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Echoes of cold war as US accused of meddling in another Brazilian election

Claims that Trump and Rubio are trying to influence result have parallels with CIA intervention 64 years ago

The year was 1962 and the Kennedy administration was desperate to swing Brazil’s congressional elections against its leftwing president, João Goulart, as a way of countering the supposed communist threat sweeping a region the US considered its back yard.

Historians say that in the lead-up to the vote, the CIA and the Department of State secretly channelled millions of dollars to opposition candidates and a group tasked with spreading rightwing propaganda and stirring up unrest.

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© Photograph: Bruna Prado/AP

© Photograph: Bruna Prado/AP

© Photograph: Bruna Prado/AP

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Tropical Storm Edouard expected to inundate parts of Texas and Louisiana

First big storm of season heads towards Gulf coast and is expected to bring potentially heavy rains

Tropical Storm Edouard headed toward the US Gulf coast early on Tuesday and was expected to gain strength before bringing potentially heavy rains and flooding into parts of Texas and Louisiana.

The storm was upgraded on Monday night from a tropical depression, and forecasters with the National Hurricane Center (NHC) expect it will make landfall in Texas later on Tuesday.

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© Photograph: NOAA/AP

© Photograph: NOAA/AP

© Photograph: NOAA/AP

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Conservatives split from Silicon Valley allies as datacenter backlash grows

Tech companies have underestimated the opposition to energy-hungry datacenters – and experts predict the pushback will intensify

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, listening to Dolly Parton in the wake of her death. I was lucky enough to see her in concert a decade ago in California, in the same arena where Google now hosts its annual I/O conference. It’s been a long time, and all my iPhone 4 photos are so blurry you can barely tell it’s a musical performance, but my memory is clear enough to compensate. She told many stories about her childhood, which led into a trio of fabulous songs: My Tennessee Mountain Home, Applejack, and Dr Robert F Thomas. They’re still my favorites.

Siri, where does Apple go next? – podcast

Apple’s Tim Cook leaves behind complicated legacy on privacy

Fifteen years after Steve Jobs, Tim Cook leaves a dramatically different Apple

Who is John Ternus, Apple’s next CEO?

‘Superhuman’ AI tool spots heart disease in less than 2 seconds

Doctors’ AI scribes get names of drugs and diagnoses wrong, NHS watchdog warns

AI can detect heart disease in women using mammograms, study suggests

‘Scary’: how misinformation and AI hallucinations are infiltrating Australia’s parliament

AI slopper in chief: Trump turns to social media amid tough questions

The datacenter backlash is bringing the entire political spectrum together – against big tech billionaires

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© Illustration: Ben Hickey/The Guardian

© Illustration: Ben Hickey/The Guardian

© Illustration: Ben Hickey/The Guardian

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‘Demonic oppression’ and ‘girly convos’: the podcast wooing young women back to Christianity

Girls Gone Bible is on tour in the US, touting a regressive ideal of femininity through discussions of abstinence and mental health struggles

At first glance, the crowd gathering outside a music venue in Red Bank, New Jersey, could have passed for a group of sorority rush hopefuls – or Ella Langley fans on their way to the country star’s show. Most of them were under the age of 30. They wore cowboy boots, maxi sundresses and soft, bouncy blowouts, scrolling on their phones outside the doors as they waited for friends to arrive.

But one accessory gave them away: the Bibles they toted. These women were there to pray.

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© Photograph: Jessie Wardarski/AP

© Photograph: Jessie Wardarski/AP

© Photograph: Jessie Wardarski/AP

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Echoes of cold war as US accused of meddling in another Brazilian election

Claims that Trump and Rubio are trying to influence result have parallels with CIA intervention 64 years ago

The year was 1962 and the Kennedy administration was desperate to swing Brazil’s congressional elections against its leftwing president, João Goulart, as a way of countering the supposed communist threat sweeping a region the US considered its back yard.

