Russian-speaking hackers claim responsibility that targeted about 14 public-facing websites, including LaGuardia and O’Hare airportsWebsites for more than a dozen US airports were temporarily brought offline by cyberattacks on Monday morning, with Russian-speaking hackers claiming responsibility for the disruption.About 14 public-facing websites for a number of sizable airports, including LaGuardia airport in New York City, were targeted and inaccessible to the public. Most have since been brought back online.Additional reporting by Kari Paul Continue reading...
Richard Gillmore stalked girls in Portland, Oregon, some of whom have spoken publicly opposing his releaseThe convicted so-called jogger rapist Richard Gillmore is scheduled to be released from prison at the end of this year.Gillmore, who will be 63 when released, used to run by the homes of young girls and women in the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon, in order to stalk and rape them. He admitted to raping nine girls in the 1970s and 80s, but he was ultimately convicted of only one rape because of the statute of limitations on the other cases.The Associated Press contributed reporting. Continue reading...
Senator urges party to center campaign on economy, warning: ‘You can’t win elections unless you have support of working class’The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders warns that Democrats should not only focus on abortion rights ahead of the midterm elections in November.In an opinion column for the Guardian published on Monday, Sanders warned that Democrats need to embrace an agenda that addresses the economic woes facing America and supports the working class, not just one solely focused on abortion. Continue reading...
Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback – if not player – in NFL history. He has won seven Super Bowls and owns a ridiculous number of records, from most career passing touchdowns and yards to most quarterback wins. Nobody can question that he has earned his accomplishments but many, particularly on the teams he has beaten, can’t help but notice that he’s received some help from the officials.
Teenage boys, both 17, treated in hospital after being hit by gunfire from moving car outside home of Lee Zeldin in town of ShirleyNew York congressman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin says his family is safe after two teenagers were shot outside his Long Island home on Sunday afternoon.The boys, both 17, were walking with a third teenager on the street in Shirley, New York, where Zeldin lives when they were hit by gunfire from a moving car, local police said. Continue reading...
America has long faced structural economic crises. Democrats must win on the economy and present a pro-worker agendaAs someone who has a lifetime 100% pro-choice voting record, and is outraged by the supreme court’s horrific decision to overturn Roe v Wade, there is no question but that Democrats must continue to focus on the right of women to control their own bodies. This is a fight that most Americans want us to wage and, given the Republicans’ extremist position on the issue, makes them genuinely vulnerable.But, as we enter the final weeks of the 2022 midterm elections, I am alarmed to hear the advice that many Democratic candidates are getting from establishment consultants and directors of well-funded Super Pacs that the closing argument of Democrats should focus only on abortion. Cut the 30-second abortion ads and coast to victory. Continue reading...
City’s new facility has to find shelters for those without alternative after a 40-year beacon of refuge shuttered earlier this yearChairs and tables lined El Paso’s new Migrant Welcome Center in west Texas, where families who have crossed the US-Mexico border without immigration papers were meeting with volunteers and city employees, or making phone calls to loved ones elsewhere in the United States.Children amused themselves in a designated play area, while their parents worked out where the next steps of their journey would take them and how they would get there. Continue reading...
The Buccaneers’ victory over the Falcons featured a decision bad enough that it overshadowed everything else in the gameTom Brady is the greatest quarterback – if not player – in NFL history. He has won seven Super Bowls and owns a ridiculous number of records, from most career passing touchdowns and yards to most quarterback wins. Nobody can question that he has earned his accomplishments but many, particularly on the teams he has beaten, can’t help but notice that he’s received some help from the officials.On Sunday, the NFL world thought they saw the most egregious example yet. In the midst of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 21-15 win over the Atlanta Falcons, referee Jerome Boger called a roughing the passer call on defensive lineman Grady Jarrett on what looked like the cleanest possible sack on Brady. If this isn’t legal, how in the world is an opposing defense expected to bring Brady down? Continue reading...
We’re told that motherhood is supposed to be your life’s work. But the 360-degree model is bad for me and for my babyFlashback to NCT, and I’m asking our course leader Alison about going to the loo: “So you say that we are not supposed to leave them unattended, ever … so how exactly do I, without putting too fine a point on it … go to the toilet?”I’m six months in now and have eventually learned that, sometimes, you need to let the baby cry so you can go to the toilet/make a cup of tea/shove a cold samosa in your mouth while you mourn your past life of nicely prepared little lunches. I used to feel guilty doing this. My husband going back to work at four months coincided with the baby suddenly needing constant entertainment, and I started to feel guilty about that too, because sometimes I would put him in the bouncer and read a book (my tight 10-minute set of politically correct nursery rhymes having fallen flat). Continue reading...
