In 2018, San Francisco set out to build a better bin. The prototypes are finally ready for action – so we gave them a trySan Francisco may struggle with an intractable housing crisis, gaping income inequality and a deserted downtown – but one thing it will not tolerate is second-rate trash cans.In 2018, the city’s department of public works began the process of replacing the city’s more than 3,000 existing public trash cans. Not content with the models already on the market, San Francisco launched what is now a three-and-half-year (and counting), $550,000 project to design bespoke bins for its streets. Continue reading...
Defense department says use of military would be inappropriate as thousands of migrants being bused from Texas and ArizonaThe Pentagon on Monday once again denied a request from the District of Columbia seeking national guard assistance in dealing with thousands of migrants being bused to the city from Texas and Arizona.According to a copy of a letter to the city reviewed by the Associated Press, the Defense Department said use of the DC National Guard would be inappropriate and would hurt the overall readiness of the troops, forcing some to cancel or disrupt military training. Continue reading...
Ex-president seeks to prevent bureau from reading seized documents until court official weighs inDonald Trump on Monday filed suit against the US government over the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, seeking to temporarily stop the bureau reading seized materials until a special court official can be appointed to review documents concerned.As the Guardian reported on Saturday, citing Trump’s lead attorney, Jim Trusty, and two sources familiar with the matter, “the suit argues that the court should appoint a special master – usually a retired lawyer or judge – because the FBI potentially seized privileged materials in its search and the Department of Justice (DoJ) should not itself decide what it can use in its investigation”. Continue reading...
As rental applications surge, jobseekers have flooded to the industry. It’s often far less appealing than they thoughtWhen Keyan Sanai moved to Manhattan and started working as a real estate broker in 2014, he was eating 12 to 15 cans of tuna a week to keep costs low. “I said to my friend, ‘My mouth tastes like a fistful of old pennies all the time,’” he says. After a doctor’s visit, he found out he had mercury poisoning.His first few years as a broker were rough. Working at a “boiler room” brokerage, he got acquainted with what he calls the “dark underbelly” of the industry. “The script is basically to lie to people: ‘Put up [an ad] that says ‘no fee’, and once you get ’em in, say, ‘Oh, that’s rented, but I have something else,’” he recalls managers telling him. He says they insisted their employees “just get [the client] out to the appointment, then pump the fear and pressure them into making a decision”. Continue reading...
State department says it does not want to close off pathways for Russian dissidents and victims of human rights abusesThe United States has rebuffed Ukraine’s demand for a blanket visa ban on Russians, saying Washington would not want to close off pathways to refuge for Russia’s dissidents and others who are vulnerable to human rights abuses.The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had first urged the visa ban in an interview earlier this month with the Washington Post, saying Russians should “live in their own world until they change their philosophy”. Continue reading...
by Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles and agencies on (#62SFQ)
Volunteers locate vehicle after police scale back efforts to find Rodni, last seen at campground partyA weeks-long search for a missing 16-year-old has come to an end after divers found what is believed to be the body of Kiely Rodni submerged in a car in a California reservoir.Rodni went missing on 6 August after attending a party with hundreds of other young people at a campground in Truckee, California. Her disappearance prompted a search effort that drew in multiple law enforcement agencies and volunteers, who spent thousands of hours looking for her. Continue reading...
Damage to Vermont-based company’s reputation of licensee’s sales in occupied Palestinian territories ‘too speculative’, US judge rulesBen & Jerry’s has lost its attempt to block its parent company Unilever from selling its ice-cream in West Bank settlements, which the US firm said would run counter to its values.The company, known for its political activism, took the unusual step seeking an injunction after London-based Unilever announced it had sold its interest in the ice-cream to an Israeli license-holder. Continue reading...
Expert, 81, who has led National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, clashed with Trump over Covid responseTop US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci plans to step down from his post in December to “pursue the next chapter” of his career, he announced in a statement on Monday.Fauci, 81, has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid) since 1984. He has advised seven presidents, as far back as Ronald Reagan, on emerging infectious disease outbreaks that have plagued the nation, testifying before Congress and the World Health Organization on the HIV/Aids epidemic to Ebola to, most recently, the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading...
