The death of the al-Qaida leader points to a potential shift in the complex dynamic between the US, Pakistan and the TalibanA decade after US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in a special operation in Pakistan, Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US drone strike in Kabul.Both men were synonymous with the image of al-Qaida. But more than anything, the killing of Zawahiri is a symbolic success for Joe Biden, whose approval rating has been dismally low recently. Even before the ill-fated military withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to the Taliban seizing power, the US president had been vigorously trying to avoid discussing the country in his media engagements. Unsurprisingly, he is now trying to capitalise on the drone strike that killed Zawahiri to seek redemption in Afghanistan.Hameed Hakimi is an associate fellow at Chatham House in London and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC Continue reading...

Drone strike against al-Qaida leader praised across US political spectrum but 9/11 families press for Saudi accountabilityFamilies torn apart by the deadly September 11 terrorist attacks celebrated Sunday’s killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the top al-Qaida leaders behind the 2001 attacks, but they continued demanding accountability for the Saudi Arabian government’s alleged role.Meanwhile, Democratic politicians touted Zawahiri’s death as a major accomplishment for Joe Biden. Continue reading...

After a decades-long hunt the simple habit of sitting out on the balcony gave the CIA an opportunity to launch ‘tailored strike’In the end it was one of the oldest mistakes in the fugitive’s handbook that apparently did for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top al-Qaida leader killed, according to US intelligence, by a drone strike on Sunday morning: he developed a habit.The co-planner of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 had acquired a taste for sitting out on the balcony of his safe house in Sherpur, a well-to-do diplomatic enclave of Kabul. He grew especially fond of stepping out on to the balcony after morning prayers, so that he could watch the sun rise over the Afghan capital. Continue reading...

Former president hedges his bets in Republican Senate race, where both Eric Greitens and Eric Schmitt claimed his endorsementAnnouncing his long-awaited endorsement in the Republican primary for US Senate in Missouri, the night before polling opened on Tuesday, Donald Trump chose to hedge his bets.“There is a BIG election in the Great State of Missouri,” the former president said on Monday, adding: “I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds … I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” Continue reading...

I was feeling smug about fleeing New York for more space in Philadelphia – until I found out about their construction lawsEnjoy schadenfreude? Well, lucky you, there’s an oversized slice of it coming up – prepared entirely at my own expense. Earlier this year I wrote about how my family had moved from a cramped one-bedroom flat in Manhattan to a spacious terrace house in (far more affordable) Philadelphia. “I have made a very good life choice,” I crowed in a column. And, for a while, that seemed to be the case. We luxuriated in all the new space and marvelled at how quiet our new home was compared with New York. Despite sharing a wall, we couldn’t hear our neighbours at all.There was good reason for that: we didn’t have any neighbours on one side. I thought they had just gone on holiday; however, it soon became clear that the house next door was empty. What’s more, it looked like the tenants had left in a hurry. There was a knocked-over fire pit in the garden, with a piece of half-burnt wood in it. There was a deflated paddling pool hung up to dry on the fence. And, strangest of all, it looked like someone had been digging an odd-shaped hole by the deck. I’ve consumed a lot of true crime in my life; my imagination went wild. Were the neighbours laundering money for the mob? Had they scarpered under cover of darkness because their bosses realised they were embezzling funds? Had they been murdered? Were they lying dead in the basement? Continue reading...

Taxpayers in the state will be able to claim tax exemption for ‘any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat’Georgia taxpayers can now list embryos as dependents on their tax returns.In a news release on Monday, Georgia’s department of revenue said it would begin to “recognize any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat … as eligible for [an] individual income tax dependent exemption”. Continue reading...

After the inspector general’s office requested the Secret Service’s January 6 communications, the effort was shut downTop officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general’s office interfered with efforts to recover erased Secret Service texts from the time of the US Capitol attack and attempted to cover up their actions, two House committees said in a letter on Monday.Taken together, the new revelations appear to show that the chief watchdog for the Secret Service and the DHS took deliberate steps to stop the retrieval of texts it knew were missing, and then sought to hide the fact that it had decided not to pursue that evidence. Continue reading...

Italian luxury carmaker enjoys strong sales in second quarter despite global economic concernsFerrari has reported record quarterly sales and profits as the cost of living crisis and concerns over the global economy fail to dent the enthusiasm for buyers of luxury trophy vehicles.The Italian sports carmaker raised its forecast for full-year revenues and profits after reporting a record second quarter, off the back of the popularity of new models and strong demand in China and the Americas. Continue reading...

