The team that came to worldwide attention thanks to Moneyball is struggling to pull in fans. A move to the bright lights of Vegas could be approachingThe first-place New York Yankees, a hit at any box office, invaded Oakland last weekend to face the last-place Athletics. The turnstiles at RingCentral Coliseum were given a rare spin, with 93,719 fans attending the four-game series, or 23,430 per game.The A’s are still dead last in the major leagues in attendance, though, having drawn a little over 10,000 fans per game this season. That should tell you not just something about the Yankees’ drawing power, but about Oakland as a baseball wasteland. Continue reading...
My jaw is hanging open in disbelief! For once, we are not being demonised, dehumanised or told we don’t existI’m an atheist but I’m pretty sure I just witnessed a miracle, thanks to the Palestinian-American comic Mo Amer. His new semi-autobiographical Netflix sitcom Mo is hilarious and, no matter your background, I guarantee you’ll find a lot of it relatable. If you are of Palestinian heritage, as I am, however, Mo is far more than just a laugh: it’s a groundbreaking piece of television.Palestine is not exactly a major theme in popular culture. If you do hear the P-word on TV it’s usually during the news and it’s normally nothing positive. It’s the same for Arabs in general, of course. If we are on the telly, we’re usually terrorists. And, if we’re not being demonised, we tend to be the punchline – not the people delivering the punchline. Palestinians, however, are dehumanised on a whole other level. You can’t even say the P-word without it causing problems: an anchor on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation once had to apologise for using the word Palestine (instead of “Palestinian territories”), for God’s sake. Being Palestinian means constantly being told you don’t exist or being accused by certain pro-Israel voices of being antisemitic simply because you assert that you do exist. I have written only a handful of articles about being Palestinian; every time I file one I have anxiety attacks for days because of the inevitable character assassinations and online trolling that occur after publication. Continue reading...
Ex-White House counselor said on Fox News that Republicans should stick with her former boss as Democrats gain groundDonald Trump’s former White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway, does not think Republicans should move on from her former boss, despite signs his control of the party could cost it the chance to take Congress in November.Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Conway said: “Those who want to move on from Trump: You go first.” Continue reading...
We are still trying to find ways to get visas – writing letters, appealing to governments – but the options are running outIt was past midnight on 9 August 2021, and I was immersed in writing when my phone pinged: a message from a contact at the Indian embassy in Kabul. They said the Indian mission in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif was evacuating and offered me a seat on the flight.There were reports the city would collapse soon and fall to the Taliban. I had already left Mazar, but it was hard to imagine that this historic, metropolitan city could topple so easily. It was too well fortified, as I had witnessed during my recent reporting trip, with hundreds of Afghan forces patrolling its gates.Ruchi Kumar is a journalist formerly resident in Kabul Continue reading...
My member’s bill that will look at political donations and expanding voting rights will soon be read in parliament. We need it to passDemocracy is a human right that in many ways underpins all other rights.But the symptoms of weakened democracy are all around us. Even here, in New Zealand, where we have one of the world’s least corrupt and most stable democracies, we’re not getting it right. Continue reading...
Officials investigating after three residents at San Mateo facility reportedly ingested liquid given mistakenly by staffOne resident of a California home for senior citizens died and two others were hospitalized after the complex’s staff mistakenly served them dishwashing liquid thinking it was drinking juice over the weekend, according to officials.Three people living at Atria Park senior living facility in San Mateo, California, just south of San Francisco, had to be taken to a hospital after ingesting the liquid in question on Saturday morning. One of them later died, and the local police, the state department of social services and the facility itself are investigating, Atria Park officials said in a statement provided to media outlets on Monday. Continue reading...
New fast-food council would have power to set standards for wages and working conditions for half a million employeesCalifornia lawmakers approved a nation-leading measure that would give more than half a million fast-food workers more power and protections, over the objections of restaurant owners who warn it would drive up consumers’ costs.The bill will create a new 10-member Fast Food Council with equal numbers of workers’ delegates and employers’ representatives, along with two state officials, empowered to set minimum standards for wages, hours and working conditions in California. Continue reading...
by Tom Davies (now) and Michael Butler (earlier, for on (#632AH)
There were wins for Cameron Norrie and Dan Evans, while Elena Rybakina suffered a shock exit and Venus Williams bowed out for possibly the last time at Flushing MeadowsPaolini’s boost from that break is immediately nullified by Swiatek breaking her serve for the third game in a row, set up by a magnificent backhand winner that kisses the line to give her the break point – the No 1 seed leads 5-2, first set.And Pegula has won the first set 6-2 against Golubic. Continue reading...
