Super typhoon weakening but large parts of Taiwan, including Taipei, still mostly closed and flights cancelled
Typhoon Champi swept past Taiwan on Saturday killing one person, injuring more than 500, and uprooting trees and severing power as it weakened and headed north toward the Chinese coast.
Earlier classified as a super typhoon and one of the strongest storms in the Pacific this year, Champi was still packing gusts of about 126km per hour (78 miles per hour) near its centre, according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration (CWA).
With less than two weeks until the midterms, my colleague Jonathan Freedland and Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan are answering your questions in this week’s episode of Politics Weekly America.
They break down the final stretch ahead of these hugely consequential elections, that will decide control of Congress in Donald Trump’s final two years of office.
Letters from federal prosecutors represent latest escalation as Trump continues to make claims of voter fraud
Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles county registrar and a letter obtained by the Associated Press.
The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth alleges Confucius Institutes operating in disguise on US university campuses
The US defense department has designated Chinese-funded cultural centers on university campuses known as Confucius Institutes as a threat to US national security, defense secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday.
Washington has long accused Confucius Institutes of being Chinese propaganda tools and has taken steps to crack down on them.
Jordon Steele-John has confirmed he will not attend parliament next week as the embattled Greens senator releases a letter detailing the allegations against him.
After days of confusion following historical complaints about alleged misconduct were publicly aired in the media, Steele-John posted a statement to social media late Friday night.
Independent MP Helen Haines’s condition has been downgraded to serious but stable after she lost both legs following an alleged attack near her electorate office in north-east Victoria on Monday afternoon.
The Alfred hospital in Melbourne provided an update on Haines’s condition on Saturday morning.
US secretary of state makes comments after Trump tells US rally warships could intervene on return from Iran
Marco Rubio urged Cubans seeking political change in their country to act, saying “now is the time” moments after Donald Trump told a Friday rally for candidates in south Florida that US warships could intervene in Cuba on their way back from the Iran war.
The US secretary of state, in his social media post addressed “to those who seek to create positive change”, urged Cubans to capitalize on Trump’s plans. “The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA,” Rubio said.
Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain will sweep across most Australian states this weekend, adding to the deluge in an already drenched Queensland.
Flash flooding in south-east Queensland this week prompted hundreds of SES callouts and the closure of multiple schools. On Saturday morning, the Bureau of Meteorology had nine flood warnings in place for south Queensland.
Kaylub Giamanco recounts the day he confronted the Silver Rail elementary school shooter, who killed three boys and one teacher
The Oregon father hailed as a hero for stopping a school shooting last week spoke for the first time about the incident, describing his experience and how he told a 911 operator: “I have to go in. People are going to die.”
Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter, has received national attention and praise for stopping the bloodshed at Silver Rail elementary in Bend, Oregon, where his children attend school.
BBC series deliberately uses ‘more organic’ shots to assure viewers animals are not AI-generated, producers say
The David Attenborough-narrated series Blue Planet III deliberately includes cloudier, less polished footage to counter AI fakery and assure viewers it is “authentic”, its producers have said.
Nearly a decade after Blue Planet II shone a light on plastic pollution, and 25 years since the first Blue Planet aired, the hit BBC series is returning with more animal behaviour and cutting-edge technology, including the world’s first underwater CCTV camera – dubbed “stonefish” cam.
Campaigners call lack of progress ‘staggering’ as online regulator issues review of first nine months of new regime
Landmark online safety measures have failed to limit the proportion of children suffering harm from social media, the UK’s online regulator has admitted, in an assessment branded “staggering” by campaigners.
The proportion of children being fed unsafe content that often left them frightened, confused and upset, was almost unchanged, according to an Ofcom review of the first nine months of supposedly strict requirements on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
More than a week after allegations that Greens senator Jordon Steele-John had behaved inappropriately towards women made headlines, his position in the party remains in limbo and its new leader’s handling of the issue in question.
David Shoebridge’s first major challenge at the helm of the federal Greens came earlier this month when the Nine newspapers reported a three-page letter had been sent to him urging an independent investigation into Steele-John.
Dozens of schools in Cornwall also affected as Storm Boelo heads for Scotland, Northern Ireland and north of England
Thousands of homes are without power and schools were closed as the first named storm of the year hit UK shores.
Storm Austen brought severe conditions to parts of the south-west, with a gust of 76mph recorded at St Mary’s airport on the Isles of Scilly on Friday morning. By 3pm, more than 31,000 homes in the south-west were without power, according to National Grid.
Rodney Hinton ran over Larry Henderson after he viewed body-cam footage of police shooting dead his son Ryan
An Ohio man who killed a deputy with his car just hours after seeing video of his son killed by Cincinnati police was found guilty of murder and other charges on Friday, according to authorities.
Rodney L Hinton, 40, faces between 15 years and life in prison after his convictions in the death of Hamilton county special deputy Larry Henderson. His sentencing is tentatively scheduled for 16 November.
Republican senator faces critical re-election battle in state where president’s trade war has outraged voters
Donald Trump dropped some of the US’s tariffs on Canada on Friday to “better serve the public interest” the White House said, handing a win to Susan Collins, the embattled Republican senator for Maine, as she faces a tight re-election campaign that will help determine whether Democrats can flip control of Congress.
Collins announced that the exemptions would apply to nine agricultural products, including blueberries, potatoes, apples and seaweed. She added that many of the state’s farmers rely on specialized equipment and materials from across the border that are “unavailable from American suppliers or cannot be replaced without incurring significant expense”.
Gunman opens fire from car in Trappes and Verrière, killing one and injuring five others, including a 12-year-old girl
Emmanuel Macron has condemned racism in French society after a gunman opened fire from a car west of Paris on Friday, killing one person, wounding a 12-year-old girl and injuring four others in what the president called a “racist terrorist attack”.
Macron arrived at the scene of the drive-by shooting in Trappes on Friday night, saying he was deeply saddened by what he called the “premeditated” attack. The 12-year-old girl, who was shot eight times, is being treated in hospital.
Justin Craig charged with official misconduct and fraud, after searching plates of wife and ‘previous acquaintance’
An Indiana police officer has been arrested on allegations that he misused Flock cameras hundreds of times in a case involving his wife and a previous acquaintance of hers.
Justin Craig of Georgetown police department, was charged with official misconduct and two counts of fraud. Documents show that he searched his wife’s license plate more than 80 times and that of a “previous acquaintance” of hers nearly 250 times, the news outlet WLKY reported.
Residents in Oleshky have been enduring a worsening humanitarian crisis due to the lack of food, electricity and other resources
The French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has just issued a statement on a shooting in a town west of Paris this morning where one person was killed and four others injured.
Police said a gunman had opened fire in Trappes, in the Yvelines, and neighbouring La Verriere. The gunman was later arrested in nearby Coignieres.
After discovery of severe bug in the PHP programming language, executives warn of ‘vulnerability tsunami’
Leaders in cybersecurity are sounding the alarm after the discovery of a major vulnerability this week. They are predicting that artificial intelligence tools will expose more fundamental weaknesses in global internet infrastructure in the months to come.
“I no longer think we’re going to be able to patch all bugs,” said Sam Altman on Thursday evening, joining the chorus of executives. In the midst of what’s being called “Black October”, for which researchers used AI to help identify critical flaws in a coding language that is used across millions of websites and may have been unpatched for years, tech executives are warning about the ways AI will be used both to identify and exploit security vulnerabilities at an unprecedented scale and pace.
