by Rachel Leingang in Phoenix, Arizona on (#653CM)
Opponents fear the measure might result in increased ballot counting time and identity fraudA measure on Arizona’s ballot in November could require more stringent voter identification, both at the polls and via mail-in ballots – the primary way people in the state vote.Opponents of Proposition 309 warn it could disenfranchise voters, making them susceptible to identity fraud and taking longer to count ballots. But the measure has the backing of Arizona GOP heavyweights and the state party itself, and it comes on the heels of nonstop, unfounded claims of 2020 election fraud by Republicans here. Continue reading...
In this, one of a series of essays from countries in or bordering the former Soviet bloc, a Bosnian poet warns that Europe will have to leave its comfort zoneStop a person on the street in Sarajevo and ask them what they think about the war in Ukraine, and they’ll tell you they think that almost everything that happened in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is happening in Ukraine.In April, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of the war against Bosnia-Herzegovina. We consider early April 1992 the moment a new era began: we have the before, during and after the catastrophe.Faruk Šehić is a Bosnian poet, short story writer and novelistThis essay is part of a series, published in collaboration with Voxeurop, featuring perspectives on the invasion of Ukraine from the former Soviet bloc and bordering countries. Translation by Will FirthDo 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.
by Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent on (#653B5)
Negotiations between world’s biggest emitters have stalled since House speaker’s visit to TaiwanJohn Kerry has urged China to return to the negotiating table with the US on the climate crisis to kickstart stalled global progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.The special envoy on climate to the US president, Joe Biden, said: “China is 30% of all emissions. We need to get China.” Continue reading...
In an extract from his new book on the multi-sport legend, Jeff Pearlman takes a look at the star’s unusual trip across the Pacific for the Japan BowlOn New Year’s Day 1986, Bo Jackson’s Auburn football run concluded in the most humdrum of ways. The Tigers traveled to Dallas, where they suffered their fourth loss of the season, a 36–16 beatdown at the hands of Texas A&M. When the Cotton Bowl PA announcer notified the crowd that Jackson (who ran for 129 yards in defeat) was voted game MVP, the news was greeted with indifferent silence.This was hardly the way to cap a career. Continue reading...
The new PM’s rise is a great achievement, but his hardline views mean this is a less transformative moment than many hoped forCongratulations to Rishi Sunak on becoming the first Asian prime minister of the UK. It’s a momentous day for a number of reasons, not least because the Conservative leadership race was a shining example of that old immigrant adage: you have to work twice as hard to achieve your goals.On his second opportunity to become the leader of the Conservative party, all it took for Sunak to win was Liz Truss tanking the economy, global markets in turmoil and the threat of Boris Johnson returning as leader. The race showed that not only did Sunak have to work much harder than his predecessors for his appointment, but it was already obvious to the whole country in the previous leadership election that he was the only sensible candidate.Hashi Mohamed is a barrister and author of People Like Us: What it Takes to Make it in Modern BritainDo 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 wealthy Lindell has found a home among diehard Trumpists and has spent tens of millions to expose unproven electoral fraudMembers of the crowd cheer when a man, wearing a blue suit and a long red striped tie, walks by their section in the Covelli Centre . Some of the rally attendees stand as the man smiles and waves at them, applauding him before he climbs the steps to the press risers.Surprisingly, the man at the center of this praise is not Donald Trump, even though the former US president is the host of the rally in the hardscrabble rust belt city of Youngstown, Ohio. Continue reading...
State to withhold funds for planned bathroom until city finds a way ‘to use public money more efficiently’Controversy is swirling around a proposed public lavatory in San Francisco after a city newspaper exposed the project’s eye-watering price tag of $1.7m.That sum would have covered a 150-sq-ft restroom with just one toilet. The pricey plans were moving ahead until the San Francisco Chronicle lifted the lid on how much taxpayer money would go down the drain, prompting backlash and ridicule. Continue reading...