Chris Stirewalter, who was forced out after Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, says Fox failed its viewers with 2020 election coverageA former Fox News politics editor who was forced out of the conservative television network shortly after its opinions hosts’ preferred candidate Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race has said that the channel failed its viewers with its election coverage.In his upcoming memoir, Chris Stirewalt says Fox News resigned its duty to prepare Trump followers for the possibility that he would lose, instead stoking the “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred” which fuels white supremacist groups but translates into big ratings. Continue reading...
I was already glum about soon turning 40. Then I learned that happiness is U-shaped – it bottoms out in your 40s, then starts to inch its way up again in your 50sAll indicators to the contrary – the three children, the mortgage, the gray hairs, that little immutable fact that I was born in 1984 – the idea that I am approaching 40 is as discordant to my identity as is my bra drawer, which, since the pandemic and the birth of my one-year-old, consists mostly of slings. No, I think whenever I’m forced to confront my reality as an almost-middle-ager, I am still 22 and my silky, lacy undergarments would be more at home on a Victoria’s Secret billboard than in Ma’s closet on the prairie.Yet here I am, along with vast swaths of other millennials who are starting to approach our most unhappy period of life. Oh, haven’t you heard? Happiness is U-shaped – it declines and bottoms out in your 40s, so report countless studies, until it starts to inch its way up again in the 50s. This is a remarkably consistent finding, across countries and cultures. Continue reading...
Three officers seen punching and kneeing, Randall Worcester, 27, in Mulberry, about 140 miles from Little RockArkansas state police have launched an investigation into three officers who were captured on video holding down and beating a man outside a convenience store, an interaction that sparked outrage on social media. Continue reading...
Russia is trying to demonstrate that Nato is powerless to stop it. Whether it succeeds depends on the west’s political will as energy prices soarNearly six months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is still widespread disagreement in the west on Vladimir Putin’s motives.This is of more than academic interest. If we do not agree why Putin decided to invade Ukraine and what he wants to achieve, we cannot define what would constitute victory or defeat for either of the warring sides and the contours of a possible endgame.Philip Short has written authoritative biographies including Putin: His Life and Times, Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare, following a long career as a foreign correspondent for the BBC in Moscow, Washington and other world capitals Continue reading...
Outgoing congresswoman Liz Cheney takes aim at election result deniers within GOP. Plus, a dispute at Apple over remote workingGood morning.The outgoing Republican member of Congress Liz Cheney, who lost her Wyoming seat last week after being beaten in a primary by a Donald Trump-backed opponent, has announced plans to set up a new political organization.Going down punching. Cheney said that two Republican US senators – Ted Cruz from Texas and Josh Hawley from Missouri – had both made themselves “unfit for future office” since they “both took steps that fundamentally threatened the constitutional order”.Others pay price for standing up to Trump. Last month, Arizona lawmaker Rusty Bowers, state house speaker for the last four of 18 years following his election, lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by the former president. Continue reading...
Amid an alarming rise in anti-Asian rhetoric and hate crimes, less than 20% say they they feel accepted in the USAnika Lima experiences a “gray area” when it comes to belonging in America. Although she feels American, was born in the US and has lived here all of her life, the UCLA college student said she regularly experiences racialized microaggressions and is often mistaken for an immigrant. “I usually wear cultural clothes and a lot of people think that means I recently immigrated,” she said. “I guess they see that as strange or foreign.”It’s something she’s contended with her entire life. Continue reading...
The Mets are right behind the Dodgers in spending. But their NL East rivals could be up for success via another routeYou know the old saying about correlation not implying causation? Well, sometimes the two are related. A look at the highest payrolls in MLB reveals that the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets lead the pack. The Dodgers and Mets also happen to have the best winning percentages in baseball.That the Dodgers are on top of both these standings isn’t shocking: this is a team that won it all in 2020 and entered the year as favorites in the National League. The Mets, however, are used to being second in both spending and winning in their own city thanks to crosstown rivals, the Yankees. Continue reading...