Historians say that in the lead-up to the vote, the CIA and the Department of State secretly channelled millions of dollars to opposition candidates and a group tasked with spreading rightwing propaganda and stirring up unrest.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Bruna Prado/AP

© Photograph: Bruna Prado/AP

© Photograph: Bruna Prado/AP

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What should we do with Trump’s monstrous architectural legacy? | Jan-Werner Müller

Questions over Trump’s ballroom and other structures might not feel urgent. But when his reign ends, Trumpism must be repudiated

On Monday, a majority on the supreme court found a technical way to overrule a lower court’s imperative to stop work, while not taking a stance on whether the whole enterprise might be illegal to begin with. Preservationists, the majority held, appear to lack legal grounds for filing a suit blocking Trump’s ballroom; that means construction will proceed, even if none other than John Roberts, in a dissent, held that “those responsible” were breaking the rules in deciding “what to build up at the People’s House”. The solicitor general John Sauer is on record claiming that 65% of the project is completed (of course, he might have exaggerated – such things are known to have happened in Trump administrations). Either way, it is thus likely that there will be a massive structure next to the original White House; and, given that the ruling will embolden the president dramatically to change Washington DC’s landscape by spending money never approved by Congress, we might be cursed with a triumphal arch as well. All of which raises the question: what to do with a monstrous architectural legacy in post-Trump America?

Some might dismiss the question as a bit of a luxury problem. After all, a war that also demonstrates the ongoing disempowerment of Congress keeps dragging on; ICE continues its cruel day-to-day work; Trump is trying every tactic to make the midterms go his way. But the built environment, and especially the civic landscape of a capital, is never just an afterthought. Buildings and monuments make values visible, as the philosopher Susan Neiman once put it. And the decision to leave Trump’s structures in place as if his reign had just been another normal era in US history is not neutral – just like leaving Confederate monuments in place is not neutral.

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University

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© Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

© Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

© Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

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Forest Service chief faces scrutiny over logging ties as Trump plans to scrap protections

Rollback of ‘roadless rule’ expected to benefit companies US Forest Service chief, Tom Schultz, previously lobbied for

Donald Trump this month announced plans to rescind a landmark rule that has protected old-growth forests in the US for 25 years. If finalized, the rollback is expected to benefit the companies that Tom Schultz, chief of the US Forest Service, represented in his previous roles as a timber industry lobbyist and executive, according to research by consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen.

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, more commonly known as the “roadless rule”, was adopted in 2001 to limit development in roughly 45m acres of national forest. Industry interests and Republican representatives have long lobbied for the rule’s rescission, which would open up those swaths of untouched land to road construction, drilling and logging.

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© Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

© Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

© Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

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The man who shaped Trump: book sheds fresh light on ruthless Roy Cohn

American Scoundrel tells story of McCarthy attack dog, mob lawyer and Trump mentor – will the president be thumbing its pages?

Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark have written a book Trumpworld doesn’t want you to read. Published on Tuesday, American Scoundrel is a propulsive, horrifying biography of Roy Cohn, the New York mob lawyer whose extraordinary life charted, as the book’s subtitle has it, a “Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump”.

“I told my publicist to reach out to any of the Fox News hosts and reporters, to Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon,” Bird said. “We haven’t gotten a peep, other than Joe Rogan. He said he looked at the galleys, and he got back to my publicist and said, ‘I’m not interested.’ I’m kind of surprised. This is a serious biography of the president’s mentor, whom he publicly admires and says he still misses.”

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© Photograph: Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images

© Photograph: Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images

© Photograph: Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images

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‘Led us down such a dark path’: documentary explores how 9/11 changed America

In Netflix film Turning Point: Generation 9/11, the lives of people forever impacted by the terrorist attack on 2002 are explored

Twenty-five years on, memory is giving way to history. Soon the US will cross the point where half its population were born after 11 September 2001 or were too young to remember the day that terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in northern Virginia and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“When I do that math, I get to the bomb at Hiroshima – that’s how distant it is,” says Brian Knappenberger, 56, director of a new Netflix documentary, Turning Point: Generation 9/11. “When we talk about the second world war, for our generation it seemed like a long time ago but, for the current generation of 20-year-olds, that’s how long ago it was.”

