Since 1988, humans have destroyed an area of rainforest roughly the size of Texas and New Mexico combinedShortly before his 44th birthday, in December 1988, the Brazilian rubber tapper and environmental activist Chico Mendes predicted he would not live until Christmas. “At first,” he said, “I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”Mendes had received death threats for years. The threats escalated when an aggressive rancher laid claim to a nearby forest reserve, where he intended to burn and level trees to create pasture for cattle. The rancher hired gunmen to prowl around Mendes’s neighborhood. Mendes publicly opposed the rancher, and continued to advocate for the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, saying Brazil must save the most biodiverse forest in the world. Destroy it, he said, and we, the human race, will end up destroying ourselves. Continue reading...

Tyson made his professional debut in March 1985. With 21 months, he had won 28 fights and become a world championBy Steven Pye for That 1980s Sports BlogTo boxing fans, Mike Tyson was a menacingly exciting presence in the heavyweight division as he made his professional debut in 1985 and worked his way towards a world title in 1986. To his opponents, he was a terrifying hurricane enveloping them and unleashing pain. Tyson won 15 fights in his first year as a professional before defeating 13 more opponents in 1986 on his way to clinching his first world title. At that stage of his career, everything came quickly. Just ask the men who faced him. Continue reading...

Gavin Newsom’s survival as California’s governor was just one of hundreds of recall attempts on the west coast this yearRecall attempts across the US in recent months have hit a fever pitch in response to Covid-19 and racial justice disputes, and a socialist city council member in Seattle has become the latest prominent seat to be targeted.Opponents of Kshama Sawant have spent months collecting thousands of signatures in an attempt to unseat the council member, who became the first socialist on the Seattle council in nearly a century after she beat a Democrat in 2013. Last week, the recall effort officially qualified for an election in December. Continue reading...

Even after passing reconciliation as is, the US welfare state would still be a small investment by world standardsAs Democrats continue negotiations in the hopes of saving Biden legislative agenda, one thing has consumed the media and conservative Democrats in Congress: the price tag. Nearly every news item on Biden’s signature Build Back Better reconciliation bill has led with the $3.5tn cost, as if the price were in the title of the bill itself.The West Virginia senator Joe Manchin issued a scathing critique of the supposedly profligate Biden agenda, calling the reconciliation bill “fiscal insanity” that ignores the “brutal fiscal reality our nation faces”. The Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema claims that she cannot support a bill with a price tag this high. The tone of these conservative senators and the media coverage would lead anyone to think that $3.5tn of additional spending over a decade was an enormous amount of money that would drastically increase the size of government, endanger government coffers, and even “re-engineer the social and economic fabric of this nation”. Continue reading...

As Greg Abbott prepares to run for re-election, political buzz has McConaughey and O’Rourke as challengers. But how about Congresswoman Veronica Escobar to rally behind?One of my favorite tales from the vault of family lore involves a woman named Ignacia Jasso, who was better known as “La Nacha”. As the tale goes, in the late 1930s or early 40s, a distant relative eloped with one of La Nacha’s daughters. But La Nacha did not approve of this marriage and, as the head of one of the first Mexican drug syndicates based in Juarez, she ordered that the relative be shot.He survived, and fled Texas, where he died of natural causes decades later in another state. Of course, the allure of the story for me involved our family’s proximity to organized crime, but the notion that a woman headed this criminal enterprise – and, I later learned, pioneered many modern-day cartel practices – never struck me as odd. Despite the macho stereotype of Hispanic men along the border, there has historically been a cultural acceptance of women in power. It is this acceptance that makes discussion of a Latina governor of Texas long overdue. Continue reading...

The latest status symbol in kitchens is invisible appliances – but hiding behind that fridge disguised as a cabinet is a long history of people trying to engineer societyRich people are having a couture cooling moment. The new status symbol, according to the New York Times, is an invisible fridge. Rich people buy enormous $15,000 Sub-Zero fridges and then stick panels on them that match their custom cabinetry. The result? As if by magic, it looks like there are no appliances in the house.There are cooling drawers, too. The drawers are mostly built into kitchen islands, although it’s increasingly common for the ultra-rich to have them installed in bathrooms for temperature-controlled face creams. Continue reading...

