US news | The Guardian

As I drove away from Winchester service station, I realised a long-planned campaign was being put into action

What to buy for the Maga person in your life – whether it’s a Trumpy Lego knockoff or conspiracy-themed whiskey’Tis the season of the gift guide. They’re everywhere you look: 10 holiday presents for the dog enthusiast in your life! Fifteen great holiday ideas for the grumpy atheist in your life! Twelve cigar-themed knick-knacks you can buy your cigar-loving partner! And, of course, there are all the usual Him and Her gift guides. As one viral tweet put it: “There’s no funnier caricature of masculinity than the Him from ‘holiday gifts for him’. he doesn’t drink any liquid but whiskey. he’s got 20 watches on each wrist. if he saw a single texture other than leather he would throw one of his pocket knives at it.”Now, I don’t normally do gift guides because I am a Serious Journalist who writes hard-hitting stories about pepper-spraying myself and cloning my dog. However, I’ll make an exception this year because, truly, we are spoiled for choice when it comes to completely bonkers conservative merchandise. Continue reading...

Bill comes after several states barred employees from downloading the app on state-owned gadgets over data concernsThe US Senate late on Wednesday passed by voice vote a bill to bar federal employees from using Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok on government-owned devices.The bill must still be approved by the US House of Representatives before going to President Joe Biden for approval. The House of Representatives would need to pass the Senate bill before the current congressional session ends, which is expected next week. Continue reading...

Ken Paxton requested the public safety department for the numbers, but it was never given due to accuracy problemsThe office of Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton this summer sought data on how many people had changed the gender information on their driver’s licenses, according to a newspaper report published on Wednesday that civil rights attorneys described as worrying.The Washington Post reported that public records obtained by the newspaper do not indicate why Paxton’s office made the request to the Texas department of public safety (DPS). The head of the driver’s license division told colleagues in June to compile the “total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months”. Continue reading...

The complaint claims that the state of Arizona is trespassing on federal lands and says the US is entitled to compensationThe US government sued Arizona governor Doug Ducey and the state on Wednesday over the placement of shipping containers as a barrier on the border with Mexico, saying it is trespassing on federal lands.The complaint filed in the US district court comes three weeks before the Republican governor steps aside for Democratic governor-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes the construction. Continue reading...

Officer who interviewed David DePape after the attack testified he also wanted to target Hunter Biden, Tom Hanks and Gavin NewsomThe man accused of attacking the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there was “evil in Washington” and he was looking to harm Pelosi because she is second in line for the presidency, a San Francisco police investigator testified on Wednesday.The suspect, David DePape, broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home on 28 October, seeking to kidnap the speaker – who was out of town – and instead beat her 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, authorities said. The violence sent shock waves through the political world. Continue reading...

President commits to strengthening Africa’s food supplies, tackling climate and partnering to take on rising global power

Text from Ralph Norman to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, urged president to declare martial lawA Republican who urged the Trump White House to declare martial law to stop Joe Biden taking office has only one regret: that he misspelled “martial”.The text from Ralph Norman of South Carolina to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, was given to the January 6 committee by Meadows and revealed by Talking Points Memo. Continue reading...

Florida governor takes enormous lead over embattled ex-president for 2024 race as Mike Pence nears a run of his ownIn a poll regarding potential Republican nominees for president in 2024, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, led Donald Trump by a whopping 23 points.Republican and Republican-leaning voters dealt the significant blow to the former president’s ego in a survey carried out by USA Today and Suffolk University and released on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Police say a young boy and his mother were found dead in Louisiana, where their home was destroyed after a tornado hitA destructive storm marched across the US on Wednesday, spawning tornadoes in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, where the deaths of a young boy and his mother were reported, delivering blizzard-like conditions to the Great Plains and threatening more severe weather in the south.The huge storm system was also expected to push more snow and ice into Appalachia and New England. The wintery blast dumped more than 2ft of snow in parts of South Dakota. Continue reading...

President makes remark on anniversary of shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed in Newtown, ConnecticutJoe Biden said on Wednesday the US should have “societal guilt” over taking too long to address gun violence and the curse of school shootings.The president made the remark in a statement 10 years after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, in which 20 young children and six adults were killed in Newtown, Connecticut, on 14 December 2012. Continue reading...