The legal woes of investor Tom Barrack, accused of secretly lobbying for the Emirati regime, add to the image of a Trump circle beset by influence-peddling and corruption“Trump is the man,” Thomas “Tom” Barrack, a wealthy investor friend of Donald Trump’s, wrote to someone in a foreign government, in 2016, as Trump’s likelihood of being named the Republican nominee for president began to become a certainty. Barrack added, cryptically, that someone called “HH” should be ready to travel.The meaning of those words, and the intent behind them, are at the center of the latest court case to roil Trump’s circle. Prosecutors have said that the “HH” in Barrack’s email referred to His Highness Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the current leader of the United Arab Emirates, and that Barrack was trying to secretly and illegally trade his access to Trump’s ear for the graces of the Emirati government and its vast pool of investment money. Continue reading...
Meticulously crafted campaign emails and text messages, with a heavy dose of guilt-tripping, reveal their parties’ worldviews“Is your phone off, Patriot?”“Are you still a Republican?” Continue reading...
Shirley Hughes, mother of Tony Hughes, an aspiring model who was among more than a dozen men murdered, speaks outThe mother of aspiring model Tony Hughes, who was among more than a dozen men murdered by Jeffrey Dahmer, has condemned the recently released Netflix series about the serial killer who took her son’s life, saying she doesn’t understand how the television show could be made.Shirley Hughes told the Guardian on Sunday that she hadn’t seen all of Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which focuses one of its 10 episodes on her son, who was deaf and just 31 years old at the time of his slaying in 1991. Nonetheless, she’d concluded that “it didn’t happen like that”. Continue reading...
The rapper has also drawn heavy criticism for donning a ‘white lives matter’ T-shirt during Paris fashion weekKanye West has now had both his Instagram and Twitter accounts locked after antisemitic posts over the weekend.Twitter locked his account Sunday after it removed one of West’s tweets saying he was going “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” because it violated the service’s policies against hate speech. Continue reading...
‘I acknowledged it repeatedly,’ says Georgia gubernatorial nominee who faces Kemp rematch, but insists voter suppression is an issueDemocratic organizer Stacey Abrams on Sunday pushed back on the accusation that she refused to acknowledge Brian Kemp as the winner of Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election, the same politician she is once again competing with for the governor’s mansion.On Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream played a 2019 speech in which Abrams said “we won”, but Abrams said the clip was taken out of context. Continue reading...
John Kirby says Biden’s warning about threat of a nuclear attack from Russia were not based on specific new informationThe US military’s top spokesperson tamped down concerns of an imminent nuclear threat from Russia, days after Joe Biden warned of a potential nuclear “Armageddon”.Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser this week, Biden talked bluntly about the threat of a nuclear attack from Russia. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” the president said. He added that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming” after invading Ukraine earlier this year. Continue reading...
The musician’s latest controversies remind us who he’s been this whole time: a guy who will do anything to be relevantTucker Carlson went to great lengths to remix Kanye West for his large conservative audience on Thursday night, calling him “an artist”, describing his erratic tweetstorms as “freeform social media posts”, and introducing him as a “Christian evangelist”. If you hadn’t been watching Fox News for the past 20 years, you’d never suspect this was the same network and time slot on which Bill O’Reilly once dismissed West as “the dopey little rapper”.But the network’s view on West, who now goes by Ye, has shifted markedly in the six years since the rapper-fashionista has made a hard right turn towards conservative libertarianism. Carlson was warming his viewers up to West as a lead-in to an exclusive, two-part one-on-one interview, shot at West’s Yeezy fashion brand headquarters in Los Angeles. Continue reading...
