Steve Stricker’s six debutants contributed the majority of the points in a resounding, record-breaking victoryWhat began on Friday morning as an opportunity for American redemption after recent Ryder Cup disappointments ended on Sunday afternoon with a record-breaking victory that doubles as an ominous statement of intent for the years ahead.Even before Xander Schauffele smacked a ball into the overcast Wisconsin blue toward the shimmering waters of Lake Michigan to kick off Sunday’s dozen singles matches, the victory celebrations were already in full swing all over the horseshoe-shaped grandstand encircling the first tee, where rowdy spectators clad in red, white and blue sucked down tall cans of beer and sang the Star-Spangled Banner and God Bless America between resounding chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” Continue reading...

Steve Stricker’s brilliant USA side routed Europe by a record score of 19-9 at Whistling Straits11.32pm BSTCongratulations to the USA for their record win, then, and commiserations to Europe. A reminder that Ewan Murray’s verdict has landed, all the way from Whistling Straits. You know what to do: clickity click. Thanks to you all for reading this blog. Nighty night!Related: Ryder Cup: Team USA romp to victory as Morikawa seals winning half point11.29pm BSTAs for Europe? Well, it was a week to forget, though what resistance shown by Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia! There were also moments for Tyrrell Hartton, Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland, plus valedictory singles wins for the veteran duo Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter. Oh, and Rory McIlroy’s defiant Sunday best and bittersweet emotional interview. So no, it wasn’t great ... but it wasn’t all bad either, was it? All roads lead to Rome now, so here’s to them regrouping along the way. Continue reading...

A 30-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of starting the blaze that grew explosively in hot and gusty weatherFirefighters were gaining the upper hand on Sunday on a forest fire that displaced thousands and destroyed more than 100 buildings near Shasta Lake in northern California.Lighter winds and cooler temperatures slowed the Fawn fire as it moved toward the shores of California’s largest man-made lake and away from populated areas north of the city of Redding, allowing crews to increase containment to 35%, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. Continue reading...

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear and federal safety authorities will investigateAt least three people were killed on Saturday afternoon when an Amtrak train that runs between Seattle and Chicago derailed in north-central Montana, toppling several cars onto their sides, authorities said.The westbound Empire Builder train derailed at about 4pm near Joplin, a town of about 200, Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said. The accident scene is about 150 miles north-east of Helena and about 30 miles from the border with Canada. Continue reading...

Speaker says she will work to build consensus on Biden’s separate $3.5tn social agenda, which has caused division within the partyThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Sunday Democrats will pass a $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill this week.Related: ‘We couldn’t be more inconsistent’: discordant Democrats imperil Biden’s agenda Continue reading...

Seven cars of an Amtrak train travelling through north-central Montana came off the rails in an accident on Saturday. The cause of the derailment is not yet clear, and the National Transportation Safety Board has said it will investigate

Top voting official Brad Raffensperger dismayed that former president uses lies to fundraiseThe top election official in Georgia, a Republican, said Donald Trump unequivocally lost the state in 2020, a day before a rally on Saturday night at which Trump repeated baseless accusations of voter fraud.Related: Arizona Republican ‘audit’ finds even bigger lead for Biden in 2020 election Continue reading...

Critics say Biden’s national security adviser should have considered the worst case scenarioOn the afternoon of 30 August, a White House aide brought a note into the Oval Office confirming that the last US military plane had left Afghan airspace, marking the moment America’s longest war had come to an end.Joe Biden was with a team of advisers and on receiving the news he asked two of them, secretary of state Tony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, to accompany him to his private dining room to mark the moment with a call to the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin. Continue reading...