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard tried to tow away an unmanned vessel in the Persian Gulf but the fifth fleet secured its releaseIran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard seized an American sea drone in the Persian Gulf and tried to tow it away, only releasing the unmanned vessel when a US navy warship and helicopter approached, according to US officials.The incident on Tuesday marks the first time the navy’s Middle East-based fifth fleet’s new drone taskforce has been targeted by Iran. Continue reading...
Gallup survey finds 71% of US residents approve of unions amid a wave of successful organizing effortsA new Gallup annual Work and Education survey found that Americans’ approval of labor unions is at its highest in nearly 60 years.Seventy-one per cent of US residents approve of unions, as high as in 1965. The 1950s saw the highest support for unions, at three in four Americans, according to the polling firm. Continue reading...
Victim described as in stable condition and alleged shooter held in California city that has seen six gun deaths in recent daysA 12-year-old boy was arrested after he allegedly shot and wounded his 13-year-old classmate at a school in Oakland, California.The shooting erupted at about 1.30pm on Monday at Madison Park academy in East Oakland. Local police said they were able to quickly detain the alleged shooter while his victim was hospitalized in what is now described as stable condition. Continue reading...
Three people injured, one seriously, after truck hits center median and spills more than 150,000 tomatoes on to road surfaceA mass of tomatoes scattered across a California highway made for stunning photos but commuter hell, after a truck crashed into a center divider and spilled its load across the roadway on Monday..The truck, which was driving in the westbound lane of Highway 80 near the Bay Area city of Vacaville on Monday morning, collided with other vehicles before crashing into the center median and knocking a large load of tomatoes on to the eastbound lanes, said Jason Tyhurst, a California highway patrol officer. Continue reading...
Standoff outside restaurant in Roanoke filmed by investigative reporter, and comes amid rising tensions in US societyRight- and leftwing protesters, some heavily armed with semi-automatic rifles, faced off outside a “drag brunch” at a restaurant in Roanoke, Texas, video showed.The standoff on Sunday was filmed by a Dallas-based investigative reporter, whose footage spread online, and came amid rising tensions in US society, polls showing majorities of Americans believe political violence is becoming more likely. Continue reading...
From Boris Johnson to Ghislaine Maxwell, there’s one thing rich people seem to have in common – they hate paying billsTruth Social, we hardly knew you! Just six months after its chaotic launch, it looks as if Donald Trump’s social media network could be on the verge of collapse. As first reported by Fox Business, Truth Social allegedly owes about $1.6m to RightForge, the internet infrastructure company that hosts the app. Paying that back might be tough since Truth Social doesn’t seem to make money and is facing a number of problems, including declining traffic and the recent denial of its trademark applications. Trump Media & Technology Group, Truth Social’s parent company, is also embroiled in a federal investigation about whether it violated securities laws.While all that sounds pretty bad, everything is rosy in the alternative universe Trump appears to inhabit. On Monday, the former president said that rumours of Truth Social’s demise are greatly exaggerated. And, to be fair, while multiple reputable news outlets have reported that Truth Social hasn’t paid RightForge since around March, the CEO of the hosting company – which targets its services at conservatives – hasn’t publicly confirmed these reports. Instead, Martin Avila told Fox Business that RightForge “believes in the mission of President Trump’s free speech platform”. Believing in free speech can be very expensive, I guess.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Tony Ornato, who reportedly told aide Trump lunged for steering wheel as Capitol attack was starting, was key figure to committeeTop US Secret Service official Tony Ornato, who has become a figure of intense interest to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, has retired from the agency.Ornato was thrust into the center of the January 6 furor as an eyewitness to some of the most critical incidents involving Donald Trump in the hours leading up to the deadly assault on the US Capitol. Continue reading...
There was a time when Republican lawmakers took dangerous security breaches seriously but Trump’s actions are unworthy of attention for the likes of Senator Ron JohnsonIn a Friday appearance on Newsmax, the rightwing media site, Ron Johnson blasted the FBI for not being aggressive enough in following the evidence. Was the great patriotic Republican senator from Wisconsin angry that the FBI had waited too long before searching Mar-a-Lago for illegally stashed documents critical to US national security? Hardly. What agitated Johnson was an alleged whistleblower’s complaint that the FBI had failed to take the “necessary investigative steps after receiving Hunter Biden’s laptop”.Remember laptop-gate? The FBI received the laptop back in 2020 from a computer repair shop owner who claimed the PC had been left in his shop but never retrieved by Hunter Biden. Analysts determined that much of the data was a “disaster” from a forensics standpoint, as the hard-drive had clearly been accessed by persons other than Biden’s son. Nonetheless, after exhaustive studies completed earlier this year, both the New York Times and the Washington Post concluded that some of the retrieved material had been authentic; and while it showed that Hunter clearly tried to trade on his father’s name, it failed to indicate any corruption on Joe Biden’s part.Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College Continue reading...