You can’t blame any young woman who would rather bake vegan muffins or live in a tree. But where does that leave the rest of us?The #girlboss has lost her lustre. A recent survey of nine- to 18-year-old girls reported that they rank “being a leader” the lowest priority in a list of 17 attributes for future work. Girls, the report concludes, were “nearly three times as likely to prioritise being healthy and safe” – you would hope – and “twice as likely to prioritise being respected than being a leader”. I like that: weren’t the two traditionally considered complementary? I suppose the farce-tragedy of the Borisiad has estranged concepts of leadership and respect so comprehensively that the two can’t be in the same country as each other, let alone the same gold-wallpapered room.Apart from being governed by a man who needed to be penned in with a puppy gate, what has turned young women off leadership? There’s the perennial “you can’t be what you can’t see” issue: women remain dramatically underrepresented as CEOs and on boards, and Covid bulletproofed the glass ceiling. A survey quoted by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in his cathartically titled book Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? found that 92% of Americans couldn’t name a female leader in tech, and a quarter of the remaining 8% offered “Alexa” or “Siri”. The Rekyjavik index, measuring attitudes towards women in leadership in G7 countries, hasn’t improved since 2019, with the most recent report concluding “deeply rooted views on female leadership are hard to shift”. Plus, the UN says we are still 257 years away from gender pay parity (by which time, on current reckoning, the few survivors of any sex living in a burnt-out Greggs will have more pressing matters to worry about than what Paul from Accounts is making: he’ll be making rat stew like everyone else).Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Now Boris Johnson’s gone, all but the most hardened of leavers have been forced to see through those rosy visions of life outside the EULast week, having whiled away two joyous days at the Tories’ conference in Birmingham, I spent a long afternoon an hour’s drive away, in the cathedral city of Worcester. The plan was to sample the mood of the kind of place once considered to hold the key to British elections: remember “Worcester woman”, the swing-voting stereotype talked up in the New Labour years? But I was also there to gather more evidence of how much the UK’s current woes are affecting the kind of average-to-affluent places that might once have weathered any economic storm.Not entirely surprisingly, people said they were worried and scared. Some talked about grownup children suddenly terrified that a mortgage is beyond their reach; others described a new and unsettling habit of using sparing amounts of gas and electricity. The autumn’s increasingly awful mood music – from talk of cancelled local Christmas markets to the possibility of three-hour power cuts – informed just about every conversation I had.John Harris is a Guardian columnist. To listen to his podcast Politics Weekly UK, search “Politics Weekly UK” on Apple, Spotify, Acast or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday Continue reading...
I mispronounce the letters, the young lad has to put me right‘Why isn’t Daddy picking me up?’ my son asked his mum. I had dropped him off, so he was confused. Once, last week, she had told him: ‘We’ll be right here at home time,’ to dissuade him from feeling too homesick. Unbeknown to us, he’d taken this literally and believes whichever one of us delivers him in the morning stands stock-still in the playground for six hours until home time.I guess my son is growing up so fast, I sometimes forget he’s still a child, an effect only worsened by the arrival of his sister. When we set off for the maternity ward, he was a dewy-skinned babe. On our return, eyes recalibrated to a newborn scale, we might as well have faced a middle-aged man, with back problems and forklift-driving certification. Continue reading...
The longest-tenured US senator joins a growing chorus of conservative lawmakers opposed to such a restrictionThe longest-tenured Republican in the US Senate has pledged to vote against a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy which a prominent fellow party member and chamber colleague proposed last month, joining a growing chorus of conservative lawmakers opposed to that idea.Chuck Grassley, who’s been one of Iowa’s senators since 1980 and is seeking an eighth term in his seat during November’s midterms, expressed his opposition to such a ban during a televised debate Thursday night with his Democratic challenger Mike Franken. Continue reading...
Rightwing governor known for aggressive, culture-war brand of populism gives softer demeanor after storm, destroying opponents’ hopes of toppling himIf such a thing can be said following a devastating hurricane that took the lives of more than 100 people, caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, and changed the face of south-west Florida forever, Ron DeSantis has had a good storm.The rightwing Republican governor has become a near ever-present face on national television during the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, largely steering clear of the political controversies that have plagued him in recent weeks as he sought to bring a calm and reassuring face to a fast-moving tragedy. Continue reading...
In a little publicized initiative, the Biden administration is seeking to tackle the ‘junk fees’ hitting Americans when they can’t afford itThey are one of the banes of modern life: “junk fees”. And they are paid for a vast list of things from terminating cellphone contracts early, to checking baggage on an airplane and getting an overdraft on a bank account. What’s worse, is many of these fees are hard to find, or hidden until it’s time to pay, and they impact poor people the most.But Joe Biden – in a little publicized initiative – is seeking to tackle these hidden costs and has made eliminating, or at least drastically reducing them, one of the key planks of his economic plans. Continue reading...