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© Photograph: COURTESY OF NETFLIX

© Photograph: COURTESY OF NETFLIX

© Photograph: COURTESY OF NETFLIX

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Russia kills at least 12 on sixth night of drone attacks on Kyiv

Zelenskyy says Moscow is capitalising on shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors to lower morale in capital

At least 12 people have been killed in and around Kyiv overnight as Ukraine’s capital endured a sixth consecutive night of Russian drone and missile attacks aimed at shattering infrastructure and lowering the morale of the city.

Eight of the dead were reported killed in Kyiv, including seven at a railway depot on the city’s left bank, and four more in the surrounding region, after hours of air alerts culminating in a wave of strikes at about 2.30am.

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© Photograph: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/AFP/Getty Images

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House to vote on stopgap funding bill as lawmakers scramble to avoid government shutdown – US politics live

Speaker Mike Johnson to launch a floor vote designed to prevent any federal shutdown before the November midterms

The US will aim to persuade G20 members to take a hands-off ⁠approach to regulating AI, according ⁠to a Trump ​White House official, at a gathering of industry titans and commerce ministers that begins on Tuesday in North Carolina.

Leaders are convening at a key moment in the AI ⁠sector’s development and the global debate over how to govern it, and as the US faces an increasing threat from China for AI supremacy, Reuters reported.

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© Photograph: Evan Vucci/Reuters

© Photograph: Evan Vucci/Reuters

© Photograph: Evan Vucci/Reuters

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First Thing: Duane Keith Davis found guilty of 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur

Jury took about three hours to reach verdict in case that relied heavily on confessions from the defendant. Plus, the woman who lived with and loved Freddie Mercury as her fiance

Good morning. A Las Vegas jury has found the former South Side Compton Crips gang leader Duane Keith Davis guilty of the murder of Tupac Shakur, bringing the case to a close nearly 30 years after the rapper was gunned down. The jury took about three hours to reach a guilty verdict in a case that relied heavily on multiple confessions from Davis himself.

The 63-year-old, who was accused of instigating the deadly shooting but not pulling the trigger himself, had spent years telling investigators and interviewers alike of his direct involvement before he was arrested in 2023.

Who was Tupac Shakur? Shakur was born in 1971 in East Harlem, New York, and rose to fame in the early 90s with lyrics that doubled as a sharp commentary on social injustice including systemic racism and police brutality. He was 25 when he died, is regarded among the greatest rappers to ever live, and continues to be celebrated around the world years after his life was cut short.

How have his family reacted to the trial? “We’ve been waiting 30 years to grieve properly,” Zayd Akinyela, Shakur’s cousin, told reporters outside the courtroom when the trial was under way. “A lot of people don’t get to grieve until they understand what happened to their loved one and how it happened.”

Why have authorities been so heavily criticised over the case? Las Vegas police faced criticism that they had bungled the investigation and failed to pursue crucial leads, including from a member of Shakur’s entourage who claimed he could identify the shooters. That witness died weeks later in a separate shooting.

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© Photograph: Pat Johnson/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Pat Johnson/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Pat Johnson/REX/Shutterstock

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House Republicans ramp up labor union investigations ahead of midterms

Inquiry come after conservative thinktanks claim unions are using member dues to support Democratic causes

House Republicans are investigating several US labor unions based on claims from far-right nonprofits alleging union dues are being used for illegal political funding.

Republicans on the House’s education and workforce committee opened the investigation this summer after multiple reports from the conservative thinktanks targeted unions and their spending, claiming that unions are using member dues to support Democratic causes.

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© Photograph: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

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Can 80-year-old Democrat Ed Markey clinch another US Senate term?

Age on the agenda in Massachusetts but octogenarian leftwinger leads younger rival Seth Moulton in primary poll

Democrats have spent the summer ousting long-serving incumbents in primaries across the country. On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will decide whether that generational revolt extends to the 80-year-old Ed Markey, whose younger Democratic rival has argued that the incumbent is simply too old to serve another term.