Republicans have put all their chips on extremism. But voters are sending more and more signals that they’re fed up with itPolls and election results over the last week reminded Americans that politics seldom moves in a straight line. As in physics, action produces reaction. Overreach invites backlash.For a long while former President Trump and his cronies seemed to be immune from this rule of political life and from the consequences of even the most outrageous conduct. As Trump himself once famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death PenaltyDennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy Continue reading...
‘We don’t expect this,’ says Kajsa Ollongren of shooting that left two other Dutch commandos woundedThe Dutch defence minister has expressed concern at gun violence in the US after a shooting in Indianapolis over the weekend that left one Dutch soldier dead and two wounded.“We do many trainings of our servicemen in the United States, and we really don’t expect this to happen. So it’s very, very concerning for us,” Kajsa Ollongren said at a meeting of EU defence ministers in Prague on Tuesday. Continue reading...
The Vermont senator rose from the political margins to become hugely influential within the American left. As he prepares to speak at a London rally, he explains why unions on both sides of the Atlantic must reassert their powerBoth are unlikely political sensations who were long consigned to the fringes: Bernie Sanders, an octogenarian US senator who inspired an army of voters far younger than himself; and Mick Lynch, a former blacklisted construction worker and child of Irish immigrants who, as the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), shot to national prominence when he humbled hostile but underinformed broadcast journalists. “I think Lynch is touching a nerve,” Sanders says.The de facto leader of the US left has swung his considerable political heft behind a new campaign – Enough Is Enough – launched to fight Britain’s mounting cost of living crisis, which was founded in part by Lynch and the RMT. It has certainly touched a nerve: at a recent rally in Clapham, south London, many of those who had queued around the block were turned away for lack of space. “‘Enough is enough’, funnily enough, is an expression we use a lot here,” Sanders says. “People are sick and tired of often working longer hours for low wages; sick and tired of their kids having a lower standard of living than them; and they’re sick and tired of billionaires getting richer and richer while they fall behind. Continue reading...
In a book looking back at his career, veteran umpire says baseball is a more accepting place than many people assumeMajor League Baseball umpire Dale Scott made history in 2014. He came out as gay, the first MLB umpire to do so. It was big enough news that Jimmy Fallon joked about it on The Tonight Show – “Well, he says he’s out, but the other umps said he’s safe. So now they gotta look at replay.”But during Scott’s 37-year career in pro baseball, his identity was no laughing matter. He feared the repercussions if he was outed, especially in his early seasons, which coincided with the Aids crisis. Now retired, Scott reflects on his years in the pros in a new memoir, The Umpire is Out: Calling the Game and Living My True Self, co-written with Rob Neyer. Continue reading...
More than half of ‘strong Republicans’ think such a conflict is at least somewhat likely, poll findsMore than two-fifths of Americans believe civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years, according to a new survey – a figure that increases to more than half among self-identified “strong Republicans”.Amid heated rhetoric from supporters of Donald Trump, the findings, in research by YouGov and the Economist, follow similar results in other polls. Continue reading...
Southern California officials agree to pay Sandra Quinones, who went into labor while detained in local jail, $480,000Southern California government officials have agreed to pay $480,000 to a woman who went into labor while detained in a local jail and then lost her baby after the guards stopped at a coffee shop while taking her to the hospital.The payment – designed to settle a federal wrongful death lawsuit pursued by the mother, Sandra Quinones – was approved at a 23 August meeting of the Orange county board of supervisors, according to the minutes of the panel’s session that day. Continue reading...
by Tumaini Carayol at Flushing Meadows on (#631V1)
The 23-time major singles champion won another chance to engineer one last signature moment at Flushing MeadowsAs Serena Williams desperately tried to drag herself through the first set of the match that could have marked the end, she was struggling badly. She had been sucked into an endless service game at 5-3 and she could only fight to hold on. She eventually faced her fourth break point of the game, the pressure rising with every point. And then, just like that, she took Arthur Ashe Stadium back to the past: ace, ace, unreturned serve. Set. Williams walked towards her seat, she clenched both of her fists and she roared into the skies.The serve, the fight and the attitude have all been some fundamental sights in tennis for two and a half decades. After these weeks, they will likely never be seen again. Continue reading...