Excerpts reported by biographer show Alito, who wrote June ruling that outlawed abortion, said he was ‘big believer in precedents’In a private meeting in 2005, Samuel Alito, who would become the US supreme court justice who wrote the ruling removing the federal right to abortion, assured Ted Kennedy of his respect for Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision which made the procedure legal in the US.“I am a believer in precedents,” Alito said, according to diary excerpts reported by the Massachusetts senator’s biographer, John A Farrell, on Monday. “People would find I adhere to that.” Continue reading...
The Texas US Senator was talking about inflation when demonstrators started to chant and ABC turned off the audioThe daytime talkshow The View momentarily descended into chaos when climate protesters interrupted an interview with the Texas Senator Ted Cruz on Monday.Cruz was in the middle of talking about inflation when chanting that sounded like “Government funding now!” began. Continue reading...
Sports brand Adidas is also facing pressure to cut ties with the rapper over his hateful commentsKanye West is facing a growing backlash among California political leaders, entertainment industry figures and members of the Jewish community – who have called on Adidas to cut ties with the star – following several antisemitic incidents in Los Angeles that came after the artist made bigoted comments about Jewish people.The fashion designer and rapper now known as Ye has been spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories for weeks in interviews and on social media. He generated further outrage for wearing a “white lives matter” T-shirt during his runway show at Paris fashion week earlier this month. Continue reading...
Gunman, 20, shot and killed two people at Central Visual and Performing Arts high school before police shot him deadA gunman broke into a St Louis high school on Monday and killed two people before police shot him dead.Several other people were wounded in a deadly intrusion that is certain to reignite debate about gun control in the US, even after Congress passed a bill earlier this year that tightened restrictions on access to firearms for some people who are considered to be at risk of carrying out violence. Continue reading...
Residents plan to ‘pay double’ in the Arizona metropolis, which has the highest inflation rate in the USJosé Beltrán wakes up at 4.45am, has a cup of coffee and lets his dog out before heading to the hospital for his 6.30am shift. For the next 12 hours, he works as a certified nursing assistant in a Covid unit, helping patients who are on mechanical ventilation. When he gets home, he has a couple of hours before bedtime – time he’ll spend having dinner with his family, then hitting the books as he studies to get into nursing school himself.It’s a grueling routine: last week alone, he was scheduled to work 57.5 hours at the hospital. The job can be harrowing and requires absolute focus: when there’s a code blue, a patient needs resuscitation and it’s up to Beltrán to help save a life. “It’s the highest thrill in my field,” he says. “It’s a privilege to be able to do that. I couldn’t do it if I didn’t love it.” Continue reading...
Residents plan to ‘pay double’ in the Arizona metropolis, which has the highest inflation rate in the USJosé Beltrán wakes up at 4.45am, has a cup of coffee and lets his dog out before heading to the hospital for his 6.30am shift. For the next 12 hours, he works as a certified nursing assistant in a Covid unit, helping patients who are on mechanical ventilation. When he gets home, he has a couple of hours before bedtime – time he’ll spend having dinner with his family, then hitting the books as he studies to get into nursing school himself.It’s a grueling routine: last week alone, he was scheduled to work 57.5 hours at the hospital. The job can be harrowing and requires absolute focus: when there’s a code blue, a patient needs resuscitation and it’s up to Beltrán to help save a life. “It’s the highest thrill in my field,” he says. “It’s a privilege to be able to do that. I couldn’t do it if I didn’t love it.” Continue reading...
by Ed Pilkington in New York and agencies on (#652HK)
J Alexander Kueng to serve 3.5 years in prison to run concurrently with previous sentence he was given in federal trialOne of two former Minneapolis police officers charged with aiding and abetting the killing of George Floyd, the Black man whose violent death prompted street protests around the world, has pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors hours before jury selection in his trial was to start.J Alexander Kueng pleaded guilty on Monday to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s killing. As part of the deal, Keung will serve 3.5 years in prison to run concurrently with a previous three-year sentence he was given in a federal trial, though a more serious charge of aiding and abetting second-degree murder will now be dropped.The Associated Press contributed to this report. Continue reading...