Players from Gotham FC and Washington Spirit halted Wednesday's game with five minutes played before linking arms in the centre circle. The gesture was a show of solidarity with players who have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against a prominent NWSL coach.Last week, the Athletic published claims of abuse made by former NWSL players Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim in addition to more than a dozen players from every team former coach Paul Riley has coached since 2010.

This week’s roundup also features George Graham, Alex Ferguson and college football’s biggest-ever win1) The upcoming Ashes series is still in the balance, but let’s close our eyes and pretend we’re at the Gabba anyway. Here’s a brutal bout of rain from 1987, a sensational hailstorm discharged in 1992, and a further classic enjoyed in 1998.2) On Saturday night, Mackenzie Dern takes on Marina Rodriguez in the UFC’s straw-weight division. The daughter and step-daughter of Brazilian jiu-jitsu champions, Dern’s submission game is exceptional, so here’s a little doc about her rise and an interview in which she discusses people’s fascination with her accent (amongst other things). Continue reading...

The Florida-based athlete has the fastest-known marathon time for a double-leg amputeeMarko Cheseto will line up for Monday’s Boston Marathon with justified confidence: he has the fastest known time for a double-leg amputee: 2 hours 37 minutes and 23 seconds. In other words, Cheseto is capable of running six-minute miles for just over 26 miles.The journey he took to get to this stage took him across two continents and through immense physical and emotional pain. Continue reading...

The striker looked like he could be the future of soccer in America. But fans never got to discover how far he could goDuring a locker room celebration after a World Cup qualifying win over Canada on 20 October 1976, Miro Rys could not have been more elated. The 19-year-old striker not only scored the opener of the US’s 2-0 triumph but also his first international goal.“I’ve got the ball right here,” Rys proudly told reporters. “I’m going to take it home and hang it on the wall. I predicted before the game I would score, but when I scored, I felt incredible.” Continue reading...

Erasing his two-decades-old record would require the rightwing Texas governor’s goodwillCriminal justice reform experts are hopeful that if Texas governor Greg Abbott approves a pardon request for George Floyd’s drug-related charges, which are almost two decades old, it will send a strong message about the prejudices of a justice system that disproportionately incarcerates Black and Latino people.Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer and his death triggered a wave of outrage over police violence and systemic racism that spread across America and to the rest of the world. At the trial of his killer, Derek Chauvin, defense lawyers attempted to portray Floyd’s history of drug use as somehow a cause of his death. Continue reading...

Shows like White Lotus allow us to feel some moral superiority over the rich. But as Logan Roy shows, they couldn’t care lessHow should a rich person be? In Succession, the HBO drama about the trials and tribulations of the ultra-wealthy Roy family and their crumbling media dynasty, the answer is, mostly, unhappy. In the first two seasons, as patriarch Logan Roy was faced with the problem of choosing one of his disappointing children as a successor we saw a gallery of paranoid elders and neurotic, despondent heirs rattling around their gilded cage, pecking at each other. (The third season will air in the coming weeks.) The characters seemed terrible but real, the tone was an unusual combination of funny and unsettling but clearly articulated – conversations about politics were topical but cynical. It felt weird, honest and fresh. It was excellent TV.But, in our risk-averse production climate, every good cultural artefact is replicated and warped in the process, usually losing whatever it was that made it good in the first place. And so there has been a trend of similar shows, all playing off the premise of a group of hyperwealthy people, awkwardly bound together – by family connections, staying at the same hotel, or attending the same school – in an unhappy tangle of resentment and neurosis. The cast of characters includes recognisable stock types (the “white feminist” girl-boss, the entitled older man, the rich socialist). The characters talk about the sort of political and cultural topics for which we all know what the “right” position to hold is. The tone is humorous. Continue reading...

The transition from college to the NFL is notoriously tough. But the Jaguars coach is in serious trouble after just four gamesSo, who had October in the Urban-Meyer-flames-his-way-out-of-Jacksonville pool?The Jacksonville Jaguars head coach may hang on to his job until the end of the season. But his run as an NFL czar effectively ended on Monday. Continue reading...

Union took issue with company’s threats to outsource jobs from the US to Mexico if workers refuse to accept their proposalsAbout 1,400 Kellogg’s workers at four US plants have gone on strike after their current union contracts expired and amid accusations that the cereal giant is offshoring jobs.The workers, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), produce cereals for brands, including Rice Krispies, Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes and Raisin Bran, at plants in Michigan, Tennessee, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. Continue reading...

