Father of toddler killed in Erie mass shooting says reported gunman never seemed distressed or out of the ordinary
The man who killed eight people, before turning the gun on himself, in a mass shooting in a home in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Friday was a grandfather who had not shown signs that he was capable of such violence, according to people who knew the shooter.
A man whose toddler was among those killed said on Sunday that the man never seemed distressed or out of the ordinary, the Associated Press reports.
Senior official says president and US secretary of state are ‘extremely pissed off’ by conduct of US envoy to Greece
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, are considering firing US ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle after a series of reports alleging she has engaged in improper and possibly illegal conduct before and during her tenure in Athens.
A senior US official said Sunday that Trump and Rubio are “extremely pissed off” by Guilfoyle’s reported conduct and would likely decide on what action to take this week after Monday’s federal holiday.
Democratic Senate candidate’s remarks come as Trump has long baselessly claimed his 2020 election loss was stolen
Democrats must “win by massive numbers” during November’s federal midterm elections because Donald Trump and his Republican allies are bound to try to sow doubt about the integrity of the results, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan said on Sunday.
El-Sayed’s comments on NBC’s Meet the Press came with the Democrats favored to win control of the House of Representatives during the 3 November midterms – and polls show that the party could also win Senate seats in states that traditionally elect Republicans and gain a majority there, too.
A fuel deal with Vladimir Putin, and sanctions against the legal institution, ram home the president’s belief that might is right
On Friday, Donald Trump drove home his belief that might is right and the rule of law is an obstacle rather than an essential foundation stone of international order. First came the escalated assault on the international criminal court (ICC), sanctioning the body itself. Then he announced a deal with Russia to buy diesel.
The US has long chafed at the notion of being bound by the rule of law that it espoused publicly. That hypocrisy now appears as a lesser vice. The president has declared that “my own morality” is all that constrains him. His brazen flouting of the law, embrace of dictators and rhetorical attacks all undermine global standards.
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Analysts say fuel will take weeks to ship and quantity is too small to affect prices, while full deal is unlikely to be met given damage to Russian refineries
Donald Trump’s deal with Vladimir Putin to temporarily lift sanctions on US imports of Russian diesel will have little “meaningful” effect on motorists and businesses in the US and overseas, energy and foreign policy analysts have predicted.
The US president infuriated Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he announced the deal on Friday, writing on Truth Social that the agreement with his Russia counterpart to supply millions of tonnes of diesel was essential to reduce fuel prices in the US, which have soared after his decision to go to war against Iran.
The president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has expressed her “full support for President Zelenskyy” amid calls for a ceasefire.
In a telephone call with the Ukrainian leader, von der Leyen posted on X that she “fully supported the call of President Zelenskyy for a ceasefire that would protect global food supplies and energy infrastructure in Ukraine and Russia.
“Ukraine supports the ceasefire, and it’s important for Russia to support it as well. We are awaiting details from the American side. From our Ukrainian side, there is always FULL support for de-escalation steps, protection of lives, and the necessary decisions to end the war and ensure lasting peace.”
Parra-Hernandez suffered a broken leg and taken to a hospital after being hit by car during an ICE operation
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent driving a vehicle struck a man on Saturday while trying to pursue him and someone else in the Houston area, according to authorities.
The federal agency had been trying to pull over and arrest Jose Mendoza-Cervantes in north-west Harris county, Texas, when he and the victim, Miguel Parra-Hernandez, exited the vehicle, officials said.
Comments were among the most direct overtures by Trump to woo Democratic senator into his Republican party
Donald Trump on Saturday openly encouraged Democratic US senator John Fetterman to switch parties and become a Republican just weeks before the federal midterm elections could reshape control of Congress.
“I’d love to see him as a Republican,” the presidents told reporters at Joint Base Andrews as he returned to Washington DC from a rally in Tennessee. “He does better as a Republican than he does as a Democrat.”
Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ spending cuts will be fully felt next year, but hospitals are already feeling the squeeze
Maternity wards across the United States are facing a wave of closures as cuts to federal Medicaid funding take effect, experts have warned.
According to analysis by the non-profit Protect Our Care, 52 maternity wards have closed since the HR1 bill was announced in July 2025, with a further eight having announced their upcoming closure.
The Michigan candidate for US Senate seat is running without directly acknowledging specific constituent groups
Abdul El-Sayed has an impressive résumé: Rhodes scholar, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, executive director of the Detroit health department. And, at 41, the Michigan Democratic senatorial candidate represents a new generation of politicians, a shift that he also embodies sartorially. Whereas casual dress for many politicians is a tieless dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, El-Sayed has embraced a post-corporate, digital nomad-ish uniform: fitted black T-shirt, slim jeans and sneakers.
His progressive politics are having a moment among liberals, and he remains unswervingly disciplined about his message: “Money Out of Politics, Money in Your Pocket, Medicare for All.” On paper he appears well-aligned to Democratic sensibilities in this moment, and he is competitive in the polls. But his support is softer than overall Democratic sentiment would dictate, especially among Black voters.
