USC and UCLA’s stunning move to the Big Ten has kicked off a wave of conference realignment that will rock college football to its foundationIt’s 2032. At long last, humans have landed on Mars.Back on Earth, US sports fans have a simple question: Is the Mars colony in the Big Ten or the SEC? Continue reading...
Critics say Aipac and its allies are seeking to influence Democratic politics with money from Republican billionairesPro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.A surge in political spending by organisations funded by hardline supporters of Israel, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has reshaped Democratic primaries over recent months even though debate about the country rarely figures as a major issue in the elections. Continue reading...
Towering waves have crashed over the top of oceanfront buildings in Keauhou-Kona, Hawaii. Video captured the moment a giant wave poured over the top of two-storey apartment buildings and flooded a car park. Powerful waves also crashed into an outdoor wedding party, sending tables flying and guests running. The US National Weather Service said a southern swell was creating ‘historic’ surf conditions. The large waves have damaged several buildings and forced road closures in Keauhou-Kona
Far-right Trump ally seeks to claim in federal court that he did not willfully fail to comply with subpoenaWith jury selection nearly complete, opening arguments are expected to take place on Tuesday in the federal trial against Steve Bannon, the top former Trump strategist charged with contempt of Congress after he failed to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.Bannon appeared in federal court on Monday as his trial formally opened in Washington. The far-right provocateur – one of the principal architects of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election – is attempting to argue that he did not willfully fail to comply with the subpoena, which sought documents and testimony. Continue reading...
A strong winter storm in the South Pacific produced the swell which headed for the islands, bringing waves more than 20ft highTowering waves on Hawaii’s south shores crashed into homes and businesses, spilled across highways and upended weddings over the weekend.The large waves, some more than 20ft (6m) high, came from a combination of a strong south swell that peaked Saturday evening, particularly high tides and rising sea levels associated with climate change, the National Weather Service said Monday. Continue reading...
The heist took place after armed guards walked away from a Brinks vehicle that had been traveling to Los Angeles for a jewelry showThieves in California stole millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry and gemstones after breaking into an unattended security vehicle on its way back from a jewelry show, police said.The robbery took place in a remote rest stop in southern California last week, authorities said on Monday, after the vehicle’s two armed guards walked away. Continue reading...
However nearly 400 officers waited 73 minutes before breaching the classroom as newly released footage shows chaotic sceneNewly released body camera footage from the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, shows that within moments of arriving at Robb elementary school, some police officers knew they needed to move swiftly to save lives.“Dude, we gotta get in there,” said staff sergeant Eduardo Canales, according to body camera footage released late on Sunday by the small south Texas city, adding: “He’s still shooting. We gotta get in there.” Continue reading...
Family members of Texas school shooting victims say state legislature’s 77-page report ‘doesn’t change anything’Wearing a shirt bearing his granddaughter’s name and a button with her face, Vincent Salazar arrived at the Uvalde civic center around noon Sunday to learn what a Texas legislative committee had determined about the day she died.He didn’t expect answers to his most pressing questions, like exactly how it happened and who was accountable for not preventing the tragedy, but still wanted to be there for Layla, the 10-year-old girl who loved to swim and run and dance before the day a gunman walked into her fourth grade classroom in May. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington on (#61HT9)
Request comes after Biden returns from Saudi trip in which he claims to have raised journalist’s murder with crown princeThe Biden administration asked a US judge for a 60-day extension before it formally weighed in on whether Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, ought to be granted sovereign immunity in a case involving the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.The Department of Justice said in a filing before a US district court that it had initiated a “decision-making process” about whether it would file a statement of interest in the case but that it would not be able to comply with the court’s requested deadline of 1 August. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Charleston, West Virginia on (#61HQY)
Judge says the state’s sole abortion clinic and its patients ‘are suffering irreparable harm’A judge in West Virginia blocked enforcement of the state’s 150-year-old abortion ban on Monday, opening the door for abortions to resume in the state.The Kanawha county circuit court judge, Tera L Salango, granted the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia a preliminary injunction against the ban, saying that in the absence of action by the court, the state’s sole abortion clinic and its patients, “especially those who are impregnated as a result of a rape or incest, are suffering irreparable harm”. Continue reading...