Those of us with ties to the country know football is embedded in its DNA. Whatever happens, tonight’s semi-final with France will be a proud momentThis isn’t the first time Morocco has made history. Forty-two years ago, Morocco also captured the attention of the world when it became the first Arab and African country to compete in the Eurovision song contest. In the end, it came second to last, and decided never to compete again.Since then, many more Moroccan hearts and egos have been bruised and broken by international football tournaments. The national team have qualified for only five World Cups out of 11 after that Eurovision adventure – and, at their best, has only ever managed to reach the round of 16. Morocco bid to host the World Cup in 1994, 1998, 2006, 2010 and 2026, and never won. Still, it never gave up hope; football is in the country’s DNA.Marie Le Conte is a French journalist living in London Continue reading...

With less than a month remaining in office, Kate Brown, said she was using her clemency powers to change the term to life in prisonWith a flourish of her pen, Governor Kate Brown of Oregon on Tuesday reduced to zero the number of prisoners awaiting execution in the state, commuting the death sentences of all 17 condemned inmates to life without parole.Brown’s action, made in the final days of her governorship, amounted to a powerful stand against capital punishment which will reverberate across the US. It brings to a head the state’s gradual shift towards an abolitionist position. Continue reading...

Move co-sponsored by Republican Roger Marshall aims to crack down on money laundering after arrest of Sam Bankman-FriedElizabeth Warren is pressing Congress to adopt new bipartisan legislation which would force crypto firms to abide by the same regulations as banks and corporations in an attempt to crack down on money laundering through digital assets.The Democratic US senator from Massachusetts is pushing for the new controls on the crypto industry in the wake of the spectacular collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. On Tuesday its founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with eight criminal counts including conspiracy to commit money laundering. Continue reading...

There is one for reflux, one for anxiety, one for vitamin D – and new ones keep on coming. Welcome to middle ageAbout seven years ago, when I was still in my 40s, my GP saw fit to prescribe me another pill to take every day. I believe it was for reflux. While I was grateful for anything to address the geysers of what felt like battery acid erupting in my belly, I was dismayed. I already took something for anxiety and two for hypertension, so this would be my fourth pill. “Four a day!” I groaned. “What’s happening to me?”“Welcome to middle age,” the GP said, drily. Continue reading...

Driver pulled over in Arizona after state trooper saw ‘suspicious’ passenger in high-occupancy vehicle lane – an inflatable GrinchAn Arizona driver received a traffic citation after being pulled over for driving in a high-occupancy vehicle lane with an inflatable Grinch in the passenger seat.HOV lanes require at least two people to be in the vehicle. Continue reading...

Kenneth Walker claimed officers violated his rights when they burst into Taylor’s apartment and killed her in March 2020The city of Louisville will pay $2m to settle two lawsuits filed by the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by police during a no-knock raid at her apartment two years ago, the Washington Post reported.Kenneth Walker filed the lawsuits against the Kentucky city in state and federal court, claiming plainclothes officers violated his rights when they burst into Taylor’s apartment while the couple was asleep and killed her on 13 March 2020, during the botched raid. Continue reading...

The monarchy’s link to slavery is glossed over in Britain. Despite their differences, William and Harry have a chance to do betterIn the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, the Duke of Sussex bemoans the racist element of the abuse suffered by Meghan on social media and in the UK press. He also addresses racism in wider British society and behind palace walls. “In this family,” he says, “you are sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”As a Black American living in London, I am often struck by the different ways in which Britain and America grapple with the question of race. In the US, despite living alongside enslaved people and their underserved descendants for four centuries, after the death of George Floyd in 2020 many white people were, or at least seemed, astounded to learn that structural racism still existed.Keith Magee is a writer and academic and chair of the Guardian Foundation. He is the author of Prophetic Justice: Race, Religion and Politics Continue reading...