Gory Halloween restaurant display called ‘disgusting’ and ‘sick’ in wake of controversial Netflix series about serial killerA Texas pizzeria is facing criticism for displaying a gory-looking pizza named after serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.Capital Pizza restaurant in Lubbock, a city in northwest Texas, introduced a store display featuring a pizza called the “Jeffrey Dahmer Special”. Continue reading...
The investigative journalist’s new audiobook, The Trump Tapes, digs deep into the threat the former president poses to democracyExplaining his decision to publish tapes of his 20 interviews with Donald Trump, renowned journalist Bob Woodward said he had finally recognized the “unparalleled danger” the former president poses to American democracy.His three books on the Trump presidency, Woodward said, “didn’t go far enough”. Continue reading...
Holga Castillo Olivares, 61, accused of concealing the fact that unnamed Sacramento teenager was staying at her homeFor nearly two years, a California teacher hid a boy who had been reported missing aged 15, authorities allege.Sacramento public school teacher Holga Castillo Olivares, 61, is accused of concealing the fact that the teenager was staying at her home despite a report that the boy was missing since the spring of 2020. Continue reading...
Ethan Crumbley, now 16, pleads guilty to all charges nearly a year after attack at Oxford high school in south-eastern MichiganA teenager pleaded guilty Monday to terrorism and first-degree murder in a Michigan school shooting that killed four students and put an extraordinary focus on the boy’s home life and the alleged role of his parents in the tragedy.Ethan Crumbley pleaded guilty to all 24 charges he faced nearly a year after the attack at Oxford high school in south-eastern Michigan. In the gallery, some relatives of the victims were weeping as assistant prosecutor Marc Keast described the crimes. Continue reading...
Texas senator wrote he ‘vehemently disagreed’ with colleagues’ call to allow certification of 2020 electionAs a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol during the January 6 attack in a desperate attempt to keep him in the Oval Office, Ted Cruz hid in a closet next to a stack of chairs, but he never thought twice about continuing to sow doubt about the former president’s electoral defeat, the Republican senator from Texas has revealed.Cruz revealed his whereabouts on the day of the deadly Capitol attack – which unsuccessfully aimed to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election – in a new book. The news was first reported by Newsweek. Continue reading...
Trump previously indicated he would agree to testify under live proceedings, but Pelosi says his lawyers will be unlikely to let him to speakAs jury selection begins in a criminal trial of the Trump Organization for tax fraud, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has taunted Donald Trump with being too cowardly to testify in another legal challenge bearing down on him.The House speaker goaded the former president in an MSNBC interview over the subpoena that was served on Friday, ordering him to testify under oath before the committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. “I don’t think he’s man enough to show up,” Pelosi said. Continue reading...
The parliamentary party must unite around the new prime minister to end the fiasco of the past six yearsThe comedy is over. The clowns have backed off. Boris Johnson raced from his Caribbean beach to revive his political potency, but for once it failed him. Those who knew him best recoiled in horror. He decided in his arrogance that this was “not the right time”. The money markets shuddered and this morning recovered. Britain is a parliamentary democracy, not a mobocracy. The grownups are taking back control.Now that the former chancellor Rishi Sunak will be the new prime minister, a greater question looms on the horizon. Has he the authority required to decontaminate Liz Truss’s brief essay in public finance? That she could do such damage in just six weeks shows the alarming fragility of a modern government. Sunak’s motto of “integrity, professionalism and accountability” could not be clearer. But stability depends on a brutal new round of spending cuts due on 31 October.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistCrisis at No 10: How long can the Tory government hold on? Join Hugh Muir, Polly Toynbee, John Crace and Jessica Elgot discussing another failed Tory prime minister and what the future holds for the government, in this livestreamed event. On Wednesday 26 October, 7pm–8pm BST. Book tickets at theguardian.com/guardianlive Continue reading...
