As wildfires burn hotter and bigger due to dry conditions, scientists are afraid the species may not survive much longerIt is still unclear how the giant sequoias of California will fare as two fires – which together have scorched more than 140,000 acres in their namesake national park and national forest – continue to burn. Thick smoke and rugged inaccessible terrain has hindered efforts to assess destruction from the KNP Complex and Windy fires, and a full accounting may take weeks.Scientists on the ground say so far the news has been both good and bad. There are still pockets of lush greenery left within the footprints of two fast-moving fires, as well as areas where the flames left little in their wake. Continue reading...

Thousands gather in Washington DC and other cities protesting against Texas law banning most abortionsThe first Women’s March of the Biden administration headed straight for the steps of the US supreme court on Saturday, part of nationwide protests that drew thousands to Washington to demand continued access to abortion in a year when conservative lawmakers and judges have put it in jeopardy.Demonstrators filled the streets surrounding the court, shouting “My body, my choice” and cheering loudly to the beat of drums. Continue reading...

With winter coming, health officials are now concerned that the arguments that have roiled Missouri will leave it vulnerable again when a next wave hitsThe boarded-up storefront of Rae’s Cafe in Blue Springs, Missouri, does not look much like a Covid-19 battleground – but it has become a cause célèbre of the anti-masking movement since owner Amanda Wohletz began a campaign in July to defy local Jackson county mask mandates imposed after Delta variant infections surged.Despite warnings, citations, the revocation of a food permit and a county health department’s order to close her doors, Wohletz persisted, claiming in court that the mandate ordering everyone five and up is required to wear a face covering when visiting indoor public spaces was “unconstitutionally created” and efforts to enforce it were “unlawful, nonsensical”. Continue reading...

Women travel long distances only to find they have arrived too late to qualify for the procedure under the draconian new lawOriginally published by the 19thKarla S knew she was pregnant almost right away. She could tell by the smells: “Everything was rancid,” Karla said. Continue reading...

The presidential election is his to lose. But the divisive forces of the far-right are on the march in a struggle that will resonate across EuropeGermany’s “watershed” election? Yawn. For a truly stimulating contest, Europe must look to France, where pre-poll noise levels are rising rapidly. Political debate ranges from the repulsive to the bizarre. Issues that matter most to EU and UK citizens – nationality, migration, climate, cost-of-living, place in the world – are under brutal examination. For floating voters angry about English fish wars, there is even, potentially, a President Poisson.In an age of predictable, managed and blatantly fixed elections, France’s looming democratic denouement is refreshingly rambunctious and emblematic. As April’s presidential contest comes into focus, the question of identity dominates. What does it mean, these days, to be French? Who belongs – and who doesn’t? Is France a global power or mere cultural theme park for Chinese tourists? Continue reading...

Former press secretary has decided to ‘break her silence’ but may find media less hospitable than to those who went beforeOn Monday, Stephanie Grisham will appear on Good Morning America. ABC is billing the interview as the former White House press secretary’s chance to “break her silence”.Donald Trump is unlikely to be watching. Grisham is not the first insider to break omertà on the Trumps, who rose from running a New York real estate empire to occupying the White House, but she may well be the politico who got closest of all. Continue reading...

Private equity business narrowly beats rival Fortress with offer that rises to £9.97bn when including debtThe US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) is set to become the new owner of Morrisons after the grocer’s board backed its £7.1bn bid for the supermarket chain following a tense auction with a rival suitor.The 287p a share bid narrowly beat the 286p offer by a consortium led by Softbank-owned Fortress Investment Group on Saturday, in a showdown to settle Morrisons’ future. Continue reading...

Hundreds of hot air balloons are launched over Albuquerque as part of annual nine-day festivalHundreds of hot air balloons launched into the skies over Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the US on Saturday for the first time in two years, as the city’s balloon fiesta returned after a pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.Yoda, Smokey the Bear and the Creamland Cow were some of the notable balloons that took flight in the mass ascension that kicked off the 49th annual festival. Continue reading...

Speaker writes to House Democrats insisting that they will pass both bipartisan bill and wider social and environmental packageThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has set a new deadline for the House to pass a major infrastructure spending bill after a week of negotiations left Joe Biden’s social and environmental policy overhaul plan in a limbo.In a letter to House Democrats on Saturday, Pelosi said that the House will have until Sunday 31 October to pass the $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August. Continue reading...