In the decade since the shooting, a reinvigorated movement aimed at ending gun violence has spread across the country

Florida governor leads embattled ex-president for 2024 race by 23 points. Plus, oldest known pair of jeans sold in auction

Severe Covid measures in China this year meant millions of us had to rely on handouts and bartering to get fed

Four quarterbacks went in the top 10 of the 2018 draft. Their varied fortunes have illustrated the difficulties of building the foundations for successFour quarterbacks were among the first 10 players selected in the 2018 NFL draft. Lamar Jackson, who went 32nd to the Baltimore Ravens, made it five first-round QBs, the second-most ever. The New York Times called it a “quarterback frenzy” in the next day’s paper.Of the four quarterbacks who went in the top 10 – expected to step right in and contribute – only Josh Allen, of Wyoming and the Buffalo Bills, is still with the team that drafted him. Josh Rosen, from UCLA, was released in October from his sixth NFL team (he still banked $18m in career earnings, more than $1m for each touchdown pass he has thrown in the NFL). Continue reading...

Portal said searches for the word increased by 1,400% after Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked to define it in her confirmation hearingThe website Dictionary.com has named its word of the year for 2022: woman.In a statement, the website said: “Our selection of woman … reflects how the intersection of gender, identity and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary.” Continue reading...

SEC says investigation into other alleged misconduct by former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange is ongoing

Ron DeSantis asks state supreme court to investigate undefined ‘wrongdoing’ related to vaccinationsThe Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Tuesday he will petition the state supreme court to convene a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to Covid-19 vaccines.The Republican governor, often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, did not say what wrongdoing the panel would investigate, but he suggested it would be in part aimed at jogging loose more information from pharmaceutical companies about the vaccines and potential side effects. Continue reading...

Company founder was arrested and charged with running a ‘house of cards’ in ‘one of the biggest financial frauds in US history’It has been another crazy 48 hours in the collapse of FTX, once the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.On Monday, the company’s now-infamous founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in the Bahamas, a day before he was set to give testimony before Congress. On Tuesday US authorities issued damning charges that the 30-year-old former billionaire ran a “house of cards” and was behind “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history”. Continue reading...

Stressed out from multiple yuletide family visits, we fled to New York one year and returned with a new-found clarity about what was really importantChristmas is the most magical time of the year. But is it really? Now I’m no grinch. In fact, I absolutely love Christmas. Yet there was a stage when I needed to have a holiday from this popular holiday. So one year we decided to “skip Christmas” to simplify our Christmas Day.The festive season is overwhelming for many, especially with increased financial pressures and family obligations. A recent report revealed one in six people believe Christmas is the most stressful time of the year. Family conflict is often rife, with some sort of bickering over presents or food. And then there’s the family member who has too much to drink and thinks it is their duty to sing a “special” rendition of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas. Unlike friends, we can’t choose our relatives! Continue reading...

The pair of jeans, recovered from an 1857 shipwreck, has sparked debate over whether they are a predecessor of the modern Levi’sPulled from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, work pants that auction officials describe as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world have sold for $114,000.The white, heavy-duty miner’s pants with a five-button fly were among 270 Gold Rush-era artefacts that sold for a total of nearly $1m in Reno earlier this month, according to Holabird Western Americana Collections. Continue reading...

President and Antony Blinken woo nations at summit in Washington in hope they will align with west rather than Russia or ChinaDozens of African leaders have assembled in Washington for a summit aimed at rebooting US relations on the continent, which have languished in recent years.The US-Africa summit, the first since 2014, will be the biggest international gathering in Washington since the pandemic and the most substantial commitment by a US administration to boosting its influence in the region for almost a decade. Continue reading...

The 20-year-old is an avatar of US hopes as fans look forward to 2026. In the present he’s a useful tool for Gregg Berhalter’s many criticsGio Reyna admitted on Monday that he sulked after being told he would have a limited role at the World Cup.I know, I know. This is what passes for scandal in Gregg Berhalter’s America. Come back to me if your players butt or bite an opponent, get kicked out of the tournament for drugs, arrested for theft or indulge in a naked pool party. Continue reading...

