US news | The Guardian

An employee admitted he had the wrong address after he checked the permit, but the company has taken no other actionA homeowner is mulling the next step after a company mistakenly demolished a home she owned in south-west Atlanta.Susan Hodgson said in an interview Saturday with the Associated Press that she found a pile of rubble in place of what used to be her longtime family property when she returned from vacation last month. Continue reading...

Michigan police are investigating a possible motive to the death of Samantha Woll as friends showed an outpouring of supportThe president of a synagogue in Detroit was found stabbed outside her home Saturday morning, according to local newspaper reports.Samantha Woll, 40, had led the Isaac Agree Downtown synagogue since 2022. The Detroit Free Press reported that she had also worked for congresswoman Elissa Slotkin as well as the re-election campaign of Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel. Slotkin and Nessel are Democrats, and the latter quickly issued a statement lamenting Woll's slaying. Continue reading...

The voice referendum was our chance to go some way to fixing things. Instead the moral failures of our founding fathers sit on our shoulders

Leaders of US, Britain, EU and Arab states should unite in backing UN calls for a humanitarian ceasefireThe Middle East is on the verge of the abyss". That was the stark warning issued last week by Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, as he assessed the violent ramifications of the Hamas terrorist attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis two weeks ago. Like numerous diplomats and politicians in the Arab world, Europe and the US, Guterres is working frantically to prevent the fire lit on 7 October from spreading beyond the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza, where Hamas is based, to the wider region.The success of these efforts hangs in the balance. The release of two Americans among the roughly 200 people taken hostage by Hamas is the first good news to emerge since the crisis erupted. Behind-the-scenes mediation led by Qatar to free those still held captive is continuing. But this success has not halted Israel's round-the-clock bombardment of Gaza. It's plain the remaining hostages' fate is inextricably linked to other issues, principally a predicted, large-scale Israeli ground offensive. Continue reading...

Allen Livingston's remains among those of at least 25 people found on farm belonging to suspected serial killer Herbert BaumeisterHuman remains found on an Indiana farm in 1996 were recently linked to a man who went missing three years earlier and was believed to have been murdered by the suspected serial killer Herbert Baumeister.This week, the Hamilton county coroner's office announced the identification of Allen Livingston, 27, ending a mystery that endured for nearly 30 years. Continue reading...

Arrests are the latest this week after mass protests across the country, including at the US Capitol and the White HouseNew York City police arrested more than 130 anti-war protesters after hundreds of people blocked traffic on Fifth Avenue on Friday night.A crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict and marched in the rain from Bryant Park to the Midtown Manhattan office of the New York US senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Continue reading...

Justin Amash, the first Palestinian American to serve as US Congress member, confirms several relatives killed

As if things weren't bad enough, Storm Babet sounds like it's out of a dark Scandinavian play. It's enough to have us weeping into our starched apronsSo, this is how the world ends - not with a bang but with the cold clicking of claws belonging to the 10-inch-wide mitten crabs that are terrorising the freshwater population of England. These rapidly proliferating creatures have cute fuzz-sheathed pincers that look like Victorian ladies' winter muffs, but they can pin down a prawn and rip off its shell with nary a tremor. Before the mitten crabs, the scare was about bedbugs. Before that it was evil AI and killer robots. This is all in the past three weeks.It's as if the sheer misery, violence and horror of the headlines have infected us with such despair that we're fixating on anything, big or small, that can do us harm, because it's all feeling just a little bit like the Third World War, isn't it? Continue reading...

Who doesn't love a satisfying, satiating long lunch? It's a defining mark of a civilised, sophisticated society, right? Our food writer, however, demursTwo weeks ago, during a work trip to Milan, I had a free lunchtime and found my way to a humble-looking trattoria surrounded by office blocks in an unromantic corner of the city.At 12.30pm, when I took a seat at the counter, it was all but empty. By 1pm it was heaving. Every seat was full and they were queueing out the door. It was clear from the shirt sleeves and the familiarity that this wasn't anything special. It was just colleagues from local businesses sitting down together. It was lunchtime in Milan and they were damn well going to have lunch. They were here for 12 plates of spaghetti puttanesca or orecchiette with pesto. And yes, a glass of wine while you're at it. Here in Milan, lunch mattered. Continue reading...