As raw milk industry experiences record growth, experts say it might contain pathogens that can sicken people
As raw milk becomes increasingly popular among Americans, there have been several recent disease outbreaks tied to the product, alarming public health officials.
Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for a ban on sales of unpasteurized milk in the United States.
Darializa Avila Chevalier criticizes NYPD’s ‘inaction’ in protecting Marble Hill protesters after ICE shot a man
Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier believes that the New York police departments’ conduct towards protesters after an ICE agent shot and wounded a man in the district she is running to represent violated “the spirit, if not the letter” of the city’s sanctuary laws.
These rules ban local police from helping federal immigration authorities in civil immigration enforcement operations.
Heat and humidity have led to one of the worst mosquito years in recent history, with West Nile virus at a decade high
Los Angeles might be best known for blue skies, beaches and film premiers — but for the last several years it’s held another, unenviable distinction: the most mosquito-infested city in America.
And this year has been especially nightmarish, thanks to a series of heatwaves and an extra-powerful El Niño. Locals have called it a summer of “living hell” as clouds of mosquitoes swarm backyards and leave diners at open air patios scratching their ankles.
Rev Dr Frederick Douglass Haynes III is reclaiming a faith-based politics to counter Trump-allied white evangelicals
It was that point in the evening: dinner plates were cleared; speeches had run long; people were chatting, milling or eyeing the exit. But then the Rev Dr Frederick Douglass Haynes III took the stage. Bald, bearded, bespectacled and dressed in black, he delivered a mix of fiery sermon and performance poetry. Soon the guests were back in their seats – rapt, listening, clapping and whooping.
Haynes’s rolling cadence was evocative of the pulpit but the political message was far from kumbaya. Aiming to succeed Democratic star Jasmine Crockett in Texas’s 30th congressional district, he danced like a butterfly with references to the boxer Muhammad Ali and rapper Tupac Shakur. But he also stung like a bee, branding Donald Trump as “President Pickpocket” and Republicans as the authors of racist gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Republican Christopher Paul is running unopposed for seat despite allegations he raped two girls 20 years ago
A candidate for police chief in a small Louisiana town candidate is on course to be elected unopposed despite two charges of child rape pending against him, leaving his community to weigh whether to convert the position into an appointed office rather than one determined at the ballot box.
Christopher Paul, a Republican who on 6 August signed up to run for chief of police in the south-western Louisiana village of Elizabeth, was arrested on 8 September on allegations that he raped two girls in 2005 and 2006.
This is no scoffing matter. The accelerating proliferation of advanced nuclear weapons is bringing ‘end times’ closer by the day
Humankind has fearfully and sometimes joyfully anticipated the end of the world ever since it began. The Bible’s Book of Revelation speaks of “end times”, a period of tribulation, war, famine, plague, floods and environmental catastrophe that may seem a less absurd prospect today than perhaps it once did. Islam, too, posits a fateful day of judgment or day of reckoning. Christian evangelicals believe that, in the final rapture, a chosen few – the righteous or the “elect” – will be saved while sinners burn. It’s a minority view. Matthew’s gospel predicts most people will defy, ignore or ridicule warnings of imminent Armageddon. Peter, another of Jesus’s disciples, agreed: “In the last days, scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.” Yet such worldly scepticism does not mean a universal cataclysm is less likely. It may make it more probable.
Donald Trump’s blanket denials of the dangers ostensibly posed by artificial intelligence, whose uncontrolled development is seen by some as the latest harbinger of apocalypse, could be interpreted as fulfilling Peter’s prophecy. This US president, the nearest thing the world has to a one-man doomsday machine, is a great one for scoffing and evil desires. In Robert Harris’s 2019 novel, The Second Sleep, a worried scientist lists half a dozen ways the world might end. They include devastating climate change, pandemic disease, a giant asteroid collision with Earth, or some other overwhelming calamity. Few heed the fictional scientist’s fears. In the event, what destroys him and almost everybody else is a disturbingly plausible cyber crash – a global digital and internet meltdown.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
David McCloskey’s new book depicts a calamitous collapse of the ‘special relationship’ – could things get darker still?
The “special relationship”, the time-honored emotional bond between the US and Britain that has sustained through war and peace, is in trouble.
The ties of history, culture and language that have bridged an ocean and bound the two countries politically for generations are fraying as perhaps never before – strained relentlessly by Donald Trump, who has gleefully sacrificed traditional alliances and diplomatic niceties on the altar of his “America first” agenda.
Protesters spent months occupying an ancient cottonwood. Then a tense standoff with US border patrol came to a head
A 200-year-old cottonwood tree near the US-Mexico border, known as the “grandmother”, has been destroyed to make way for the construction of Donald Trump’s border wall, despite a months-long effort by protesters trying to save it.
In late July, land defenders began a tree-sit in the ghost town of Lochiel, Arizona, taking turns occupying a platform high in the tree’s canopy. The group remained there for more than 70 days.