We need allies who care enough to shift their thinking, so the onus isn’t always on disabled people to point out problemsIt has been an exhausting summer to be disabled. Every day there seems to be a news story. The Lizzo ableist slur, followed by the Beyoncé ableist slur – the exact same one – mere weeks later. The model whose prosthetic leg was edited out of a celebratory “beach bodies” advert. The virulent bullying of the deaf Love Island contestant Tasha Ghouri, both on social media and in the villa.Some of the slights have been more subtle, woven into the fabric of the work surrounding them so seamlessly that they could, and probably will, be explained to me by able-bodied people as being perfectly fine, actually. But it was disappointing to see the final episode of Derry Girls – lauded as “a triumph” by reviewers – using a disabled cast member as shorthand for a party not being as cool as it first appeared. The Oscar-winning film Coda, although well-meaning, centres on the struggles of an able-bodied person overcoming the great impediment of having a disabled family. In her medieval fable Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh, usually an incredible and fearless writer, uses her characters’ disabilities – their “clawed hand”, “unseemly disproportion”, being “misshapen” – as a way of evoking eeriness and discomfort. Able-bodied writers lazily turning to disability for horror is a time-honoured literary tradition, but perhaps we ought to move on.Kathryn Bromwich is a commissioning editor and writer on the Observer New Review Continue reading...

New findings disprove audit by Cyber Ninjas, investigating all ‘dead’ individuals: ‘Many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased’After spending months reviewing the 2020 election in Arizona last year, Cyber Ninjas, the firm overseeing the so-called audit said it believed nearly 300 dead people may have voted. It was one of a series of allegations the company made as part of an effort to sow doubt about the election results in Arizona.It turned out not to be true. After investigating the allegations thoroughly, analysts found just one person who was actually dead at the time of the election. Continue reading...

Activism works. If we could ban tobacco advertising and sponsorship, we can ban fossil fuel propaganda

Rather than sideline federal agencies, Republicans want to seize control of them, purge civil servants and replace them with America First footsoldiersThe Republican party of today has a new attitude towards the power of government. The Reaganites who used to dominate the party mostly saw government as the problem: if only it could be cut back or eliminated entirely, free markets would deliver everything America needed. But a new report on plans being developed for Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House shows just how much this has changed. Rather than sidelining or eliminating federal agencies, Republicans now want to do something much more disturbing: seize effective control of them in order to persecute their enemies and implement a radical agenda.At the core of the new plan, as reported by Axios, is the intention to strip away employment protections from thousands of senior civil servants, eliminating at a stroke a large chunk of the civil service’s expertise and institutional memory. This would allow them to be replaced with a “cadre” loyal to Trump’s America First agenda, most of them likely to be 20- and 30-somethings with no experience in government who would owe their newfound prominence to Trump alone. Ideologically zealous and loyal to a fault, they would set about trying to reshape the government in Trump’s image.Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States and host of the podcast America Explained Continue reading...

President ordered strike on Kabul safe house in Afghanistan during high-level meeting, administration says. Plus, space debris found in AustraliaGood morning.A US drone strike in Afghanistan has killed the top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Joe Biden announced yesterday.When did Biden order the strike? After much consideration and detailed questions, the president eventually ordered a strike on the safe house at a meeting of key cabinet members and national security officials on 25 July.When was it carried out? At 9.48pm ET on Saturday by an unmanned aerial vehicle, while Zawahiri was on his balcony.What else is California doing? The state said it is also building on the steps developed during the coronavirus pandemic to set up vaccination clinics and make sure there is outreach to vulnerable populations. Continue reading...

Studies show the lack of abortion access has a life-long financial and emotional cost Continue reading...

It will be confusing for voters to figure out whether it’s ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that preserves abortion rightsOn Tuesday, voters in Kansas will be voting on whether the state’s constitution protects the right to an abortion.On one hand, this vote could be seen as a litmus test for how a traditionally conservative state reacts to the US supreme court overturning Roe v Wade, which guaranteed the right to an abortion nationwide. Continue reading...

Red flags captured the attention of lawmakers in Washington, but they can only help save lives if police, prosecutors and judges know how to act on themEditor’s note: This story was produced by the non-profit newsroom Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Get its investigations emailed directly to you.One day after Mariah Carpenter was gunned down by her ex-boyfriend, her mother met local police at a storage unit in Columbus, Ohio, belonging to the killer. They rolled up the door and made a shocking discovery: there, among dozens of pairs of new Air Jordan sneakers, were at least 20 guns, including assault rifles. Continue reading...