Anti-choice groups are embarrassed that their draconian law is being enforced the way it was designed

Hangar 1 collaborated with Crimson Wine group to salvage Napa-grown fruit for a specialty vodka with charitable intentionsWhen the haze from last year’s Glass fire settled over Napa Valley, all seemed lost for the region’s grapes. Most were tinged with ash and smoke before they could be pulled from the vines, rendering them useless for winemaking. But it gave a spirit distillery in nearby Alameda an idea.Hangar 1, which specializes in crafting sustainable and locally sourced spirits, reached out to their partners at an affected winery to see if they could turn the wasted grapes into vodka. Continue reading...

The Amazon boss turned up late and then told the PM to get on with his job. As Jennifer Acuri points out, it’s tough in New York“Look, you can fake it everywhere else, maybe try it in Los Angeles, but they’ll eat you alive in New York.” That’s a piece of advice Jennifer Arcuri says she once gave Boris Johnson. It doesn’t seem like he took it because, on Monday, he was in New York meeting Jeff Bezos and it didn’t seem to go very well.We know about this Arcuri tip because on Tuesday she was talking about Johnson via video link to the London Assembly’s oversight committee. By an oversight, the committee seems to have been confusingly named. Is it a committee concerned with overseeing what the mayor of London does or with oversights that he has committed? Or does that amount to the same thing? Continue reading...

The removal of Gen Robert E Lee’s statue – a target for Black Lives Matter protesters – from Monument Avenue has sparked a debate on public art in VirginiaAll but one plinth is now bare on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.Where once stood enormous statues glorifying Confederate leaders, on a thoroughfare that memorialized a white supremacist past in the former capital of the Confederacy, there is now empty space. The only monument that remains is of a black man: the Richmond native and renowned tennis player and activist Arthur Ashe. Continue reading...

The death of Gabby Petito draws attention to a form of widespread gendered violence in the US that has long been hiding in plain sightThe last week of July, as Gabby Petito and her fiance, Brian Laundrie, posted Instagram photos of themselves hiking barefoot in Utah’s Canyonlands national park, bronzed skin matching apricot-colored rocks, the body of Jerri Winters was discovered in Clinton Township, Michigan.Her boyfriend, Matthew Lewinski, immediately admitted to the police he strangled her last December, keeping her mutilated body in the basement of the home they shared for months. Continue reading...

Slumping approval ratings, political deadlock at home and blunders on foreign policy leave the White House facing its moment of truthIs Joe Biden failing? Less than nine months into his presidency, rising numbers of Americans and not a few foreign allies appear to think so. Polls last week by Gallup and Rasmussen put his national approval rating at minus 10 points. His overall poll average is minus 4. That compares with a positive approval rating of 19 points in January when he took office.These figures suggest one of the steepest ever early falls in presidential popularity is under way. Jolting, too, is a new Harvard-Harris survey giving Donald Trump a 48% favourability rating to Biden’s 46%. Among independent voters and in battleground states, the outlook for Democrats appears grim. In Iowa, 62% disapprove of Biden’s performance while 70% say the country is “on the wrong track”. Michigan and Virginia tell similar stories. Continue reading...

Staff attrition, high demand for appointments and enraged human clients have strained vet practices across the USEarly in the pandemic, Dr Monica Mansfield, a veterinarian based in Medway, Massachusetts, became haunted by a recurring nightmare.“There were these vulnerable kittens in my basement, and I forgot to feed them,” Mansfield recalls. “I’d wake up, terrified. ‘Oh my gosh, the kittens! Where are they?’ I felt like I was missing details and forgetting things that were critical to a case – that were critical to an animal’s life.” Continue reading...

Undermining female solidarity serves only to strengthen the grip of the patriarchyBlaming women for the ills of the world might appear an odd feminist call to action. But an idea gaining traction is that the “white feminism” dominant in the United States and the UK is not only a driving force of societal racism, but responsible for a host of other bad things, from the war on terror to the hypersexualisation of women in popular culture, to the dreadful abuses of power we see in international aid. It’s part of a growing tendency on the left to look for scapegoats at the cost of building the solidarity needed for social change.This is not to downplay the extent of racial inequalities in the UK, the way they affect women of colour and the structural racism that lies behind them. But it’s quite a jump to move from the observation that women are no more immune to racism than men to holding the feminist movement accountable for the plight of women of colour around the world. A new book, Against White Feminism, by Rafia Zakaria, makes precisely this case. To stack up the argument, she stereotypes feminism beyond recognition as a shallow, consumerist and exclusionary movement dominated by selfish white women who care little about scrutinising the male violence perpetrated by white men. Continue reading...