While a whopping 71% of voters said that American democracy is at risk, just 7% named it as the most important issue in this electionThis much is clear: Democrats are in trouble in the midterms. After an initial bump from the widespread outrage at an extremist supreme court that stripped American women of our nationwide right to safe, legal abortion, voters are recalibrating, and falling into a familiar midterm routine: supporting the opposition party. Republicans, according to new polling, are leading with voters nationwide, and especially in a handful of crucial state races that will determine control of Congress.But there’s something bigger going on here than just the usual political churn, or even the idea that voters are more motivated by pocketbook issues than amorphous ones like a potential future need for abortion. Voters are adapting to authoritarianism. And that doesn’t just portend a bad outcome for Democrats in November; it suggests America’s democratic future is at acute risk.Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness Continue reading...
The final public hearing has wrapped up – we asked our readers to give their thoughts on whether the evidence stacked upThe House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol ended its likely final public hearing last week by subpoenaing Donald Trump to give evidence.Here, Guardian readers in the US share their views of the hearings, what they thought of the evidence given and if it had changed their mind. Continue reading...
The far-right Republican who is running for governor in Pennsylvania has extremist views – and he hasn’t softened his stance. Plus, how Barbra Streisand rose above jabs at her appearanceGood morning.As Pennsylvanians prepare to vote for their next governor, it is no exaggeration to say the future of American democracy is at stake.What does Mastriano believe? As a state senator in Pennsylvania, he said women who violated a proposed six-week abortion ban should be charged with murder. Mastriano frequently attacks trans people, and has said gay marriage should be illegal and same-sex couples should not be allowed to adopt children.Ten years after Mitt Romney’s loss, Republicans are fighting their first election since the presidency of Donald Trump. But far from entering next month’s midterms as the party of tolerance, diversity and sincerity, critics say, it has shown itself to be unapologetically the party of hate.Did Boris Johnson get much support? The former prime minister claimed to have won the support of 102 colleagues – two clear of the threshold needed – but only about 60 had publicly stated their support for him, leading many to believe he was bluffing.Who else is in the race? Penny Mordaunt is the third candidate in the race. She had only 30 public backers by Sunday night – 70 short of the number needed to get on the ballot paper, and is under pressure to withdraw and accept that Sunak has the support of the parliamentary party. Continue reading...
The 45-year-old had nothing to prove and plenty to lose by coming back from retirement. And now he’s stuck with a team that looks unable to support himIt was midway through the third quarter in Carolina on Sunday, with the Buccaneers trailing 14-0. At the peak of the Tom Brady Era, the deficit would have felt surmountable. After all, this was a matchup the oddsmakers almost considered a lock for Tampa Bay, listing them as 13.5-point favorites. This was the game for Brady and his offense to take out their anger on the lowly Panthers after losing to Pittsburgh last week. After all, in Carolina they were facing an interim head coach, former XFL quarterback PJ Walker, and a franchise which had just lost its best player.But after yet another stunning loss, this one 21-3 and somehow worse than last week’s, it’s safe to declare the Tom Brady Era as we know it O-V-E-R. As Oliver Connolly pointed out in these pages last week, many of Tampa’s woes are not down to Brady. The wideouts continued to be a detriment on Sunday, starting with Mike Evans dropping what should have been a touchdown on the opening drive. According to ESPN Stats and Info, Evans had 10.9 yards of separation between himself and the nearest defender. It was the most wide-open drop on a pass traveling over 30 yards this season. Continue reading...
by Adam Gabbattin Butler County, Pennsylvania on (#651YR)
The far-right Republican, running for governor in Pennsylvania, has extremist views – and he hasn’t softened his positions one bitAs Pennsylvanians prepare to vote for their next governor, it is no exaggeration to say the future of American democracy is at stake.Doug Mastriano, a retired army colonel who has enthusiastically indulged Donald Trump’s fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, is the Republican candidate. If he wins, he plans to deregister every single one of Pennsylvania’s 8.7 million voters. In future elections, Mastriano would choose who certifies – or doesn’t – the state’s election results. Continue reading...