As rumors swirl about possible NBA expansion in the Emerald City, it’s worth remembering that the region is a hotbed for hoops.It was bedlam. Unlike any moment the city had seen in more than a decade. When Kevin Durant, then playing for the reigning champion Golden State Warriors, came out onto the hardwood at KeyArena in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle on 5 October 2018, you couldn’t hear yourself shout in ecstasy. You could only hear the roar of the whole crowd, which included many Seattle luminaries, from Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson to the rapper Macklemore, deafening and raucous all at once.Why? Because Durant came out ahead of that preseason NBA game wearing a forest-green Shawn Kemp jersey, No 40. It was a reminder that the city has not had an NBA team since the SuperSonics left town for Oklahoma City (where they became the Thunder) in 2008.

Training camp is upon us once again. Here’s a look at the 10 most important figures heading into the 2022 NFL seasonThe pads are thudding. The sprinklers are sprinkling. Training camp is here. And with that, we look at the 10 most important figures for the 2022 NFL season, in no particular order. Continue reading...

The national carrier was the only airline trusted by Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man. But that was before it was privatisedThis week, it was a computer glitch that caused chaos at Qantas.It wasn’t the only airline affected by the IT problem, which also grounded the planes of some competitors. Continue reading...

State is second in three days to make decision amid push to fight outbreak with vaccines, outreach and educationCalifornia has declared a a state of emergency over monkeypox, becoming the second state in three days to do so as US authorities speed up efforts to combat the outbreak.

CDC says findings indicate others may be shedding virus as officials urge residents to ensure they’re vaccinatedThe polio virus was present in wastewater in a New York City suburb a month before health officials there announced a confirmed case of the disease last month, state health officials said on Monday, urging residents to be sure they have been vaccinated.The discovery of the disease from wastewater samples collected in June means the virus was present in the community before the Rockland county adult’s diagnosis was made public on 21 July. The case marked the first in a US adult in nearly a decade. Continue reading...

Temperatures rose above 95F on Sunday for the seventh day in a row, a record for the cityOregon authorities are investigating four additional deaths potentially linked to last week’s scorching heat wave, bringing the total number of suspected hyperthermia deaths to 14.The Oregon state medical examiner’s office said Monday the designation of heat-related death is preliminary and requires further investigation. Continue reading...

Analysis: The House speaker, who stood up for activists in Tiananmen Square in 1991, has long seen the role as part of her jobThirty-one years ago, a relatively new congresswoman from California surprised Chinese authorities when she unfurled a banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square dedicated to the pro-democracy student activists massacred there.Now the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is poised to travel to Taiwan during a tour of Asia nations this week, once again defying Beijing at a moment of extraordinary tension between the US and China – but also creating a host of problems for Joe Biden. Continue reading...

Bodies discovered in north-west near Oregon border as McKinney fire, which exploded in size over the weekend, turns deadlyTwo people were found dead in the path of the a wildfire raging across northern California, as firefighters raced to contain the blaze amid searing temperatures and impending thunderstorms.The McKinney fire in northern California, which has grown into California’s largest this year, is one of several large fires burning across the US west and one of several concurrent extreme weather events battering the region. Continue reading...

Man with ties to Three Percenters, who said he planned to violently drag Pelosi from building, sentenced to seven yearsAn associate of the far-right Three Percenters militia group has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for his role in storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.It is the longest sentence imposed so far among hundreds of cases related to the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump who sought to stop the official congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory over his Republican rival. Continue reading...

The basketball legend, who died Sunday aged 88, was doggedly committed to using his platform to amplify his political actions, setting a template for today’s athlete activistsIf a person can somehow be widely adored while being simultaneously underappreciated, they must be truly great. The late NBA legend Bill Russell was a truly great person.In the time since Russell’s death was announced by his family on Sunday, tributes have poured in from around the world. Among them was an eloquent eulogy from former US president Barack Obama in which he writes, “As tall as Bill Russell stood, his legacy rises far higher –both as a player and as a person.” Obama would know: he presented Russell with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. And yet, despite the outpouring of kind words in his memory, Russell may still be the most underappreciated icon in NBA history. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Court ruling comes after trial revealed tax arrangements and apparent effort to buy NeverlandThe heir to the digger company JCB has failed in an attempt to take control of a business run by his former best friend after a bitter US courtroom battle that included lurid allegations about personal conduct – and even revealed an apparent attempt to buy Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch.Jo Bamford, a grandson of the JCB founder, sued Joseph Manheim last year in Delaware, claiming that his former friend had “surreptitiously” taken control of a company they set up to help wealthy, mainly Chinese, investors get residence in the US. Bamford, 44, a self-styled “green entrepreneur”, claimed Manheim secretly siphoned millions of dollars from the business and Bamford sought damages of $13.8m (£11.3m). Continue reading...

