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Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? They were the unmistakable lyrics a dozen or so Wales supporters sang as they hopped off a metro escalator and descended on a stadium adjacent to a 500,000 square metre shopping mall fit with a five-star hotel. A few days after the Brazil legend Cafu wished Wales good luck wearing a tricolour bucket hat now synonymous with the nation, they are the kind of words that could have reasonably been running through Gareth Bale’s mind after his penalty snatched a late draw on their first appearance at the World Cup finals since 1958.Bale is the true prince of Wales and despite spending almost the entire match on the margins he provided another one of those big‑game moments to file with the rest of them. His catalogue this year is already turning into quite the collection: two stunning goals against Austria in March, a match-winning free‑kick against Ukraine to secure their place at these finals, and, a fortnight ago, an extra-time header to help Los Angeles FC en route to lifting the Major League Soccer Cup. Continue reading...

High on the Democrats’ midterm success, the octogenarian president presides over the annual pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkeysHail to the grandpa-in-chief!With important legislation under his belt, Republicans in disarray and Vladimir Putin in retreat, Joe Biden is looking pleased with himself and ready for family time. Continue reading...

After news of attack was reported on TV at his date’s house, man took Uber to Capitol and climbed through broken window to enterA Delaware man was sentenced to jail time for joining the January 6 Capitol attacks after seeing the violence unfold on a Tinder date’s television.Jeffrey Schaefer was sentenced to 30 days in jail and ordered to pay a $2,000 fine on Friday after prosecutors argued that he participated in the Capitol attacks after watching the rioting happen on TV while at his date’s house. Continue reading...

Two measures get go-ahead from voters but bid to institute stricter voter ID requirements failsTwo Republican ballot measures that will restrict how citizens can get their own priorities on the ballot in the future were approved by voters in Arizona, while one measure to institute stricter voter ID requirements failed.The mixed messages sent by voters on these measures aligned with the state’s increasingly purple, swing-state style, where candidates and proposals that win come from both sides of the aisle. Continue reading...

After being repeatedly humiliated by Prince Mohammed, Biden continues to appease an autocrat who disdains himThe Biden administration told a US judge last week that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, should be granted immunity in a civil lawsuit over his role in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That decision effectively ends one of the last efforts to hold the prince accountable for Khashoggi’s assassination by a Saudi hit team inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.It is an act of weakness and political cowardice by Joe Biden’s administration, which staked its reputation on holding Khashoggi’s killers accountable and centering its foreign policy on human rights, rather than accommodating autocrats. Biden has done neither. Even worse, he has capitulated yet again to what he views as a realpolitik pressure to make nice with the 37-year-old prince who could well be Saudi Arabia’s king for decades. But Biden can’t seem to collect on that quid-pro-quo arrangement and claim a political victory, as Prince Mohammed has snubbed the US president at every opportunity.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University. He is also a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now Continue reading...

Among the mourners outside Club Q, there was little doubt anti-LGBTQ hatred was a motivating factor in the deadly attackWhile officials held off on releasing a motive in the shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs that killed at least five people and injured another 25, there was little doubt among the thousands of mourners who have now gathered across the city: they believe the motive was hate.“It has to stop,” said the Rev Roger Butts of the All Souls Unitarian church, of what he described as a social and political landscape in the US rampant with anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and misinformation. “Enough is enough. We have to stand up.” Continue reading...

Through adolescent realism and glittering fantasy, Princess Mia showed me more about life than my textbooks ever didNews of Hollywood franchise reboots are so frequent as to be usually unremarkable, even tiresome. But Disney’s announcement last week that it was developing a Princess Diaries 3 film felt different. “The Princess Diaries 3 movie,” in the words of a popular tweet, “will heal our broken nation.”That may sound over-dramatic – after all, cultural objects beloved by teenage girls invite suspicion at worst and polite tolerance at best; things that also fall under the banner of “chick-lit” doubly so. And yet the films, and the Meg Cabot books that provided their source material, arguably taught my teenaged self more about life – and even politics – than textbooks did. They were certainly more fun.Rebecca Liu is a Guardian commissioning editor Continue reading...

Under pressure from the fundamentalists, No 10 quickly denied reports of a ‘Swiss-style’ deal with the EU. But the mood music against Brexit is an irreversible trendThe head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) used his conference speech today to call for a tilt in immigration policy, to reflect the fact that the UK actively needs people to move here if we are ever to see a return to prosperity. There were rumours, meanwhile, of a “Swiss-style” deal between the UK and the EU, in which we would slowly reconverge with the single market, via harmonised regulations around food and agriculture.The puzzle pieces are cohering into one picture: things are bad. Some people would like to continue arguing about root causes, arranging Brexit, Covid and the sheer fecklessness of modern Conservatism into an infinitely contestable hierarchy, but most people would just prefer things to be better. And the “how can things be better?” phase of the arc comes right before “any mistake that can be undone, let’s try to undo it”. Continue reading...