Twelve bulging bears battled it out to take home the illustrious title of Alaska’s fattest bear earlier this week. Thousands cast their vote in the annual competition which compares the pre-hibernation weight gain of the Katmai national park residents. Master-of-salmon and reigning champion Otis took the crown this year, with a charming underdog backstory that ultimately won over bear enthusiasts. Pre-hibernation weight gain over Alaska’s short summer and fall is crucial for bears heading into the long, freezing winter. Gorging on salmon during this time allows the bears to emerge healthy from hibernation when spring comes around. Continue reading...

Judge excoriates ‘unprecedented scheme’ to deny women abortion right as law faces uncertain futureA US federal judge has temporarily blocked the near-total ban on abortion in Texas, dealing the first legal blow against the contentious law and throwing its future into uncertainty.The law, known as Senate Bill 8, banned most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state and, until now, had withstood a wave of early challenges. Continue reading...

Items for sale include photographs, firearms, jewelry and furniture belonging to gangster and his familyIt was Christmas Day in 1946 when the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone took his wife and four granddaughters out for a walk on to the dock of their sprawling mansion on Palm Island, Florida.A picture shows “Papa”, as he was known to them, relishing his freedom after being released from Alcatraz where he served over seven years for tax evasion. Continue reading...

Musician says city should have taken more proactive stance after police fatally shot his cousin there earlier this yearPharrell Williams has pulled his popular Something in the Water festival in Virginia Beach after a police officer fatally shot his cousin there earlier this year.City leaders had appealed to Williams to restore the festival in 2022, but Williams criticized officials’ “toxic energy” in a letter this week. Continue reading...

Brad Little, who was in Texas with other Republican governors, promised to reverse Janice McGeachin’s orders when he returnedIdaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, temporarily left the state on Tuesday on government business and his deputy, Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin, immediately began issuing rightwing orders while she was temporarily holding executive power – including a ban on coronavirus vaccine mandates.That same afternoon, McGeachin issued an executive order – as acting governor – banning state officials from requiring what she called “Covid-19 vaccine passports” from employees, the Washington Post reported. Continue reading...

America still holds enormous sway on the global economy. So when Congress starts down a path to a possible debt default, could it hit the world with GFC 2.0?

A catchall of federal rental assistance funds, eviction prevention programs and court rules are helping some renters stay in their homesChandra Dobbs was stunned when the police officer showed up on her doorstep with a fat packet of eviction papers. She thought she had more time.“I didn’t think I was going to be evicted because I applied for rental assistance money,” Dobbs said a few days later. “But they didn’t want to wait the four to six weeks. So now we’re homeless – me, my 16-year-old son, my daughter and my grandchild, a toddler.” Continue reading...

American says he has improved since loss to Fury in 2020 and his ability to overcome adversity may stand him in good stead“I see me beating him up and then knocking him out,” Deontay Wilder said in his Alabama drawl soon after he arrived in Las Vegas on Tuesday evening and looked ahead to his third world heavyweight title fight against Tyson Fury on Saturday night. It was a reminder that we are back in fight week in the dangerous and unpredictable business of heavyweight boxing.The damaged kings of this division can say terrible things – as Wilder proved in March 2018 when he said: “I want a body on my record.” He tried to qualify his statement by saying that, because he was prepared to die in the ring, he was also willing to take an opponent’s life. Wilder is not a bad man. He has his own demons. He also understands boxing’s darkest truth. Many boxers are willing to risk being carried away in a box in pursuit of their dreams. Continue reading...

Supreme court to hear case of Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian held at Guantánamo Bay and allegedly tortured at a ‘black site’ in PolandThe US supreme court is set to hear arguments about the government’s ability to keep what it says are “state secrets” from a Palestinian man who endured brutal torture by the CIA following 9/11 and is now held at Guantánamo Bay.At the center of the case being heard on Wednesday is whether Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, can get information related to his detention. Continue reading...

Source says Meadows, Bannon and others will move to undercut House select committee inquiry – under instructions from TrumpThe former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top aides subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack are expected to defy orders for documents and testimony related to 6 January, according to a source familiar with the matter.The move to defy the subpoenas would mark the first major investigative hurdle faced by the select committee and threatens to touch off an extended legal battle as the former president pushes some of his most senior aides to undercut the inquiry. Continue reading...

