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Video of NFL star taking out animal rights demonstrator who interrupted game against San Francisco 49ers went viralNational Football League linebacker Bobby Wagner laid one of the season’s most jarring hits this week on an animal rights advocate who ran on to the field of a game to protest about criminal charges filed against two other activists.“I just saw somebody running on the field, and [it looked like] he wasn’t supposed to be on the field,” Wagner, who plays for the Los Angeles Rams, said when reporters asked him about tackling the protester on Monday night. “I saw security was having a little problem, so I helped them out.” Continue reading...

The man is suspected of abducting four, including an 8-month-old baby, and tried to kill himself before Merced police arrivedA man suspected of kidnapping a Sikh family, including an 8-month-old baby, in central California tried to kill himself Tuesday and is hospitalized in critical condition, authorities said. The family is still missing.The Merced county sheriff’s office said in a statement that investigators identified Jesus Salgado, 48, after he used a victim’s ATM card. Continue reading...

Appellate court ruling prevented special master from examining 100 files seized from Mar-a-Lago with classification markingsDonald Trump on Tuesday asked the US supreme court to partially reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master, reviewing for privilege protections materials seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, from examining 100 documents with classification markings.The motion to vacate the ruling by the US appeals court for the 11th circuit represents the former president’s final chance to reinsert the 100 documents into the special master review – and potentially exclude some from the investigation into whether he illegally retained national defense information Continue reading...

Ballistics tests tie together fatal shooting in Oakland with killings of five men and the non-fatal shooting of a woman in StocktonA California serial killer seems to be “on a mission” dating back to last year, which has seen the fatal shooting of at least six men and the wounding of one woman – but authorities have not figured out what’s behind the violence.Ballistics tests and some video evidence linked the shootings in Stockton and Oakland, about 70 miles apart in northern California, police said. Continue reading...

Despite some rainfall, state is still suffering from an extreme water shortage driven by the climate crisis – and La Niña may worsen itCalifornia has witnessed its three driest years on record and the drought shows no signs of abating, officials said Monday. The dry spell set the stage for catastrophic wildfires and has strained water resources and caused conflicts over usage.“We are actively planning for another dry year,” said Jeanine Jones, drought manager for the state’s department of water resources, who was discussing the California’s status at the conclusion of its water year, which ended 30 September. Continue reading...

Unofficial figures more than 100 killed by storm that swept across Florida and made second deadly landfall in South CarolinaThe death toll from Hurricane Ian continued a grim and steady climb on Tuesday, as officials in Florida laid out the next stages of the recovery effort and Joe Biden prepared to tour some of the worst-hit areas.Unofficial figures have recorded more than 100 killed by the category 4 storm that swept Florida last week before making a second deadly US landfall in South Carolina. Continue reading...

Anti-abortion Senate candidate in Georgia reportedly paid for the procedure for a former girlfriend in 2009

In Merrill v Milligan, the court will decide whether Alabama’s new congressional map violates the Voting Rights ActThe supreme court’s conservative majority appeared unsettled on Tuesday on whether it would gut one of the most powerful remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act in a case that has profound implications for the representation of Black Americans and other minority groups.The case, Merrill v Milligan, centers on how much those who draw electoral districts should be required to consider race. It involves a dispute over the seven congressional districts Alabama drew last year. Only one of those districts has a majority-Black population, even though Black people make up a quarter of Alabama’s population. Earlier this year, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the configuration was illegal under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which guarantees minority groups equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process. It ordered Alabama to draw a second district with a minority population. The supreme court stepped in earlier this year and halted that order while the case proceeded. Continue reading...