Testimony from government’s first witness showed militia group’s leader had planned resistance well before election results were outIt was just two days after the presidential election that his preferred candidate Donald Trump lost, and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes fired off a text to members of his extremist group.“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” the text read. Continue reading...
James Brennand confronted the 17 year old who was in a car that had evaded him a day earlier and began shooting when the car drove offA Texas police force has fired an officer who shot and wounded a teenager sitting in his car eating a hamburger.The San Antonio police department fired James Brennand after he shot Erik Cantu, 17, on 2 October in a fast-food restaurant parking lot, the agency’s training commander, Alyssa Campos, said in a video statement released Wednesday. Continue reading...
The coffee giant will be required to reinstate Hannah Whitbeck’s job and to hold a meeting reasserting that the company broke the lawStarbucks illegally fired an employee at one of the coffee giant’s shops in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for engaging in union activism, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled Friday.The decision requires Starbucks to offer the worker reinstatement with back pay and to hold a meeting with employees, management, government representatives and the union to clarify workers’ rights and reassert the board’s finding that the company broke the law. Continue reading...
The facility, named for the late retired general Richard Cavazos, will become the first to honor a Latino service memberThe US army’s first Latino four-star general is set to become the namesake of the country’s largest active-duty armored military base, replacing the Confederate leader after whom the facility was originally named.In a recent memo to top military brass at the Pentagon, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said officials had until 1 January 2024 to implement a recommendation to change the name of Texas’s Fort Hood to Fort Cavazos, honoring the late retired general Richard Cavazos. Continue reading...
The Republican candidate for a Georgia US Senate seat has insisted that he does not know the woman’s identityHerschel Walker, the Republican candidate for a Georgia US Senate seat, has maintained he does not know the identity of a woman who claims that in 2009 she terminated a pregnancy that was the result of her and Walker’s relationship.But on Friday, the woman at the center of a political storm that threatens to undo the former Dallas Cowboys running back’s campaign told the New York Times that Walker urged her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later and that their relationship ended when she declined. Continue reading...
Greg Gutfeld’s creepy rant is just the latest example of the US right’s obsession with sexKids these days, eh? They’re all “deliberately ugly-fying themselves”. That’s according to Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, anyway. The 58-year-old recently went on a weird tirade about how college students aren’t adhering to his beauty standards. “You see them on TikTok, they’re out of shape, asexual,” Gutfeld said on Thursday, during a conversation about college loans. “They’re rejecting the truth in beauty, they all look like rejects from a loony bin.” Continue reading...
Subject of Netflix drama known as the ‘SoHo grifter’ must refrain from posting on social mediaAnna Sorokin, the convicted con artist who masqueraded as a German heiress and swindled wealthy New Yorkers, has been released from jail but must steer clear of social media, her attorney has confirmed.The 31-year-old, who also went by the name Anna Delvey and is the subject of Netflix’s Inventing Anna, has been held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since March 2021. Continue reading...
The uprising against Tehran’s vile regime could fail like those in Hong Kong, Belarus, Egypt and Syria – but this time something feels differentIn Hong Kong in 2019-20, millions took to the streets to oppose the repressive actions of an authoritarian regime. But ultimately their voices were silenced, their leaders jailed and China stripped away their democratic rights – as western leaders looked on, wringing their hands.In Belarus, nationwide protests erupted when a cruel dictator stole the 2020 election. The UN said hundreds of people were abused, tortured, raped. But the dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, propped up by his loathsome buddy in Moscow, remains truculently in power. Continue reading...
The 1951 refugee convention should be upheld by Russia’s neighbours as people refusing to fight in Ukraine seek safetyRussian software architect “AA” was one of 17,000 people who fled Russia for Finland last weekend. This was before Finland closed its border with Russia, which was the last direct route from Russia to the European Union. AA told Finnish journalists that Russia was establishing “call-up centres or contact points” on the other side of the border, preventing people from leaving and funnelling them into the armed forces. Apparently, no authority on either side of the borders between Russia and the EU is now interested in the fate of ordinary Russians who refuse to fight in the criminal invasion of Ukraine.Other EU countries bordering Russia have also recently closed their eastern borders and suspended Russian tourist visas. Certain countries have explicitly said that they will not recognise Russians fleeing conscription as refugees, with Estonian foreign minister Urmas Reinsalu telling Reuters in September: “A refusal to fulfil one’s civic duty in Russia or a desire to do so does not constitute sufficient grounds for being granted asylum in another country”.Nicole Stybnarova is a lecturer in public international law and refugee law at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of OxfordDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...
