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I once scoffed at the idea of empty nest syndrome'. Now I scour camp photos like a homicide detective, on the lookout for scowls or sunburnOn Sunday I dropped off my kids at camp and, all going well, I won't see or hear from them for two weeks. This wasn't part of my plan for the summer. Sleepaway camp, a staple of American childhood, isn't in my background and the whole idea of it filled me with dread. At their age - eight - I would have hated it, I'm sure, being sent away and forced to have fun. But my children aren't me and they pushed and pushed until finally last week I gave in. So there they are, at a lake in New Jersey, and here I am, in New York, alone.It should be good for all of us, this period of detachment. Unless you favour the Edwardian model and ship off your kids to boarding school as long-range training for ruining the country, parenting young children is intense. Single parenting, in the absence of immediate family, can feel - in my case, as a single parent of twins - like being one person divided into three.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist based in New York Continue reading...

Is there anything he can't sell? Continue reading...

Gift' to Florida governor's presidential campaign has been criticized online given team's claim of supporting DEI effortsThe Orlando Magic NBA team has donated $50,000 to a super PAC supporting Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis's presidential bid.According to Federal Election Commission records, the Never Back Down super PAC received the donation made by the basketball team on 26 June. Further results showed the team making donations to other political causes in past years, with $500 going to Conservative Results in 2016, $2,000 to Maverick PAC USA in 2014 and another $500 to Linda Chapin for Congress in 2000. Continue reading...

Texas government installed barrier to deter migrants - Mexican and US governments want it removed as dangerous and illegalA body has been found stuck in a floating barrier installed by Texas authorities in the Rio Grande river on the US border, Mexico's foreign ministry has saidAuthorities were working to identify the body found in the river and determine the cause of death, said Mexico's foreign ministry, as it reiterated safety concerns. Continue reading...

Authorities are looking for additional victims after linking Negasi Zuberi to sexual assaults in at least four more statesA man who posed as an undercover police officer kidnapped a woman in Seattle, drove her to his home in Oregon and locked her in a makeshift cell in his garage before she managed to escape, the FBI said Wednesday.The man, Negasi Zuberi, faces a federal interstate kidnapping charge, and authorities said they are looking for additional victims after linking him to violent sexual assaults in at least four more states. Continue reading...

John Lauro claims four criminal charges over efforts to overturn 2020 election absurd'; US officials say Trump will have fingerprints taken but no photo

Rise Above Movement co-founder to face charges in Los Angeles in relation to violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters in 2017Robert Rundo, the influential American neo-Nazi and co-founder of the now-defunct Rise Above Movement, was extradited to the USto face charges in relation to violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters in 2017.Rundo was extradited from Romania to the US on Tuesday, after being apprehended in a Bucharest gym in late March on an American warrant. Continue reading...

Appeals court upholds injunction ordering two school districts to allow trans students to use facilities in line with gender identitiesA federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that transgender students in Indiana must have access to the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identities.The seventh circuit court of appeals ruling on Tuesday upheld a preliminary injunction from the US district court for the southern district of Indiana last year ordering the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville and the Vigo County Schools to give the transgender students such access. Continue reading...

Arianna Davis, 24, and Crystal Williams, 26, described incidents of body shaming and being forced to participate in religious activitiesFormer dancers for Lizzo are speaking out after they sued the artist for sexual harassment, racial discrimination and fostering a hostile work environment.Two plaintiffs in the case, Arianna Davis, 24, and Crystal Williams, 26, talked openly in interviews about the suffering they said they endured by Lizzo, whose legal name is Melissa Jefferson. Continue reading...

Stanley Woodward, lawyer for Walt Nauta, might be in the position of cross-examining past or current clients', court filing says

A healthy body politic cannot allow its core values and principles to be trashed with impunityThe indictment served on Donald Trump on Monday marks the beginning of a legal reckoning that is desperately required, if American democracy is to properly free itself from his malign, insidious influence. Mr Trump already faces multiple criminal charges relating to the retention of classified national security documents and the payment of hush money to a porn star. But the gravity of the four counts outlined by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is of a different order of magnitude.Mr Trump stands accused of conspiring, in office, to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Following Joe Biden's victory, the indictment states, Mr Trump knowingly" used false claims of electoral fraud in an attempt to subvert the legitimate election results". A bipartisan congressional committee report last year came to similar conclusions and provides much of the basis for the charges. But this represents the first major legal attempt to hold Mr Trump accountable for events leading up to and including the storming of the Capitol by a violent mob on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...

Report says ex-president made comments at private White House lunch in June but pledged to do all he could' for re-election bidBarack Obama has reportedly warned Joe Biden about how strong a challenge Donald Trump will be in their second election battle in 2024, should Trump win the Republican nomination next year as expected.Polling now shows Trump and Biden closely matched for a second presidential contest. Continue reading...