Poverty is stalking the streets of Britain – and that’s the big issue the people in charge continue to duckIt won’t be Boris Johnson, but whoever the new prime minister turns out to be, they will have been dragged into office by “economic orthodoxy” and its henchmen. Their mandate is pre-written in the data you have been deluged with about the impact of unfunded tax cuts, from the depreciation of the pound to rises in interest rates, and the untenable upward effect this has had on mortgages and rents. The charts have spoken – an ideological experiment has gone terribly wrong and must be reversed.But it is a tale of two crises, and only one is being told. Attracting far less fanfare is another set of statistics about cold and hunger. More than a million people are expected to be pushed into poverty this winter. Their slide into deprivation will test an informal support network already stretched to its limit. Last week, the food bank charity the Trussell Trust launched an emergency appeal for donations because need for food banks has now outstripped donations. Charities like this, private citizens and schools are mobilising to bridge the gap. Continue reading...
Nevada’s athletic commission voted to oversee league of the controversial sport that has already seen one competitor dieCue the Will Smith jokes: the much-maligned president of the UFC, Dana White, has the green light for a new venture – the Power Slap League.Though much remains uncertain about the new league, slap fighting is pretty much what it sounds like: two people face each other and take turns smacking one another on the side of the head with an open hand. Continue reading...
Woman was taking dog out when she was ‘charged by an adult female black bear’ and sustained non-life threatening injuriesA woman in Washington state survived a bear attack on Saturday after she punched the animal in the nose, an official said.The woman, who has not been named, was taking her dog out in the town of Leavenworth, in the middle of the state, when she was “charged by an adult female black bear”, the Washington department of fish and wildlife said. Continue reading...
Jury ordered Jones to pay $965m in damages to families subjected to harassment from Jones’s lies about Newtown school shootingConspiracy theorist Alex Jones has asked a Connecticut judge to throw out a nearly $1bn verdict against him and order a new trial in a lawsuit by Sandy Hook families, who say they were subjected to harassment and threats from Jones’s lies about the 2012 Newtown school shooting.Jones filed the requests Friday, saying Judge Barbara Bellis’s pretrial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a substantial miscarriage of justice”. Continue reading...
Voters take advantage of in-person and mail-in voting as more than 5.8 million people already cast their vote by FridayEarly voting in the midterm elections is on track to match records set in 2018, according to researchers, as voters take advantage of both in-person and mail-in voting in states across the country.More than 5.8 million people had already cast their vote by Friday evening, CNN reported, a similar total to this stage in the 2018 elections, which had the highest turnout of any midterm vote in a generation. Continue reading...
Until Democrats tell it like it is, their electoral majorities will continue to be fragileA milder version of Liz Truss’s economically induced vanishing act may be occurring on this side of the Atlantic.Despite the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive campaign in generations to slow the economy and bring price increases under control, prices continue to climb.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...
The tribally owned Mad River Brewing Company has partnered with the Giants to build an economic support system and back key causesThese days, you’ll see them sprinkled across Oracle Park, the stadium of the San Francisco Giants: bright blue cans with images of a steelhead fish flapping above a waterway, a deer with its head to the ground or a dam in the Klamath River.The cans are produced by the Mad River Brewing Company, owned by the largest federally recognized Indigenous nation in California, the Yurok Tribe. And in April, they became the first tribally owned craft beer sold in a major league sports stadium. Continue reading...
If you’ve done something wrong, admit your mistake and fix what you can. Otherwise, stand your groundRemember Anton Ego – the aptly-named villainous restaurant critic in the animated film Ratatouille? His scathing review of Chef Gusteau’s restaurant debatably contributed to the chef’s death. It was only the delicious food prepared by Remy – he was the rat – which saved the day for the celebrated Parisian eatery. Ego represented a cohort of food critics that dominated the restaurant industry for centuries. But where are those food critics today? Sure, there are still a few around. But most of them have been crowdsourced by review sites like Yelp.Yelp has become the place where people get their food reviews. And not just food. It’s retailers and services too. The site reportedly has logged 184m reviews worldwide and 178m unique visitor each month. Some 45% of people will check a Yelp review before visiting a business. That is great power. Continue reading...