Where employees are a corporation’s key assets, workers’ greater power comes in threatening to walk out the doorWhen Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44bn, he clearly didn’t know that the key assets he was buying lay in Twitter’s 7,500 workers’ heads.On corporate balance sheets, the assets of a corporation are its factories, equipment, patents and brand name. Continue reading...

Five people killed after gunman opened fire at LGBTQ nightclub but police say death toll could have been higher• Don’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.Police have praised the individuals who tackled a gunman after he opened fire at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs for their “incredible act of heroism” that stopped the tragedy that killed at least five people from being even worse.Who was the gunman? Police allege that 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich went into Club Q at about 11.55pm on Saturday and immediately began shooting with a rifle.Do we know anything about the victims yet? According to reports, bartenders Daniel Davis Aston and Derrick Rump were two of the victims.Was the suspect motivated by hate against LGBTQ people? A motive has not officially been established yet. However, the attack took place at Club Q, a club that has a weekly drag show on Saturday evenings and had a drag brunch scheduled for Sunday morning, which was also the transgender day of remembrance. The attack came amid growing fears of violence and intimidation toward drag queens.Why wasn’t the deal stronger? Oil-producing countries had thwarted attempts to strengthen the deal, said Laurence Tubiana, one of the architects of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, now chief executive of the European Climate Foundation. “The influence of the fossil fuel industry was found across the board,” she said. She blamed the host country, Egypt, for allowing its regional alliances to sway the final decision, a claim hotly denied by the hosts. Continue reading...

Gareth Bale leads his team in their first World Cup since 1958. The Americans should have most of the possession – and they will need to use itWales’ sole other finals appearance came in 1958, when Manchester United caretaker manager Jimmy Murphy led them to the quarter-finals of a 16-nation tournament with only four non-European teams. Wales advanced from a group also containing hosts Sweden, Hungary and Mexico, but without the injured Juventus star John Charles they lost to Brazil. Pele scored the only goal. Singled out for rough treatment by Hungary in the previous game, Charles’ absence is one of the most famous “what ifs” in Welsh football. Continue reading...

The second-year QB has thrilled fans this season, even if he is far from the finished product. Chicago must do everything to keep him healthyIt’s hard to say how Chicago Bears fans should feel following their 27-24 loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. No fans wants to see their team’s record drop to 3-8, of course, or resign themselves to the knowledge that they have no realistic route to the playoffs. Still, the loss provided more evidence that Justin Fields could be the quarterback that the Bears have been searching for since the bygone days of the Super Bowl Shuffle.Now, however, the Bears have to worry about keeping Fields healthy. Continue reading...

Five people killed and 25 injured after gunman opened fire at LGBTQ nightclubThe individuals who tackled a gunman after he opened fire at a LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs have been praised for their “incredible act of heroism” that prevented the tragedy that killed at least five people from being even worse.The mayor of Colorado Springs, John Suthers, told CNN one or two individuals in the club moved quickly to “subdue” the shooter. Continue reading...

Joshua Thurman describes the moment he heard gunfire and saw a 'flash from the muzzle of the gun' used in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs which left five people dead. Thurman says the shooting has 'shattered' the local LGBTQ community. 'How can we now do anything knowing something like this can happen?' Authorities say the attack is being investigated to see if it should be prosecuted as a hate crime

At least three others shot dead in attack at Club Q in Colorado Springs, after which a man was arrestedAmong those killed at a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub targeted by a mass shooting late Saturday were two of the establishment’s bartenders, according to community members.Daniel Davis Aston and Derrick Rump were two of at least five people shot dead at Club Q in Colorado Springs, local LGBTQ activist Alex Clemons-Laput said. Other media outlets reported Aston and Rump were among those slain at the club. Continue reading...

At least 25 people were also injured in attack at Club Q, and suspect in custody after patrons confronted and subdued him, police sayAt least five people were killed and another 25 were injured in a shooting late Saturday at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.The suspected shooter, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, is in custody, the chief of the Colorado Spring Police Department, Adrian Vasquez, said at a news conference Sunday morning. Continue reading...

