Endorsement not always full-throated but party backing marks major turn after bitter split over nomination
Facing a barrage of extreme attacks from Donald Trump and his allies, the Democratic establishment is finally rallying around progressive Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s candidate in the closely watched US Senate election in Michigan. But the endorsement is not always full-throated, and often even omits his name.
At a rally in Port Huron on Sunday, the US president launched the latest in a wave of Islamophobic rants against El-Sayed, erroneously branding him a “jihadist” and “Muslim Brotherhood member” while invoking 9/11.
John Swinney and Rhun ap Iorwerth say devolving power further is up to Holyrood and Senedd – not Westminster
Scotland and Wales’s first ministers have told Andy Burnham that decisions on local devolution rest solely with their parliaments, in response to the prime minister’s push to extend English-style regional powers across the UK.
After Burnham held discussions in Glasgow with John Swinney and Rhun ap Iorwerth about localised employment and reindustrialisation powers, Downing Street characterised the talks as constructive.
From surgeons to senior civil servants, even the most decent people can make disastrous mistakes. But these gaffes require honesty
Gabriel Weston made a mistake at work this summer. It doesn’t define her – she was and is a well-regarded NHS surgeon and author – but it was serious enough, as she explained in an extraordinarily candid series of Instagram and Substack posts this month, to prompt an investigation that left her feeling “ashamed and alone and really quite nervous”. Whatever went wrong in the operating theatre was bad enough to be classed a “never event” (something that should never be able to happen if the process is working properly) and triggered a nagging anxiety that she might somehow do it again, unless she figured out where she had unexpectedly gone wrong.
It’s a fascinating insight into a process that most people never have the courage to talk about openly. But it also highlights why it’s so hard in practice for doctors and other professionals to acknowledge and learn from mistakes – as every public inquiry into every public scandal ends up recommending, only to repeat it all over again after the next one – rather than close ranks and cover up. Weston says she only spoke up out of frustration with what she saw as her employers’ failure to support her (she had asked to reduce what she considered an overloaded operating list to take some pressure off, which she says has now happened, leaving her full of praise for the hospital’s ultimate response). Judging by the responses to her posts, she’s not alone.
Independent candidate Bill Hill is threatening to unseat Trump ally Nick Begich with a message of affordability
As Republicans fight to maintain their narrow majority in Congress, they face a unique challenge in Alaska – not from a Democrat, but from an independent commercial fisher and first-time candidate running to flip the state’s lone House seat.
Bill Hill, who is an Alaska Native and has worked in education and construction, has positioned himself as a working-class candidate who will fight to make life more affordable for people like himself and his family.
The president cancelled the events in favor of tele-rallies, as Republicans face a fight to retain control of Congress
Donald Trump cancelled, and then promptly uncancelled, two in-person rallies in Kansas and Iowa this weekend as polls suggest US midterm election races in the previous Republican strongholds could go down to the wire.
On Thursday, just five days before election day, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced the president would no longer host the Kansas and Iowa rallies and instead participate in “a large number of tele-rallies”. The RNC claimed it felt it was in a “strong position” in Kansas and Iowa.
Mary Peltola has denied that she knew anything about an effort to put another candidate on the Alaska ballot with the same name as the Republican incumbent, as the US justice department escalated a criminal investigation this week with new grand jury subpoenas.
“I just want to clear the air,” the Democratic Senate candidate said on Thursday at the top of a speech in a downtown bar in Juneau, Alaska’s capital. “I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.”
Swedish climate academic says he has been ‘kept in the dark’ over Home Office decision to revoke his travel authorisation
The Swedish climate academic Andreas Malm has condemned a travel ban imposed on him by the UK government as a “drift into authoritarianism” amid criticism of the move.
Malm, the author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, said he had been “kept in the dark” by the UK’s immigration authorities over the reasons for his electronic travel authorisation (ETA) being revoked.
Swedish climate academic says he has been ‘kept in the dark’ over Home Office decision to revoke his travel authorisation
The Swedish climate academic Andreas Malm has condemned a travel ban imposed on him by the UK government as a “drift into authoritarianism” amid criticism of the move.
Malm, the author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, said he had been “kept in the dark” by the UK’s immigration authorities over the reasons for his electronic travel authorisation (ETA) being revoked.
Altering copyright law to allow AI companies to scrape music, books and journalism could trigger a constitutional breach, Coalition senators and the recording industry have warned, as they raise new fears it could open Australia to massive legal action and compensation claims from rights holders worldwide.
The attorney general’s department admitted it was “extremely alive” to the issue, and Australia’s leading constitutional expert, Anne Twomey, agreed there was “potentially” a concern – depending how legislation was drafted – that granting AI companies permission to scrape copyrighted material from the internet could amount to an acquisition of property by the government.
As is the custom, millions of children in the United States will be out in the streets this Halloween to trick-or-treat, decked out in costumes. Also as is custom, adults will fret about the mostly mythical dangers children may face. Once upon a time it was razor blades in apples; this year, it’s rainbow fentanyl in candy. But while fears of children receiving narcotic-spiked treats are unfounded, there is a very real danger that America’s children face on this most hallowed of evenings: cars.