While Radon Liz and Kamikwasi Kwarteng set quantum dates for fiscal steadiness, Suella Braverman was talking up a coupSmall steps and all that. The Tory party conference may be on life support in the ICU – most delegates have written thank you letters to Mick Lynch for Wednesday’s rail strikes that have given them a gold-plated excuse for leaving early – but things aren’t quite as bad as they could be. It was probably more luck than judgment, but Liz Truss finally got through an interview relatively unscathed. Put it like this. It wasn’t a total car crash. More a minor scrape.There are caveats, of course. For one thing, the interview with Nick Robinson for the Today programme had been prerecorded the day before. So we might just have got a moment in time when a version of Radon Liz existed that was not quite so catatonically hapless. There was no way of knowing whether another iteration of Truss that was live at 8.10am on a Tuesday morning would have given the same interview. Things have turned unusually existential in Birmingham. Continue reading...

Trump told lawyer to report to National Archives that he had given them all the documents, but lawyer was ‘not sure’ that was trueA lawyer for Donald Trump refused to report to the National Archives that the former president had turned over all Oval Office documents as required out of concern that the claim was a lie.Earlier this year, Trump returned 15 boxes of federal government records from his Mar-a-Lago resort home to the National Archives, and he directed one of his lawyers, Alex Cannon, to inform the agency that the boxes contained all the documents taken from his time in office. Continue reading...

Republican condemned by John Fetterman as ‘puppy killer’ after reports allege Oz oversaw animal deaths between 1989 and 2010An already over-the-top and acrimonious US Senate race in Pennsylvania has escalated after John Fetterman – the Democratic candidate – accused his Republican opponent, the celebrity physician Dr Oz, of having killed more than 300 dogs.Calling his rival “sick” and a “puppy killer”, Fetterman cited reporting published on Monday alleging that Mehmet Oz oversaw numerous animal deaths while conducting medical research at Columbia University. Continue reading...

President says sorry to family of Jackie Walorski in Oval Office meeting after remarks at food insecurity summit last monthThe mother of the late congresswoman Jackie Walorski told Joe Biden that her daughter was in “heaven with Jesus” after the president apologized for mistakenly calling for Walorski during public remarks last week despite her death in August.During a private meeting in the Oval Office with the Walorski family on Friday, Biden apologized for a gaffe he made during a summit on food insecurity on 28 September, when he called into the audience to see if Walorski was in attendance, as the Republican representative from Indiana had served as co-chairperson of the House Hunger Caucus. Continue reading...

Christian Walker says Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia lied about paying for former girlfriend’s termination in 2009The son of Georgia’s Republican US Senate hopeful Herschel Walker called his father a liar and a hypocrite after a media report alleged that the candidate, who has publicly opposed abortion rights, paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend in 2009.The Daily Beast reported on Monday that Walker, a former pro football player, paid to end the ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy when the couple was dating by depositing a $700 check into her bank account for the procedure. Walker vehemently denies the allegations and has threatened to sue the news outlet for defamation. Continue reading...

Instead of merely ‘trimming the fat’ from the public sector, this government seems intent on sinking the welfare state entirelyWhen a ship encounters a storm, the captain does not rip up the deck and cut off the lifeboats to make the ship move faster. Doing so might temporarily delay flooding, but it gives passengers no chance when an iceberg crashes against the hull. And yet that’s exactly what British governments have been doing ever since the financial crisis of 2008. One by one, the ropes holding on to our welfare services and public institutions have been severed. The current government, which has called on departments to find “efficiencies” to meet its unfunded tax cuts, is no different.So what can we expect to happen if Liz Truss’s cabinet pursues these cuts? Already, Conservative MPs are extolling the benefits of an “insurance-based” health service, and seem to be preparing the ground for further waves of NHS privatisation. Yet Britain’s public sector has already been gnawed to the bone. How will departments “trim the fat”, as the levelling-up secretary Simon Clarke described the approach over the weekend? Is there even any fat left to trim? Continue reading...