But the Senate primary in this heavily Democratic state flips a central dynamic of previous contests, where youthful progressive insurgents have targeted – and in several cases, toppled – older incumbents they derided as avatars of an outmoded cautious establishment.

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© Photograph: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

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Press freedom advocates alarmed by $300,000 defamation verdict against Louisiana newspaper

Experts say ruling could undermine the ‘actual malice’ standard and make publishers more wary of critical reporting

A $300,000 jury verdict won recently by a Louisiana supreme court justice who sued the Advocate, the state’s largest newspaper, for libel over an editorial has caused concern among some US press freedom advocates.

One said the decision demonstrated a misunderstanding of a key legal principle governing such cases. And another worries the verdict could have a chilling effect on the media industry’s efforts to report on powerful people and institutions.

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© Photograph: Louisiana Supreme Court

© Photograph: Louisiana Supreme Court

© Photograph: Louisiana Supreme Court

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Russia kills at least 12 on sixth night of drone attacks on Kyiv

Zelenskyy says Moscow is capitalising on shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors to lower morale in capital

At least 12 people have been killed in and around Kyiv overnight as Ukraine’s capital endured a sixth consecutive night of Russian drone and missile attacks aimed at shattering infrastructure and lowering the morale of the city.

Eight of the dead were reported killed in Kyiv, including seven at a railway depot on the city’s left bank, and four more in the surrounding region, after hours of air alerts culminating in a wave of strikes at about 2.30am.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/AFP/Getty Images

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The media’s Hasan Piker obsession is letting Republican Mike Rogers off the hook | Mehdi Hasan

Mike Rogers isn’t merely campaigning alongside a controversial supporter. His campaign put an extremist on its faith leadership team

Hasan Piker.

Turn on cable news. Pick up a newspaper. Log on to Twitter. It doesn’t seem to matter where you get your political news: for the past month, the leftist Twitch streamer has become one of the dominant subjects of coverage, conversation and controversy surrounding the crucial Michigan Senate race between the Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and the Republican Mike Rogers.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

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Thai resort prepares to host USS Abraham Lincoln sailors after more than 270 days at sea

Security stepped up in Pattaya before arrival of thousands of sailors and marines whose deployment was extended due to US war in Iran

Authorities in the Thai resort city of Pattaya have stepped up security as they prepare to welcome thousands of sailors and marines from the USS Abraham Lincoln who have spent more than 270 consecutive days at sea.

“About 600 officials will provide security and other necessary assistance,” the provincial governor, Narit Niramaiwong, told AFP.

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© Photograph: Алексей Облов/Getty Images

© Photograph: Алексей Облов/Getty Images

© Photograph: Алексей Облов/Getty Images

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Thai resort prepares to host USS Abraham Lincoln sailors after more than 270 days at sea

Security stepped up in Pattaya before arrival of thousands of sailors and marines whose deployment was extended due to US war in Iran

Authorities in the Thai resort city of Pattaya have stepped up security as they prepare to welcome thousands of sailors and marines from the USS Abraham Lincoln who have spent more than 270 consecutive days at sea.

“About 600 officials will provide security and other necessary assistance,” the provincial governor, Narit Niramaiwong, told AFP.

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© Photograph: Алексей Облов/Getty Images

© Photograph: Алексей Облов/Getty Images

© Photograph: Алексей Облов/Getty Images

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Life after Maga: the group offering an ‘exit ramp’ for rightwingers questioning Trumpism

The non-profit Leaving Maga is built on the premise that abandoning the Trump-built movement is like fighting a disease or breaking an addiction

Stephania Messina kept birthing boys. In the Quiverfull conservative Christian church she belonged to outside Detroit, Michigan, that made her a community celebrity. Your quiver, as the church taught it, is your womb, meant to be filled with as many arrows – a metaphor for children – as you can shoot unto the Lord. She shot five. “They treated me like I was Mother Mary, like I was this gift to the church,” she said.

But while she was quickly pushed into leading worship and Bible study groups for women and children, she wasn’t permitted to talk about politics.

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© Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images

© Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images

© Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images

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