Danny Serafini was one of two people arrested after investigation into fatal shooting of Robert Spohr and wounding of his wifeA former professional baseball player was one of two people arrested on Friday in connection to an infamous Lake Tahoe shooting that killed a man and badly wounded his wife in 2021.After a two-year investigation, Danny Serafini, 49, and Samantha Scott, 33, were arrested separately in Nevada, hundreds of miles apart in Las Vegas and north-west of Reno. Continue reading...

The US president now owns' this war. Israel's prime minister has no exit strategy and if he gets the long conflict he wants, the US may be drawn in ever deeper

One branch of US government has ground to a halt amid death threats and screaming matches as Republicans fail to unite around a candidate for speakerDeath threats. Screaming matches behind closed doors. A futile cycle of votes that put internecine warfare on full public display. The Republican party this week sank into new depths of disarray and dysfunction - with no remedy in sight.Never before has America gone so long without a speaker of the House of Representatives and, critics say, not for a very long time has a major party appeared so broken. It has left a branch of the US government leaderless at an extraordinary moment of peril in the Middle East and Ukraine. Continue reading...

After Boebert's Beetlejuice embarrassment, Adam Frisch hopes he can wrestle the Colorado congresswoman's seat from herAdam Frisch is in his second congressional campaign, crossing and re-crossing Colorado's third US House district, a space bigger than Pennsylvania. Thirteen months out from election day, time is one thing he does not lack. But Frisch has a unique way of counting it anyway: before and after Beetlejuice.Before Beetlejuice," the Democrat says, of polling in his Republican-leaning district, we were up by two points, Trump was up five." Continue reading...

US prosecutors allege Merl Hefferman, 54, illegally cremated up to four members killed by the group at a California funeral homeFederal prosecutors say that a former Hells Angels boss disposed of the bodies of up to four of the group's members at a central California funeral home, known to the gang as the pizza oven".US prosecutors set out in gruesome detail last week how they believe members of the gang used the Yost and Webb funeral home in Fresno, California, to cremate four men. Continue reading...

In Bay Ridge, which has seen an influx of Palestinians in recent years, residents talk of one-sided' response to Israel-Hamas warOn an afternoon this week in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge, Zein Rimawi sat alone in the back of a community center he established for the neighborhood's Palestinian community. As the board chair of the Arab American Federation and founder of several local institutions, Rimawi has a reputation in the area.His desk is decorated with a tissue box covered with a knitted Palestinian flag, a bejeweled camel, and a journal with the landscape of Jerusalem on the cover. Behind him is a framed Quranic verse about refuge called Surah Al-Falaq". Continue reading...

Conferences have been abruptly cancelled, media appearances suppressed and demands made to fire critics of Israeli policiesWidespread attempts to suppress pro-Palestinian views in the US after the Hamas attack on Israel have forced the cancellation of major conferences, prompted demands for the dismissal of workers who express support for Palestinians and led to intimidation campaigns against Arab American voices critical of Israeli policies.Earlier this week, a leading US Jewish group forced the cancellation of a major Palestinian campaign organisation's national conference by alleging it was a front for Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 Israelis and abducted about 200 people in its attack from Gaza. Continue reading...

MLS has upped the playoff teams from 14 to 18 and added a best-of-three format. But what is a boon for the postseason has belittled the rest of the yearNot even the most gifted medium could divine much of a big-game aura from a match between sides in 10th and 11th place in MLS's Western Conference. Yet there is a potential playoff spot riding on the result of Sporting Kansas City v Minnesota United on Saturday.It is the last weekend of the regular season: Decision Day, in league marketing-speak. It will be Thank-A-Commish-Day in Kansas City or Minnesota should either of these mediocre teams still harbor dreams of lifting the MLS Cup at the final whistle. Continue reading...