Dick Durbin, chair of Senate judiciary committee, criticizes supreme court justice in wake of billowing ethics scandalsA powerful Democrat senator has called Samuel Alito's public expression of opposition to US supreme court ethics reform unwise and unwelcome", rejecting the conservative justice's contention that Congress cannot implement such measures.Justice Alito is providing speculative public commentary on a bill that is still going through the legislative process," said Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois and the chair of the Senate judiciary committee. Continue reading...

Two and half years in the making, special counsel Jack Smith's indictment presents a devastating case laced with telling detailMore than 1,000 people charged over the US Capitol riot, millions of pages of evidence compiled by the House January 6 committee, hundreds of hours of depositions of key players - all this has finally been boiled down to a 45-page indictment that accuses Donald Trump of attempting to destroy American democracy.Why didn't they do this 2.5 years ago?" the former president asked peevishly on Tuesday, shortly before the indictment came down. The answer lies in the document itself: in its painstaking command of detail and in the cool, crisp legal language deployed by special counsel Jack Smith to make his case. Continue reading...

Report shows lack of accountability' for misuse of lethal force, intimidation, sexual harassment and falsifying documentsA new report identifies persistent human rights abuses without accountability at the US-Mexico border by agents with US Customs and Border Protection - the largest civilian law enforcement agency run by the federal government.The report, compiled by the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola) and the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), migrant rights advocacy groups, details a pattern of misuse of lethal force, intimidation, sexual harassment and falsifying documents. Continue reading...

Four district attorneys file lawsuit against oversight commission seen as response to election of progressive, Black prosecutorsA group of district attorneys filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the state of Georgia and Governor Brian Kemp challenging Republican-led legislation that gives the state the ability to oust prosecutors it finds are not enforcing the law.The four district attorneys are challenging Senate Bill 92, which Kemp signed into law in May creating a statewide Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission with the power to investigate complaints against district attorneys, discipline them and remove them from office if it decides they are not adequately carrying out state law. They claim that the law, which institutes a top-down approach to law enforcement", prevents voters from selecting their own district attorneys. In recent years, Georgia voters have increasingly chosen progressive, Black prosecutors. Continue reading...

Democrats and some Republican opponents welcomed Donald Trump's federal indictment on four charges relating to his alleged attempted election subversion, while the former president's supporters rallied to his defence. Trump is now facing 78 criminal charges, including 40 federal counts in Florida over his retention of classified records, and 34 New York state counts over hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels. Despite this, and the prospect of more charges over election subversion in Georgia, he is leading national Republican polling by more than 30 points and by wide margins in early voting states

Lieutenant governor among officials calling for postponement as thousands on strike demanding better pay and benefitsCalifornia officials are urging Taylor Swift to postpone her Los Angeles concerts and stand in solidarity with striking hotel workers.Eleni Kounalakis, California's lieutenant governor, as well as dozens of other state and local politicians asked the singer in an open letter to support the hotel workers' plight. Continue reading...

What's a guy get his gal for the 50th?' Lee Wilson secretly planted 80 acres of sunflowers to surprise his wifeA Kansas man celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary by surprising his wife with more than a million sunflowers.In May, working with his son, Lee Wilson secretly planted 80 acres of sunflowers, around 1.2m plants, in preparation for the anniversary on 10 August. Continue reading...

Automated tills now take up much more space than those staffed by humans. We must resist!I've wailed before about the proliferation of self-checkout machines. But I will do so again, because my mood darkens every time I visit my local big supermarket. I first honoured the place with my business about 20 years ago. Back then there were about two dozen staffed checkouts, in those days of innocence before the death march of progress gathered pace. A handful of self-checkouts appeared; a handful of human ones vanished. At first we saw them as harmless novelties. They were never all in operation, and those that were rarely worked properly. The whole caper seemed to involve as many staff supervising machines as could have been operating a battery of proper tills. But we indulged the management, bless them. They've got to try these things, haven't they?Then came more of them, and ever fewer human tills. A zero-sum game. It remained the case that some machines were out of action and the remainder invariably had a glitch in store for you. Only the other day I had a torrid time with some pitiful, dried-out geraniums on a three-for-5 offer. They just wouldn't scan. I got them for nothing in the end, but they all died anyway.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Vermont police say Ryan Koss, 35, pulled out in front of Williams, who was riding motorbike and unable to avoid collisionA driver accused of causing a crash that killed the actor Treat Williams was cited for grossly negligent operation causing death, officials said.An investigation of the 12 June crash in Dorset, Vermont, concluded a vehicle pulled in front of Williams, who was riding a motorcycle and was unable to avoid a collision, Vermont state police said. Continue reading...

