Lawmakers grilled the director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, during a contentious House hearing on Monday, where members of both parties called for her resignation in the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month. The director of the US Secret Service said she took full responsibility' for any security lapses
The beloved Motown group's co-founder died of a heart failure and had been struggling with bladder cancerAbdul Duke" Fakir, the last surviving original member of the Four Tops, the beloved Motown group, died Monday at his home in Detroit. He was 88 years old.According to a family spokesperson, Fakir died of heart failure with his family and friends by his side. The family announced his death Monday afternoon, saying, our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of a trailblazer, icon and music legend who, through his 70-year music career, touched the lives of so many". Continue reading...
Lawmakers of both parties call for resignation of Kimberly Cheatle, who admits agency failed' at ex-president's rallyLawmakers grilled the director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, during a contentious House hearing on Monday, where members of both parties called for her resignation in the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month.In her opening statement, Cheatle acknowledged the Secret Service had failed" on 13 July, when a 20-year-old gunman was able to take a clear shot at the former president from a rooftop near Trump's campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Continue reading...
The vice-president is in pole position to be the Democratic nominee - and thoughts have turned to a possible No 2A Democratic party ticket led by Kamala Harris seems increasingly likely as scores of high-profile elected Democrats line up to endorse her for president in the wake of Joe Biden's withdrawal from the race.In Biden's announcement that he would no longer pursue a second term, he thanked Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work", and later, in endorsing her, called his choice to run with her in 2020 the best decision I've made". Continue reading...
Abortion since fall of Roe v Wade has been winning issue for Democrats Biden was reluctant to utter word abortion'The biggest abortion rights groups in US politics are lining up behind Kamala Harris's bid for president, a show of faith in a politician who has already become the face of the White House's fight over abortion rights - which is not only one of the election's biggest issues but one of the few where Democrats have the advantage.Within hours of Joe Biden's stunning announcement on Sunday that he would drop out of the presidential race and endorse the vice-president, Emilys List, which champions Democratic women who support abortion rights, and Reproductive Freedom for All, which advocates for abortion access and was previously known as Naral Pro-Choice America, officially endorsed Harris. Emilys List plans to pour at least $20m into the race in support of Harris. Continue reading...
The party should move immediately to project confidence and unity. The stakes are high, and there's no time to loseJoe Biden's resignation has left the party with two clear options. The first and easiest is for the convention to be a rally for Kamala Harris as the nominee, as nearly all party conventions have been for the last 40 years. The second is to have a floor fight at the convention, with multiple candidates fighting to win over a majority of delegates.The second option is attractive for a few reasons. It creates a process for candidates to win over support from major constituencies in the party, it allows them to make their cases to the broader public much like a regular primary, and it could draw in a large audience. It is the preferred solution of many of the party's major donors and even, according to some reporting, some of its most astute political leaders. Continue reading...
The president's decision to abandon his bid for re-election gives his party a chance to reinvigorate the campaign and beat Donald TrumpJoe Biden's announcement on Sunday marked the beginning of the end of an American political life filled with second acts. None was more remarkable than his defeat of Donald Trump in 2020. His acceptance that he could not do so again will burnish what his vice-president on Monday described as an unmatched" legacy. Elected to relief rather than elation, as the man saving the US from a second Trump term, he became the president who helped it recover from the pandemic, pushed through a landmark green infrastructure package and sought to shape a fairer economy.He could now be a lame duck, beset by Republican attacks on his capacity to continue as commander-in-chief. But he could cement his record, emboldened by the certainty of departure from office. His decision to quit his re-election bid was belated, yet in sharp contrast to Mr Trump's delusional egotism. Continue reading...
Get up to speed with the Democrat frontrunner - who officiated the first gay wedding in California and won a huge victory when she went to war with the mortgage companiesAfter Kamala Harris was named as Joe Biden's running mate in August 2020, Donald Trump said she was totally unlikable" and a communist; he twice called her this monster". While monster" is a dehumanising term, the pronoun flags what seems to me to be a racist subtext: not a" monster, but this" thing we have all agreed is a monster. Continue reading...
Michigan and Wisconsin party members are hopeful as some Trump voters also approve of the president's decisionFor many Democratic swing state voters, Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election came as a relief.Oh thank God," said Cathy Gramze, a retired nurse who lives in the suburbs of Detroit. My diagnosis has for a long time been that he cannot run again and I am not entirely sure that he should finish his term in office." Continue reading...
