special access to US intelligence files on Guantánamo Bay which revealed there was no credible evidence against the British detainees, a new book has claimed.US officials hoped that any British detainees released from the notorious prison camp would be detained once they set foot in the UK or placed under strict surveillance. But officials who examined files on British detainees in a meeting in Washington in February 2004 found there was no significant evidence against them. Continue reading...

The corporation is under attack for losing its edge. One of its leading voices defends its distinct roleIndulge me for a few seconds and close your eyes. Now, imagine a world without the BBC. What’s it like in the darkness? No EastEnders or RuPaul’s Drag Race. No Newsnight or Question Time. No Snog, Marry, Avoid? or Ten O’Clock News. No Glow Up or Strictly, no Proms, no Radio 4 or 3 or iPlayer. No World Service, no Line of Duty or Peaky Blinders, no Attenborough and Planet Earth and, heaven forbid, no Mastermind!What kind of a world is it for you? For many, it would be a pretty poor one. Others would disagree. Their reasoning might be based on a deeply held belief that the BBC is full of lefties, especially in its news division. Hooray, they’d say, no more woke news and pernicious identity politics. No more wokey blokeys, telling me I can’t sing Rule, Britannia! at the Last Night of the Proms. No more banging on about the Lionesses having no black players! Continue reading...

To counter the influence of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the US-led alliance has to show that freedom is worth fighting forIt was a deadly week for democracy. US president Joe Biden launched a rescue effort to save the “soul of the nation” that the dementor-in-chief, Donald Trump, AKA Lord Voldemort, is conspiring to steal.Russia lost a great man whose titanic struggle for reform was fatally torpedoed by a pint-sized usurper named Vladimir Putin. And China was saddled with indefinite dictatorship under the dead hand of Xi Jinping.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Ex-president’s latest award, for narrating national parks series, takes him closer to joining rare group who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and TonyBarack Obama is halfway to becoming an Egot after winning an Emmy award to go with his two Grammys.The former president won the best narrator Emmy on Saturday for his work on the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks. Continue reading...

On a busy day of third-round action, Cam Norrie reached the last 16 but compatriot Dan Evans lost an epic contest to Marin CilicFirst set: Norrie* 2-2 Rune (* denotes server)No issues for Norrie this time. The Briton’s first serve proves too much for Rune who sees a few of his returns go long. Continue reading...

Airport worker who knew how to take off but not land is in police custody, report saysThe pilot who stole a plane and threatened to intentionally crash into a Walmart superstore in Tupelo, Mississippi, while flying around the state for five hours will be charged with grand larceny and making terrorist threats, authorities have said.Cory Wayne Patterson, 29, an airport worker who reportedly knew how to take off but not land, could also face federal charges, Tupelo police chief John Quaka said. Continue reading...

When the 23-time major champion says she’s retiring, maybe it’s time to believe her – and for her to believe herselfMaybe the first clue that retirement was going to be difficult for Serena Williams came in her first-person essay in Vogue, where she couldn’t even bring herself to say the word. Then there were the interviews throughout her month-long valedictory leading up to and during the US Open, where she deftly sidestepped direct questions and left the door open for a possible return. Even in the cathartic aftermath of Friday night’s third-round defeat to Ajla Tomljanović, the sudden deluge of tears seemed to express a finality that she either could not or would not articulate in words.“I don’t think so, but you never know,” she said, when asked if she would reconsider her decision. “I don’t know.” Continue reading...

About 7,500 people in Weed and those nearby under evacuation orders as much of state faces brutal heatwaveA fast-moving wildfire in northern California is threatening rural communities near the Oregon border, injuring people and torching homes.About 7,500 people in Weed and several nearby communities were under evacuation orders on Saturday as the flames raced through tinder-dry grass. Much of California is facing a brutal heatwave this weekend that’s likely to see some of the hottest weather of the year. Continue reading...

Pure grit and scintillating play – Williams’s curtain call against Ajla Tomljanović demonstrated how she changed all sport for everSerena Williams doesn’t much like the word “retirement”. The 40-year-old athlete thinks it sounds old-fashioned. She prefers to say that she is in “transition”, although she’s well aware that’s a sensitive concept in 2022, so generally when she’s asked about what’s next for her, Williams settles on “evolution”.Whichever term she chooses, the undeniable facts are these: on Friday night in New York, Williams lost an exhilarating, excruciating third-round match at the US Open to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanović. The stakes were huge, the quality of play scintillating. Williams, her opponent, the 24,000 people watching in an unhinged Arthur Ashe Stadium – where the cheapest seats were changing hands for more than $500 (£434) – and millions tuning in on screens knew this might be the last time we would ever see Williams compete on a tennis court. Continue reading...