Gunman was a 20-year-old man who shot five people at the Greenwood Park mall before a shopper shot and killed himAuthorities on Monday identified the gunman who shot five people at a suburban Indianapolis shopping mall on Sunday, killing three of them, before a shopper shot and killed him.He was a 20-year-old local man, Jonathan Sapirman, of Greenwood, who began firing after leaving a bathroom at the Greenwood Park Mall shortly before it closed Sunday evening, the Greenwood police chief, James Ison, said at a news conference. Continue reading...
Jury to decide on death penalty or life in prison for gunman who pleaded guilty to murdering 17 people in 2018A prosecutor on Monday urged jurors to sentence to death the gunman who killed 17 people in a mass shooting at a Florida high school in 2018.The penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz began on Monday, the deadliest US mass shooting to go before a jury. Continue reading...
Infectious disease expert and adviser to Trump and Biden says of Covid: ‘I think we’re going to be living with this’Anthony Fauci announced on Monday he will have retired by the time Joe Biden’s first term in the White House ends in January 2025, but said his hope of eliminating Covid will likely not have been achieved by then.“If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have Covid any more,’ then I will be 105,” the government’s chief medical adviser, 81, said in a wide-ranging interview with Politico. Continue reading...
Former Trump adviser refused to comply with Capitol attack subpoena for documents and testimony related to January 6A federal criminal trial got under way on Monday, with the start of jury selection, to determine whether Steve Bannon, the influential former adviser to Donald Trump, broke the law by refusing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony by the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Last fall, the congressional committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots subpoenaed Bannon to sit for a deposition and to provide a wide range of documents related to the events of January 6. Bannon refused to comply. The committee cited him for contempt and referred him to the US justice department for prosecution in October of last year. Continue reading...
Agency’s account about how text messages from day before and day of the Capitol attack were erased has shifted several timesDeleted Secret Service texts sent on 6 January, the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol, and the day before will be released by Tuesday to the House committee investigating the failed attempt by supporters of Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, a panel member said.“You can imagine how shocked we were to get the letter from the [Department of Homeland Security] inspector general saying that he had been trying to get this information and that they had, in fact, been deleted after he’d asked for them,” committee member and California Democratic congresswoman Zoe Lofgren told ABC’s This Week. Continue reading...
Dangerous heat will become the norm, even in the UK. Systems need to urgently change – and the silence needs to be brokenCan we talk about it now? I mean the subject most of the media and most of the political class has been avoiding for so long. You know, the only subject that ultimately counts – the survival of life on Earth. Everyone knows, however carefully they avoid the topic, that, beside it, all the topics filling the front pages and obsessing the pundits are dust. Even the Times editors still publishing columns denying climate science know it. Even the candidates for the Tory leadership, ignoring or downplaying the issue, know it. Never has a silence been so loud or so resonant.This is not a passive silence. It is an active silence, a fierce commitment to distraction and irrelevance in the face of an existential crisis. It is a void assiduously filled with trivia and amusement, gossip and spectacle. Talk about anything, but not about this. But while the people who dominate the means of communication frantically avoid the subject, the planet speaks, in a roar becoming impossible to ignore. These days of atmospheric rage, these heatshocks and wildfires ignore the angry shushing and burst rudely into our silent retreat. Continue reading...
The schism in world golf is the all-consuming storyline, with all eyes now turning to Augusta and the 2023 MastersThe condensed nature of the men’s major championship schedule leaves an unsatisfactory pause after the final putts are holed at the Open. To be precise, 263 days will have passed between Cameron Smith holding the Claret Jug aloft at the Old Course and the opening tee shots being struck at the 2023 Masters.There is reason, however, to wonder what on earth the professional game could – or should – look like by the time it returns to Augusta National next year. Mainstream tours can wish away the LIV Series all they like and the R&A can try to divert focus on to Smith’s outstanding final round of 64, but the fact remains this major was dominated by discourse about the rebel league. Continue reading...