Biden's economic policies are the most successful in the US in decades. That puts the Democrats on a strong political footingUntil recently, I assumed that Joe Biden would get a second term despite worries about his age because most Americans find Trump so loathsome.But I've underestimated Bidenomics. It's turning out to be the most successful set of economic policies the United States has witnessed in a half-century.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 Continue reading...

Stop was caused by officer misreading car's license plate and suspecting it was a stolen carA Texas police department apologized after officers pulled over what they wrongly suspected was a stolen car, then held an innocent Black family at gunpoint.The driver, her husband and one of two children being driven to a youth basketball tournament could all be heard sobbing on body-camera video posted online by police in Frisco, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Continue reading...

The defending champions have ground their way into the tournament's knockout stage. But they need to improve quickly against a strong Sweden teamAs a fire alarm echoed throughout Eden Park on Tuesday night and the public-address system asked everyone to evacuate, most of the crowd of 42,000 stayed in their seats in confusion. It turned out to be a false alarm, and almost too fitting a metaphor for a night to forget for the United States.A scoreless draw with Portugal secured the defending champions a place in the knockout rounds. That was widely expected by most of the world prior to the tournament. How the US got there, however, could be generously described as a grind. Continue reading...

Vice-president says she will not accept invitation to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery'Kamala Harris fired back at the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, after he invited her to discuss new school standards for the teaching of African American history which claim some enslaved people derived benefits that could be used in later life.There is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery," the vice-president said. Continue reading...

Latest criminal case before ex-president has come weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information. Plus, experts warn of record US deaths from extreme heat

Super Pac affiliated with anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist received $5m from Trump backer Timothy MellonA Super Pac affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist running for president as a Democrat, owes half its cash to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports filed on Monday.The group, American Values 2024, reported receiving $5m from Timothy Mellon, a wealthy businessman from Wyoming, according to NBC News and Politico. It registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in April, days before Kennedy officially launched his campaign, according to FEC records. Continue reading...

Social media is abuzz with a survey showing 12th-grade boys are twice as likely to identify as conservative. The reality is a little more complicatedThe kids are all (leaning to the) right. Well, teenage boys in the US are, anyway. Social media was recently abuzz with a survey that shows 12th-grade boys (who are aged 17 or 18) are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative v liberal. Their female counterparts, meanwhile, lean overwhelmingly liberal.There are, of course, lies, damned lies and statistics. Before digging into these statistics it is worth explaining how they went viral. The numbers showing young men becoming conservative come from the 2022 Monitoring the Future study, a respected annual survey looking at American adolescents that began in 1975. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor, used this data for a chart in Generations, her new book about generational differences. Continue reading...

Ex-president has been summoned to appear in court on charges linked to attempt to overturn 2020 election

OKC have a host of young stars who could help them challenge for the NBA title. The only problem may be finding a long-term homeThe Oklahoma City Thunder have one of the most promising cores of young players in the NBA. Led by 25-year-old All-Star guard Shai-Gilgeous Alexander, they also boast 2023 Rookie of the Year runner-up Jalen Williams, gifted 20-year-old Australian point guard Josh Giddey and highly touted 21-year-old seven-footer Chet Holmgren, who will debut this coming season.What's more, the wheeling and dealing of general manager Sam Presti in the trade market over recent seasons has seen them accumulate a bounty of 15 first-round picks to be redeemed over the next seven years. Continue reading...

The eye-watering sums on offer for players like Ronaldo are only the latest influx of cash for a game we love, but others ownNot long ago I had an instructive conversation with a football-mad 10-year-old from Belfast. We were walking by a beautiful lake in Donegal. I'd seen him proudly wearing a Liverpool kit on the dancefloor at our Liverpool-mad friend's wedding the previous day, so I asked him about the ongoing English league season. As everyone knows, football is a common language", particularly for people from different generations or cultural backgrounds who might otherwise struggle to know what to talk about together.I asked him to name his favourite player (Mohamed Salah) and whether he thought Arsenal would be champions (he was certain they wouldn't). He asked had I seen Cristiano Ronaldo's latest goals? I confessed I had not. Ronaldo is smashing all the league records, he said, quoting the latest figures. Yeah, but it's only the Saudi league, I interrupted. It's not a proper league, is it? Who cares? Continue reading...