It seems likely that Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva will eventually oust the president. Even if he does, a turbulent time in office awaitsThe first lesson from Brazil’s election on Sunday is that public opinion surveys severely misfired. Just a few days before the contest, many reported a 15% lead for Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva over the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro; and many also predicted a Lula first-round victory. The second lesson is that, far from being a flash in the pan – as many had hoped – the rightwing populist movement Bolsonarismo is an organised political force, and it is here to stay, at least for the medium term.Bolsonaro finished five percentage points behind the leftist former leader Lula – as he is popularly known. Bolsonaro’s party and its allies also surprised in the legislative elections the same day, winning around two dozen seats in the senate and almost 100 in the chamber of deputies. While a Lula victory still appears likely on 30 October, the thin margin separating the two candidates promises an even more bruising, mud-slinging campaign, and sharpens the risk of post-election violence should the incumbent lose the runoff.Christopher Sabatini is a senior research fellow in the Latin America, US and the Americas programme at Chatham House

None of the stories from the Yates investigation, which include reports of coaches sexually assaulting their players, were shocking for me or my peers. Silence must not prevailI was asked to speak with the Yates investigation into abuse in US soccer after the Guardian published its own report into the University of Toledo that included my reports of being a survivor of sexual assault and abuse. The reality as a survivor is that you struggle to trust others and any sign of doubt about what you share triggers physical and emotional responses that make reliving those experiences yet again difficult.Talking to the Yates investigators, I felt the disbelief was not that they doubted my story but a lack of understanding of how deep systemic abuse runs through every level of women’s soccer in the US.Candice Fabry is the owner of Fearless & Capable; Head Women’s Soccer Coach at Ottawa University (KS); Head Women’s Soccer Coach for Kansas City Courage, Midwest Region Coach for the US Youth Olympic Development Program; State Coach for Kansas Soccer Youth State Association Olympic Development Program; and a US Soccer Grassroots Coaching Instructor. She was a former assistant coach and player at the University of Toledo. Continue reading...

UN special rapporteur praises step in right direction but says ‘structural inequality is underlying cause of hunger’The White House hunger conference last week was a step in the right direction but missed a chance to address the systemic causes and to expand the “right to food”, according to a United Nations hunger expert.Policymakers should be focusing on those causes if they want to solve hunger, said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Racism, corporate control and poverty contribute heavily to hunger, he said. Continue reading...

People forget that championing whiteness is what makes Trump powerfulA growing chorus of voices is warning that our democracy is in grave danger, but there is much less discussion of the exact nature of the threat. Recently, President Biden emphasized the severity of the threat by going to the place where the constitution was signed to give what the White House described as “a speech on the continued battle for the soul of the nation”.Biden specifically named “Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans” as the ones carrying out the attacks, and that is accurate, on the surface. The deeper, more longstanding threat, however, was articulated by historian Taylor Branch in a 2018 conversation with author Isabel Wilkerson recounted in Wilkerson’s book Caste. As they discussed how the rise of white domestic terrorism under Trump was part of the backlash to the country’s growing racial diversity, Branch noted that, “people said they wouldn’t stand for being a minority in their own country”. He went on to add, “the real question would be if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and is a Guardian US columnist. His book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good will be published October 18th Continue reading...

In the first of a new series, we look at how November’s midterm elections could be an inflection point as election deniers seek to take control of the vote counting processItem number 28 on the agenda for the March meeting of the county commission in rural southern Nevada seemed benign enough. But by the end of the hour-and-45-minute presentation Sandra Merlino, the longtime local clerk, felt sickened.One by one, a band of activists took to the podium to argue that Nye county should switch from electronic ballots to paper ones in forthcoming elections. They were led by Jim Marchant, a Las Vegas businessman who lost a 2020 House race but refused to concede, alleging fraud. He argued that the county couldn’t trust its electronic election equipment and that it should switch to a system in which it only used paper ballots and counted those ballots by hand. Continue reading...