Party sees new urgency – and political opportunity – amid growing threat to Roe v WadeStanding on the lawn of the US Capitol, in clear view of the supreme court, a coalition of Democratic women declared Roe v Wade was no longer the law of the land.Related: House Democrats vote to establish federal right to abortion Continue reading...

While big corporations tell Americans how virtuous they are, they lobby up a storm against Biden’s social policy billIn recent years, “corporate social responsibility” has been viewed by some as the answer to the multiple failings of capitalism. Chief executives have responded to all sorts of problems – worsening climate change, widening inequality, soaring healthcare costs and so on – by promising their corporations will lead the way to solutions because they’re committed to being “socially responsible”.Related: House Democrats are scared to tax billionaires – that’s a costly mistake | Robert Reich Continue reading...

The Spanish wildcard, who for years feuded with the captain, broke Nick Faldo’s win record with a comeback for the agesRight about the time it was all as good as over, when the US fans at Whistling Straits were jeering the loudest, the wiseacres on social media were explaining where Europe had got it all wrong, just when your thumb was hovering over the TV remote, that was when it happened.Europe, already 6-2 down, were trailing in two of the Saturday morning foursome matches and all-square in the third. Their alpha pair, Sergio García and Jon Rahm, who had won the team’s only full point on the first day, had lost four of their first five holes on the second. It was not that they were playing so very badly, just that the USA pair of Brooks Koepka and Daniel Berger were playing that much better. Continue reading...

The US team had the upper hand again at Whistling Straits, leaving Europe hoping for a Sunday miracle12.26am BSTThat’s the end of another long day, and another painful one for Europe. They’re staring down the barrel now, and although nobody ever takes anything for granted in the Ryder Cup, they’ll need to improve on the Miracle of Medinah if they’re to keep hold of their trophy ... and this team have never looked capable of anything like that. Pity poor Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia, though, who have been clocking up the points in what looks a futile if admirable effort. Thanks for reading this blog. Hope to see you tomorrow for the USA procession!12.19am BSTFleetwood nearly trundles in a chip; Hovland nearly drains his long birdie putt. But it’s too little, too late, and they pick up DeChambeau’s marker. Easy in the end, though that end came quickly with a four-hole salvo.3&1 Scheffler/DeChambeau v Fleetwood/Hovland (F)

Freed from the psychic baggage of two decades of failure, the youngest team in Ryder Cup history are so far battering EuropeThe generational shift that defines Steve Stricker’s US team continued to pay off handsomely on Saturday morning as the Americans moved closer to winning back the Ryder Cup along the windy, western shores of Lake Michigan.The youngest team in Ryder Cup history – average age: 29 – continued its rampage on the Straits Course and their European foes, winning three of the morning’s foursomes matches to take a 9-3 stranglehold on the proceedings and move within 5½ points of reclaiming the title. The Americans, who became the first team in competition history to lead by six or more points after three sessions, were threatening to not only win back the Ryder Cup but run away with it as the groups went off for Saturday afternoon’s fourballs. Continue reading...

Judge granted temporary injunction and referred the case to a three-judge panel while mandate was set to go into effect MondayNew York City schools have been temporarily blocked from enforcing a vaccine mandate for teachers and other workers by a federal appeals judge, days before it was to take effect.Related: CDC overrides advisory panel to back Pfizer booster for Americans with high-risk jobs Continue reading...