We have seen a rapid escalation of violence from Israeli settlers, yet this seems to sit outside the consideration of world leadersSince Hamas's 7 October invasion, which killed more than 1,300 Israelis and took control of several military bases and settlements, Israel has embarked on what some human rights groups are warning will amount to a genocide. Israel has killed more than 4,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and many thousands more have been injured, according to the UN. Countless others are trapped under the rubble. Supplies of water, food, electricity and fuel have been cut off.Because of this devastation, governments and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have called for a ceasefire in Gaza. This is desperately needed to stop the immediate bloodshed. It would not, however, end the violence that Israel subjects Palestinians to on a daily basis.Layth Hanbali is a health researcher working independently and at Birzeit University in Ramallah, PalestineDo 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...

Events in Israel have inspired renewed public questioning about our true Frenchness' - even that of beloved football starsFrance is home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim populations. Inevitably, what is happening in the Middle East has a particular resonance here. The grotesque images that circulated after Hamas's horrific attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October, planned and carried out in a chillingly meticulous way, sent shockwaves through France that are still reverberating.A big part of the country's public debate has been fixated, since the massacre, on avoiding the importation" of tensions connected with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After a spate of antisemitic incidents, Emmanuel Macron is rightly concerned about the fear gripping our compatriots of the Jewish faith". In a televised address to the nation, he announced a range of measures to tighten protection at Jewish schools and places of worship and culture.Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian columnist. She is a writer, journalist, film director and activistDo 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...

The Lviv BookForum was vibrant this year, but still there is the backdrop of conflict and the need to find a place for storytellingLast year's Lviv BookForum, a literary festival in the elegant western Ukrainian city, was mostly an online affair, held in a basement lecture theatre that might double up, if needed, as a bomb shelter. By contrast, this year's edition had about 150 live events, with many available online, too.Some were so popular that audiences, many of them in their 20s and 30s, filled the aisles and crowded at the back of the main venue, a handsome 16th-century powder tower" that once formed part of the city's arsenal. Publishers were selling books at stalls in the soft autumn sunshine. There was an evening of poetry and live music in the city's marionette theatre. There was laughter, there was drinking, there were old friends to see and new ones to make. Continue reading...

Tom Gerbier was hiking the tallest mountain in the contiguous US in Sequoia national park when he fell to his deathA pilot from France who disappeared while hiking California's towering Mount Whitney was found dead after falling about 1,000ft (305 meters) off a cliff, the National Park Service said Friday.The hiker was identified as Tom Gerbier of Fontenay-sous-Bois, France, who was a pilot for Air France, the park service said in a statement. Continue reading...

Minnesota congresswoman blames dishonest smearing' for surge in violent threats in wake of Israel-Hamas conflict

This live blog is now closed. For latest reporting on Jim Jordan and the House speaker race, you can read our latest report:

Details on how Yuscil Taveras became a cooperating witness against ex-president and Walt Nauta revealed for first timeWhen the technology director at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club implicated the former US president and his valet in a scheme to erase subpoenaed security camera footage in the classified documents case, it was the culmination of weeks of talks with prosecutors about an immunity deal.The employee - identified as Trump Employee 4" in the superseding indictment but named by people familiar with the matter as Yuscil Taveras - became crucial to special counsel prosecutors over several weeks in July after he decided to cooperate with the criminal investigation. Continue reading...

US secretary of state told reporters that two released American hostages are 'safely in the hands of Israeli authorities in Israel'. Speaking in Washington DC, he said staff from the US would see the released hostages, Judith and Natalie Raanan, soon and that 'they'll receive support and assistance they need'. Blinken also pledged that the US would make every effort to free other US citizens currently being held in Gaza Continue reading...

Friday marked an escalation in House chaos as Jim Jordan lost his third vote to be House speaker and his status as nominee - how did we get here?Ever since Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as House speaker on 3 October, the Republican conference has been mired in chaos. Friday marked an escalation as should be of that dysfunction as Jim Jordan, the far-right congressman from Ohio, lost his third vote on the House floor to be speaker and his status as the GOP nominee.Here's a look at what transpired this week: Continue reading...

Republican colleagues vote against Ohio congressman's continued bid after his third failed attempt to corral support

The German company was accused of facilitating the disgraced financier's sex traffickingDeutsche Bank on Friday won final approval from a US judge for a $75m settlement it reached with victims of Jeffrey Epstein who had accused the German company of facilitating the late financier's sex trafficking.The US district judge Jed Rakoff, who granted preliminary approval for the deal in June, signed off on the settlement during a court hearing in Manhattan. Continue reading...

Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding the ex-president in contempt for now, but reserved the right to do soA New York judge fined former US president Donald Trump $5,000 on Friday after a disparaging social media post about a key court staffer in his New York civil fraud case was allowed to linger on his campaign website after the judge ordered it deleted.Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt, for now, but reserved the right to do so - and possibly even put him in jail - if he continued to violate a gag order barring parties in the case from personal attacks on court staff. Continue reading...

Florida jury convicts David Tronnes for murder of Shanti Cooper-Tronnes after she refused to appear on home renovation showShanti Cooper-Tronnes abruptly walked out of a meeting with the producers of a home renovation television series that her husband coveted appearing on in 2018. She was beaten to death days later.This week, a jury in Florida found her husband, David Tronnes, guilty of murdering her because he was so enraged by her refusal to go on the show, which he believed would bail them out of costly improvements to their house. Continue reading...

Kenneth Chesebro was facing seven felony charges related to plan to falsely certify that Trump won in 2020Kenneth Chesebro, the attorney who allegedly devised the fake electors" plan to prevent Joe Biden from winning the 2020 election, has accepted a plea deal and will avoid going to trial in the Fulton county racketeering case involving Donald Trump and 17 others.The last-minute plea deal marks the second major victory in as many days for prosecutors, who can now compel him to testify against his former allies in Trump's inner circle to bolster their case. Continue reading...

Judge had awarded custody of the suspect's children to his wife on the day of the killing, authorities sayPolice are searching for a man suspected of fatally shooting a Maryland judge who had awarded custody of the suspect's children to his wife on the day of the killing, authorities said on Friday.The circuit court judge was fatally shot in the driveway of his home in Maryland on Thursday night, police have said. Continue reading...

Republicans plan to retreat once again behind closed doors to chart next steps following third vote over far-right congressman

Move follows president's prime-time address to nation but faces uncertain future with House of Representatives still paralysedThe Biden administration on Friday submitted a $106bn request to Congress for military and humanitarian aid for Israel and Ukraine and humanitarian assistance for Gaza, insisting lawmakers had an obligation to support US allies standing up to tyranny and aggression worldwide.White House officials spelled out the urgency of the request at a morning press briefing, reinforcing Joe Biden's assertion in a televised address to the nation on Thursday night from the Oval Office that there were links between the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the deadly attacks on Israel by Hamas on 7 October. Continue reading...

They crave a rage-filled reaction from Israel's prime minister. Wise heads should temper his response - and then be rid of himYou cannot think straight when you're in pain. That's truer still when the pain is combined with fury at those who caused it. There's a reason we speak of blind rage": when anger descends, we cannot see what's in front of us. And if that's true of individuals, it's truer still of nations.That was the message Joe Biden brought when he travelled to Israel this week. Drawing on his own experience of multiple bereavements, he consoled Israelis grieving for the more than 1,400 civilians killed by Hamas in the 7 October massacre and those waiting for word on the 203 hostages, including young children and the elderly, still held in Gaza. In what has become his signature style, Biden shared in their pain.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistDo 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...

Joe Harding, a Republican who sponsored don't say gay' law, must serve four months for claiming $150,000 in relief fundsA former Florida state lawmaker who sponsored the state's divisive law nicknamed don't say gay was sentenced to prison on Thursday for fraudulently collecting Covid-19 pandemic small business government aid.The former Republican representative, Joe Harding, faced a maximum sentence of 20 years, but was sentenced to four months in federal prison. Continue reading...

Infowars host must pay $1.5bn to families who sued over his conspiracy theories that 2012 massacre was a hoaxA Texas judge has ruled that the Infowars host, Alex Jones, cannot use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying nearly $1.5bn to families who sued over his conspiracy theories that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.The decision is another significant defeat for Jones in the wake of juries in Texas and Connecticut punishing him over spreading falsehoods about the nation's deadliest school shooting. US district judge Christopher Lopez of Houston issued the ruling on Thursday. Continue reading...