A woman in Kansas has had to recount her rape story to strangers and collect hundreds of signatures to get the legal system to take her seriouslyHere’s a fun fact about consent: once you say “yes”, you can change your mind! Saying “yes” at the beginning of a sexual encounter doesn’t mean you give blanket permission for someone to do whatever the hell they like to you. Consenting to sex with someone doesn’t mean you automatically consent to being violently choked.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for pre-order. Continue reading...

As the Native American population grows to the largest in modern history, groups say it’s vital that they organize to make sure they’re not left out of the redistricting processIn a small unadorned conference room in the North Dakota state capitol, Collette Brown, a representative for the Spirit Lake Nation, stood up on 26 August to testify on behalf of the 7,559 members of her federally recognized tribe.Speaking to a largely white, male Republican committee of lawmakers, she explained what Native American communities stand to lose with redistricting if the legislature decides to draw legislative boundaries that split Native American communities or create areas that have at-large representation, instead of single-member districts. Continue reading...

The NBA’s failure to get ahead of its vaccination crisis shows that the ostensibly progressive league still has work to doIn October 2020, more than a month before the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would receive emergency-use authorization from the FDA, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association got to work.The WNBPA understood that misinformation in regards to the virus and vaccine had been ramping up, and it seemed to be getting harder and harder to seek reliable guidance. They also likely considered that professional athletes represented a relatively easy target for misinformation and conspiracy theories as highly impressionable young people with a lot of free time on their hands – time often spent on their phones scrolling social media – and relatively little contact with the outside world. So they came together with league commissioner Cathy Engelbert and set out a plan to educate WNBA players about the Covid-19 vaccine so that they could make educated choices when the time came. Continue reading...

The Royal Ballet dancer Colin Jones became one of the most celebrated photojournalists of postwar Britain, covering subjects as diverse as working life in the industrial north-east, the English National Ballet, the Alabama race riots and African-Caribbean youth in 1970s London with an empathetic eye. Jones also documented arts and youth culture with his iconic portraits of the Who, Julie Christie, Tom Waits and mods and rockers in Brighton in 1964Words by Peter Crookston Continue reading...

From container ship queues in the US to power cuts in China, the post-Covid pickup in activity is taking a toll

Once an asset that secured a comfortable retirement, the medallion’s worth has plummeted, leaving drivers financially ruined. Here are some of their storiesFor more than a century, taxi drivers have transported busy New Yorkers to their jobs, to brunch, or home from a late night out. A symbol of the city made globally famous in countless Hollywood films, the drivers of these yellow cabs are majority immigrants and people of color.Driving a New York City cab has been a vital path for immigrants, and their families, to make a decent living. But in recent years all that has changed. Now, many are struggling under the burden of life-altering debt after investing in a taxi medallion. Continue reading...

My brother, mother and father all died before I was 30. I didn’t cope well at first, but then I had an epiphanyOn my 30th birthday I realised I was totally alone.My father had died five days earlier. My mother had died nine years previously, and my brother 21 years before. Continue reading...

Five black-and-white quadrupeds who escaped from a farm last month should be easy to spot around town … shouldn’t they?Many interesting things have happened in Upper Marlboro in recent years.In 2014, the Frederick Douglass high school football team recorded a perfect season. In 2019, to celebrate National Pie Day, a local museum hosted a lecture on the “history of pie”. This May, the town bought an electric car. Continue reading...

After years of sexual abuse allegations, the R&B singer has finally had to face punishment for his crimes but will a wider reckoning follow?Activist Oronike Odeleye was at her desk, knee-deep in another 12-hour day of working from home, when the news hit. A friend called. The R&B performer and producer R Kelly had been found guilty on all nine counts in his sex trafficking case, he said. Initially, Odeleye felt “a bit stunned, but also really relieved”, she says, thinking first of the survivors who had bravely shared their testimony.Together with Kenyette Tisha Barnes, Odeleye had founded the #MuteRKelly movement in 2017. The goal: a financial boycott of Kelly, given the years of child sexual abuse and sexual misconduct allegations made against the star. At the time, she had hoped to soon “step in the name of justice at his trial”. On Monday 27 September, that day arrived. But as the week wore on, she wasn’t convinced the industry was ready to examine itself more closely. Continue reading...

The request follows the former president suing Twitter, Facebook and Google in July accusing them of censoring conservative voicesDonald Trump, the former US president, has asked a federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to reinstate his account.In July Trump sued Twitter, Facebook and Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints. Continue reading...

