State attorney general said Trump’s justice department’s directive to verify 20,000 ballots is completely improper

California’s attorney general on Saturday rebuked the Trump administration’s efforts to quash alleged noncitizen voting, calling it “politicizing and weaponizing the law”.

Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, said the justice department acted at Donald Trump’s direction.

Former president speaks to crowd of thousands in support of Abdul El-Sayed for US Senate and Democratic ticket

Barack Obama told a Detroit crowd on Saturday that Abdul El-Sayed was “fighting for change, real change, that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket”, as he threw his weight behind the Democratic Senate candidate and the rest of the ticket on the first day of early voting in Michigan.

Obama said in front of thousands of onlookers at Cass technical high school in Detroit that El-Sayed would “finish the job we started with the Affordable Care Act and guarantee quality, affordable healthcare to every single American”.

Death inside Folkston facility comes as officials allegedly threaten hunger strikers there with force-feeding

An immigrant detained at a sprawling detention center complex in Georgia died on Friday, local and federal officials confirmed, after the facility has already faced national scrutiny for its response to an ongoing hunger strike inside.

The death inside the D Ray James facility in Folkston, Georgia, comes as federal immigration officials and private contractors are allegedly threatening hunger strikers there with force-feeding, a detained hunger striker, his wife, attorneys and advocates all said this week. Detainees are refusing food to protest prolonged captivity and bad conditions.

But Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX owns Starlink, accuses Ukrainian military of violating ⁠the company’s terms

Ukraine’s military has a “stable connection to Starlink”, the Ukrainian government said, 10 days after its ability to use the satellite communications system was suddenly restricted.

But hours after the announcement, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose company owns Starlink, accused the Ukrainian military of violating ⁠the company’s terms. Neither Musk nor the US government, which operates Starshield using Starlink technology, took responsibility for imposing the curbs.

• Surridge and Mukhtar fire Nashville to 2-0 victory

• Nashville extend unbeaten streak to seven matches

• Montreal teenager Keita impresses on MLS debut

Nashville SC scored twice in the second half to claim the Supporters’ Shield as the top team in MLS with a 2-0 win at CF Montreal on Saturday.

The win allowed Nashville (21-3-7, 70 points) to stretch their unbeaten streak to seven games (5-0-2).

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• Obama rallies Michigan crowd for El-Sayed, saying he’s ‘fighting for real change’

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Donald Trump voted in West Palm Beach, Florida today, telling reporters at the polls that he voted straight Republican on his ballot. Trump has historically mailed-in his ballot rather than voting in-person.

Speaking from the polling site, Trump defended an ad from Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, his administration’s lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Alaska Senate race if Repubican senator Dan Sullivan loses his race and the war in Iran.

Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem fell from ride earlier this month, spurring amusement park to temporarily shut it down

Six Flags will install seatbelts on its Goliath rollercoaster in Georgia, after a rider plummeted to his death earlier this month.

Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, a 42-year-old father and educator, was thrown from his seat on the Goliath, a coaster that plunges riders down 165ft, before a second drop of 180ft. On his way down, he collided with the ride’s other cars.

Baseball’s two best regular-season teams are also among its lowest spenders. But their unlikely World Series comes with a warning about the sport’s future

The best pitcher in baseball led the best team to victory over the second-best team? Weird.

A World Series that makes the logical feel novel began on Friday as the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 3-2 in Game 1. Of course the Brewers, with their MLB-topping 103 regular-season victories, should be facing the 98-win Rays on the grandest stage. But of course, since these are two of the smallest and lowest-budget franchises in the sport, they shouldn’t.

• American, 22, edges Britain’s Jake Jarman by 0.033

• Blakely takes vault and bars bronze after all-around gold

• Simone Biles watches as Americans shine in Rotterdam

American Frederick Richard won the floor exercise title at the world gymnastics championships in Rotterdam on Saturday, finishing ahead of Britain’s Jake Jarman and Israel’s Artem Dolgopyat.