Georgia in focus: A fragile coalition around Atlanta helped shift the state’s politics, but as the midterms loom the cracks are showing“Very normal” is how Rupal Vaishnav describes his experience as an entrenched resident of Atlanta. He moved to the city at the age of nine, after immigrating to the US from India in the late 1970s. When his parents settled in Clayton county – a suburb south of downtown that’s now home to the world’s busiest airport – it was still largely populated by white families living in 60s-era bungalows; before that, it was the fictional setting for Gone With the Wind.Vaishnav was one of two Indian kids in school – the other was his brother – and a strict vegetarian who spoke Gujarati at home. But he joined the school’s air force junior reserves, studied mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech and earned his law degree from Georgia State. For the past five years, he’s worked in the local district attorney’s office and this year he ran to be a state judge in Forsyth county, once infamous for its lynchings. “The biggest thing I struggled with growing up and that I still see in my son are the identity conflicts,” Vaishnav says, now 50. “Are you American? Are you Indian? You have to get comfortable knowing the two cultures. It’s a balancing act that you get better at over time.” Continue reading...

The trial would give law enforcement access to live footage by consenting residents, a departure from the city’s previous stanceLast week San Francisco city leaders approved a 15-month pilot allowing police to monitor live footage from surveillance cameras owned by consenting businesses and civilians without a warrant.The 7-4 decision by the San Francisco board of supervisors was a major loss for a broad coalition of civil liberties groups that had argued the move would give police unprecedented surveillance powers. It also seemingly marked a departure from the progressive stance on surveillance the city’s leadership had previously maintained. Continue reading...

The 33-year-old has been trying to regain his fitness in the run-up to the World Cup. But he is yet to complete a full 90 minutes for LAFCLess than 20 minutes into only his second Major League Soccer game, Gareth Bale scored a goal that could have served as a mission statement. Introduced off the bench with Los Angeles FC already 1-0 up against Sporting KC, the Welsh winger, who needs game time to find his best form before the 2022 World Cup, produced a performance that grew sharper with every minute and culminated in a quick transition strike to kill the game at 2-0.Another typical Bale goal quickly followed in a 4-1 win over Real Salt Lake in which the 33-year-old strode past two opponents at the byline to fire home from a tight angle. Two goals in three appearances off the bench represented a good start to his MLS career, but Bale has struggled to build on this. In fact, he hasn’t scored another goal in the two months since his strike at Rio Tinto Stadium. Continue reading...

One minute everyone wants a bit of British and American culture; the next you’re on the phone desperately trying to get tickets for the latest K-pop sensationTwo weeks back, while the world was marvelling at the Great British Queue, I was in a queue of a different sort – Ticketmaster’s – trying to get tickets to the South Korean band Blackpink. There was a countdown, there was an app, I had Mr Z on the case trying a different date, and it was completely fruitless, thank God, because I had no idea when I started how expensive they were.My kid, along with my niece, is a “blink”, which means a fan of Blackpink, a girl band that US and UK media always call the most successful “South Korean” act of all time, omitting to mention that – as the most followed music act on YouTube – they really don’t need the national qualifier. The second most followed act, incidentally, is BTS – AKA the Bangtan Boys, also South Korean.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Republican candidate for US Senate in Georgia who has vehemently opposed abortion rights denies a media report he paid for an abortion for an anonymous former girlfriend in 2009, describing it as ‘a flat out lie’A Republican nominee for the US Senate, who strongly opposes abortion rights, has denied a Daily Beast report that he paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend in 2009. Herschel Walker, a former American football player who is running for the US Senate in Georgia, called the accusation a “flat-out lie” and says he will sue the news outlet for defamation.The Daily Beast published claims from a woman who says Walker paid for her abortion when they were dating. The woman, who was not named, claimed the allegation was supported by a receipt showing a $575 payment for the procedure, along with a get-well card, purportedly from Walker. Continue reading...

Data obtained by the Guardian shows at least 14 unhoused people froze to death in 2021, part of an overall surge in homeless deathsAt least 14 unhoused people froze to death on the streets of Los Angeles in 2021, new county data reveals, marking a sharp increase in reports of hypothermia fatalities and a grim sign of how dire the region’s homelessness catastrophe has become.Out of 14 deaths where the LA coroner’s office cited “cold exposure” and hypothermia last year, six victims died on sidewalks, according to public records obtained by the Guardian. Four died in hospitals, and the others were found at a bus bench, a parking lot, a dried-up riverbed and an abandoned building. The death toll is significantly higher than previous years, with six reported hypothermia deaths in 2020, nine in 2019, seven in 2018 and three in 2017. Continue reading...