President meets Democrats for talks and insists ‘it doesn’t matter whether it’s six minutes or six weeks – we’re going to get it done’Democrats returned to the Capitol on Friday deeply divided but determined to make progress on Joe Biden’s ambitious economic vision, after an embarrassing setback delayed a planned vote on a related $1tn measure to improve the nation’s infrastructure.Biden on Friday made a rare visit to Capitol Hill to meet privately with House Democrats amid a stalemate that has put his sprawling domestic agenda in jeopardy. The visit comes after after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed a vote on part of his economic agenda, a bipartisan $1tn public works measure, on Thursday night after a frantic day of negotiations failed to produce a deal. Continue reading...

Judge orders prison for indigenous rights campaigner despite UN experts’ opinion that his treatment broke international lawSteven Donziger, the US indigenous rights campaigner and lawyer who spent decades battling the energy firm Chevron over pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment on Friday for criminal contempt charges arising from a lawsuit brought by the oil giant.Donziger, who was disbarred from practicing law in New York last year, was found guilty in May of defying court orders, including by failing to turn over his computer and other electronic devices. Continue reading...

All kindergarten through 12th grade students will be required to be vaccinated once it gains government approval for those age groupsCalifornia has announced the nation’s first Covid-19 vaccination mandate for schoolchildren, a plan that will have all elementary through high school students get the shots once the vaccine gains final approval from the US government for different age groups.The government has fully approved the Covid vaccine for those 16 and over but only granted an emergency authorization for anyone 12 to 15. Once federal regulators fully approve the vaccine for that group, the state will require students in seventh through 12th grades to get vaccinated in both public and private schools, the governor Gavin Newsom’s office said on Friday. Continue reading...

California governor apologizes for city’s seizure of first west coast resort for Black people, which almost certainly would have made heirs millionairesA beachfront property seized from a Black family in southern California nearly a century ago will be returned to the family’s descendants, in a move hailed as a milestone in the fight for reparations and the return of lands stolen from people of color.In 1912 Willa and Charles Bruce bought land in Manhattan Beach, a Los Angeles seaside suburb, turning it into a thriving resort run for and by Black residents despite harassment and violence from white neighbors. Continue reading...

Value of Andrew Hopkins’ Exscientia firm reaches market value of $2.9bn in Nasdaq IPOA Welsh scientist who dreamed up his artificial intelligence biotech company while walking home from the laboratory is sitting on a potential $539m (£400m) paper fortune after its $2.9bn stock market float.The idea for Exscientia, an Oxford-based firm that uses artificial intelligence to develop medicines, dates back to the 1990s when Andrew Hopkins was a biophysics PhD student in Oxford. He researched potential treatments for HIV, but the process was so laborious that he thought there must a better way to design drugs. Continue reading...

Weakening the courts, limiting protest, hobbling the elections regulator. If another country did this, what would we call it?If this wasn’t us, how would we describe it? If this was Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, or Poland, what language might we use? Would an announcer on the BBC World Service declare: “Amid fuel and food shortages, the government has moved to cement its grip on power. It’s taking action against the courts, shrinking their ability to hold the ruling party to account, curbing citizens’ right to protest and imposing new rules that would gag whistleblowers and sharply restrict freedom of the press. It’s also moving against election monitors while changing voting rules, which observers say will hurt beleaguered opposition groups … ”It doesn’t sound like us. We like to tell ourselves that we live in a mature democracy, our institutions deep rooted. Political competition is brisk, never more so than at this time of year, as one party conference ends and another begins. This is not a one-party state. All it would require is Labour to get its act together – to which end it made a decent start this week – and, with a fair wind, the Conservatives would be out.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Supreme court says Kavanaugh is showing no symptoms and has been fully vaccinated since JanuaryJustice Brett Kavanaugh has tested positive for Covid-19, the supreme court announced on Friday, just three days before the court is set to begin a new term hearing oral arguments in key cases relating to religion, guns and abortion.The court said Kavanaugh, 56, is showing no symptoms of the virus and has been fully vaccinated against Covid since January. Continue reading...

Review of 40 years of data shows many fatal police encounters are misclassified, most often when the victim is Black or HispanicMore than half of all police-involved killings in the US go unreported with the majority of victims being Black, according to a new study published in the Lancet, a peer reviewed journal.Research at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that in the US between 1980 and 2018, more than 55% of deaths, over 17,000 in total, from police violence were either misclassified or went unreported. Continue reading...