Chat group on the platform Signal was reportedly used to send end-to-end encrypted information about FTX and its hedge fundSam Bankman-Fried and other members of the inner circle of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX allegedly formed a chat group on the encrypted platform Signal under the name “Wirefraud”.The Australian Financial Review reported that the Wirefraud chat group was used to send end-to-end encrypted information about FTX and its crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, in the run-up to the implosion of the exchange. According to the newspaper, members of the secret group included Bankman-Fried, his FTX partners Zixiao “Gary” Wang and Nishad Singh, and the CEO of Alameda Research Caroline Ellison. Continue reading...

More than 15 million people under winter advisory while several areas in midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstormsMore than 15 million people are under a winter advisory as of Tuesday, as several areas in the midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms, Axios reported.Storm warnings are in effect across a dozen states, including parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota. Continue reading...

As a miserable year limps towards its end, let’s talk about the silly trends that have cut through the gloom. Sorry if you came here for geopoliticsWant to play a fun end-of-2022 game? That was a rhetorical question, I’m afraid. You have no choice. They’re compulsory at this time of year. In this game you have to answer the question: “Is this the name of a trend widely discussed by the media in 2022, or is it a deranged combination of words that I just made up?” Four of the following are the former and one is the latter. Here we go: 1) frazzled Englishwoman, 2) goblin mode, 3) butter boards, 4) cabbage circles, 5) quiet quitting.Before I reveal the answer, I want to point out that this was a surprisingly difficult quiz to devise. I’d think of something ridiculous, then Google it and find out that it was an actual trend. (And by “trend” I mean a phrase that a TikToker coined and content-hungry media people, such as myself, wrote frantic thinkpieces about.) But the answer, before you all die of suspense, is number four. Yep, even the frazzled Englishwoman trend was real. Apparently an Australian TikToker went viral with an observation that her fellow Australians were suddenly dressing like middle-class Englishwomen in Richard Curtis films from the noughties: sensible, charity-shop-chic vibes, eclectic scarf collections, damp air of worry. Anyone who has ever met a middle-class Englishwoman will immediately recognise this aesthetic and wonder why it never had a name before.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

They say they’re seeking a new life but the Sussexes seem obsessed with their old one, and people enraged by them can talk about little elseOf all the charges laid at the door of Harry and Meghan, we can reasonably discount the idea that being paid by Netflix is the sin to end all sins. I’m not sure how people think the British royal family have historically accrued their vast wealth, but a contract with a streaming giant is right down the list of money-spinning horrors.Let’s face it, there are a lot worse ways to lay your hands on a reported £88m in today’s money. No one dissolved the monasteries, here. No one ran a foreign country as an extraction colony. Looting-wise, no one did much beyond taking a call from telly warlord Ted Sarandos and thinking: yes please. This is the market value of my truth. Continue reading...

A great deal of the media are concentrated in the hands of too few people, who are often too attuned to what their corporate owners or political benefactors would like emphasized

Domestic competition assigns state and regional team names in attempt to increase fan engagementIn 15-a-side rugby, the men’s US Eagles recently failed to reach the World Cup. But American sevens seems in contrasting health. On the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, the men’s and women’s national teams are on track to qualify for the next Olympics, in Paris.At home, Premier Rugby Sevens, a professional competition seeking to establish itself on the sporting map, says it is also well placed to progress. On Tuesday, it announced it will double (to 16) the number of men’s and women’s teams competing next year, its third, teams for the first time named for states and regions. Continue reading...

Mohammed Abouagela Masud accused by US of preparing the bomb that destroyed Boeing 747, killing 270 people in 1988. Plus, the oldest university student graduatesGood morning.A former Libyan intelligence operative accused of preparing the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 was taken into US custody after being abducted from his home by a notorious warlord and then detained by armed militia for two weeks, the Guardian has been told.What have the White House said? Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, told reporters: “Today is a good day because Masud will be facing justice for his alleged role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. I will say that this was done in a lawful manner according to established procedures. For more specifics on how it happened I would refer you to the justice department because they’re best positioned to be able to speak to that.”What did the justice department say? In a statement, Michael H Glasheen, the acting assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington field office, said: “The lawful arrest and presentment in court of the alleged bombmaker … is the product of hard work and partnerships across the globe.”How restrictive will those bans be? It remains to be seen. Conservatives across the country embroiled in conflicts over which exceptions – if any – should be allowed for abortion. “Exceptions in the case of rape and incest, we realise, are sometimes a necessary political reality. And we would not block a bill or oppose a bill that would prevent 95% of abortions,” explains Glenn. Continue reading...