Johnny Lauder swam through half-mile of flood waters in Naples, Florida, to pull his mother, a double amputee, out of her homeEvery time flood waters inundate a community, forecasters admonish their viewers not to swim through them because of countless perils potentially hidden under the surface – but Johnny Lauder ignored those warnings after Hurricane Ian’s storm surge trapped his mother, a double amputee, inside her Florida home.Lauder swam through a half-mile of neck-deep, rapidly moving, debris-filled flood waters that swamped his 84-year-old mother’s neighborhood in Naples to pull her out of the home that she couldn’t flee from ahead of Ian. Continue reading...

The solution by Camelback Family Planning ensures patients can access pills and treatment without breaking the lawA Phoenix abortion clinic has come up with a way for patients who can end their pregnancy using a pill to get the medication quickly without running afoul of a resurrected Arizona law that bans most abortions.Under the arrangement that began on Monday, patients will have an ultrasound in Arizona, get a prescription through a tele-health appointment with a California doctor and then have it mailed to a post office in a California border town for pickup, all for free. Continue reading...

Police are left baffled as to why the victims were targeted and have announced a $95,000 reward for information leading to an arrestA serial killer may have ambushed five men in central California separately in recent months, shooting them to death alone in the dark, and police are baffled as to why the victims were targeted.None of the men were robbed or beaten before their killings – which all took place within a radius of a few square miles – and none appear to have known each other, Stockton police officer Joseph Silva said on Monday. The shootings do not seem to be related to gangs or drugs. Continue reading...

Stewart Rhodes and four associates face the rare civil war-era charge of seditious conspiracy for attacking the US CapitolThe founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates planned an “armed rebellion” to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the election, a federal prosecutor contended on Monday as the most serious case yet went to trial involving the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.Stewart Rhodes and his band of far-right militants were prepared to go to war to stop Joe Biden from becoming president, assistant US attorney Jeffrey Nestler told jurors. Continue reading...

Tillerson says he barely knew defendant Tom Barrack, who is accused of leaking intelligence to the United Arab EmiratesRex Tillerson, who served a turbulent term as secretary of state under former US president Donald Trump, was called as a government witness Monday at the trial of a Trump ally accused of leaking intelligence to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).Tillerson testified that he barely knew the defendant, Tom Barrack, once the chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee, or anything about his relationship with the UAE. Continue reading...

Cable news has tried to smear ex-president ‘with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels’, says court filingDonald Trump has sued cable TV network CNN, claiming defamation and seeking punitive damages of $475m, according to a Florida court filing on Monday.The US cable news station has attempted to smear the former US president “with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler’,” Trump’s lawyers claimed. The lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Fort Lauderdale. Continue reading...

Planned Parenthood will debut the traveling facility later this year to meet increased demand from neighboring statesPlanned Parenthood officials on Monday announced plans for a mobile abortion clinic – a 37ft recreational vehicle that will stay in Illinois but travel close to the borders of adjoining states that have banned the procedure since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade earlier this year.The announcement came 100 days after the supreme court ruling that stripped away constitutional protections for abortions, allowing states to ban the procedure. Continue reading...

Stories of tragedy and delay emerge as search-and-rescue teams discover survivors and fatalitiesAs Florida continues grappling with the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Ian, the state’s death roll mounts and stories of tragedy and delay emerge.Over 81 people are confirmed dead and that toll is expected to rise. Rescue crews working brutal shifts – sometimes 20 hours long – are still combing through the wreckage, and flooding continues in many parts of the state. Continue reading...