With white billionaire friends like these, progressives and Democrats are likely to lose political power and also set back the cause of racial justice in this countryThe 2022 Democratic primaries have seen a surge of white billionaires, ostensibly Democrats, throwing their weight – and their money – around to try to boost the fortunes of hand-picked, under-qualified white men running against candidates of color. They are doing this despite the candidates of color often being more experienced and better suited to both win and govern in a period of fractious racial conflict where democracy itself is under ferocious attack. With white billionaire friends like these, progressives and Democrats are likely to lose political power and also set back the cause of racial justice in this country.Not only is it a bad look and a continuation of institutional racism in a party that is nearly half people of color, but, most immediately, it’s bad electoral politics. Most of these billionaires and billionaire-backed politicians are weaker candidates than the person of color they are trying to block.Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority. He is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
World Rugby CEO doesn’t think ‘the game needs the US in France next year’ but knows Chile’s win on Saturday underlined the need for serious work before the World Cup comes to AmericaThe first thing to do in conversation with Alan Gilpin, chief executive of World Rugby, the day after an extraordinary World Cup play-off is to celebrate Chile, qualifiers for the first time after beating the USA 31-29 in Colorado, 52-51 on aggregate.“Congratulations to them,” Gilpin says. “They’ve pulled together an incredibly committed, passionate team who believe in each other and were able to really hang in at times against a very good Eagles side. Continue reading...
by Sam Levin in Lancaster, California, with photograp on (#61H2G)
On the edge of northern Los Angeles county, at least 200 people are living in tents and trailers on remote, harsh terrain. ‘They treat us like we’re a lost cause,’ one resident saidIn a remote stretch of southern California desert, at least 200 unhoused people live outside, battling the extremes: blazing hot temperatures in the summer, snow in winter, rugged terrain inaccessible to many vehicles, a constant wind that blankets everything with silt, and no running water for miles.For Candice Winfrey, the conditions almost proved deadly. Continue reading...
Increase will keep up the pressure at pumps, where drivers have faced record petrol and diesel pricesThe price of oil rose on Monday after the US president, Joe Biden, came away from talks in the Middle East without an agreement on raising supply.Biden had hoped to secure a promise from Saudi Arabia to increase its output of oil, which could lead to an easing of global supply pressures. Continue reading...
In states with abortion bans, ob-gyn residency programs may need to offer out-of-state training options in order to maintain their accredited statusIt was the moment Dani Mathisen had eagerly awaited for weeks. She and her husband watched the ultrasound screen as the wand slicked through the jelly on her stomach. As a doctor, Dani could interpret the images on the 20-week week anatomy scan herself – and immediately, she started seeing the problems in her pregnancy.Her daughter’s feet weren’t forming quite right. A bone surgery can fix that, she thought. Continue reading...
The Dallas Cowboys are valued at a staggering $7bn despite a losing culture and a penchant for off-field scandal. Is the world’s richest sports team really all hat and no cattle?Before he was the title character of an Emmy-winning series, Ted Lasso was the star of a 2013 marketing campaign for NBC after the network was awarded the broadcasting rights for the Premier League in the United States.The ad followed the same fish-out-of-water premise as the show it later inspired: Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis, was a red-blooded American football coach hired by Tottenham Hotspur struggling to grasp the basics of “soccer”. Continue reading...
The work involved in taking care of a baby is unpaid, hard and often overlooked – but I now find pleasure and validation in itI’m supposed to be writing about joy, but I’ve just been crying my eyes out. Nothing major, just the physical aftermath of illness, sleep deprivation and a baby whose Celtic roots are manifesting themselves in an extreme hatred of hot weather. The thing I am learning about parenthood is that the lows can feel very low, but they are also transient because the joy, oh my God, the joy! It carries you through.The cult of motherhood, of course, needs no more cheerleaders. The fact that we are all supposed to be so happy-clappy about child rearing has been the source of much maternal unhappiness and frustration. Several women have confessed to me that they didn’t feel that powerful, golden oxytocin high you’re supposed to feel after giving birth. Instead, the joy grew and grew as they got to know their babies, but still they felt guilty.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author Continue reading...