With a younger rival to emerge, the focus is likely to turn to ex-president, 78, and his often rambling, confused speechesWith 78-year-old Donald Trump now certain to face a Democratic candidate younger than he is, the Republican could have the tables turned on him over the questions of age and mental agility that he often sidestepped while Joe Biden was his opponent.The age gap between Trump and any of his likely Democrat opponents - Kamala Harris, 59; Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, 52; Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro, 51 - could make him the sole focus of voters' desire for a generational handover of power.Joe Biden drops out and endorses Kamala HarrisDemocrats praise Biden and Republicans go on the offenseWho will replace Biden? How does the process work?A look back at Joe Biden's life in politics Continue reading...
Castle Rock, Colorado, cannot prevent church from quintessential act' of offering temporary refugeA federal judge has ruled that a Colorado gold rush town cannot prevent an evangelical church from providing temporary shelter to unhoused people on the church's property.The ruling against the town of Castle Rock comes after The Rock church sued the town for attempting to block it by arguing the church could not park RVs used as residences on site under local zoning laws. Continue reading...
The vice-president billed herself as the Anti-Trump' in 2020. What are her policies on battleground issues of 2024?The first Black person, the first person of South Asian descent and the first female vice-president in US history versus a white man. The oldest presidential candidate in US history versus someone almost 20 years younger than him. The property mogul who inherited a fortune from his father versus the daughter of a biologist and a university professor in economics, both of whom are immigrants.If Kamala Harris becomes the nominee, then, as said in a 2020 Harris campaign ad shared widely after Biden resigned, Trump will be up against the Anti-Trump". Continue reading...
After protesters occupied parliament demanding transparency, the government did something extraordinary: it hired themHow do you build back trust in government and politicians? Globally, the trust crisis is blamed for the rise of populism. In the UK, the new government has come into power with a blizzard of policy announcements and a focus on what Keir Starmer, the prime minister, calls the fight for trust" - one that defines our political era".Some insist that the key is delivery - following through on policies that improve people's lives. Others counter with the example of the US, where Joe Biden's solid delivery record failed to shift his political fortunes. Some believe revamping the rules on standards and ethics is the answer.Polly Curtis is the chief executive of the cross-party thinktank Demos, a former Guardian journalist and author of Behind Closed Doors Continue reading...
Melanie Georger, who dreamed of flying for commercial airlines, was only person onboard after passengers jumpedA 26-year-old pilot with dreams of flying for commercial airlines died in a skydiving flight over the weekend when her small plane crashed near the Niagara Falls after her passengers jumped from the aircraft.Melanie Georger, 26, was the only person onboard when her single-engine Cessna crashed on Saturday, the Niagara county, New York, sheriff's office said in a statement. Georger, of Towanda, New York, was working to become a commercial pilot, her father said on Saturday in a statement on Facebook.The Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...
The Israeli government has long stressed that there was no Palestine whose land it could occupy and that the territories are disputed'. The court has rejected thisFriday's international court of justice (ICJ) ruling was a wholesale repudiation of Israel's legal justifications for its 57-year (and counting) occupation of Palestinian territory. But it is not a magic bullet. Political pressure will be needed to back it up. The first opportunity will come when Joe Biden meets the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Washington on Tuesday.As has been widely noted, the court's ruling is only advisory", not binding, because it was requested by the UN general assembly rather than the product of a lawsuit between two states. Moreover, the Israeli government is already ignoring prior ICJ decisions. Israel has not moved the separation barrier, which the court held in a 2004 advisory opinion to be illegal because, under the guise of security, Israel has incorporated large swathes of Palestinian land on the Israeli side of the barrier. Nor has Israel discernibly mitigated its offensive in Gaza despite court orders in the case brought by South Africa requiring steps to protect Palestinian rights under the genocide convention. Continue reading...
Joe Biden has announced he will no longer be seeking reelection as US president. When he leaves office on 20 January 2025, it will mark the end of a political career spanning more than 50 years. At the age of 30, he was one of the youngest senators in the country's history
by Callum Jones in New York and Lauren Gambino in Was on (#6PCXJ)
Some top backers throw weight behind Harris amid flood of grassroots donations but other heavyweights pointedly decline to offer supportTop Democratic donors helped end Joe Biden's re-election bid in the past weeks by publicly and privately calling on him to stand aside, and threatening to pull their funds.In the hours after he withdrew from the campaign, some of the party's highest-profile backers promptly threw their weight behind Kamala Harris. Others pointedly did not.Joe Biden drops out and endorses Kamala HarrisDemocrats praise Biden and Republicans go on the offenseWho will replace Biden? How does the process work?A look back at Joe Biden's life in politics Continue reading...
Tell us how you feel about the possibility of US vice president Kamala Harris receiving the Democratic nomination for the 2024 US presidential electionWe're interested to hear how American voters feel about Kamala Harris trying to win the Democratic nomination for the 2024 US presidential election, and Joe Biden's endorsement of his vice president since he dropped out of the race.I am honored to have the president's endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination," Harris said. I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic party - and unite our nation - to defeat Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda." Continue reading...