Ex-vice-president hopes prosecutors ‘give careful consideration before taking more steps’ in investigating Trump over January 6Though he believes “no one is above the law,” former US vice-president Mike Pence says he hopes federal prosecutors “give careful consideration before they take any additional steps” in investigating Donald Trump’s role in inciting the rioters who staged the January 6 Capitol attack and tried to hang him.Pence made those remarks Sunday in an interview with the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd, in which he also said that the FBI “sent the wrong message” with its search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August to retake government secrets that were stored there without authorization. Continue reading...

At least five people were killed and another 18 were injured in a shooting late on Saturday night at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs. The suspected shooter, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, is in custody, the chief of the Colorado Springs police department, Adrian Vasquez, said at a news conference on Sunday morning. He said Aldrich immediately began shooting when he entered the club on Saturday, and at least two patrons quickly confronted him and subdued him. 'We owe them a great debt of thanks,' Vasquez added

The USMNT’s young players have negotiated the off-field turmoil in Qatar. Now they must deal with injuries and loss of form in key areasShortly after the silence enveloping this sleepy neighborhood on the outskirts of Doha was broken by the late evening call to prayer echoing from the minarets, the United States men’s national team arrived at the Al-Gharrafa Stadium on Saturday night for their penultimate training session ahead of a tournament unlike any other.The modest 21,000-seat bowl in Al Rayyan – the Americans’ training headquarters for the length of their stay in Qatar – is eight miles from the soaring glass-and-steel skyscrapers and sprawling air-conditioned malls of the Doha corniche. But not nearly far enough, it turns out, to escape the swirling controversies about the first World Cup to be staged in an Arab country, which were only amplified to a deafening pitch in the run-up to Sunday’s opening match between the host country and Ecuador. Continue reading...

Rather than a bloated global talking shop, we need something smaller, leaner and fully focused on the crisis at hand

Police and emergency response vehicles attend the scene of a shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs in which five people were killed and 18 injured. A suspect is in custody and being treated for injuries after the attack at Club Q, the police spokesperson Pamela Castro told a news conference. A statement from Club Q on its Facebook page said it was 'devastated by the senseless attack on our community … We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack'

Boomers have overseen one of the greatest expansions of wealth in history – and created problems for the generations to comeI’m not exactly a baby boomer, but I’m pretty darn close. The standard definition of this generation is that they were born between the years after the second world war and 1964. I was born in 1965, close, so go ahead, call me a boomer if you want. I’m not ashamed. But there’s one thing I do know: the small business world will be much better off when the boomers ride off into the sunset.According to data from Wilmington Trust, baby boomers own 2.3m businesses in the country and employ about 25 million people, which means that a third of Americans depend on these businesses for their income and tens of millions more – vendors, suppliers, freelancers – also depend on these businesses for their livelihood. Continue reading...

The state rejected hardline rhetoric amid historic turnout by young and Latino votersArizonans rejected extremists.As their new governor, voters chose Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who oversaw the 2020 election, over Kari Lake, the extremist Trump-endorsed election denier who campaigned alongside white supremacists. They re-elected the moderate Democrat Mark Kelly to the Senate over the far-right Blake Masters, who equated abortion to “genocide” and espouses the great replacement theory. For secretary of state, voters chose Adrian Fontes, the former election official who vowed to protect voting rights, over Mark Finchem, a self-identified member of the Oath Keepers. Continue reading...

The expected Republican steamroll in the midterms never materialized, due to concerns over abortion rights and a mobilized Democratic baseWhen Republicans narrowly clinched control of the US House of Representatives, it was clear the “red wave” failed to materialize and Democrats avoided what many feared would be a hefty defeat.Considering the midterm elections historically tend to favor the president’s opposing party, Democrats performed well. Despite Biden’s low approval rating, his administration had the best midterm performance of any president in decades. Continue reading...

Finance chief Allen Weisselberg, whose plea deal depends on him telling the truth, claims he acted alone in Trump Organization tax fraud trial in New YorkOf all the sprawling legal contests facing Donald Trump, the one against his family company finally came into focus in a New York court last week.Alan Weisselberg, the longtime financial chief of the Trump Organization, told a jury that he had betrayed the trust of the Trump family when he dodged $1.7m in income taxes on company perks, including a Manhattan apartment, tuition for his grandchildren and luxury cars. Continue reading...

Biden spent the last several months weathering the blame for an anticipated rebuke from voters – but instead found vindicationToday, Joe Biden will quietly ring in his 80th birthday over brunch with his family in Washington. It’s a milestone none of his predecessors reached while serving in the White House and one that looms large as he considers his political future.Yet the president enters his ninth decade at a moment of unexpected strength. Democrats defied history in the midterm elections, keeping control of the Senate and shattering Republican hopes of a “red wave” in the House. Continue reading...