Despite the horrifying levels of violence against women, there is no strategy to end it. Just promises to ‘learn lessons’Cressida Dick must be the last woman in the country who thinks there may be “lessons” to be learned from Wayne Couzens’s rape and murder of Sarah Everard. At least 80 women in the UK have been killed by men since Everard. Only 1.6% of rapes in England and Wales reported to police even result in a charge. Fifty-two per cent of police found guilty of sexual misconduct kept their jobs. Women already know all the lessons. Women live with the all-pervasive understanding that they are prey.The women who love you have to communicate the fear to you when you’re still a girl, knowing that one day you too will have to communicate it to the girls you love. They pass you down their strategies – their defences – like your birthright. And when you’re big enough to be out in the world on your own, those same women spend their time hoping till it hurts that this fear, which they had to gift you out of love, will somehow save you. “In the evenings,” said Sarah Everard’s mother in her unforgettable victim impact statement, “at the time she was abducted, I let out a silent scream: ‘Don’t get in the car, Sarah. Don’t believe him. Run!’”Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Jury will now consider damages after far-right conspiracy theorist failed to produce documents for the court casesA Texas judge ruled the far-right conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones is liable for damages to families of children killed in the 2012 Newtown massacre in two lawsuits, after he repeatedly refused to produce documents for the court cases.The rulings are “default judgments”, or rare de facto losses, because of Jones’s repeated failure to comply with discovery, or the process of producing documents for a court case. The court will convene a jury to consider damages.This article was amended on 1 October 2021 to clarify to total amount awarded to Lenny Pozner in a 2020 judgement. Continue reading...

Democrats say holdup is temporary despite stalemate over Biden’s sweeping economic agendaThe US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, postponed a planned vote on a trillion-dollar infrastructure package on Thursday night a stinging defeat after progressives threatened to revolt and Democratic leaders failed to reach an agreement with centrists holdouts on the full sweep of Joe Biden’s ambitious economic vision.The decision to delay the vote capped a frantic day of negotiations in Washington that stretched late into the evening, as the president and Democratic leaders attempted to break a stalemate between a handful of moderates, who pushed for the infrastructure vote, and progressives who believe it would be insufficient without a broader, $3.5tn social policy package. At the same time, negotiations between White House officials and two Senate Democrats opposed to the current size of Biden’s social spending package dragged into the night without a deal. Continue reading...

Judge denies white supremacist, 22, opportunity to address court as survivors of 2019 attack give moving statementsA 22-year-old white supremacist was denied a chance to address a courtroom before a judge sentenced him Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for bursting into a southern California synagogue on the last day of Passover in 2019 with a semiautomatic rifle, killing one worshipper and wounding three others.An agreement with prosecutors that spared John T Earnest the death penalty left little suspense about the outcome, but the hearing provided 13 victims and families a chance to address the killer and gave a sense of finality to a case illustrating how online hate speech can lead to extremist violence. Many gave heart-wrenching accounts of how their lives were upended and how determined they were to persevere despite such devastating loss. Continue reading...

There needs to be a full, Stephen Lawrence-style judicial inquiry into the case and broader police cultureFrom the moment Sarah Everard was stopped by Wayne Couzens, she probably never had a chance. He was armed with a police badge, belt and handcuffs; with strength, power and authority. The lockdown laws, which have hugely expanded police discretion, were ripe for abuse. In coming weeks, many senior voices in the police, politics and media will claim that Couzens was a single bad apple in an otherwise functional system. But we must not budge until there are fundamental changes in how we fund and train the police, and how we legislate around crime.Those who consistently warn against excessive police power don’t do so because they are “soft on crime” or think the police are a wicked breed apart. Police officers inevitably reflect wider society, with all its misogyny, racism and corruption, alongside its nobler qualities of courage and public service. A senior investigator told Sky News that police officers “do not view Wayne Couzens as a police officer”. I have no doubt of the sincerity of his disgust, but magical thinking will not change the fact that Couzens was indeed a police officer, and was even selected and trained to hold firearms.Shami Chakrabarti was shadow attorney general for England and Wales from 2016 to 2020, and was director of Liberty from 2003 to 2016

Centrists and progressives remain at odds over social spending. Plus Daniel Craig on Bond, fried eggs, and regrets

My focused, rational fear in the early days of lockdown has been replaced by a vague, ever-present anxiety without a single culprit. And that anxiety feels amped up to 11The other morning, my kindergartner woke me up by clambering onto the bed and stage-whispering hotly in my ear, “The mama is lost!”What? Continue reading...