In today's newsletter: On top of the other prosecutions against him, th eformer president has just been charged with conspiracy to defraud the US, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights and more Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning.Donald Trump has been indicted for conspiring to defraud the United States" and other alleged crimes connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 US election result.UK news | The family of Captain Tom Moore have objected to an enforcement notice ordering them to pull down an unauthorised spa pool block at the home of the late charity fundraiser.Conservatives | Jeremy Hunt oversaw the signing of a low-tax treaty with San Marino that was championed by a leading Tory donor, who with his companies has given more than 700,000 to the party and 30,000 to the chancellor. Maurizio Bragagni, a prominent businessman and diplomat for San Marino, was present in No 11 Downing Street when a double taxation" treaty was signed in May.AI | UK intelligence agencies are lobbying the government to weaken surveillance laws, which they argue place a burdensome" limit on their ability to train artificial intelligence models with large amounts of personal data.Rights | Anti-protest laws and culture wars perpetrated by the government are among the issues highlighted as urgent and alarming" by two thinktanks that argue the threat to Britain's democratic spaces is growing, with charities and civil society groups come under political attack" by ministers.Science | Adults' penchant for the landscapes of Vincent van Gogh is mirrored in babies, researchers say. Infants and adults were shown a selection of 10 of Van Gogh's landscapes among 40 possible images. The infants tended to gaze longer at artworks that adult participants rated higher for pleasantness. Van Gogh's Green Corn Stalks had the highest shared preference. Continue reading...

Ron DeSantis decried the alleged swamp mentality' while Nancy Pelosi said charges outlined sinister plot'While Democrats and progressives welcomed Donald Trump's federal indictment on four charges relating to his attempted election subversion, the former president's chief rival for the 2024 Republican nomination rallied to his defense.Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is a distant second to Trump in primary polling, swiftly issued a statement that notably did not mention Trump by name. Continue reading...

An MPs' report on Chinese intentions credits President Xi with a flattering level of strategic nous. The real problems lie closer to homeIn the figure of Xi Jinping, with his dominant political personality and assertive communicative style, many in the west have found the autocrat they always feared would one day confront them. For Xi and the people around him, combatting what his administration calls western universalism", and western attempts to infiltrate China's politics through economic and cultural engagement, has been a major task.Now the Xi threat has come right into our own back yard. A recent report by the British parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) defines the nature of Chinese intentions as ambition at a global level - to become a technological and economic superpower, on which other countries are reliant". This, it says, poses a national security threat to the UK". Its words align with those of the CIA and FBI in the US, who have in recent years regarded China as their greatest adversary. Continue reading...

Marjorie Perkins of Maine realized 17-year-old was awfully hungry' after defending herself and called 911 as he was eatingThe household matriarch who insists on feeding visitors, especially young ones, stands among the most enduring US stereotypes.But an 87-year-old woman from Brunswick, Maine, recently took that stereotype to an extreme by reportedly fighting off a teenager who broke into her home, then giving him snacks when he said he was hungry as she sent him on his way. Continue reading...

The former president is facing several charges in connection with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 electionsDonald Trump has been charged with several crimes in connection with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in a historic indictment that is deepening the former president's legal peril.The charges, filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Washington DC on Tuesday, accuse Trump of conspiracies that targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election". Continue reading...

Special counsel Jack Smith to seek speedy trial and says January 6 was fueled by lies'

Fitch changed the country's rating from AAA to AA+, citing fiscal deterioration and down-to-the wire debt ceiling negotiationsRating agency Fitch downgraded the US government's top credit rating on Tuesday, a move that drew an angry response from the White House and surprised investors.Fitch downgraded the United States to AA+ from AAA, citing fiscal deterioration over the next three years and repeated down-the-wire debt ceiling negotiations that threaten the government's ability to pay its bills. It is the second major rating agency after Standard & Poor's to strip the US of its triple-A rating. Continue reading...

Special counsel Jack Smith has described the January 6 insurrection as 'an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy' that was 'fuelled by lies by the defendant'. The statements follow his lengthy investigation into Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Latest criminal case before ex-president comes just weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information

Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election

Past efforts to hold Trump accountable for the violence and his broader election subversion campaign have fallen short

A brief downpour helped crews on the ground, but experts warn they could face unstable wind conditions that could blow fire back at themFirefighters have managed to partially contain a giant wildfire in the Mojave desert that scorched tens of thousands of acres of scrub and sent smoke across the Las Vegas Strip.The York fire was mapped at roughly 125 sq miles (323.7 sq km) on Tuesday, with 23% containment, making it the largest wildfire of the season in California. Continue reading...

A lifeguard brought the container ashore and opened it to discover a Black man's body as homicide detectives investigate the deathA lifeguard found a man's body in a barrel at a southern California beach on Monday, after seeing the container floating in the water, officials said.Homicide detectives with the Los Angeles county sheriff's department are investigating the circumstances around the death. Continue reading...

Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Sophie Downey and Anita Asante to reflect on England's incredible 6-1 win over ChinaRate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.On the podcast today; England finally look like a side capable of going very far at this World Cup, helped hugely by an amazing performance by Lauren James. If it wasn't for an offside she may well have had the greatest ever World Cup hat-trick. Continue reading...