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The American is one of the breakout athletes in Paris, thanks to an irreverent social media presence that has won her sponsors and millions of fansIlona Maher might not have the professional resume of Australia's Maddison Levi, Great Britain's Ellie Kildunne or New Zealand's Portia Woodman-Wickliffe. But the 27-year-old from Vermont is surely one of the biggest stars of the Olympic women's rugby sevens competition that kicked off Sunday at the Stade de France, at least among people under 30.One of the breakout social media personalities of the Tokyo Games three years ago, Maher has gone on to amass more than 1.4m Instagram followers with 1.6m more on TikTok, a combined reach that far outstrips more established US Olympic stars like Katie Ledecky and Noah Lyles. And those figures have only swelled in the three days since the Paris Games opened. Continue reading...

The convention celebrated Trump's vision of immigration as a disease. The GOP idea of a cure would mean I, and millions of others, would not existThe Republican party has made it clear it doesn't like pronouns. But two in particular have become the seething core of the worldview it holds: they" and them".Just hours after the former president was shot at on 13 July, Cory Mills, a Republican US representative from Florida, posted on X: First they tried to silence him. Then they tried to imprison him. Now they try to kill him." Continue reading...

It is becoming clear that much of the stakes of the November contest will revolve around questions of gender - and specifically, questions of familyIt's possible," writes Jessica Winter in the New Yorker, that if JD Vance had his way, citizenship in the United States would be conferred not solely by birthright but by marriage and children." This is no exaggeration. In a now viral 2021 clip, JD Vance said: Let's give votes to all children in this country, but let's give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power - you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic - than people who don't have kids. Let's face the consequences and the reality: If you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."This position now represents large swaths of the Republican party, which has taken on an angry and aggressively prescriptive approach to family life.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Campaign says it saw unprecedented grassroots support' as about 66% of total fundraising came from first-time donorsKamala Harris raised $200m in the week since she was endorsed by Joe Biden, her team said, as the vice-president appears to be drawing increased enthusiasm to her campaign.Harris for President said about 66% of the total came from first-time donors, as the campaign said it had seen unprecedented grassroots support". Continue reading...

Call me a grinch, but at no other time of year are we told quite so much how to behave, dress or eat. It's time this frankenseason was reined inI read yet another roundup of summer trends last week with narrowed eyes and my traditional wasp-chewing expression of disapproval. We are supposed, apparently, to greet this year's wet, brat, hot rat summer" with gladiator mullets, Nigella's sgroppino gelato and boat raves"; we should be monetising our feet and chopping wood. I hope you are taking notes.What gave me wasp-face (surely ripe for inclusion in a summer trend listicle, along with my other key seasonal trends, this and every year: underboob sweat, climate dread, toenail shame and excess salt consumption)? It's not the list itself I take issue with, except the inclusion of boats, which are hateful. It's the idea that July and August are so special that we need instructions to ensure we are doing them right. Continue reading...

Vice-president emphasizes bodily autonomy and affordable care as experts expect Democrats to remain on offenseKamala Harris is staking out health, and especially reproductive rights and affordable healthcare, as a central issue in her historic campaign for the US presidency, experts say.The first ad for the Harris campaign, released on Thursday, prioritized bodily autonomy, safety from gun violence, and affordable healthcare alongside issues like child poverty and the rule of law. Continue reading...

Former head of US border security says claim terribly misleading' and statistics show nine of 10 convicted traffickers are US citizensA former head of US border security has accused Donald Trump of exploiting" the pain of the opioid epidemic to wrongly vilify migrants as responsible for the surge in American deaths from fentanyl during recent years.But the Trump campaign is expected to double down on the deception now that the vice-president, Kamala Harris, whom Republicans describe as Joe Biden's border czar" and accuse of inaction over a surge of illegal immigration, is likely to be the Democratic presidential candidate in November. Continue reading...