FBI intervenes for a second time since last summer in case involving Brooklyn-based writer and activist Masih AlinejadA man who had a high-powered rifle outside the home of an Iranian-American journalist and activist targeted by an Iranian kidnapping plot last year is now facing federal charges, according to authorities.The arrest of Khalid Mehdiyev on Thursday marks the second time since last summer that the FBI has intervened in a case involving Brooklyn-based writer Masih Alinejad, who among other things has campaigned against the compulsory use of hijab head coverings for Iranian women. Continue reading...

Publisher of America: a Redemption Story accepts blame for text that says senator ‘preparing to make presidential bid in 2022’The Republican South Carolina senator Tim Scott has denied preparing to run for president, despite writing a book which says he is.America: a Redemption Story will be published next week. Continue reading...

China has stepped up its warning against Nancy Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan, saying its military will 'not sit idly by' if it goes ahead this week. The explicit message came amid reports that the US House speaker, who began her tour of Asia at the weekend, may be arriving in Taipei on Tuesday and as China’s People’s Liberation Army was celebrating the 95th anniversary of its founding. China’s spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said that because of Pelosi’s status, a visit to Taiwan, which China claims as its own province, would 'lead to egregious political impact'

One journalist reporting on the lethal injection was told her skirt was too short and another said she had a full-body inspectionLast Thursday night, the state of Alabama took three hours to find a vein in Joe Nathan James Jr through which officials could pump lethal injection drugs and execute him, a process that the department of corrections insisted was “nothing out of the ordinary”.Alabama appears to specialize in its extraordinary sense of the ordinary, particularly when it comes to the death penalty. It has now emerged that, during that execution, prison officials subjected female reporters who came as witnesses to the proceeding to a clothing inspection, attempting to bar one woman from the death chamber on grounds that her skirt was too short. Continue reading...

The Long Summer of 2022 began in May, when the abortion opinion draft leaked, and continued through a series of brutal rulings and congressional hearingsAmerican politics is about to take a summer break. The supreme court’s next term won’t start until October. Congress will be in recess in August. And the January 6 hearings will be on hiatus until September. Things will calm down for a little while. Or so it will seem on the surface, at least.This supposed respite follows what historians might come to call the Long Summer of 2022. It began in early May, when Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v Women’s Health Organization leaked – the decision that in June overturned Roe v Wade and abolished the right to abortion. This was not the start, but itself a manifestation and apotheosis of a reactionary assault on the post-1960s civil rights era that originated in Republican-led states and has been consistently enabled and actively advanced by the supreme court. The Dobbs leak, which dominated the political discourse for weeks, clearly indicated an escalation of rightwing attempts to turn the clock back by many decades.Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer Continue reading...

Those who care about democracy should advance the Democratic party. Anything else is a vanity projectDoes the US need a third party, and can one succeed? According to the founders of the new Forward party, the answer to both questions is yes. By targeting disaffected Americans on all parts of the political spectrum, the founders – who include the former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and the former Republican governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman – hope to create a new force that will lead Americans into a future in which they can “cut out the extreme partisanship, reintroduce a competition of ideas, and work together in good faith”.Sounds great. But unfortunately, the Forward party is ill conceived, based on a faulty idea of how to fix America’s descent into political madness, and likely to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and host of the podcast America Explained Continue reading...

Kari Lake and Mark Finchem are in running for crucial state roles. Plus, tributes paid to Nichelle NicholsGood morning.Arizona Republicans are on the verge of nominating two of the US’s most prominent election deniers for governor and secretary of state, the latest in a series of primary contests with serious consequences for American democracy.What do the experts say? “It’s a dangerous time for elections because you have a couple of people who are relying on people to vote for them but then will turn around and say the election system is rigged, despite the lack of any evidence as such. There’s no talk of policy or anything. It’s all looking backward to 2020,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant in the state.Why is this so important? Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest grain producers. The blockade has caused a worldwide grain shortage and price rises, which pushed some countries that are reliant on grain imports, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, towards famine. Continue reading...

As parents, we are bombarded with rituals and superstitions to get our children sleeping through the nightI’m not going to tell you whether or not my baby is sleeping. If I say he is and your baby is not, then you will hate me. And if I say that he isn’t, I will immediately be bombarded with unsolicited advice, usually for a fee. The shysters are already circling.Besides, nothing lasts for ever. When the baby was very small and I wondered if he might become “a good sleeper”, other parents delighted in telling me about the four-month sleep regression. Then I found a scientific article claiming it was a myth and decided that if I refused to believe in it, then it would not come for me. I’ll let you know how that goes, I could say, but I won’t. I’m very tired, but most of all I’m tired of talking and thinking about baby sleep.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author Continue reading...