With US gymnastics great Simone Biles looking on as a spectator in the Netherlands, the 22-year-old Richard secured his first world title, edging out Jarman by just 0.033 points after scoring 14.633. Jarman, the defending world champion, was among a field that included the last two Olympic gold medallists.

• American, 32, wins season-opening giant slalom

• Moltzan edges Albania’s Lara Colturi by 0.01sec

• Mikaela Shiffrin drops from first to seventh place

American Paula Moltzan became the oldest woman to claim her first Alpine skiing World Cup victory on Saturday, pipping Albania’s Lara Colturi by just one-hundredth of a second in a thrilling season-opening giant slalom at Sölden, Austria.

Moltzan, who was fifth after the opening run, produced a superb second descent to finish with a combined time of 2min 14.82sec, narrowly denying her Italian-born Albanian rival, who finished in 2min 14.83sec. Germany’s Emma Aicher completed the podium, 0.52sec behind the Minnesota native.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 4,588 cases across the country, more than double the tally in 2025

Federal health authorities reported an additional 178 cases of measles in the US this week, as the vaccine-preventable illness continues to sicken people across at least 43 outbreaks.

The new data reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) comes as experts criticize the agency for lack of transparency, and as health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr takes steps to further upend US vaccine infrastructure.

Other voter concerns have prevailed but return of Congress likely to see renewed focus on late sex offender’s activities

As US voters head to the polls for crucial and fraught midterm elections, some survivors’ advocates in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation have expressed concern that the scandal could recede into the background.

Political experts believe, however, the Epstein issue is not going away permanently and that many voters can balance day-to-day concerns such as affordability and AI with the scandal involving the late financier and accused sex trafficker whose social circle was widespread among America’s elite.

The basketball star seems proud to leave the job to his partner. That’s so last century

Nobody can accuse the basketball star LaMelo Ball of being bad at his job. That said, the Minnesota Timberwolves point guard doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of dribbling.

Ball has a nine-month-old son, LaOne, with his partner Ana Montana (real name: Analicia Chaves) and is apparently uninterested in dealing with all the body fluids that come with a baby.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Nazhat Shameem Khan claims some staff are facing ‘banking difficulties’ but their work is unaffected

The deputy prosecutor of the international criminal court has said new US sanctions are beginning to take effect on its staff but insisted they have not hindered the court’s work.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced the sanctions this month, accusing the ICC – a frequent target of the Trump administration – of being a “rogue court” and declaring: “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.”

Critics decry Trump administration rule that lets hunters lure bears with human foods on federal lands in Alaska

A new Trump administration rule allows hunters to bait bears on federal lands in Alaska with bacon, doughnuts, meat scraps or other human foods typically used to help kill the trophy animals at close range.

Opponents say the practice will cause bears to be more aggressive around humans, and allege that the rule change is a political gift to largely rightwing trophy hunters. The rule replaces a 2024 Biden administration rule that banned the practice, and environmental groups criticized the move as “indefensible and inexcusable”.

New details of IV team’s attempts to find a vein shared by Pike’s lawyer ‘shocked and disturbed’ practitioners

Medical experts have expressed shock at the apparent incompetence shown by Tennessee’s execution team during the failed lethal injection of Christa Pike, the prisoner who survived a normally fatal dose of pentobarbital, which they say would be considered medical malpractice in any other setting.

New details emerged on Thursday of how Tennessee’s intravenous (IV) team struggled for almost an hour to set up a line into Pike’s arms through which she would be administered the fatal dose of sedative. A blow-by-blow account was released in legal proceedings from Pike’s lawyer, Randy Spivey, who was present inside the death chamber at her 30 September failed execution.

Ultra-endurance swimmer Catherine Breed navigated waves, wildlife and pollution to become the first person to swim from state’s northern-most tip to Mexico border

Nearly four months ago, Catherine Breed, a 33-year-old from the San Francisco Bay Area, set out to become the first person to swim the entire coastline of California – from its northern-most tip to the border with Mexico. She and her support team prepared for encounters with sharks and storms. They hadn’t anticipated completing the marathon swim during a year of historic super El Niño weather.