New attack line on Trump seems to be sticking, simplifying Biden's threats to democracy warnings. Plus, US beat Germany at soccer in ParisGood morning.US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird.What are the polls saying? Harris is showing an uptick on Biden but still behind Trump. According to averages based on New York Times/Siena College polls, Trump is averaging 48% compared with Harris on 46%.What attack lines are Republicans deploying against Harris? Several Republicans on Sunday tried to portray Harris as a dangerous liberal" with far-left politics.What's been the latest trigger for escalating tensions? The diplomacy came amid growing anger in Israel over the strike on the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which Israel seized in 1967 and annexed from Syria in 1981. On Sunday, thousands attended funeral processions for the 12 children.What has the UN said about the prospect of war? The UN's special coordinator for Lebanon, as well as the UN peacekeeping force, urged maximum restraint". Both sides, they said, must put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire", which risks a catastrophe beyond belief". Continue reading...

The former BYU star drew comparisons with Steph Curry coming out of college but he never established himself in the NBA. Now he has a chance at goldJimmer Fredette was a comet in college. He won the National Player of the Year in 2011 and was the leading scorer in the NCAA as a senior for BYU. He wowed in the NCAA tournament, often taking on opponents one-on-five, and drew comparisons to Stephen Curry for his sharp shooting.But Fredette's pro career didn't pan out as he, and his many fans, hoped. Instead of becoming a multi-time NBA All-Star like Curry, he struggled to find his footing after being drafted 10th overall in 2011, playing for Sacramento for two-and-a-half seasons and then bouncing around the league before playing in Greece and China. But the 35-year-old has found a new calling as the face of USA's men's 3x3 basketball team. He will make his Olympic debut when the Americans begin their campaign against Germany on Tuesday. Continue reading...

New Jersey school to revert to its previous name after Menendez found guilty of taking cash and gold bribesA New Jersey school named after Bob Menendez intends to change its name after the state's Democratic senator was convicted of federal bribery charges on 16 July.Robert Menendez elementary in West New York plans to revert to its previous name - Public School No 3 - before the start of the upcoming academic year, the New Jersey Globe recently reported, attributing the information to the city's mayor, Albio Sires. Continue reading...

Not everything has worked but few other nations would have had the temerity to stage an opening in such fashionLet's face it, it was a failure. The rain, as if unleashed by a vengeful Olympian god upset at seeing what had become of the original Games, failed to derail the extravaganza devised by Thomas Jolly, as Poseidon's storms had failed to prevent Odysseus from reaching Ithaca. The saboteurs who paralysed most of France's TGV system on the eve of the opening ceremony failed too. One way or another, hundreds of thousands of drenched onlookers found a way to line the banks of the Seine to salute athletes and artists alike. And so did the rightwingers who had choked in their cafe creme when they'd heard that French-Malian Aya Nakamura was to perform on the big night, which she did, horror of horrors, with the Republican Guard in full parade garb, closing her skit with a Charles Aznavour song.Argentina had done even better. France's new sporting villains, since Chelsea footballer Enzo Fernandez posted a video of the Copa America winners singing racist and homophobic chants aimed at Les Bleus in the Argentinian dressing room, managed to fail even before the Olympic cauldron had been set alight by Teddy Riner and Marie-Jose Perec. What's more, they were sent packing from the sevens tournament by Antoine Dupont's team, in the Stade de France - and while Argentina's populist leader Javier Milei was the awkward guest of president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace. It couldn't have been worse; yet, somehow, it couldn't have been better. WE DID IT!", exclaimed a jubilant Macron on his X account. Continue reading...

We created a new kind of orchestra to fight for Ukraine all over the world

Top diplomats from Japan, the US, Australia and India met on Monday to discuss security concerns and joint support to reinforce maritime safety and cybersecurity in the Indo-Pacific region amid growing tensions with China. Penny Wong said they are facing 'the most confronting circumstances in our region in decades'. Continue reading...