Faced with a grim outlook for 2022, some Democrats are looking ahead to 2024 and asking, is Joe Biden the best person to lead the party and the US?Joe Biden is having a rough summer. The US supreme court has overturned Roe v Wade, ending federal protections for abortion access. Although gas prices are now falling, they remain high and have driven inflation to its largest annual increase in more than 40 years. West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has finally ended any hopes that the president had of passing a climate bill in Congress. With an evenly divided Senate, Biden’s options for addressing these problems – or enacting any of his other legislative priorities – are bleak.The American people have taken note. Biden’s approval rating has steadily fallen since April and now sits in the high 30s. A recent Monmouth poll found that only 10% of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction. Continue reading...
They’re an alarming symbol of an American crisis. Do they represent our inevitable future?A company in Fort Pierce, Florida – not far from Parkland, site of the 2018 school shooting that killed 17 – is stirring controversy with its plan to protect children from school shootings by hiding them in bullet-resistant steel enclosures.To many, the idea of directing children into stark metal boxes serves as an alarming symbol of a country that fails time and again to address the causes of its gun violence crisis. Continue reading...
Man entered centre with rifle and began firing in food court before being killed by armed bystanderThree people were fatally shot and two injured at an Indiana mall after a man with a rifle opened fire in a food court and an armed civilian shot and killed him, police said.The man entered the Greenwood Park Mall with a rifle and several magazines of ammunition and began firing in the food court on Sunday evening, said the Greenwood police department chief, Jim Ison. Continue reading...
Report that draws from interviews with family members, phone information and testimony given to lawmakers offers the most complete account yet of shooterBefore shooting 21 people to death at Robb elementary in Uvalde, Texas, the killer had threatened suicide, menaced women, stockpiled guns and accessories and made a video of himself riding around while holding a dead cat, according to a preliminary report from a committee of Texas state lawmakers investigating the massacre.The story of 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos – as portrayed in the report released Sunday – is one of red flags that caretakers and officials of all kinds largely missed until he went to his former fourth grade classroom and murdered 19 students as well as two teachers on 24 May in one of the deadliest school shootings ever in America. Continue reading...
by Sam Levine in New York and Charles Scudder in Uval on (#61GMS)
Nearly 400 officers from myriad agencies went to the school, but were stymied by a lack of coordination, report detailsThere were “systemic failures and egregious poor decisionmaking” involved in the deadly school shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, a committee of state lawmakers investigating the massacre has found.The 77-page report from the Texas legislature – released Sunday – details glaring failures in the years leading up to and during the 24 May shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead, along with 17 others wounded. Continue reading...
Our award-winning photographer has been at St Andrews for the Open and presents some of his favourite shots from 2022’s historic tournament Continue reading...
Australian Cameron Smith shot a stunning final-round 64 to win the 150th Open Championship at St AndrewsExcellent birdie-birdie-birdie start by Xander Schauffle today. Last week’s Scottish Open winner hasn’t had the week he wanted but looks to be finishing off in style. A contrast to Jon Rahm who appears ready to explode after a bogey at 3 and a double bogey at 4 when he had wedge in hand for his second. The Spaniard drops to tied 68th.Local Scot Robert MacIntyre is currently giving the galleries plenty to cheer. The left-hander has bagged two eagles today - at the 5th and 7th - and is -6 overall and tied 26th as he tees off at 13. A shame about that pesky double bogey at the 1st today. Continue reading...
Senator also rebukes Biden for Saudi Arabia trip: ‘I don’t believe we should maintain a warm relationship with a dictator like that’Bernie Sanders harshly criticized prominent fellow Democrats on Sunday, accusing his Senate colleague Joe Manchin of sabotaging the president’s agenda and rebuking Joe Biden for traveling to Saudi Arabia last week.During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Sanders interrupted host Martha Raddatz when she said Manchin had “abruptly pulled the plug” on supporting a scaled-back version of a spending bill that is crucial to Biden’s agenda. Manchin said he would not support provisions in the bill that increase spending to combat climate change and close tax loopholes. Democrats cannot pass the bill without Manchin’s support in a US Senate that is divided 50-50, with vice-president Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker in the event one is needed. Continue reading...