The oldest-ever American president's political career is coming to an end as he yields to pressure to step aside. We look back at a journey that began in 1972
The Americans edged out the Chinese in the gold medal count in Tokyo. Will the two swap positions this time around?In 2021, China came within a single victory of tying the USA for the most gold medals at that year's Games. Is this the year the Americans lose top spot?The short answer: Possibly, but probably not. Continue reading...
My childhood bullies instilled in me a hatred of my body. Now I hear the word fat' as a neutral term rather than a label of shameTwo years ago, in a session with my therapist, I suddenly found myself saying, I want to talk about my relationship to my body sometime." Just saying that one sentence out loud was all I could muster that day, and had taken me decades to get to that point.My first real awareness of my body started when I was around eight years old in the hallways of my grammar school in suburban Boston. As I cycled my bike over mounds of dirt in the woods behind my house, and flew around the corners of a roller rink on a Thursday night as Michael Jackson tunes blared, I was blissfully unaware that my body was being judged and seen as wrong.Jason Prokowiew is a writer and author of War Boys: A Father and Son MemoirIn the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD's eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder HopeDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Former Chelsea manager has to quickly pick up the pieces in Paris after team's dismal World Cup showingThis time last year Emma Hayes's relationship with international football was very different. Her face adorned ITV's posters promoting its commentary team for the broadcaster's coverage of the Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. The decorated Chelsea manager, celebrated for her astute technical analysis at both men's and women's major tournaments, was on a break from the day-to-day grind of club football management.The dismal showing of the back-to-back world champions, the USA, was picked apart by Hayes on screen and in print. Youth development in the US was criticised, a lack of creative talent coming through pinpointed as a key issue, and the togetherness of the team was questioned. Continue reading...
Trump-aligned Pacs will unleash wave of attacks, including TV ads, on record as vice-president and past in CaliforniaDonald Trump is scrambling to pivot his campaign against Kamala Harris, with attack ads hitting her current record in office and her past in California, according to two sources familiar with the matter, after Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 race on Sunday.The Trump campaign is viewing Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee, especially after Biden gave his endorsement, and started preparing opposition research dossiers against her in recent weeks. But as much as Biden's withdrawal has left Democrats floundering ahead of its nominating convention next month, it has in many ways also flummoxed the Trump campaign. Continue reading...
Announcement comes at turbulent time in world affairs, with conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and a growing US-China rivalryAfter Sunday's bombshell decision not to seek re-election, Joe Biden still has six months left as the US president and commander-in-chief, and foreign leaders could be expected to write off the American president as a lame duck.Around the world, heads of government and top diplomats had been preparing for a sea change in US policy under a potential Donald Trump administration, guided by his America First views that are broadly skeptical of Europe, unsympathetic toward Ukraine, hawkish on China and pro-Israel. Continue reading...
On Friday, the president insisted he was all-in for re-election. By Sunday, he was out. What just happened?Forty-eight hours is an aeon in American politics, especially if you are Joe Biden and the party that you lead, and a relentlessly growing number of your closest allies within it, are turning inexorably against you.On Friday morning, the message coming out of Joe Biden's camp left no room for interpretation. He might be sick with Covid, but he was resolute: the Biden re-election show must go on. Continue reading...
Only a handful of people grasp the magnitude of the changes that are about to hit us. They're exciting - and terrifyingA short while ago, a screenwriter friend from Los Angeles called me. I have three years left," he said. Maybe five if I'm lucky." He had been allowed to test a screenplay AI still in development. He described a miniseries: main characters, plot and atmosphere - and a few minutes later, there they were, all the episodes, written and ready for filming. Then he asked the AI for improvement suggestions on its own series, and to his astonishment, they were great - smart, targeted, witty and creative. The AI completely overhauled the ending of one episode, and with those changes the whole thing was really good. He paused for a moment, then repeated that he had three years left before he would have to find a new job.In 2020, I participated in an experiment that I gave a lecture on the following year, later published as a booklet titled My Algorithm and I. In it, I describe my failed collaboration with a large language model at a time when these AIs were not yet publicly available. If you want to understand AI better and analyse our current situation, please do not read my book. It has been so overtaken by technical development in the past three years that today it is so outdated it's as though it came from a different period in world history, like a text about the first railways or a biplane airshow.Daniel Kehlmann is a German-language novelist and playwright. His TV series, Kafka, is on Channel 4This article is adapted from a speech given in Berlin this month at a celebration of German cultural politics in the presence of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz Continue reading...