In today's newsletter: The US vice-president has changed the race for the White House - but pitfalls still lie ahead Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. In the week since Kamala Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee, the contest for the presidency has been transformed. Money has poured in, the polls have tightened, and the campaign is about something fundamentally different. The same Democrats who were almost catatonic over Joe Biden's chances of victory because so many voters saw him as too old to do the job now believe that Donald Trump can be defeated.But none of that means that Harris is sure of taking the Oval Office - or even that she is the favourite. Today's newsletter explains how she has changed the race, and how much she still has left to do. Here are the headlines.Social care | Teachers, NHS staff and other key workers who balance part-time work with caring for loved ones are quitting their jobs to avoid being hit with huge cash penalties for breaching carer's allowance rules, according to a study by Carers UK. The report details carers being forced to take desperate measures to avoid breaching tight earnings limits, including quitting their jobs, cutting their hours, turning down pay rises, one-off cost of living payments and performance bonuses, and even working free hours each month.Israel-Gaza war | Global leaders were engaged in intensive diplomacy on Sunday to dissuade Israel from increasing attacks on Lebanon, in response to a rocket strike that killed 12 children in the occupied Golan Heights. Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he would determine the type" and timing" of the response to Hezbollah's attack.Immigration and asylum | A woman has died trying to cross the Channel in an overcrowded dinghy, as a number of small boats made the dangerous journey over the weekend.Home Office | Environmental groups are among 92 civil society organisations who have warned the home secretary Yvette Cooper against the steady erosion of the right to protest" in the UK, and called on her to reverse the previous government's crackdown on peaceful protest.Venezuela | Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela's presidential election by the government-controlled electoral authority - a result that appeared to dash opposition hopes of ending 25 years of socialist rule and looked certain to be bitterly contested. Continue reading...

If the world closes its eyes to the daily horrors inflicted on Palestinians, it runs the risk of cheapening life everywhereOn Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation after his speech to US Congress. It was a moment that seemed to usher in a new phase of the war in Gaza - one in which it is not only tolerated as an unfortunate necessity, but is seen as something for which unquestionable support will continue without limits, without red lines and without tactical discretion. Israel's relentless erasure of families, homes, culture and infrastructure - without end or indication of when any of it will satisfy its goals - is now just a part of life.At the same time, the presumptive Democratic contender, Kamala Harris, makes a nonsensical appeal that we cannot allow ourselves to become numb" to what is happening and that she will not be silent", when the only thing that matters is that the US continues to arm and fund Israel. Continue reading...

Keifer, a medical student at the University of Kentucky and reproductive justice advocate, put her studies on hold to compete in Paris. Now she is a double Olympic championIf it was the last time Lee Kiefer took the competitive piste, it's hard to imagine a better way to go out. The 30-year-old medical student from Lexington, Kentucky, wrote herself into fencing history on Sunday night, roaring to a second straight Olympic gold medal in the women's individual foil with a dazzling 15-6 win over younger teammate Lauren Scruggs in a rare all-American final.Scruggs, the precocious 21-year-old Queens native and rising Harvard senior, made history of her own in defeat, becoming the first Black American fencer to win an individual medal in a women's event. But the Olympic debutante proved no match for a defending champion driven by a self-belief that comes only with experience. Continue reading...

Adam Peaty shares silver as Andy Murray and Dan Evans save five match points to progress to round two in the men's doublesIt's also a huge night for Australia's women's football team. The Matildas are enormously popular at home, but they opened their Olympic campaign with a tame defeat to Germany in front of a sparse crowd. Victory over Zambia, the lowest ranked side in Group B, is essential.Meanwhile, Australia's qualification hopes have been helped by the extraordinary situation that has engulfed defending champions Canada, who have been docked six points and seen their coach banned for a year. Continue reading...

Kevin Durant, LeBron James and co dismantle their world No 4-ranked Serbian opponents in a riotous Paris Olympics pantomimePerhaps the pivotal moment in this game - tonally, if not competitively - came right at the end of the third quarter. Anthony Edwards sends Nikola Jovic to the shoe shop with an outrageous feint and slip, drains a simple two, and as he peels away he sees pretty much the entire bench doing impressions of him, spinning and reeling, consumed in fits of laughter. That, in hindsight, was probably the point at which a potentially tricky Olympic basketball opener against the world's No 4 side dissolved fully into riotous, uproariouspantomime.So no, it's fair to say Team USA did not get the memo. They are not burdened by your expectations. They are not keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they measure up against 1992. They have not been reading your angsty tweets (with the exception of KD, who almost certainly has). The result: three quarters of pure business, one quarter of pure pleasure, a potential medal rival not simply dispatched but shoved disdainfully aside, a game that was basically conceived at its outset as a series of memes. Continue reading...