Duane Hansen of Nebraska spent years growing the 846lb (384kg) pumpkin he named 'Berta'. Now he has set a record for paddling 38 miles (61km) in it. In photos and video posted to social media, Hansen can be seen traveling along the Missouri, breaking the Guinness World Record for 'longest journey by pumpkin boat', though Guinness has not yet validated the result. 'I probably wouldn’t try this again,' Hansen said. 'And if somebody breaks this record, I will bow down to them because they are tough' Continue reading...
Duane Hansen says his knees still hurt after he broke a pumpkin-paddling record that actually existsStep aside, ultramarathoners: America has a new endurance athlete, and he’s as gourd as it gets.A Nebraska man has set a new world record after he paddled 38 miles down a river in a huge, hollowed-out pumpkin he grew himself. Continue reading...
The speech, outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, will highlight how America’s standing – and democracy – are at stakeJoe Biden will deliver a primetime address on Thursday about “the continued battle for the soul of the nation”, the White House has said.Calling the speech a major address, the White House said Biden would discuss how America’s standing in the world and its own democracy are at stake. Continue reading...
Jena Griswold urges Americans to pay attention to crucial but often overlooked races for secretary of stateColorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, is warning anyone who will listen that the fate of free and fair elections in the United States hangs in the balance in this November’s midterm contests.In many of the most competitive races for offices with authority over US elections, Republicans nominated candidates who have embraced or echoed Donald Trump’s myth of a stolen election in 2020. Continue reading...
by Luke McLaughlin (now) and Niall McVeigh (briefly) on (#63136)
The 20-year-old qualifier secured an emotional win over the No 7 seed, while Daniil Medvedev progressed to the second roundJack Draper and Harriet Dart are other British players in action today.Now, here we go on Louis Armstrong stadium, with Cerundolo v Murray. Cerundolo is seeded 24th. Continue reading...
Details of suspected gunman and his two victims were not immediately released in attack at a Safeway in BendA shooting at a Safeway grocery store on Sunday night in Bend, Oregon, left three people dead, including the suspected attacker, reigniting pleas from the public for government leaders to take more action against gun violence.Police in Bend said the shooter – whose name hasn’t been released – came from a nearby residential area and began firing as he crossed through the Safeway parking lot. One person was shot near the entrance and died at the scene, police said. Continue reading...
Man aged 19 held over killing of three people on Sunday and wounding of a fourth did not encounter police after first incidentA 19-year-old man suspected of randomly killing three people on Detroit streets over roughly two hours may have been emboldened when he did not encounter police after the first shooting, the mayor said on Monday.No one called 911 when a 28-year-old man was shot on Sunday, less than two miles from a police station, Mayor Mike Duggan said. Continue reading...
Justice department’s move could undermine former president’s request to have a special master filter the documentsThe FBI has already finished reviewing whether any of the materials seized from Donald Trump’s resort in Florida were privileged, the justice department said in a court filing on Monday that could undermine the former president’s request to have a special master filter the documents.The justice department said FBI agents not involved in the investigation surrounding Trump’s retention of government secrets at Mar-a-Lago have completed a review of the documents and identified a number of files that may be privileged and set aside from the evidence cache. Continue reading...
The actor Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance in a series of prerecorded virtual cameos at the VMAs as a projection on MTV’s mascot, the Moon Man. He said he 'needed the work' and that he was available for ‘birthdays, bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, weddings, wakes, any old thing you need’ Continue reading...
Republican South Carolina senator cites 'the ‘Clinton debacle’ and claims the FBI failed to investigate Hunter BidenAmid growing fears about political violence in the US, a senior Republican senator predicted “riots in the streets” if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling classified information.Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, made his remarks about the ex-president while speaking to Fox News’s Sunday Night in America, hosted by Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman from the same state. Continue reading...
Commando Simmie Poetsema was one of three soldiers wounded in incident outside hotel in US cityOne of three Dutch soldiers wounded in a shooting outside a hotel in Indianapolis over the weekend has died, according to US and Dutch authorities.The commando died of his injuries on Sunday night surrounded by family and colleagues, the Dutch defence ministry said on Monday.The Associated Press contributed reporting. Continue reading...
Rory McIlroy has morphed from superstar to statesman of late but at East Lake he showed he can still play a bit tooIt may not be in the gift of the PGA Tour to predetermine event winners but it is safe to assume Rory McIlroy’s latest FedEx Cup triumph met with approval in the corridors of power.McIlroy left East Lake $18m richer having overturned Scottie Scheffler’s 54-hole lead of half a dozen shots. For the Northern Irishman, there is further validation of a year in which he has him played some of his finest golf. As far as the PGA Tour is concerned, McIlroy is the perfect ambassador. Continue reading...