But after dodging hurricanes, wildlife and 8ft waves in an unusually volatile Pacific Ocean, Breed finally celebrated the end of her journey on a beach in San Diego on Monday.

Even with a multimillion-dollar war chest, the US representative faces a stiff fight for his seat from Democrat Rebecca Bennett

The stars above New Jersey seemed aligned for Tom Kean Jr.

The Republican congressman had a war chest of more than $2.4m in February, an endorsement from Donald Trump and a district whose lines were redrawn in 2022 to benefit his party. He was an established political figure with widespread name recognition, thanks to his father’s stint as a well-regarded governor of New Jersey.

Ebro Ahmed, who acted after driver’s medical emergency, said he hopes incident will show Eritreans ‘in a good way’

A man who hopped on to a school bus full of terrified children that was careering down a Minnesota street after its driver had a medical emergency and manually halted it says he was motivated to act by a Qu’ran verse about how saving one life is equivalent to saving all of humanity.

“I’m a numbers guy, and those numbers make sense to me,” Ebro Ahmed, 27, said on Friday during an interview about his actions four days earlier in front of his family’s convenience store in Saint Paul, Minnesota. “I didn’t do it for me. It was selflessness in the name of God.”

Vice-president’s visibility has risen as Trump’s popularity wanes, but path to inherit Maga throne is more complicated than it may seem

A day after JD Vance suggested Donald Trump would endorse him if he runs for president, the vice-president shifted awkwardly in the Oval Office as his boss was asked about the remark.

“He’s a very talented person, and he’s a very good person,” Trump said of the man standing behind him, with a forced smile this week. “But we’ve literally – I don’t think we’ve ever talked about,” the president claimed, leaving the assertion unconfirmed.

Former USA team doctor Larry Nassar’s 2018 conviction sparked a global reckoning in gymnastics, yet gymnasts say they are still being let down

It has been 10 years since the Indianapolis Star published allegations of sexual abuse by Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for USA Gymnastics, setting off a chain of events that would lead to a reckoning for the sport. Hundreds of women came forward with their own allegations against Nassar, who also worked at Michigan State University, leading to his conviction and jailing.

The exposure of his crimes sparked a wider investigation into how gymnastics had allowed predators to abuse young athletes around the world. While Nassar was the worst recorded case, it emerged many other countries had questions to answer about the failure to protect victims from not only sexual but physical and emotional abuse. But a decade later, on a large houseboat moored in Rotterdam three tram stops away from the Ahoy Arena, where the World Gymnastics Championships are taking place this week, survivors and advocates raised fears about the slow pace of change.

We’ve heard much about the end of the west. At the proposed summit between Trump, Putin and Xi, those fears could crystallise

In the final two years of a US presidency, when Congress has been lost, approval ratings have sunk like a stone and their party has started to think about who’s coming next, the person occupying the Oval Office can feel their power draining away. Domestic legislation, particularly in an era where bipartisan cooperation is almost nonexistent, grinds to a halt. But as the days tick by until the end, and as presidents begin to think about their legacy, there is one part of the job where they still have power: the rest of the world.

In the final weeks of his presidency in 1992 George HW Bush sent 28,000 American troops to Somalia to help end a famine. For Bill Clinton, it was a quixotic attempt to bring peace to the Middle East by ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Barack Obama restored diplomatic ties with Cuba, making a historic visit to Havana, as well as a final, successful push on the Iran nuclear deal.

• Brewers claim 3-2 victory in Game 1 of World Series

• Yelich triples home a run and scores in first inning

• Misiorowski and Megill hold off late Rays fightback

Trevor Megill struck out Jonny DeLuca with runners on second and third to escape a ninth-inning jam as the Milwaukee Brewers held on for a 3-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday night.

DeLuca’s strikeout came after Tampa Bay’s Liam Hicks had grounded into an apparent game-ending double play that was overturned after a video review. Replays showed that Brewers shortstop Cooper Pratt’s right foot was slightly off the bag when he reached to catch a high throw from second baseman Brice Turang.