National security council says attack that killed 12 children and teenagers should be universally condemned'The Biden administration formally placed blame on Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for the rocket strike that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.National security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the attack was conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control. It should be universally condemned." Continue reading...

Tactic calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are now more engaged with electionUS Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. Is Donald Trump OK?" the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: Trump is old and quite weird?" Continue reading...

The VIPs have hooked themselves to the US star's cultural celebrity, desperate to bathe in her reflected gloryThe loge boxes and the VIP seats lie empty for most of the morning. After all, this is precious croissant and champagne time, and nobody wants to waste it on gymnasts no one has heard of. A few minutes before the start of the second subdivision, they shuffle out of the lounges and executive suites and down the steps, pursued by the flashing red dots of a thousand phone cameras.We have Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg. We have Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. We have John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, Greta Gerwig and Jessica Chastain, the Jonas Brothers, the now-ubiquitous Anna Wintour, whose main leisure activity these days seems to be sitting in the front row of blue-chip sporting events with an austere expression, like a woman being dragged to watch her nephew's nativity play. Continue reading...

Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis try to paint Harris, a centrist Democrat, as having far-left politicsRepublicans took to the airwaves Sunday to criticize a surging Kamala Harris, calling the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a dangerous liberal" as US conservatives' lines of attack on the vice-president began to solidify.In appearances across CNN and Fox News, senior Republican figures Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis each attempted to paint Harris - who is typically seen as a centrist Democrat - as having far-left politics. Continue reading...

We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing ... and that never happened,' says lead sharpshooter on local Swat teamLocal police officers on a special tactical team who were assigned to help protect Donald Trump on the day the former president was wounded during a 13 July assassination attempt in Butler county, Pennsylvania, have said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened," Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in nearby Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News. Continue reading...

Mike Lynch uses first interview since acquittal in June of fraud charges to call for overhaul of extradition lawThe British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has said he thought he would die in a US jail if he had not been cleared of defrauding Hewlett-Packard over a multibillion-dollar business deal.In his first interview since his acquittal last month on charges related to the $11.1bn (8.6bn) purchase of his company Autonomy in 2011, the man once lauded as the UK's answer to Bill Gates said that his lung condition meant he doubted he would have survived a prison term. Continue reading...

Asked if he would make a good VP, transportation secretary says not appropriate for me to wander down that path'White House administrator Pete Buttigieg says it is a bad look" for Republicans to call Kamala Harris a diversity hire in their attempts to slow down the momentum that has greeted her ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket for November's presidential race.On Saturday's episode of the New York Times podcast The Interview, the Democratic transportation secretary said you can tell" that is the case because of how even Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson has tried to distance himself from that line of attack against Harris. Continue reading...

The city where the president was born is still clearly Joe Biden country - but there's an acceptance that he had to drop outThe Central Scranton Expressway, the road which leads into Scranton from the I-81 highway, was renamed in 2021 as the President Joseph R Biden Jr Expressway.The road drops down into the center of Scranton, the Pennsylvania city where the president was born, where it meets up with Biden Street - renamed in the same 2021 city council vote. Continue reading...

Bishara Bahbah bent on punishing' Democrats for unfettered support' of Israel, despite GOP following suitFor John Akouri, whose father immigrated from Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1955, there is only one choice for president in November's election: Donald Trump, despite the Muslim travel ban during his presidency, the felony falsifying business records conviction and the unadulterated drama constantly surrounding him.After almost two decades of wars and watching [the Islamic State] cause devastation in Syria and in Iraq we needed someone to come in and clean things up," he said of his initial draw to Trump for the 2016 election. So, I thought on a foreign policy and national level he was saying the right things. He was a breath of fresh air," he continued, referencing Trump's withdrawal of thousands of US troops from Syria in 2019. Continue reading...