Civil suit centering on what was argued to be defective roofs came after couple killed when vehicle rolled overThe American automaker Ford Motor Co has promised to appeal a $1.7bn verdict leveled against it in connection with a pickup truck crash that killed a Georgia couple, a manufacturer representative said Sunday.Jurors in Gwinnett county, just north-east of Atlanta, returned the verdict late last week in a yearslong civil case centering on what the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued were dangerously defective roofs on the Ford pickup involved in the crash and other vehicles like it, lawyer James Butler Jr said Sunday. Continue reading...
Host says, ‘It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue,’ after CNN cancels media show Reliable SourcesBrian Stelter, host of CNN’s media affairs show Reliable Sources which was cancelled last week after 30 years on air, used his final episode Sunday to make a pointed rebuke of the network’s new bosses and their intention to pursue a more “neutral voice” to its coverage.“It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue,” Stelter said in his final monologue, which he stressed was unvetted by CNN management before he delivered it live. “It is not partisan to stand up to demagogues – it’s required, it’s patriotic.” Continue reading...
Democrats believe that signs of a brewing backlash after the loss of reproduction choice will reshape the battle for control of Congress and and statehouses this fallFor years, Democrats warned that abortion rights were under grave threat. Across the US, antiabortion activists in red states chipped away at access and pushed for conservative judges to secure their gains. Yet for many Americans, the prospect of losing the constitutional right to abortion that had existed since 1973 remained worrying but remote.That all changed in June, when in Dobbs v Jackson, the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the 49-year-old ruling which had established the right. Continue reading...
Memo to staff says that new healthcare policy will also offer ‘travel support’ for workers seeking abortionsThe US’s largest private employer, Walmart, is expanding its abortion coverage for employees after staying largely mum on the issue following the supreme court ruling that in June scrapped a nationwide right to abortion.In a memo sent to employees Friday, the retail giant said its healthcare plans will cover abortion for employees “when there is a health risk to the mother, rape or incest, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage or lack of fetal viability”. The plans will be “effective immediately”, the memo added. Continue reading...
CDC is trying to determine whether romaine lettuce is the source of an outbreak that has sickened 37 peopleThe fast-food chain Wendy’s says it is pulling lettuce from sandwiches in its restaurants in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania after people eating them there reported falling ill.The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday it is trying to determine whether romaine lettuce in Wendy’s sandwiches is the source of an E coli outbreak that has sickened over 30 people – and whether romaine used by the chain was also served or sold at other businesses. Continue reading...
Cheney says two Republican US senators – Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – have both made themselves ‘unfit for future office’The former top Republican Liz Cheney, who lost her Wyoming seat in Congress last week when she was beaten in a primary by a Donald Trump-endorsed challenger, is threatening to turn her political muscle against other prominent politicians in her party who have embraced the former president’s attack on democracy.In an interview with ABC News aired on Sunday, she said that some of the best known Republican figures are now within her sights. She name-checked Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – all of whom have openly supported Trump’s lie that electoral fraudsters stole the 2020 presidential race from him and handed it to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. Continue reading...
Republican senator was ordered on Friday to appear before grand jury investigating efforts to overturn 2020 electionA federal appeals court on Sunday temporarily blocked a judge’s order requiring Republican senator Lindsey Graham to testify before a Georgia grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state.The judge who ordered Graham’s appearance in front of the grand jury – Leigh Martin May – should determine whether the subpoena requiring the South Carolina senator testify before the panel should be quashed or modified in accordance with the US constitution’s speech or debate clause. Continue reading...
by Kieran Pender at the Sydney Olympic Park on (#62R5N)
Undefeated across two decades of these head-to-head meets, the US team win by just 26 points after a dramatic three daysIn a famous scene in the cult TV show The Wire, after a failed attempt on his life, the character Omar Little warns: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” On Sunday Australia attempted to take the world swimming crown off the US during the final night of the Duel in the Pool. They missed, but only just.The US has long reigned supreme in international swimming. The nation has finished atop the Olympic swimming medal tally at every Games since 1988 and is undefeated across two decades of the head-to-head match-ups, variously against Australia and Europe, in the Duel format. Continue reading...