American voters have reacted to the news that the president, Joe Biden, will pull out of the upcoming election. Biden has endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to run in his place. Asked for their opinions, most people believed it was a good choice for Biden to step down, while there were mixed responses to Harris being the alternative
Celebrities including Aaron Sorkin, Robert De Niro and Barbra Streisand have shared their support for the US president's decision to end his election campaignHollywood has reacted to the news that the US president, Joe Biden, is dropping out of the presidential election with gratitude and a sigh of relief, having for the most part stayed stumm in recent weeks as only a few celebrities called for him to step aside.Just hours before Biden announced he was ending his bid for re-election and endorsing the vice-president, Kamala Harris, West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin argued in a New York Times opinion piece that the Democrats should select Republican Mitt Romney to defeat former president Donald Trump in November, as a clear and powerful demonstration" about stopping a deranged man from taking power". Continue reading...
Vice-president posts statement thanking the president for his leadership and endorsementJoe Biden announced he would not stay in the 2024 presidential race, throwing his supporting behind his vice-president, Kamala Harris.In his letter, Biden called Harris an extraordinary partner" and said choosing her to serve as vice-president was the best decision I've made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year."On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country. His remarkable legacy of accomplishment is unmatched in modern American history, surpassing the legacy of many Presidents who have served two terms in office.It is a profound honor to serve as his Vice President, and I am deeply grateful to the President, Dr. Biden, and the entire Biden family. I first came to know President Biden through his son Beau. We were friends from our days working together as Attorneys General of our home states. As we worked together, Beau would tell me stories about his Dad. The kind of father-and the kind of man-he was. And the qualities Beau revered in his father are the same qualities, the same values, I have seen every single day in Joe's leadership as President: His honesty and integrity. His big heart and commitment to his faith and his family. And his love of our country and the American people. Continue reading...
The president will be remembered for steering the US to recovery and giving his party a chance to beat Trump againLegend has it that when King George III heard that George Washington, the first US president, had decided to retire after his second term, he remarked: If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."Joe Biden, 81, holed up at a Delaware beach house with a bad cough after a Covid-19 diagnosis, ended his presidential re-election campaign on Sunday. It was a selfless decision that put the country's interests before his own - an act of grace that many see as vividly contrasting with the narcissism of his opponent Donald Trump. Continue reading...
by Lauren Gambino, Scarlet Pestell, Elena Morresi, Fa on (#6PCH8)
Joe Biden has withdrawn from the race for the US presidency, an extraordinary decision upending American politics, that plunges the Democratic nomination into uncertainty just months before the November election against Donald Trump, a candidate he has warned is an existential threat to US democracy. Biden thanked the vice-president, Kamala Harris, in a letter announcing his decision, and later endorsed her as the Democratic nominee for president in a tweet.In this video the Guardian US's politics correspondent, Lauren Gambino, explains why Biden has ultimately decided to step aside
Pennsylvania congressman says evidence coming to light has shown unacceptable operational failures'The Pennsylvania congressman Brendan Boyle has become the first Democrat to call for US Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle to resign as more security lapses that may have contributed to the near-assassination of Donald Trump on 13 July continue coming to light.In a statement issued after the Washington Post reported on Saturday that the presidential protection agency had for two years denied Trump requests for additional security, Boyle said he had no confidence" in the Secret Service leadership. Continue reading...
Man, 72, suffered significant injuries before killing bear with handgun, says Montana fish, wildlife and parks officialsA 72-year-old man picking huckleberries in Montana shot and killed a grizzly bear after the animal attacked him in a surprise encounter, injuring him badly enough that he had to be hospitalized, authorities said Friday.The man was alone on national forest land when the adult female charged him Thursday. He suffered significant injuries before killing the bear with a handgun, said Montana fish, wildlife and parks officials. Continue reading...
Reagan's assassination attempt led to bipartisan support for reforms. Now, the GOP will probably focus on security insteadMore than a week after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump with an assault weapon, his political supporters and fellow members of the Republican party have remained silent on the issue of tightening America's notoriously lax gun control laws.That intransigence plays out against the backdrop of a US election that was already deeply marred by fears of political violence and the possibility of civil unrest before a 20-year-old gunman fired a AR-15-style rifle at the former president, injuring him and two others and killing one rally-goer at an event in Pennsylvania. Continue reading...
It's all very well sticking up posters calling for respect, not regrets', but what we really need is to tap the power of the baked potatoGo steady, we've got enough history," reads one of York's new purple street signs. Respect your bar staff and taxi drivers, give them gratitude not attitude," says another, while a third says: Hold it! It's not a place to pee."This is the latest initiative to try to tame our city centre. The signs follow a guide for stags and hens", a hospitality code of conduct" (no admittance for offensive inflatables", or people we believe to be drunk" which, hmm) and cards for buskers to try to prevent people nicking their microphones. Continue reading...
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