Our response to global heating and the decimation of animal species is to marginalise the Green party and lock up protestersSigns and wonders. Omens of black portent. Part of an American looney's ear has been shot off by another American looney. The proposed presidency of the earless looney had been endorsed by Atomic Kitten's Kerry Katona. A computer went wrong and everything in the world stopped working everywhere. On Tuesday it was reported that Chris Packham regretted having once ridden an elephant. Last Sunday was the hottest day ever. A lioness hath whelped in the streets. Graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead. Suella Braverman sat in for James O'Brien on LBC and the last surviving member of the Four Tops died. Surely we are living in The End Times. The optics, as they say, are not good.But last week I sat outside at night alone on my Welsh mountain holiday, drinking draught Bwtty Bach beer from a plastic flask and reading an old Brigid Brophy paperback. For a moment I was happy beyond measure, forgot the world beyond, and stopped worrying. And then I saw something was awry in my idyll. I looked up at a security light, a stark halogen glow between the grey stone wall and the bright buck moon. Not long ago, in such a night as this, such a lamp as that would always have been hazed by a fuzzy penumbra of buzzy invertebrates. But tonight the air around it was hungry and dead, the entomological equivalent of an empty Republican convention room, where no one at all turns up to listen to Boris Johnson.Stewart Lee's Basic Lee is available to stream on Now TV. He is previewing 40 minutes of new material in Stewart Lee Introduces Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with Connie Planque (12), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The move by the billionaire news mogul, 93, could have a real, significant impact' on the global media landscapeAn elderly billionaire goes to war with his adult children over the future of his media empire. His only ally is his eldest son, crowned leader of his father's enterprise after years of jostling with his siblings.In choosing a successor, the patriarch spurns three of his other children, who remain threats: when he dies, they will each have just as much power as the eldest son to shape his companies, potentially against the rightwing ideologies that have guided them for decades. Continue reading...

The three-time Rookie of the Month has been elevated to the main squad. Her inclusion points to a team with one eye on gold and one on the futureThe US women's soccer team face the familiar pressure of trying to bring home gold at the Olympics. But for new manager Emma Hayes and a younger generation of talent, this tournament is as much about redefining their story and building toward the future as winning the title.The 18-player roster has an average age of 26.8, which is the fourth-youngest roster the US have ever sent to the Olympics and the youngest since 2008. And few players embody the turn-the-page nature of the squad better than Washington Spirit midfielder Croix Bethune. Continue reading...

Media mogul's bid to extend rightwing influence beyond the grave should be resisted to the lastWe live in an era of private dynasties. America's billionaires are worth a cool $5.5tn at the last count. Three - Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla's Elon Musk and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg - are worth over a staggering $500bn between them. Americans dominate the global billionaire league table: Britain has none in the top hundred. But we still have enough to cause concern.Individuals who have resources on this scale change the dynamics of the economies and societies in which they live, as the US increasingly dramatises. Their spending pulls economies out of kilter so that too much production is directed towards opulent, useless baubles, but, more dangerously, it spills over into buying political influence - directly in the political process and indirectly via media ownership. Unconstrained, the impact can only grow in the decades ahead, a phenomenon of which the dynastic founders are well aware, even if the wider public is not. Continue reading...

The writer, who would have turned 100 this week, spoke to, and from, America's moral conscienceJames Baldwin was about 10 when he first read Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. The character in the novel that most spoke to him was not the virtuous aristocrat Charles Darnay or Sydney Carton, the dissolute lawyer turned hero, but Therese Defarge, a woman brimming with hate, sitting in the shadow of the guillotine, knitting as the heads rolled.I recognised that unrelenting hatred," Baldwin later wrote in his book-length essay The Devil Finds Work, for it was all up and down my streets". Those streets were the streets of Harlem, and the hatred was born out of the racism and poverty that encased the lives of those who lived there.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...

Special report A meeting in a New York coffee shop helped US investigators get the inside track on a network of doping and the agents that prey on vulnerable athletesA winter's day, 2015, New York. Investigator Victor Burgos turned over the conversation he was about to have in his mind. In the next minutes, he was either going to recruit an ally in the fight against anti-doping or have a hostile, frustrating encounter that would send him back to the drawing board. Chances were it would be the latter. The omerta of dopers matches the mafia. No one talks. Few inform on their peers.He was meeting a distance runner who was blissfully unaware of what was coming. The man was superb by normal standards, his marathon personal best well within what might be regarded as world class. In Kenyan terms, though, he was a mid-ranker and never going to be an Olympic superstar. He also had tested positive for 19-nortestosterone, a hardcoresteroid. Continue reading...