Without a plan in place to minimise infection, a ‘moving on’ strategy leaves vulnerable people behindAs the season of Christmas work parties and drinks with friends begins, it feels a distance from the December of two years ago, at the height of the pandemic. We will hug our grandparents, hardly remembering a time when that was anything remarkable. Perhaps that’s why the news that Covid infections in the UK have passed 1m cases again has barely raised a murmur.Months of lockdowns and the grief of losing our loved ones, often without being able to say goodbye, was a collective trauma, and one that we have not dealt with as a nation. The ease of Matt Hancock’s rehabilitation suggests a public keen to bury the pain, keep calm and carry on. There is a noticeable – and understandable – urge to “move on” from the pandemic, even as it still happens around us. Ministers hardly help, talking of “post-Covid” just as ICU beds fill up again.Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

LeBron James joined an exclusive club when he started his 20th season this year. That type of longevity requires talent, interpersonal skills and a little luckKevin Willis remembers encouraging Tim Duncan to keep going. The two former All-NBA players, who won a championship together in San Antonio in 2003, chatted when Duncan’s career was winding down in 2016. “The Big Fundamental” was to retire after his 19 season, and Willis practically pleaded with Duncan to give it one more year so that he could enter one of the few NBA “clubs” that’s eluded him. The 20-plus-seasons club.Willis had been one of only eight members of the club, alongside Vince Carter, Jamal Crawford, Robert Parish, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That was it – until this season. Two more players are adding their names to that vaunted group. One is the undrafted Miami Heat lifer Udonis Haslem. And the other is maybe the greatest hooper of all time: LeBron James. Continue reading...

Dramatising the latest watercooler story doesn’t guarantee you box-office success. The stiffest competition may come from reality’s own high dramaJust before the curtain came up on Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, producer Eleanor Lloyd spoke to the audience about its breakneck transposition from real-life courtroom drama to stage show and the “high-wire act” that such theatre becomes. The part-verbatim show dramatises the case that was detonated soon after Coleen Rooney dropped her Instagram grenade and Rebekah Vardy filed for libel.Having run in the high court and been reported in the media only a few months earlier, here it was again, reprising the best lines, from chipolata-gate to Davy Jones’s Locker. Laying its public interest debate aside, it was indisputably the watercooler story of the spring and summer, its incredible WhatsApp turns holding us rapt. Continue reading...

Joyce DeFauw gets bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University over seven decades after she first stepped on campusJoyce DeFauw of Illinois has given a whole new meaning to the term super senior, used for students who take longer than the usual four years to get their undergraduate degrees.On Sunday, the 90-year-old received a bachelor’s of general studies from Northern Illinois University more than seven decades after she first stepped on campus, becoming what officials believe to be the eldest person to ever graduate from the school. Continue reading...

I’m sure we’ll survive not seeing each other for a couple more weeks, when the rush of December gives way to lazy days

Well-known cougar was tranquilized by officials in the back yard of a Los Feliz home after showing signs of distressLos Angeles’ most famous mountain lion, known for roaming across freeways and making a sprawling urban park his home, was captured Monday by wildlife officials who want to examine the big cat after he killed a dog that was being walked in the Hollywood Hills.The cougar, dubbed P-22, wears a GPS tracking collar as part of a National Park Service study and is regularly recorded on security cameras strolling through residential areas near LA’s Griffith Park, a wilderness and picnic area. Continue reading...

Arrest just 24 hours before founder of cryptocurrency exchange was to testify before US CongressThe Bahamas police have arrested former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the country’s attorney general said in a statement on Monday, adding that the Bahamas has received formal notification from the US of criminal charges against him.Bankman-Fried is expected to be extradited to the US, the attorney general’s office for the Bahamas told Reuters, but declined to comment on what the charges were. Continue reading...