Preparing to face Italy in the Eagles’ opener, the Saracens pair say the women’s game is ready to take a big step forward“I was teaching at school on Wednesday and then flying to a World Cup on Thursday. It’s definitely a bit surreal, but it’s a very fortunate position and I’m going to take any opportunity I get.”Lotte Clapp has seen a few things in her time. An international winger, she has won 10 England caps and captained Saracens to three domestic titles. But life can still take unexpected turns. Continue reading...
Georgia in focus: A Democratic challenger who raised $10.8m is facing an uphill battle against the Maga congresswomanIn cowboy hat and square-toed boots, Marcus Flowers steps on to another porch, knocks on another front door and introduces himself as the Democrat trying to unseat Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Chip Freeman will take some persuading. He usually votes Republican and admires Greene’s “backbone”.“She puts her foot down and stands on a situation,” says Freeman, 51, a self-employed delivery man and handyman in suburban Rome, Georgia. “Not backbone because she’s accomplished anything but backbone because she’ll stand up face to face with people.” Continue reading...
After 40 years out of the spotlight, the game is hot gossip again, thanks to a major beef between two grandmastersI have a shocking admission to make. I am a chess cheat. Or at least world champion Magnus Carlsen would brand me a chess cheat. Occasionally, in online games where I have been testing out particular openings, I have used a chess engine (a dedicated computer program) to look for the best moves to try to get an understanding of positions.Strictly speaking, that is cheating and if the chess platforms on which I play found out, I would be banned. But they never have, because after the first 15 or so moves I abandon the engine and just play on my wits, usually making the litany of blunders for which my chess is noted. Any suspicions anti-cheating systems have about my perfect play up to move 15 are allayed by my decidedly imperfect play over the next 30 or 40. I am a cheat who has got away with it.Stephen Moss is author of The Rookie: An Odyssey through Chess (and Life)Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...
The recent conviction of a prolific killer sheds light on the need for protections for a vulnerable populationAs Hollyn Williams and Lindsey Roan cleaned out their mother’s apartment, things just didn’t add up.Williams had found their mother, Martha Williams, dead on the floor of her luxury senior living apartment in Plano, Texas, just north of Dallas in March 2018. Police and medical examiners decided she had died of natural causes. Continue reading...
The president, beset by low poll ratings, has been focusing on fundraising, while his predecessor swoops in for campaign rallies, whether Republican candidates like it or notRaucous music will be played, bellicose speeches will be given and big lies will be told. Donald Trump will hold his 20th and 21st campaign rallies of the year in Nevada and Arizona this weekend, urging voters to support Republican candidates in the midterm elections.Joe Biden will be relaxing at home in Delaware. Continue reading...
Michael Fanone recounts meeting with South Carolina Republican senator in book to be published next weekRepublican senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham told a police officer badly beaten during the Capitol attack that law enforcement should have shot rioting Trump supporters in the head, according to a new book.“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” the now ex-cop, Michael Fanone, says the South Carolina Republican told him at a meeting in May 2021, four months after the deadly attack on Congress. Continue reading...
Congressman John Curtis of Utah laments lack of women in state legislatures drafting laws – ‘if you’re a woman, it stinks’Despite his party’s staunch opposition to terminating pregnancies, Congressman John Curtis, a Utah Republican, has raised eyebrows after saying at a debate this week that he wished women could decide whether abortion should be legal.“I wish, as a man, I didn’t have to make this decision,” John Curtis said, referring to how the state legislatures which are now empowered to decide the legality of abortion are dominated by men. “I wish women could make this decision.” Continue reading...
Robert Hadden, a former gynecologist, was accused in 2016 of sexually abusing female patients for over two decadesTwo New York hospitals have agreed to pay more than $165m to 147 former patients who have accused a former gynecologist of sexual abuse and misconduct.Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian announced the agreement Friday. Last year, the two hospitals reached a settlement to establish a $71m compensation fund with 79 former patients. Continue reading...
A man with a large kitchen knife said he wanted to take a picture with showgirls but then started stabbing people, a witness saidAn attacker with a large kitchen knife killed two people and wounded six others in stabbings along the Las Vegas Strip before he was arrested on Thursday, police said.Three people were hospitalized in critical condition and another three were in stable condition, according to Las Vegas police, who said they began receiving 911 calls about the stabbings around 11.40am across the street from the Wynn casino and hotel. Continue reading...
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