First lady will travel to Delaware to rejoin the president after getting negative results from two consecutive testsFirst lady Jill Biden has tested negative for Covid-19 and will leave South Carolina – where she had isolated since vacationing with Joe Biden – and rejoin the president at their Delaware beach home, her office said Sunday.The White House announced on Tuesday that the first lady, 71, who like her husband has been twice-vaccinated and twice-boosted with the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, had tested positive for the coronavirus. She first had symptoms on Monday. Continue reading...
Civil rights advocates say it ‘imposes religion’ as new law requires public campuses to display any donated items bearing that phraseCivil rights advocates are ringing alarm bells about officials distributing “In God We Trust” posters in Texas schools after a state law took effect requiring public campuses to display any donated items bearing that phrase.“These posters demonstrate the more casual ways a state can impose religion on the public,” Sophie Ellman-Golan of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) told the Guardian. “Alone, they’re a basic violation of the separation of church and state. But in the broader context, it’s hard not to see them as part of the larger Christian nationalist project.” Continue reading...
Even if Vladimir Putin does eventually falter, Russia’s power structure means another Putin will follow, and then another“On the front page – war, on the back page – the crossword.” A line from my novel The Light and the Dark sprang to mind as I travelled on a train shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Sitting across from me, a passenger was reading the paper: on the front page, there was the war; on the back page, the crossword. Time has passed since then, and the daily atrocities have started to disappear from the headlines, despite the battles growing more savage each day. But no one in the west wants to hear about war any more – people are tired of horror and solidarity. They want peace, no price rises, a quiet life and a nice holiday.Mikhail Shishkin is a novelist. He has won the Russian Booker, Russian National Bestseller and Big Book prizes Continue reading...
What’s to blame? The change in the balance of power between large corporations and the governmentThe Clean Air Act of 1970 authorized the government to regulate air pollution.The Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Biden signed into law this past week, allocates more than $300bn to energy and climate reform, including $30bn in subsidies for manufacturers of solar panels and wind turbines.the Chips and Science Act (with $52bn of subsidies to semiconductor firms, plus another $24bn in manufacturing tax credits);the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ($550bn of new spending on railroads, broadband and the electric grid, among other things);and now the Inflation Reduction Act (including the subsidies I noted).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...
Laughter has been far more than a coping mechanism amid repression and economic crisis – it has rid the island of tyrantsSri Lanka’s been a joke for a while. At least for those compelled to live here. A deeply unfunny joke without a punchline. An island of uncanny beauty, blessed with an abundance of resources and a vibrant and literate population, Sri Lanka manages to produce ugliness on a consistent basis across a range of catastrophes.The country has an unending supply of tragedy, absurdity and unorthodox cricketers, though it has run short of most other things – like petrol, gas, electricity, imports and competent leaders. As the economic crisis deepens, queues lengthen and prices soar, the output of jokes, memes, cartoons, skits, TikToks and fake news sites has been prolific. Continue reading...
The government is trying to hide its own views of Rwanda. But the problem with the plan goes deeper‘There are state control, security, surveillance structures from the national level down… Political opposition is not tolerated and arbitrary detention, torture and even killings are accepted methods of enforcing control too.”The email from a Foreign Office official to colleagues in the Home Office in response to Britain’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was disclosed during a court case last week, during which a number of media organisations and potential deportees were attempting to force the government to make public information it wants to keep secret. The court ruled that the majority of passages in internal documents relating to Foreign Office assessments of Rwanda must be released, although a small number could be redacted. The court hearing on the legality of the Rwanda scheme takes place next month. Continue reading...
Even feminists seem to expect women who succeed in a man’s world to be caring tooWhat’s the difference between a girlboss and a career woman? The simplest answer, perhaps, is time. Once it was the term “career woman” that translated female ambition as selfish, immoral and slightly ridiculous; now, “girlboss” does the job. The morals in question have changed. The effect is the same.You may not have heard the word. It traces the rise and fall of a particular movement in feminism. Girlboss originated around 2014 as an approving description of the type of success epitomised by Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean in” approach. It cheered on the rugged individualist making it in a man’s world through “moxie” and “hustle”. Continue reading...