Senate minority leader says he will ‘cross those bridges when I get there’ as expert says court may have reached a ‘turning point’At the end of a week in which Mitch McConnell refused to rule out blocking a Joe Biden supreme court pick if Republicans take the Senate next year, an expert said the court may have reached a “turning point” regarding public perception of its politicisation and need for reform.Related: Amy Coney Barrett says the supreme court aren’t ‘partisan hacks’. Oh really? | David Sirota Continue reading...

Woman, 30, arrested on suspicion of starting Fawn fire while nearly 2,000 under mandatory evacuation ordersFirefighters hope shifting winds and cooling temperatures will aid efforts to battle a wildfire in a forest in far northern California that has displaced thousands and burned at least 100 structures.Related: Fresh California wildfire prompts evacuations as forest blazes grow Continue reading...

A wildfire in northern California spread rapidly on Thursday, burning homes and prompting evacuation orders in a rural community in Shasta county. The Fawn fire in northern California started Wednesday north of Redding in Shasta county, and scorched more than 8.5 sq miles (22 sq km) of heavy timber on steep, rugged terrain amid hot, dry and gusty conditions. A woman was arrested on suspicion of starting the fire

Netflix has snapped up the author’s entire estate but could struggle to do justice to the fantastic world of his imaginationIt has been a lucrative week for the estate of Roald Dahl and an expensive one for Netflix, which purchased the Roald Dahl Story Company for a reported £500m and though neither organisation would confirm the exact sum involved, I’m sure the frobscottle corks were popped. In a statement, the streaming service said its planned adaptation of Matilda the Musical and its forthcoming animated Charlie and the Chocolate Factory series had “opened its eyes to a much more ambitious venture – the creation of a unique universe across animated and live action films and TV, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theatre, consumer products and more”.Whew. It’s going to be Frozen all over again, isn’t it? I don’t have children, but I do have nephews and nieces and have learned through them that there is nothing you can’t embellish with Anna and Elsa. A fork? Frozened. Trainers with sparkly laces? Frozened. There are Frozen potties, Hula Hoops, bed frames, tents. There are more snowflakes on children’s toys than there are people angrily typing the word on Twitter. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we get Miss Trunchbull-branded javelins, Mr Twit beard combs or a Grandpa Joe-themed bedspread. Continue reading...

Some residents of the small west Texas city responded to the migrants with hate and fear. Others directed anger at politicians

The rightwing playbook: outrage, leading to the passage of deliberately vague laws and advocacy groups diligently weaponizing those lawsAs we all know, there is nothing right-wingers love more than free speech and nothing they detest more than “cancel culture”. People should be able to say whatever they like without fear of censorship, conservatives are constantly squealing. Except, of course, if those people happen to be saying things they don’t agree with. In which case: silence them immediately and ban their books! Continue reading...

Considerable resources were dedicated to finding Petito’s body. Yet Indigenous people in Wyoming are more likely to disappear and to be killed, and their cases are barely noticedThe apparent murder of 22-year-old Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito has been a consistent part of the American news cycle since she disappeared on 11 September. Her YouTube presence and participation in the Instagram #vanlife subculture, which involves young people travelling around the country living aesthetically appealing lives in vans and converted buses, provided plenty of content for internet detectives on sites like TikTok and Reddit to consume. Her story is heart-wrenching, especially after police footage has emerged of Petito and her fiance Brian Laundrie, who is now a “person of interest” in her death, having a domestic crisis.But the story also feels eerily familiar – so familiar, in fact, that there is a term for it: “missing white woman syndrome”. White women, particularly conventionally attractive middle- or upper-class white women, tend to receive disproportionate media coverage when they go missing. Petito’s case is tragic, but the media attention it has attracted replicates a systemic pattern. Continue reading...

Transitioning isn’t always linear. My journey involved many surprising twists and turnsImagine running a race where the finish line continually relocates itself. This is the best way I can describe my transition into womanhood.I was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. I started my medical transition at the age of 29. During those years, I underwent a multitude of gender-affirming surgeries, which included a rhinoplasty, a chin, jaw and brow-bone shave along with multiple breast augmentations. Continue reading...