Longtime Hells Angels president who cultivated his outlaw image and turned the motorcycle club into a global brandAs the longtime president of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, Sonny Barger, who has died aged 83, was the epitome of the outlaw biker. It was something he had earned, but also an image he cultivated with charisma and shrewdness, turning Hells Angels into a worldwide brand. Though law enforcement saw the Angels as more of a gang than a club, in the 1960s the media latched on to Barger (pronounced Bar-gurr), selling the outlaw image to the world as a form of countercultural protest that took celluloid form in films such as Easy Rider (1969).This is not surprising. The postwar image of motorcycle gangs was established by the 1953 movie The Wild One. When Marlon Brando, as the leader of the Black Rebels, is asked what he is rebelling against, he replies, “Whaddaya got?”. Early in his biking career, after having his skull fractured by police, Barger added a “1%” patch to the Angels’ outfit, in response to the head of the American Motorcyclist Association claiming “99% of motorcyclists were law-abiding”. Continue reading...
‘No one is above the law,’ says Elaine Luria in response to whether Trump could shield himself from threat of prosecution by simply announcing runDonald Trump won’t blunt the investigation by the congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6th attack on the Capitol by announcing that he’s running for the Oval Office again, a member of the panel said Sunday.Elaine Luria, a Virginia congresswoman and one of seven Democrats on the committee, told CNN’s Dana Bash, “The bottom line is that no one is above the law – whether he’s a president, former president or a potential future presidential candidate, we are going to pursue the facts.” Continue reading...
Relatives tell of loss as experts says harsher laws are forcing people to take ever more dangerous routes into USBefore he left Veracruz, Pablo Ortega asked his sister Rosa to do two things: look after his pregnant wife, and, should anything happen to him on his way to the US, make sure his body was brought home so it could be carried through the streets where he grew up. This week, Rosa found herself having to fulfil both duties to her little brother.At 6.20pm on 27 June, an abandoned trailer was discovered on a remote backroad in San Antonio, Texas. Inside were the bodies of dozens of people who had died as they tried to migrate from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Among them was Pablo, 20, whose body was found alongside that of his 43-year-old uncle, Jesús Álvarez. In total, 53 people died and more than a dozen were taken to hospital, including four children. Four people have been charged. Continue reading...
I’m sure the president is experiencing some diminution in the memory department. I know I amAt 79, Joe Biden is the oldest president in American history. Concerns about his age top the list for why Democratic voters want the party to find an alternative for 2024.I don’t think this reflects an “ageist” prejudice against those who have reached such withering heights so much as an understanding that people in their late 70s and 80s wither.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at 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...
Indians will soon outnumber Chinese, threatening Beijing’s sense of superiorityLast week, the UN’s global population project announced a major shift in the way the world looks. Next year, India, not China, will be the world’s most populous country. Right now, China has 1.43 billion people to India’s 1.41 billion, but by mid-century there will be more than 1.6 billion Indians to around 1.3 billion Chinese.At one level, this development ought to delight Beijing, which compelled its population into a “one child” policy for some 40 years. Yet there may be a few disconsolate faces in Beijing. The idea of China being the most populous society in the world has long been linked to the country’s rise. Officially, China dismisses any idea that being at the top of global rankings matters: in January this year, vice foreign minister Le Yucheng declared that China had no interest in becoming the world’s biggest economy or superpower and would instead work on improving its people’s lives at home.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...
He has weaponised food, energy and refugees, spreading economic and political pain across the continent. Sanctions don’t work, a land for peace deal would be a disaster. Only the military route remains
The Fox news host spoke at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, a state that has first say in Republican presidential nomineesHe entered to rapturous applause, flattered his hosts shamelessly, told them about his political vision and sold them merchandise bearing his name.Tucker Carlson’s appearance in Iowa on Friday looked like a presidential run, walked like a presidential run and quacked like a presidential run but was most certainly not a presidential run, at least as far as anyone knows. Continue reading...
A Reuters Institute survey found that a rising number of people are avoiding the news or just don’t believe itThis might be just another negative news story. And if it is, there is evidence that many of you will turn away in despair.The Reuters Institute revealed last month that 42% of Americans actively avoid the news at least some of the time because it grinds them down or they just don’t believe it. Fifteen percent said they disconnected from news coverage altogether. In other countries, such as the UK and Brazil, the numbers selectively avoiding it were even higher. Continue reading...
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