As Khamenei crows over Rushdie, Biden seeks a revived pact. But make no mistake: this poisonous regime will always need its Great SatanIf any one man is to blame for gleeful Iranian crowing over the attack on Salman Rushdie, it is the country’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The black-turbaned ayatollah’s bigoted, blinkered outlook has been poisoning the well of Iranian politics and society since he first took power in 1989.Kayhan newspaper, known as Khamenei’s mouthpiece, praised Rushdie’s assailant, saying “his hands should be showered with kisses”. A jubilant headline declared: “Devil’s neck under the sword”. While Iran denies responsibility for the attack, Khamenei has repeatedly endorsed the late Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering Rushdie’s murder. Continue reading...
Rusty Bowers was speaker of Arizona’s house of representatives when he stood up to the former president’s demand that he overturn the election result. He paid the price but has no regretsRusty Bowers is headed for the exit. After 18 years as an Arizona lawmaker, the past four as speaker of the state’s house of representatives, he has been unceremoniously shown the door by his own Republican party.Last month he lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by Donald Trump. The rival, David Farnsworth, made an unusual pitch to voters: the 2020 presidential election had not only been stolen from Trump, he said, it was satanically snatched by the “devil himself”. Continue reading...
Police say charges for US actor, 78, include criminal sexual contact at Monster Mania horror film convention last weekendActor Gary Busey is facing charges of sexual misconduct and harassment stemming from his behavior at a fan convention in New Jersey, police said on Saturday.Police in Cherry Hill, a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, charged the 78-year-old Busey with two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual contact, one of attempted criminal sexual contact and another of harassment, officers said in a statement. Continue reading...
by Hugo Lowell in West Palm Beach, Florida on (#62QKF)
Legal motion would seek appointment of official to decide what materials can be used in investigation, attorney and sources sayDonald Trump is expected to seek the appointment of a special court official to determine whether materials that the FBI seized from his Florida resort can be used in a criminal investigation, according to his lead attorney Jim Trusty and two sources familiar with the matter.The motion would be the first formal legal action by the former president after federal agents last week confiscated about 30 boxes of highly-sensitive documents from his Mar-a-Lago resort in connection with an investigation into the unauthorized retention of government secrets. Continue reading...
Duo charged with murder over killing of Adam Simjee, 22, who was forced to walk into woods with girlfriend and died after gunfightWhen Adam Simjee and his girlfriend Mikayla Paulus stopped their car in the Talladega national forest in Alabama last week, after being flagged down by what the college students thought was a stranded driver, the couple did not think much of it.But the “stranded driver” – a woman named Yasmine Hider – turned out to be a gun-wielding robber who forced Simjee, 22, and Paulus, 20, to walk into the woods. Simjee pulled out his own handgun and shot Hider in defense of his girlfriend and himself, but he did not survive the confrontation – police allege Hider shot him dead. Continue reading...
After our interview, he offered to take me there even though he clearly had no idea where he was goingLots of journalists have Salman Rushdie stories. He likes to talk and he is generous with his time. When I interviewed him a few years ago, we had lunch together – somewhat ironically, it seems to me now – at the restaurant at Tate Britain, a venue long since closed on account of the Rex Whistler mural on its walls (in 2020, the gallery’s ethics committee called it “unequivocally offensive”). What I remember most, though, isn’t what happened there, but the fact that when we were finished, Rushdie insisted he would rather walk with me to Pimlico underground than pile into a taxi.I think I was surprised. One of my very first jobs as a young journalist involved attending an event where Rushdie, then still in hiding, was rumoured to be going to appear (memory tells me that he did, emerging from behind a curtain like a stage magician). But I was also amused. He didn’t – it was obvious – quite know the best way to the station and in his outsize puffer jacket he rather meekly followed me, looking about happily as he strolled. I’ve thought of those few stuccoed streets, and of him padding along them in the sunshine, seemingly without a care, every day since he was attacked. How the world turns. All the things, wonderful and ordinary, that we take for granted. Continue reading...
Ruling comes as plaintiffs say current Georgia public service commission election system discriminates against Black votersBlack voters challenging Georgia’s method of electing members to the state’s public service commission scored a preliminary US supreme court order in their favor late Friday.The decision came after conflicting rulings from lower courts earlier this month, offering up a rare example of the supreme court’s 6-3 conservative majority’s siding with voters over state officials. Continue reading...
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