Galvanised into action by recent events, Project Rozana hopes to inspire fellow Australians to help

Top aide to then New York governor says Trump's son-in-law called to stress contrast between two states during pandemicIn April 2020, as Covid-19 surged in New York, Donald Trump's senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, called a top aide to the governor, Andrew Cuomo, to stress in a smug" tone how in contrast to the locked-down Empire state, reeling under a climbing death count and social panic, Florida remained open for business.I've spoken with a lot of friends," the aide, Melissa DeRosa, quotes Kushner as saying, in a new book. But they have mainly relocated to Florida. Did you know everything is open there?" Continue reading...

Support for Palestinian cause had risen earlier this year, but polls show decrease particularly among Democrats since Hamas attacksPublic opinion polls surveying Americans' views on the Israel-Hamas conflict suggest support for the Palestinian cause has taken a hit as a result of the carnage unfolding in the Middle East.The recent wave of violence followed a period of significant improvement in US public opinion toward Palestinians, with Gallup polling earlier this year showing for the first time that Democrats expressed more sympathy for the Palestinians (49%) than the Israelis (38%). Continue reading...

The PM is withering on the international stage. Back home, in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, his troops are in trouble, tooConsider the struggle of a modern statesman such as Rishi Sunak, forced to segue from fibbing about a meat tax and state-mandated carpooling to flying to the Middle East and saying something for the ages. In not altogether unanticipated scenes, the prime minister hasn't managed it.For all Sunak's studied earnestness, he has become a figure that no one serious can quite take seriously. We live in an era where politicians have cannibalised their own gravitas for cheap thrills and pyrrhic wins. I know generals are always fighting the last war, but that's quite hard to respect when it was the war on motorists". The culture wars are the only conflict where you actively want the veterans to end up homeless. Continue reading...

That the author could be prosecuted for comments made 13 years ago is absurd - but also a deadly threat to freedom of speechThe climate for media and free speech in India is in a dangerous place. The country is already ranked 161 out of 180 countries in the press freedom index, but the actions of prime minister Narendra Modi's government in the past few weeks have shown how many more clampdowns await. Desperately in need of distraction tactics - given the many failures in governance, tackling inflation or delivering jobs - the regime is after a fresh dose of sound and fury against political opponents.And so a decade-old case has been dusted off, paving the way for initiating legal proceedings against the novelist, journalist and activist Arundhati Roy for comments she made in 2010 about Kashmir. The Kashmiri law professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain has also had charges against him approved. It comes after police raids on the homes of more than 40 journalists in Delhi and elsewhere. They have been slapped with terrorism charges and had their phones and laptops seized. They were working for NewsClick, a website accused of having funding links with China: a charge denied by both the website and its funders. Continue reading...

Violations have soared but legislative effort to strengthen protection for young workers have received little supportChild labor violations have been soaring in the US, but efforts to render solutions through legislation have received little support, and Republicans at the state level continue pushing bills that would roll back current child labor protections.In most recent fiscal year, the US Department of Labor wage and hour division reported 835 cases of child labor violations affecting 3,876 minors, and 688 minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation, a 283% increase since 2015. Civil penalties against employers totaled just under $4.3m. Continue reading...

US president says Americans must not walk away from their role as a beacon to the world'. Plus, Britney Spears details 2008 breakdown in memoir

There is little chance that the spiral of killing will subside. The international community must work to prevent further deathThe image of haggard doctors standing amid bodies and rubble following the explosive strike on al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza has sent shock waves around the world, which was still reeling from horrific Hamas-led attacks and the relentless Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza. In the past two weeks, thousands of Israeli and Palestinian civilians have been killed with a speed and brutality that was previously unimaginable in Israel and Palestine. There is little sign that the spiral of mass killing will subside soon. Instead, there are clear warning signs that further atrocities are imminent.United Nations experts have cautioned that atrocity crimes are processes, not singular events. They are foreshadowed by the presence of risk factors and early warning signs .... [giving] many opportunities to prevent crises from escalating. After they reach a certain stage, however, the options for action are both more limited and more costly." Since 2021, the UK Government promised to adopt a more integrated approach to tackling conflict and instability, with an increased emphasis on atrocity prevention.Omar Shakir, Yasmine Ahmed and Akshaya Kumar work at Human Rights WatchDo 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...

The NFL commissioner has been rewarded with a contract extension after massively growing revenues, even if his wider impact is muted