Companies may claim to serve employees, communities and the planet – but two books show profit still comes firstAmerican CEOs are a self-assured bunch but it takes a certain level of hubris to conclude that your skills making money and climbing the corporate ladder also equip you to solve social and environmental challenges.While promising to save the world is increasingly part of the chief executive’s job description, two timely new books make clear that this grandiose notion remains little more than a self-serving fantasy. Continue reading...

As he enters prison, a disgraced former DEA agent who lived a decadent double life has claimed his own crimes were the tip of the icebergJosé Irizarry was cursed with a drug lord’s tastes and a civil servant’s salary.An agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Irizarry liked yacht parties with sex workers, jewelry from Tiffany, Louis Vuitton luggage and luxury cars. To finance his lifestyle – which came to include a BMW, two Land Rovers and three houses – Irizarry embezzled millions of dollars in government funds. Continue reading...

‘Extraordinary circumstances’ require appointment of Jack Smith to determine whether charges should be brought, Garland saysThe US attorney general Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to determine whether Donald Trump should face criminal charges stemming from investigations into the former’s president’s alleged mishandling of national security materials and his role in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.The politically explosive move comes just three days after Trump announced he is running for the White House yet again, despite a disappointing Republican performance in the midterm elections, especially among candidates backed by the ex-president. Continue reading...

Anti-abortion activist said supreme court justice revealed the landmark ruling on contraception and religious rights weeks earlierA civil rights group issued a call Saturday for US supreme court justice Samuel Alito to be investigated over allegations that the judge leaked a 2014 landmark ruling involving contraception and religious rights at a private dinner with wealthy political donors.The claim was contained in a New York Times article in which minister Rob Schenck, an anti-abortion activist, said he was told of the decision weeks before it was announced and had used the information to prepare a public relations push. Continue reading...

Cannabis farmers have ‘an unclear path to market’ as the state has yet to approve retail dispensariesA strong smell of weed hangs over many New York neighborhoods, the result in part of cannabis decriminalization in 2019 – but cannabis growers in the state are at an impasse when it comes to getting their crops to market.Almost 300,000 pounds of the drug, worth as much as $750m, from last summer’s production at 200 state-licensed farms are stockpiled, without a place to be sold and in danger of deteriorating, according to a Bloomberg report on Saturday. Continue reading...

The power of irate Taylor Swift fans means something might actually be done about the dominance of Ticketmaster and coMove over Karl Marx, it looks like Taylor Swift just radicalized the masses. Over the past few days there has been a lot of bad blood between Ticketmaster and enraged Swift fans over the disastrous rollout of tickets for the singer’s “Eras” tour. During the pre-sale process, which was only supposed to be open to around 1.5 million verified Swift fans, 14 million people, including bots, tried to get tickets. Pandemonium and heartbreak ensued. Things got even more heated on Thursday, the day before sales were meant to open to the general public, when Ticketmaster announced it was scrapping further sales due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand”. According to Ticketmaster, demand for Swift “could have filled 900 stadiums”. Continue reading...

The midfielder looks liberated when he steps on to the field for his country. How he handles expectation will be crucial to his team’s chances at this World CupIn America, the French actor Isabelle Huppert once said, Europe disappears: “They have everything. They don’t need anything. Deep down to them we are a sort of elegant Third World.” The history of American sport reads as one iteration of this blazing autonomy: from the development of baseball as a derivative of regional English games like stoolball and tut-ball to the evolution of rugby union into American football and the creation of basketball from the manipulation of a soccer ball indoors, the US has specialized in fashioning its own kind of sporting modernity out of Europe’s raw cultural materials, often consigning these older sports to the scrapheap of national memory.But globalization – the great success story of American free-market economics – and the unstoppable rise of football have, in recent decades, forced the US to confront a discomfiting reality: in the world’s most popular sport, the global hegemon remains a middleweight at best. The country that has everything now finds that it doesn’t: emerging (almost) every four years from a middling confederation into the glare of the World Cup, the spotlight deflected for once towards other countries, the America that wants for nothing – so confident, so culturally self-reliant – now finds itself in need. It needs to prove that it has footballing muscle equal to its muscle in every other domain. It needs to show that it belongs. And it needs, perhaps more than anything, to convince the world that it can produce a player in the men’s game equal to Haaland, Neymar, Salah, or Mbappé. Continue reading...