Shortages in the United States are piling up. Covid isn’t the only reason for the problemThere’s a quiet panic happening in the US economy. Medical labs are running out of supplies like pipettes and petri dishes, summer camps and restaurants are having trouble getting food, and automobile, paint and electronics firms are curtailing production because they can’t get semiconductors. One man told me he couldn’t get a Whopper meal at a Burger King in Florida, as there was a sign saying “Sorry, no french fries with any order. We have no potatoes.”Imagine that, no french fries in America.Matt Stoller is a writer and former policymaker who focuses on the politics of market power and antitrust Continue reading...

Who was first? Who went far? Who was far out? Continue reading...

Meetings across the state have been disrupted by aggressive family refusing to wear masks and threatening board membersThe California school boards association has pleaded with the governor to protect education officials facing an “unprecedented increase in hostility”, as board meetings across the state have been rocked by aggressive protests over Covid-19 restrictions.In a letter to Gavin Newsom, the association, which represents nearly 1,000 education agencies across the state, said school board members have been “accosted, verbally abused, physically assaulted, and subjected to death threats against themselves and their family members”. Continue reading...

We all know about the skills of Mahomes and the Chiefs. But their divisional rivals look good enough to reach the postseasonWhen the NFL expanded its postseason from 12 to 14 teams, each conference was handed an extra wildcard berth. That means that, in theory, all three wildcard teams could come from the same division. Meaning: it’s plausible that a single division could send all four of its teams to the playoffs.This year that division could be the AFC West. FiveThirtyEight gives the Kansas City Chiefs (62%), Los Angeles Chargers (64%), Denver Broncos (70%), and Las Vegas Raiders (63%) a better than even chance of making the playoffs. Indeed, FiveThirtyEight’s ‘average simulated season’ model projects the worst record in the West to be split between the Raiders, Chargers and Chiefs at 10-7. Continue reading...

Hundreds of people joined Oath Keepers or renewed membership after many of group’s members participated in riotHacked materials from the website of the rightwing militia group the Oath Keepers show that hundreds of people either joined or renewed their membership after many of the group’s members participated in the attack on the Capitol on 6 January.They included people who joined under their military ranks, including combat veterans, retired servicepersons, at least one serving national guardsman, several members of the clergy and others involved in security contracting and the firearms industry. Continue reading...

The Presbyterian coach started embracing analytics during his high school career. But not everyone is a fan of his methodsTwo weeks ago the Presbyterian College football team was on the road against Campbell University when the game reached a critical juncture. Already down 14-zip with less than five minutes left in the first quarter, the Blue Hose had just taken a sack on third-and-long that pinned them on their own four-yard line. Making matters worse, the play clock expired on quarterback Ren Hefley and backed up Presbyterian even farther – to the two-yard line.Most any other football coach in America wouldn’t have to think twice about what to do next: kick the ball away. But Kevin Kelley is different, he made his name by boldly keeping his offense on the field on fourth down instead of punting or trying for field goals. This time, his decision to actually punt was an agonizing one that felt like a psychic defeat. “They were just manhandling us,” says the 52-year-old coach, who was still smarting about his call when the Guardian caught up with him this week. “The chances of us converting on fourth down were not looking good.” Continue reading...

Democratic lawmakers including Missouri representative Cori Bush shared personal stories behind their decisions to have abortions during a House oversight committee meeting about reproductive rights on Thursday.Representatives Barbara Lee of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington also shared their stories during the committee hearing

The left wants to achieve far-reaching structural change – the sort of political reframing that requires coalition building. Are polarizing words throwing them off course?

Some hospitals have experienced staff shortages after new rules went into effect – but the mandate appears to be workingErie County Medical Center, a hospital in the western New York city of Buffalo, just recorded its highest single-day patient count ever – 553 patients in a facility licensed for 573 beds – but not because of an influx of Covid-19 cases.Instead, hospital leaders said the caseload is the result of a New York state vaccine mandate – the first statewide “vaccinate or terminate” mandate to be implemented in the nation. Continue reading...

Congress passed a bill to fund the government into December. But questions remain over the debt ceiling and Biden’s agendaThe US government went into Thursday embroiled in a game of three-dimensional chess with time running out and trillions of dollars at stake.The first dimension was a must-do: fund the government by midnight to avoid it shutting down. In a typical shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees stop getting paid and many stop working; some services are suspended and numerous national attractions and national parks temporarily close. Continue reading...

Bill passed by Senate and House will extend funding until 3 December as Democrats continue to wrangle over Biden’s economic agenda