Exploiting people, exploiting land, and keeping its ugly side secret. Its historical effects are all too recognisable in the Pandora papers nowWhenever there’s a leak of documents from the remote islands and obscure jurisdictions where rich people hide their money, such as this week’s release of the Pandora papers, we ask ourselves how such things could happen. How did we end up with a global system that enables great wealth to be transferred offshore, untaxed and hidden from public view? Politicians condemn it as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”. But it’s not. It is the face of capitalism.Capitalism was arguably born on a remote island. A few decades after the Portuguese colonised Madeira in 1420, they developed a system that differed in some respects from anything that had gone before. By felling the forests after which they named the island (madeira is Portuguese for wood), they created, in this uninhabited sphere, a blank slate – a terra nullius – in which a new economy could be built. Financed by bankers in Genoa and Flanders, they transported enslaved people from Africa to plant and process sugar. They developed an economy in which land, labour and money lost their previous social meaning and became tradable commodities.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnistJoin the Guardian’s head of investigations Paul Lewis and guests in this special livestreamed event looking into the Pandora papers revelations on Monday 18 October, 8pm BST | 9pm CEST | 12am PDT | 3pm EDT. Book tickets here Continue reading...

Joe Biden says he has spoken to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, about Taiwan and they have agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement.Beijing sent about 150 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence zone over four days beginning on Friday, the same day China marked a key patriotic holiday, in a record escalation of its grey-zone military activity directed towards the island

Former Facebook insider claims social network puts profits before people. Plus, Trump aides could resist subpoena

The legendary MMA fighter looks back on his life and times at the head of Brazilian jiu-jitsu’s first family in a new memoirIn Rickson Gracie’s many jiu jitsu fights, he tried to avoid thinking about either victory or defeat. What was on his mind was something far more basic and far more important: Breathing.While training in martial arts, Gracie learned to breathe using his diaphragm. Similar to the way singers and divers breathe, it results in deeper inhalations and exhalations than the chest breaths most people take. Limiting his pulse to 60 beats per minute during a grueling fight, he found it gave him greater endurance than his opponent. Reflecting this importance, Breathe is the title of his new memoir, co-written with Peter Maguire. Continue reading...

I don’t want to learn how to protect my drink in a club, or buy a contraption to make sure my door stays locked. I want to live in a world where women like Miya Marcano don’t live in fearHere we go again. Every time a woman is a victim of male violence, there is a major public discussion on how they can “protect” themselves.Last week, a British police commissioner said that Sarah Everard, an English woman killed in March by a police officer, “never should have submitted” to the false arrest that led to her rape and murder. “Women, first of all, need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can’t be arrested,” the commissioner said. Everard’s killer, Wayne Couzens, had falsely arrested her for supposedly violating London’s Covid regulations.Tayo Bero is a freelance journalist Continue reading...

Pope Francis was among those speaking out on behalf of Ernest Johnson, who killed three in 1994A man has been put to death in the US state of Missouri for killing three workers while robbing a convenience store nearly three decades ago, an execution performed over objections from racial justice activists, lawmakers and the pope.Ernest Johnson died from an injection of pentobarbital at Bonne Terre state prison. In his written last statement, Johnson said he was sorry “and have remorse for what I do”. He said he loved his family and friends and thanked those who prayed for him. Continue reading...

A decade ago Occupy reframed US political debate, trained a generation of activists, and served as a dress rehearsal for movements that followedIt has been 10 years since Occupy Wall Street shook the United States and spread like fire across the planet, part of a new era of political consciousness that included movements like the Arab Spring and the Spanish Indignados. Originally launched on 17 September 2011 by members of the Canadian political magazine Adbusters, and famous for temporarily occupying Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s Financial District, Occupy spread to more than 900 cities in countries across the world within a month. By its end, hundreds of thousands of people had engaged in a broad political struggle against the prevailing political order of economic inequality and the unaccountable capitalists who had driven the world into recession only a few years prior.Occupy was dismissed for years as ineffective, but time has disproven the cynics. If anything, the Occupy movement showed what is possible when a ragtag group of organizers turn private suffering into public action. Occupy not only helped redefine the political conversation in the United States, it served as a dress rehearsal for many organizations and movements that followed. Through policies proposed and passed in its wake, to the individuals it set up to lead a new generation of social movements and political institutions, Occupy Wall Street has left a powerful legacy. Continue reading...