The writer was no stranger to self-mythologising. But the prices fetched at her estate sale were more about glamour seeking substanceJoan Didion is a figure mythologised in near-messianic terms. Her intelligence, originality, craft, humour, candour and style formed a singular, fascinating essence. That essence is what gives value to the items auctioned in her estate sale this week. The sale, at Stair Galleries in New York, offered (very wealthy) members of the public the opportunity to buy her sunglasses (a Celine tortoiseshell pair sold for $27,000), blank notebooks ($9,000), several typewriters (one sold for $6,000), hurricane lamps (a group sold for just over $4,000), her writing desk ($60,000), a stack of her favourite books ($26,000) and various paintings.What each item of the sale offered most of all, though, was a sense of proximity to a beloved but elusive figure, who, despite her liberal use of personal anecdotes and disclosures, always maintained a sense of distance in her writing. A woman described by her friend the writer Susanna Moore, as “both enchanting and reproachful”.Rachel Connolly is a London-based journalist from Belfast Continue reading...

Eight years before America hosts the finals, players including props who conceded key penalties against Chile and Portugal remain young and full of promiseIn Dubai on Friday night, at a frenetic last-minute ruck, the US prop Jack Iscaro conceded the penalty Portugal kicked for a 16-16 draw, enough to secure a place at the Rugby World Cup in France and condemn the Eagles to watch from home.The Americans were in the final qualification tournament because in Colorado in July they lost a similarly tight game to Chile. Then, a last-minute penalty that might’ve saved the game was reversed, because the prop Chance Wenglewski made an illegal clear-out. Continue reading...

Republicans are now soul searching over how they lost a very winnable Senate and bracing for two tumultuous years in the House – and many blame TrumpMike Lindell was full of passionate intensity. Wandering the white and gold ballroom of the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the mustachioed pillow-maker predicted that Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House would clear the Republican field.“After he announces today, I think [Florida governor] Ron DeSantis will end up just endorsing him,” Lindell, a rabid Trump cheerleader and conspiracy theorist, told the Guardian early on Tuesday evening. “I can’t imagine anybody wasting the time, effort and money of the people. We need to unite our country and there’s only man who can do that and he’ll be up on that stage. Period.” Continue reading...

Merrick Garland names Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor, as special counsel to decide whether to bring charges against Trump

Jurors hear closing arguments in seditious conspiracy trial of founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates of far-right groupFor weeks leading up to 6 January 2021, the Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates of the far-right group discussed using violence to overturn the 2020 presidential election’s outcome, and when rioters started storming the US Capitol they saw an opportunity to do it, a federal prosecutor told jurors on Friday as the seditious conspiracy case wound toward a close.Prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy said in her closing argument to jurors after nearly two months of testimony in the high-stakes case that Rhodes’s own words show he was preparing to lead a rebellion to keep Democrat Joe Biden out of the White House. Rhodes and his co-defendants repeatedly called for “violent overthrow” of the US government and sprang into action that day, she said. Continue reading...

Jack Smith will oversee investigations into Trump – but why did the attorney general take this step against the ex-president?On Friday, when announcing the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel overseeing investigations of Donald Trump’s alleged election subversion and retention of White House records, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the selection would ensure “independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters”.So why did Garland take this step against the former president? Continue reading...

Man named to lead investigations into ex-president is experienced prosecutor most recently at international criminal courtJack Smith is the man the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed on Friday to be an independent special counsel overseeing parallel justice department investigations into Donald Trump’s hoarding of top secret documents and involvement in the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, and he has been a criminal prosecutor for almost 30 years.Smith has previously served as the chief of public integrity for the US justice department and dealt in particular with cases involving corruption, bringing cases against prominent Republicans and Democrats. In 2015 he was appointed first assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. He is a registered independent, not aligned with either of the two dominant political parties in the US. Continue reading...

Nicholas Joseph Gutierrez was arrested after the Wednesday incident, but has been freed while the case is being investigatedA 22-year-old southern California driver who plowed into a group of Los Angeles county sheriff’s department recruits on a run, injuring dozens, has been released from custody as authorities investigate the incident.Nicholas Joseph Gutierrez had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder of a peace officer after the Wednesday morning crash, which the sheriff said investigators think was a “deliberate act”. The Diamond Bar resident was released late on Thursday. Continue reading...

US attorney general Merrick Garland has named Jack Smith as special counsel who has the job of determining whether Donald Trump will face charges as part of any Department of Justice investigations. The politically explosive move comes just days after the former US president announced he was running for the White House again.