Animal Collective, Bonobo and Mercury prize winner Little Simz among acts to cancel concertsMusicians are cancelling concerts and entire tours because the rising costs of staff and materials coupled with a drop off in ticket sales is making them too expensive to run.Earlier this month, US band Animal Collective cancelled forthcoming European dates as“not sustainable”. Within days, the UK downtempo producer Bonobo called time on future live shows in America, describing them as “exponentially expensive”. Then electronic musician Tourist rescheduled a US stint, saying “sometimes tickets just don’t get sold”. Continue reading...
As the leader enters his third term, there are increasing signs that the country is turning inwards, replacing the outside world with cyber ‘reality’In August, there was an unexpected stir in China about a scholarly article. The piece, published in a respected but specialist journal, argued that during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing dynasty (1644-1911), China had been a country relatively closed off to the outside world. Most recent scholarship has assumed that this was a bad thing and that greater openness in the modern era had led to China’s rise in global standing and growth. But the article took a contrarian position, suggesting that there were economic and social advantages to the doors being closed in large part. The argument might have stayed in the realms of the academic. But it was then sent out on the social media feed of a thinktank closely linked to the Chinese Communist party (CCP). There was plenty of social media comment, mostly wondering whether the CCP was hinting that today, too, China should think about whether openness was quite such a good idea.At first glance, it might seem that the opening speech last Sunday by Xi Jinping at the 20th party congress was giving a very different message: indeed, there was a specific pledge praising the idea of openness in the next five years that will mark Xi’s third term. And attention at the end of the Congress has been on the sudden, still unexplained escorting of former president Hu Jintao out of the meeting, and the new Politburo standing committee whose members owe their standing almost entirely to Xi. But there are other signs that the China of the 2020s may be considerably less open than the one we have known for some four decades from the 1980s to 2020. China since the 80s has been defined by the idea that “reform” and “opening” have gone together. Yet that openness created an anomaly in the first two decades of the present century. China became a society highly connected with the outside world but also deeply controlled and monitored at home: open but illiberal, a combination that many theorists of democracy thought impossible. Unlike the old Soviet bloc, there was little sense that China tried to restrict its citizens, except political dissidents, from travelling abroad. The Chinese of the reform era studied in Britain, did deals in America, and saw the sights and bought luxury goods in Italy. Nobody stopped visitors from observing democracy in all its guises in the liberal world, but they understood that open discussion of the concept stopped when they arrived back at Beijing airport. Continue reading...
The Academy-award winner has been emailing a ‘daily dose of truth’ to mobilize supporters of the party to vote in NovemberFor the past month, Academy Award-winning documentary maker Michael Moore has been emailing out a daily missive “Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truth” on why he believes Democrats will win big in America’s midterm elections next month.Moore calls it “a brief honest daily dose of the truth – and the real optimism these truths offer us”. It also – at this moment in time – flies in the face of most political punditry, which sees a Republican win on the cards. Continue reading...
The menopause market is worth an estimated $600bn – and producers are falling over themselves to target women with everything they might need, from underwear to scentsFor my birthday last week, the algorithm gave me perimenopause ads. Happy birthday Eva, here is a future of anxiety, mood swings, brain fog, hot flushes and irregular periods, no gift receipt available sorry bye I love you. To be clear – Instagram is being previous. I remain calm, cool and bleeding, but also a member of the first generation of women actively aware of our soon coming menopause. Which has obvious benefits but also, less discussed, irritations.The menopause revolution happened in stages. The first stage involved talking about it. People like Davina McCall started discussing the impact of menopause on her life – her body, her mental health – in ways that opened up conversations between women and their doctors, and their employers, and their families. Data emerged: one in three women were choosing not to go to their GP, despite 77% finding at least one symptom of menopause “very difficult”. Continue reading...
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