Just as predicted, poor women and victims of sexual assault and abuse are suffering most under Texas’s draconian new lawI’m a Texas abortion provider. Since the state’s new anti-abortion law – known as Senate Bill 8 – went into effect three weeks ago, my job transformed from physician to dystopian travel agent for a journey that, for most of my patients, will probably never happen.SB8 is not just a set of roadblocks but rather a near-total ban on abortion. Politicians have rendered abortion care impossible to access for people who can’t afford to travel hundreds of miles out of state. Many of those who can’t get an abortion will be pushed deeper into poverty as a result.Samuel Dickman, an internist, is an abortion provider and health policy researcher in Texas Continue reading...

Presented with new challenges and new levels, the Philadelphia Union product turned RB Salzburg rising star has met and exceeded the bar immediately at every stopIt took the US men’s national team two-and-a-half games to reach the cliff’s edge of World Cup qualifying panic. An insipid first 45 had them down 1-0 at the break in Honduras, a dispiriting performance that followed equally dispiriting back-to-back draws to open the cycle. This program had stared at that abyss before. Once again it was staring back at them.Sweeping changes from head coach Gregg Berhalter were necessary. One of the players entrusted to salvage a result, and to silence a narrative building calling for his job, was 20-year-old RB Salzburg midfielder Brenden Aaronson. Continue reading...

As homicides surged across the US last year, the number of Black females killed increased sharply as wellA least four Black women and girls were murdered each day in the United States in 2020, according to statistics released by the FBI last week, a sharp increase compared to the year before.The FBI recorded at least 405 additional murders of Black women and girls last year as homicide surged across the country, and experts caution that even that stark number likely represents an undercount. Continue reading...

Former British No 1 had a courtside view as Raducanu shocked the tennis world with her march to the US Open titleLess than a month ago, as Emma Raducanu tore through the US Open draw to snatch a grand slam title that is still hard to believe, few people had a better seat, as history was unfolding, than Tim Henman.He had arrived in New York as a pundit for Amazon Prime with uncertainty swirling over just how much the event would resonate with the public at large in the absence of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. Instead, between the unending stream of tight matches in both singles draws and the manner Raducanu won the tournament, he left extremely satisfied: “That was the best grand slam I’ve watched,” he says. Continue reading...

Corruption in politics – we all agree it is bad, but is the cure worse than the disease?

A woman tweeted her invoice for mole removal in a US hospital – showing one of the many small, insidious charges that add up to millions each yearWords are cheap, but emotion will cost you. An American woman recently found that out the hard way when she went in for a routine medical checkup that included a mole removal, and ended up with a hefty invoice that included an $11 (£8) fee for “brief emotion”. The Virginia-based woman, who goes by the name Midge, or @mxmclain online, tweeted a copy of her invoice last week. “Mole removal: $223”, she said in the viral tweet. “Crying: extra.”To be fair, @mxmclain didn’t get charged for crying. “Brief emotion” is short for brief emotional assessment. What happened was probably something like this: in the middle of Midge’s checkup, her healthcare provider wanted to ask her some routine questions about her mental state. “Can I ask you a few things?” her doctor might have said. “Of course,” Midge might have replied, as anyone would. She wouldn’t have realised this short Q&A was a service she was expected to pay extra for. Continue reading...

Guns once owned by Al Capone, one of the most notorious gangsters in United States history, are among 174 lots to go under the hammer this week at a California auction, A Century of Notoriety: the Estate of Al Capone. Auctioneers are billing the sale as ‘one of the most important celebrity auctions in history’. Continue reading...

Those travelling to the sun-kissed islands have allegedly faked negative Covid test results or vaccine recordsIf you’re an unvaccinated American headed to Hawaii, and you want to avoid quarantine, you’ll need to provide the state with a negative Covid test.Alternatively, you could attempt to fake out authorities – and get arrested for it. Continue reading...

Frances Haugen’s animated remarks were a striking contrast to Mark Zuckerberg’s robotic testimony before CongressIt might, as one senator put it, be remembered as “the big tobacco jaw-dropping moment of truth”.The truth-teller was former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen, appearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify that the online platform knowingly harms children, just as cigarette makers did before they were brought to heel. Continue reading...