The story of Nan Goldin, a photographer who campaigned against the Sackler family’s Purdue Pharma, premieres at the Venice Film FestivalA documentary about artist Nan Goldin’s fight to hold members of the Sackler family to account for the opioid crisis is “a challenge to other artists” to use their power to expose corruption, its director Laura Poitras has said.The maker of lauded films including Risk (about Wikileaks) and Citizenfour (about Edward Snowden) was premiering All the Beauty and the Bloodshed in competition at the Venice film festival on Saturday. Continue reading...

‘The actions of the department look more understandable,’ Trump’s attorney general tells the New York Times in an interviewFormer attorney general William Barr came to the defense of the FBI and the justice department’s (DoJ) judicial request to search Donald Trump’s Florida home and country club compound last month, saying Friday that documents seized in the search appeared to support the department’s claims of a national security risk.“As more information comes out, the actions of the department look more understandable,” Barr told the New York Times in an interview. Continue reading...

New technology helps to track child abuse images, but in the case of false positives, companies don’t always rescind suspensionsHere’s a hypothetical scenario. You’re the parent of a toddler, a little boy. His penis has become swollen because of an infection and it’s hurting him. You phone the GP’s surgery and eventually get through to the practice’s nurse. The nurse suggests you take a photograph of the affected area and email it so that she can consult one of the doctors.So you get out your Samsung phone, take a couple of pictures and send them off. A short time later, the nurse phones to say that the GP has prescribed some antibiotics that you can pick up from the surgery’s pharmacy. You drive there, pick them up and in a few hours the swelling starts to reduce and your lad is perking up. Panic over. Continue reading...

Days of heavy rain caused dangerous currents in the Rio Grande in an area where people frequently cross into TexasAt least nine people were found dead in the Rio Grande while attempting a hazardous crossing in Texas, officials said on Saturday.The discovery was made by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Mexican officials on Thursday while responding to a large number of people attempting to migrate across the river near the city of Eagle Pass. Continue reading...

Large age gaps in relationships aren’t automatically problematic, but it’s a major red flag if a man consistently dates women half his ageTwenty-five is a milestone year. It’s when the development and maturation of your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and decision-making, is finally complete. At 25 you have reached maturity and have a fully formed brain. You also have absolutely no chance of dating Leonardo DiCaprio. As has been frequently observed, the 47-year-old actor appears to be incapable of a relationship with anyone over the age of 25. Continue reading...

Eliza Fletcher last seen at about 4:20am on Friday when a man approached her during a runAuthorities in Tennessee are searching for a woman who police said was abducted and forced into a vehicle while she was jogging near the University of Memphis campus.Eliza Fletcher, 34, was last seen at about 4.20am on Friday, Memphis police said. She was jogging when a man approached her and forced her into an SUV after a brief struggle, university police said. She was reported missing when she did not return home from her regular morning run, authorities said. Continue reading...

American Matthew Wolff became the first player to hit a hole-in-one at a LIV Golf event, helping him to a share of the first-round lead at the Invitational Boston. Wolff sunk the ace at the 178-yard second hole with his compatriot Talor Gooch alongside him at the top of the leaderboard. Continue reading...

If we’re to avoid a future in which the nation’s largest Black-majority city lacks representation that looks like most of its citizens, we need electoral reformDetroit has been represented by at least one Black member of Congress since 1955. That’s four years before Berry Gordy founded Motown Records, three years before Ozzie Virgil became the first person of African descent to play for the Detroit Tigers, and 17 years before General Motors hired its first Black automotive designer in 1972.Now that long, proud run is nearing an end. After this November’s elections, Detroit – nearly 80% Black, the largest percentage, by far, of any major American city – will probably be left without any Black representation in the House of Representatives. An era that covered parts of eight decades, and the careers of heavyweights such as Representatives John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick will close.David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote Continue reading...

Rappers have long had their music used as evidence against them in criminal trials. California could soon limit the practiceIn 2000, McKinley “Mac” Phipps Jr was a 22-year-old rising rap star when he was arrested for murder.A 19-year-old had been shot at a Slidell, Louisiana club where Phipps was due to perform, and police quickly zeroed in on the artist as the suspect. A man who was working security at the venue confessed that he had killed the teenager, but still prosecutors pushed forward with a trial against Phipps. Continue reading...

In response to a US supreme court ruling lifting concealed-carry restrictions a state law bans firearms in sensitive areasA few blocks from New York City’s famed Times Square, a roadside sign flashed a warning to anyone visiting the so-called crossroads of the world.“Times Square Gun Free Zone,” the LED-style sign announced in all-caps orange lettering. Continue reading...