That’s because pedestrians under the age of 18 are three times more likely to be struck and killed by a car on Halloween than any other day of the year. A 2026 analysis of federal crash records found that 45 children were killed while walking on Halloween between 2010 and 2024, more than any other day. That risk grows to 10 times more likely for children aged 4 to 8 years old, according to a study from 2019 in JAMA Pediatrics.
“You’re going to have increased numbers of children, including younger children who are out on the streets,” said Lois Lee, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School. “At the same time, you have adults who are driving, and especially this year on a Monday, people will be driving home from work. If children are in costume, they may be wearing darker clothing … which makes them harder to detect.”
The JAMA Pediatrics study from 2019 corroborates this, noting that Halloween “may heighten pedestrian traffic risk, because celebrations occur at dusk, masks restrict peripheral vision, costumes limit visibility, street-crossing safety is neglected, and some partygoers are impaired by alcohol.” It’s the kind of lethal combination that can turn a fun occasion into a deadly nightmare. Adult victims included, the risk of death to all pedestrians was 43 percent higher on Halloween compared to a regular evening.
But what happens on Halloween isn’t an isolated incident. After gun injuries, motor vehicle injuries are the second leading cause of death among children in the US overall. And with pedestrian fatalities (both adult and child) at a 40-year high in the US, it’s worth asking why children roaming the streets is so inherently deadly, and what can be done about it.
“Sometimes when you talk about this issue, you get pushback from people and people say, ‘Well, of course, you have more children on the streets, of course, more children are going to die,’” Doug Gordon, a writer and podcast host who advocates for safer streets and cities, told me. “But that accepts a baseline level of danger that I think we as a society have in fact accepted on the other 364 days of the year.”
There are broader reasons for why streets have gotten even more dangerous for pedestrians recently. One is that drivers are distracted — not just by their phones, but increasingly by the infotainment systems that come as a part of newer cars. A more pressing issue is the increasing size of cars in the US; SUVs make up half of all car sales in the US, and are much more likely to kill pedestrians in crashes than smaller vehicles. “Mass times [acceleration] is force,” Gordon summed up. “When you increase the mass of something, you’re going to increase the force at which it interacts with a small vulnerable child.”
But the biggest reason may be that American streets and cities are designed for cars, and not people. As Charles Marohn — founder and president of Strong Towns and an expert on urban planning and civil engineering — has argued, engineers who design streets prioritize getting cars as quickly from point A to point B over everything else. One recent example: A traffic safety committee in Utah could not find any way to make the five-lane road crossing to a school safer for students aside from just removing the crosswalk altogether.
But there is a lot that can be done to make streets safer, for future Halloweens and every other day of the year. In the short term, cities and towns can build on open streets programs implemented after the Covid-19 pandemic began, which involve closing certain streets to car traffic to allow for more public space. Notably, New York City announced a “Trick or Streets” plan that would see 100 car-free zones in effect from 4 to 8 pm on Halloween this year. And the Big Apple isn’t alone, as Henry Grabar reported for Slate: less dense and more car-dependent cities like St. Petersburg, Florida and Seattle will also either close off the city center for Halloween or actually allow residents to apply for permits that can close off their neighborhoods to car traffic.
In the long run, Gordon believes that places around the US should be able to pass what is known as the popsicle test, where a kid should be able to safely walk to a store, buy a popsicle, and return home before it melts. In essence, every city should be designed to be friendly and traversable to the most vulnerable in our communities. “If you start thinking along those lines, then I think you start thinking along the lines of what infrastructure is needed to make that possible, where I would feel comfortable letting my kid do that,” Gordon said. “Halloween is like a giant version of the popsicle test because it’s not just your kid, it’s every kid in the neighborhood.”
Designing safer streets for children goes beyond safety — it would make for a better Halloween. “Having sidewalks and good lighting is a good preventive measure, not just for injury prevention, but also just general health,” Lee told me, “because that encourages everybody in the neighborhood to walk, exercise, and get outside, which is better for everybody’s health as well.”
And if their safety isn’t enough motivation, designing dense, walkable cities could even lead to bigger candy hauls for kids.
“When you build a city that’s safer, so that kids can walk around by themselves and not be worried about getting hit by a car, or the parents being worried about them being hit by a car, it’s just better,” Gordon said. “It’s awesome. They’re independent. It’s fun. And on Halloween, they get a lot of candy.”
Correction, October 31, 4 pm ET: A previous version of this story had an inaccurate definition of the equation for force.
Update, October 30, 2026, 10 am ET: This story has been updated to include new federal crash data.
The leader of the UK’s biggest trade union has called for the same political focus to be given to NHS, education and care sector workers as there has been on those employed in North Sea oil and gas.
Andrea Egan, the general secretary of Unison, said too often public sector workers were treated as an “afterthought” by the government compared with the “massive political focus” on protecting jobs in the North Sea.
DOJ issues grand jury subpoenas to local election officials in California as part of its investigation into the state’s voter rolls, multiple sources told ABC News.
The DOJ is issuing new subpoenas in a probe of Alaska's U.S. Senate race and alleged efforts by Democrats to recruit a candidate with the same name as the GOP incumbent.
There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 in the Senate and 39 governorships up for grabs in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Jonathan Freedland is joined by Carrie Dann, of the Cook Political Report, to run through some of the races to watch before the final weekend of campaigning
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