About 30% of California’s registered voters are Latino, and it appears they voted largely Democrat – but some say it was ‘about ensuring this state didn’t move backward’Luis Sánchez worked overtime to rescue Governor Gavin Newsom in California’s recall race. His group PowerCA Action reached more than a quarter-million voters ahead of election day, encouraging young Latino Californians to head to the polls.Related: ‘Study Newsom’s playbook’: what Democrats – and Republicans – can learn from California’s recall Continue reading...

The UN played a crucial role in defeating South African apartheid – it is time to investigate Israel’s unequal regimeThis week, world leaders have gathered in New York for the 76th session of the United Nations general assembly, struggling to prove its continued relevance in a bruised world. The major themes so far have been the climate crisis, vaccinating the world against Covid-19 and the new regime in Afghanistan – and rightly so. But there is another issue that also demands our attention, where progress could restore faith in the general assembly’s ability to act: the deepening regime of Israeli Jewish supremacy over millions of Palestinians, which has been recognised by more and more observers as a regime of apartheid. We join many global leaders in calling for the general assembly to investigate this regime, and consequently take the necessary measures of accountability to dismantle it.Last year, in response to Israel’s plans to annex further land in the occupied Palestinian territory, we were joined by tens of Arab civil society leaders and diplomats in calling for sanctions against Israel and defending the right of Palestinians to engage in legitimate resistance, including through boycott, divestment and sanctions. This is to safeguard not just the inalienable rights of the people of Palestine, particularly to self-determination, but also the sanctity of the international rule of law. Continue reading...

Despite all the analogies for this possibly terminal emergency, it is unlike anything that has come beforeWriting in 2003, the American environmentalist Bill McKibben observed that although “some small percentage” of scientists, diplomats and activists had known for 15 years that the Earth was facing a disastrous change, their knowledge had almost completely failed to alarm anyone else.It certainly alarmed McKibben: in June 1988, the scientist James Hansen testified to the US Congress that the world was warming rapidly and human behaviour was the primary cause – the first loud and unequivocal warning of the climate crisis to come – and before the next year was out, McKibben had published The End of Nature, the first book about climate change for a lay audience. But few others seemed particularly worried. “People think about ‘global warming’ in the way they think about ‘violence on television’ or ‘growing trade deficits’, as a marginal concern to them, if a concern at all,” he wrote in 2003. “Hardly anyone has fear in their guts.” Continue reading...

A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Germany Continue reading...

Divisions between progressives and moderates in Congress are threatening to scuttle a $3.5tn social spending program and a $1tn infrastructure billAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez cannot have been surprised that wearing a “Tax the Rich” dress to New York’s Met gala would trigger performative outrage from the right. But it also earned blowback from closer to home.Eric Adams, a Black police veteran who won the party’s mayoral primary by appealing to its centre, argued that “when you talk about just blanketly saying ‘tax the rich’ in this city”, it would potentially drive away firefighters, teachers and other taxpayers on whom the city depends. He advocated cutting wasteful spending instead. Continue reading...

Joe Biden meets leaders of Australia, India and Japan in latest effort to cement US leadership in AsiaUS president Joe Biden and the leaders of Australia, India and Japan highlighted their Quad group’s role in safeguarding a stable, democratic Indo-Pacific in a veiled dig at rival China.The first in-person summit of the Quad held on Friday marked Biden’s latest effort to cement US leadership in Asia in the face of a rising China. Continue reading...

Steve Stricker’s side established a commanding lead over the defending champions after day one at Whistling Straits1.19am BSTRelated: Ryder Cup: Europe left with mountain to climb as USA dominate first day12.32am BST... and with that, I’m out of here. Back in the afternoon, when Europe will desperately try to turn the tide. Thanks for reading. Nighty night! Continue reading...