Tactless jokes and half-arsed platitudes made up chancellor’s vapid Tory conference speechNot waving but drowning. Days like these are coming round with increasing frequency. Days when the sketch is little more than a transcription service. Days when there is no way to improve on the sheer madness of the Tory party. Its capacity for self-harm has become compulsive. An addiction almost. The only way most Conservatives can reassure themselves they are in government is when they are surrounded by chaos. Their lives – and ours – are unmanageable. Interest rates rising, the pound tanking, public infighting. Yup, that’s the way Tories know they are still relevant. Even if they are on life support.We all knew Liz Truss was going to be hopeless. That was a given. We just didn’t know she was going to be so hopeless quite so quickly. Or that she would be given so much enthusiastic support from the half-witted collective that make up her cabinet. Step forward Kamikwasi Kwarteng and the skin-crawlingly needy Chris Philp. Everyone’s favourite punchbag. We imagined Radon Liz might spread out the fun. A managed decline of her party. Instead she has gone for broke, daring the Tories to get rid of her little more than a month after electing her. She is the queen of the clusterfuck. The Trussterfuck. Continue reading...

Dominion Voting Systems accuses Mike Lindell, a prominent Trump supporter, of promoting baseless voter fraud claimsThe defamation lawsuit that voting machine company Dominion is pursuing against the MyPillow chief executive, Mike Lindell, can proceed after the US supreme court rejected the prominent Donald Trump supporter’s appeal aiming to block the case.Dominion Voting Systems in February 2021 filed a $1.3bn lawsuit accusing Lindell of promoting the debunked conspiracy theory that the company’s machines manipulated vote counts in favor of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election that ousted Trump from the Oval Office. Continue reading...

‘The first thing I saw was an airplane wheel at the end of our bed,’ says home’s resident, Jason Hoffman, who survived the crashA small plane crashed into a home in Minnesota over the weekend, killing all three people onboard but not injuring anyone at the house, according to state officials.The Hermantown Police Department said a plane crashed into the second floor of a local home on Saturday night before falling into the back yard of the property. Two people at the home weren’t hurt, according to the police department. Continue reading...

The Native American actor and activist who declined Brando’s Oscar for The Godfather has died aged 75, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced in a tweet on Sunday. Littlefeather had breast cancer.The Hollywood Reporter cited a statement from her caretaker that said she died at noon on Sunday at home in the northern California city of Novato, surrounded by loved ones

In red states, women’s options and speech are being dramatically constrained by the misogynist laws that have sprung into effect since the reversal of Roe v WadeOn 23 September, staff and faculty at the University of Idaho received a strange missive from their employer. In an email sent out by university lawyers, professors were told that in accordance with the state’s new abortion ban, they are now prohibited from a large swath of activities. They are no longer allowed to “promote abortion”. They are no longer allowed to “counsel in favor of abortion”. They are no longer allowed to tell students, or anyone else, where to get an abortion; they are no longer allowed to dispense emergency contraception, like Plan B. State law now forbids any state resources or state employees’ time from being spent “promoting” or “advertising” either abortion or “services for the prevention of conception”, so the university won’t be dispensing birth control any more, either.The email said that the university can continue to provide condoms, so long as those condoms are distributed for the purposes of preventing disease transmission only, not for birth control. Since when used correctly condoms prevent both pregnancy and disease transmission, how this change will affect condom availability on campus remains unclear. Those university employees who are found to violate this new gag rule, either by “promoting” abortion, or by dispensing contraception, risk felony convictions, prison time, fines, firing and permanent bans from all state employment.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Perla Huerta was reportedly sent to Texas from Florida to fill planes chartered by DeSantis, offering gift cards to asylum seekersA former US army combat medic and counterintelligence agent allegedly solicited asylum seekers to join flights out of Texas to Martha’s Vineyard that Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, chartered.Perla Huerta was sent to Texas from Tampa to fill the planes at the center of the trips, which many have argued could amount to illegal human trafficking, a person briefed on an investigation into the case told the New York Times. Continue reading...