The choice for voters has never been so clear cut as Kamala Harris takes on Donald Trump for the White HouseA man convicted of dozens of felonies versus a criminal prosecutor. An architect of abortion bans versus a champion of reproductive freedom. An elderly white man fixated on the past versus a mixed-race daughter of immigrants leaning into the future.One hundred days from the US presidential election, the choice for voters has never been so clear cut. Kamala Harris, 59, the de facto Democratic nominee after the dramatic withdrawal of Joe Biden, is a progressive person of colour bidding to become the first female president in America's 248-year history. Continue reading...

Pramila Jayapal, progressive Seattle representative, says of undeniable' enthusiasm: I have not seen anything like this'Kamala Harris pledged to earn the votes of young people this election, as the vice-president and newly elevated presumptive Democratic nominee rides a gen Z-powered wave of online Kamalove" .In a virtual address to attendees of a two-day summit in Atlanta, hosted by the liberal gen Z-led organization Voters of Tomorrow, Harris said she had been elected the first female vice-president of the United States because young voters showed up" in 2020. She touted historic progress" made by the Biden-Harris administration on combating gun violence and climate change, all of which she said was again at stake this November". Continue reading...

Intensity and dramatic spread have led to unwelcome comparisons to 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 peopleCooler temperatures brought some relief to the thousands of firefighters battling the Park fire in northern California after it exploded in size, becoming the largest in the state and prompting the governor to make an emergency declaration for three counties.The intensity and dramatic spread of the wildfire led officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the disastrous Camp fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and destroying 11,000 homes. Continue reading...

The Florida swimmer anchored the US men's 4x100m freestyle relay team to victory as he claimed his eighth Olympic titleNot long after Caeleb Dressel touched the wall on Saturday night to clinch USA's first gold of the Paris Olympics, his teammate Hunter Armstrong broke down in tears while receiving his medal at the top of the podium.Dressel could relate. Eight years ago he was the young hotshot reduced to a blubbery mess after winning the first of two golds alongside Michael Phelps and Nathan Adrian in the same race on his Olympic debut in Rio. Now the Florida native, who turns 28 next month, is the veteran of a young US swim team looking to keep pace with their mighty Australian rivals. Continue reading...

Antoine Dupont and Ariarne Titmus were the golden turns on the opening Saturday in ParisWe're now just 15 minutes away from the start of the action on day one of the Paris Olympics. And that action is badminton.If you don't know your back alley from your shuttlecock, fear not, because here's one we made earlier.The pool is shallower than the 3m standard, at 2.30m and there have been some questions raised over the effect this will have. The starting platforms have fins that allow swimmers to really push off at the gun. And one of France's faces of the Games, swimmer Leon Marchand, believes it will live up to expectations.The pool is superb," he said. I loved the feeling I had in the water, the depth which is the same along the entire length. So you feel like you're swimming fast and that's cool. It's a beautiful pool." If swimmers are feeling fast in the pool at La Defense, we could yet see some new world records. Continue reading...

Sean P Grayson worked for six law enforcement agencies in four years, with allegations of abuse of power and lyingAs vigils for Sonya Massey take place across the US this weekend, a history of unethical and aggressive behavior by the officer who shot her, Sean P Grayson, is emerging. Grayson's disciplinary file includes accusations of bullying behavior and abuse of power, according to CBS News.Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman and mother of two living outside Springfield, Illinois, had called 911 when she thought a prowler was lurking outside her home on 6 July. Grayson and another officer from the Sangamon county sheriff's office were dispatched and arrived at her home. Instead of helping Massey with a possible intruder, Grayson shot her in the face after she moved a pot of water from her kitchen stove at their request. Continue reading...

A week ago, former president was riding high, but now he faces vibrant, younger rival who hit the ground runningDonald Trump capped a tough week in which his Democratic opponents turned the tables, replacing aging Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as their top choice for president, by resorting to insults and extremism on the campaign trail.A week ago, Trump was riding high on the iconic moment when he rose bloodied and with a defiantly raised fist from an assassination attempt, pulling away in the polls. Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to recover from his dire late June debate against the Republican nominee and an unconvincing performance in the days since. Continue reading...