While some have praised the Biden administration for the deal, others are upset over the prospect of releasing Viktor Bout, nicknamed the ‘Merchant of Death’A proposal by the Biden administration to exchange notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner and former marine Paul Whelan, two high-profile Americans currently detained in Russia, has been met with praise, confusion and fury.While some have praised the Biden administration and state department for doing whatever it takes to bring back Griner and Whelan, others have cast skepticism towards the deal, especially when it comes to releasing Bout, who has a notorious international reputation. Continue reading...

It’s much bigger than just Taytay and her tiny civilisation ending aeroplane(s). But she has to stop, they all do, one way or another

Kari Lake and Mark Finchem running for governor and secretary of state in primary contests that could have serious consequencesArizona Republicans are on the verge of nominating two of America’s most prominent election deniers for governor and secretary of state, the latest in a series of primary contests with serious consequences for America’s democracy.Kari Lake, a former news anchor, and Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker, are running for governor and secretary of state, respectively. Both have built their campaigns around the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Both are frontrunners in their races and if elected, would take over roles with considerable power over how elections are run and certified in a key battleground state. Continue reading...

Just weeks after Lizzo responded to my viral tweet by changing her lyrics, Queen Bey has made the same mistake on RenaissanceIt’s not very often that I don’t know what to say, rendered speechless by ignorance, sadness and a simmering anger born of bone-deep exhaustion. But that’s how I feel right now.Six weeks ago I called out American singer, Lizzo, on Twitter for her use of an ableist slur (“spaz”) in a new song. That tweet of mine – which explained how the slur was connected to my disability, cerebral palsy – took me less than five minutes to write and it went viral, landing on the front page of global news outlets including the BBC, New York Times and the Washington Post. Continue reading...

I recycle, have cut my meat intake and don’t have kids. And now I have to care about the environment more than everI find the environment and the climate emergency the most boring topic on the (burning) planet. When people talk about it, it makes me wish that the planet would succumb sooner rather than later, so I didn’t have to hear one more word about plastic straws and recycling. I flunked my geology exam on purpose, because studying for it was hell. When I see the images of little polar bears on melting ice, I feel nothing.Once, I posted a clip on Instagram from a documentary I made where I threw a set of scales into a lake to make a point about diet culture. The entire internet was enraged until I posted another video of the producer diving into the lake to pick it up again.Sofie Hagen is a writer and comedianDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

Take it from someone who grew up with a ‘low-ranking’ passport – Brexit has made international travel inherently more chaotic and stressfulWhenever I’m flying with someone who is a relaxed traveller – someone who arrives just before check-in closes, then has a full sit-down breakfast while I approach meltdown – I tease them about something I call “border privilege”. Chances are that relaxed traveller was born with access to a passport that has a high “power ranking”.If you don’t know what that is, lucky you, for you are probably a holder of a passport that is high on the Henley passport index – a global ranking of countries in terms of the travel freedom their passports enjoy. The higher your passport ranks, the more “border privilege” you have – that is, the ability to cross national boundaries with, at best, a sense of excitement and, at worst, mild annoyance at the inconveniences of travel.Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Reports that House speaker could visit Taiwan have riled China; analysts say she may yet do so in unofficial capacityThe US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has begun a tour of Asia but questions remain over whether it will include a stop in Taiwan.In a press release on Sunday, Pelosi said a delegation would travel to the Indo-Pacific “to reaffirm America’s strong and unshakeable commitment to our allies and friends in the region”. Continue reading...

The American actor has died at the age of 89. Loved for her inspirational, groundbreaking role as Lt Uhura on Star Trek, here we look back at her life and career Continue reading...

Rewritten $739bn bill, now called the Inflation Reduction Act, that tackles US debt and the climate crisis could pass Senate this weekWest Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin on Sunday hailed the legislation he almost killed off, calling the rewritten $739bn bill he agreed to last week to pay down US debt and tackle the climate crisis “great for America”.Manchin, on a tour of all five Sunday morning TV politics talk shows, told CBS’s Face the Nation that the energy and climate deal he’s now supporting will tackle inflation because it will be “aggressively producing more energy, to get more supply, to get the prices down”. Continue reading...

President feels well, White House says, after he tests positive only days after he tested negativeJoe Biden continued to test positive for coronavirus on Sunday and will “continue his strict isolation measures” his physician said.The US president feels well, the White House said. Biden tweeted about the economy and about regretting being unable to meet in person to commiserate with military veterans and their families visiting Capitol Hill in support of a long-awaited bipartisan bill that would expand healthcare access for those exposed to toxic burn pits. Continue reading...