As Ankaragucu host Besiktas in the Super Lig, two players who honed their skills in England will be looking to prove they have what it takes at the top levelWhen Ankaragucu host Besiktas on Sunday there will be a former MK Dons forward taking to the field, aiming to prove his talents on Turkey’s biggest stage, while having half an eye on making the Qatar World Cup.To add to the similarities, like Dele Alli, Gboly Ariyibi spent a number of his early years in Nigeria. The two will come face-to-face at Eryaman Stadium in the Super Lig where they find themselves a long way from home. Continue reading...

Born in the same year as the tennis champion, I watched her face countless obstacles – and become the greatest of all timeWe don’t deserve Serena Williams. Nothing about this world makes it likely that a little black girl from Compton – now “evolving” away from professional competition after her final match at the US Open – would become an indisputable Goat.Witnessing Williams’s ascension to Greatest of All Time status has been an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime experience. The sheer longevity of her career sunk in for me when I discovered that Emma Raducanu, who Williams has played this season, had not even been born during one of Williams’s most memorable seasons: 2002, when she won three grand slam titles in a row. Continue reading...

There is no greater expression of Serena’s love for the sport than how long she stayed and many times she came back. She played on till the end, the very endAs Serena Williams stood one tie-break away from her demise in the second set of the breathless, unforgettable final match of her career, a deafening wall of noise inside Arthur Ashe Stadium punctuated every minor victory she achieved. She had led 5-3 in the first set, only for her lead to crumble. When she established a 5-2 advantage in the second set, her four set points evaporated in a flash. Each time she came close she was arrested by tension, rust, nerves.Nothing went her way, but Williams did what she has done for 27 years: she fought. She tore into forehands, her loud, piercing grunts following every shot. She desperately sprinted for every last ball, she pumped her fists and hollered at herself in encouragement. Somehow, she dragged herself over the line in the second-set tie-break, crunching a searing forehand winner off a 20-shot rally, one of her final moments of defiance. Continue reading...

Frazzled hair, sleepy eyes, warts and all: at last, an app that lets us share the glory of daily life in all its compelling mundanityI have been on BeReal since March – this year’s grooviest, see-and-be-seen social platform. Six months on, I’ve learned that my life is way more dull than I had realised.BeReal is a photo sharing app in which once a day, at a random time, every user is sent a notification to post a photo of their surroundings within a two-minute time frame. You don’t get to wait for the fun bit of your day, or find a flattering photo on your camera roll. My BeReals are almost invariably of my computer screen, my dog or my fridge. Even being on holiday doesn’t always help: sod’s law demands that the app’s distinctive ping will come while you are buying suncream or at the car hire office, not on the beach.Jess Cartner-Morley is associate editor (fashion) at the Guardian Continue reading...

Response to podcast series and magazine profile met with barb that duke and duchess are ‘taking a hardship and turning it into content’Meghan Markle launched a US media blitz last week with a podcast and a lengthy magazine profile, but the somewhat cool reception she and husband Prince Harry are now receiving in America suggests there are still bumps in their road ahead as they seek to establish themselves as bona fide celebrities.The push came with an interview in New York magazine’s the Cut, titled “Meghan of Montecito”, and it touted the launch of Markle’s Spotify podcast Archetypes. Continue reading...

The photo released by the justice department of materials seized at his resort sends a message: the time for frivolity is overThe photo tells it all. There is the overabundance of the carpet in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida resort, with its elaborate floral design presumably intended to suggest taste and luxury but merely signaling excess.There is the tackiness of the cheap gilded frames stuck in a box on the right of the picture, an echo of the golden skin plastered all over Trump Tower in Manhattan. In the front frame, the ego of the owner rings out – it is a Time magazine cover from 2019 showing Trump’s Democratic presidential challengers, Joe Biden among them, peering enviously at him as he sits in the Oval Office. Continue reading...

Temperatures are breaking records in southern California with advocates concerned for the unhoused and outdoor workersAs Los Angeles struggled under a brutal heatwave, many streets were quiet as residents followed the official warnings to shelter inside their air conditioned homes. Public libraries transformed into cooling centers, and mutual aid groups prepared frozen water bottles to offer relief to unhoused residents. Food vendors were still on the streets, despite describing heat that can reach 115F (46C) inside a sweltering truck.Heading into a holiday weekend, southern California is grappling with its hottest weather of the year, with no relief in sight. Even in a city known for its heat, the triple digit temperatures in some towns around Los Angeles are breaking records, and advocates worry that the extremes will prove deadly for workers and others forced to be outside during the hottest hours of the day. Continue reading...