ICE official, who was sleeping on man’s lawn and appeared ‘intoxicated’, faces felony charges, California police say
A 72-year-old man shot an off-duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in California early on Friday morning after the “intoxicated and agitated” official assaulted him and his daughter on their property, local authorities allege.
The Fresno police department said that the ICE official was receiving medical care after being shot in the midsection. The official, identified as David Gonzalez, is facing felony charges for assaulting the father-daughter duo, Fresno police said.
Pike’s lawyers said she is back in same prison she’s lived in for last 30 years and will continue to receive medical care
Christa Pike has been discharged from the hospital after surviving Tennessee’s botched 30 September attempt to execute her by lethal injection and is back in prison, her lawyers said on Saturday.
Pike, 50, returned to the Deborah K Johnson rehabilitation center, where she has been imprisoned for the last three decades, her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement.
The tourist attraction just unveiled an elaborate, full-scale overhaul to match Trump’s second-term aesthetic
Sitting behind a replica Resolute Desk, nine-year-old Sydney Wright posed for the camera like a future US president. “I love it,” she smiled. And what about the dazzling gold appliqués, gold leaf and gold trim surrounding her? “It’s cool.”
Sydney was among a steady stream of visitors on Thursday to The People’s House: A White House Experience, an interactive museum – with an orientation film narrated by The West Wing star Martin Sheen – at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue, just 150 yards from the real thing.
EMS workers, who make life-or-death decisions in emergencies, are the lowest paid first responders
After 31 years in New York City’s emergency medical services, Oren Barzilay has started giving young New Yorkers advice he never imagined giving when he began his EMS career. “Don’t come here,” he tells them. “You are only going to hurt yourself.”
It is a striking reversal for Barzilay, the recently retired president of FDNY EMS Local 2507. What changed for Barzilay was not his view of work or the value of service. It was what he believes is the New York City failure to pay the people who put their lives at risk to save the lives of others.
Fain was dogged by investigation but still decisively beat challenger Rich Boyer, who received just 13% of vote
The president of the United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, has easily won his re-election bid after an campaign period marred by accusations of corruption and election interference.
The union’s election of leadership for a four-year term began with mail-in ballots being sent out in late August 2026, with vote tabulating commencing on 6 October.
Every time a story about a woman being raped becomes headline news, the same pattern repeats without fail
If she really was raped, why didn’t she speak up earlier? Why did she get drunk? Why was she wearing such a short skirt? Why did she walk home by herself?
God, it’s exhausting, isn’t it? Every time a story about a woman being raped becomes headline news, the same pattern repeats without fail. People accuse the woman of asking for it. They question her motives; they scrutinize her looks; they attack her character. And without fail, she is punished for speaking up.
Regulator looks to expand loophole to allow dangerous compounds in food as long as they’re not carcinogenic
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing to expand a controversial loophole to allow some of the world’s most toxic chemicals to be added directly to food without a safety review.
The “threshold of regulation” (TOR) exemption currently allows dangerous compounds to be used without review in food contact materials, such as packaging or processing equipment, if they are not carcinogenic, and are added at levels below 0.5 parts per billion (ppb).
While most of the crowd at a Stop Sexual Violence rally in New York City was mostly women, men of all ages were in attendance too
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered at city halls and college campuses across the country on Thursday to demand an end to sexual violence. The nationwide rallies followed weeks of public outcry over the mishandling of campus sexual assault cases at Cornell University and Louisiana State University.
The protest organizers – including Women’s March, Feminist Generation and Me Too International – demanded justice for Jane Doe, who said she was drugged and gang-raped by seven students at a Cornell frat party; Kendall Francis, who said she was raped by an LSU football player; and all survivors harmed “from the frat house to the White House”. They also called for reform of Title IX, a set of protections for sexual misconduct victims and LGBTQ+ students that the Trump administration has slowly stripped away.
Democrat in Congress since 1983 rebuked over ‘dangerous’ campaign ad – will it harm her chances in tight Ohio race?
Last month, Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, released a video advertisement in which she looks directly at the camera and says exactly what she thinks about one of the most divisive issues facing Democrats today.
“Here’s the truth: I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools because parents know what’s best for their kids,” Kaptur says, “and boys should not play in girls’ sports.”
Order for workers to remain standing to ‘reinforce professionalism’ draws rebuke amid plunging morale
Union officials have launched a campaign to allow airport security staff to sit once more after the Trump administration unilaterally removed all the chairs for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staff at checkpoints.
“People are pissed,” said Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) TSA council 100 and president of AFGE local 1040, which represents TSA workers in Dallas-Fort Worth.
First US memorial for suicide victims dedicated by Chicago archdiocese earlier this year at Queen of Heaven cemetery
The Chicago archdiocese has recognized the Rev Charles Rubey’s work supporting families whose loved ones died by suicide this year by dedicating in his honor a memorial to the lives lost to suicide and the victims’ surviving families.
In 1979 Rubey founded the Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide, a counseling and support program run by Catholic Charities of the archdiocese of Chicago.
Dozens of CIA officers have been afflicted by debilitating symptoms over the past decade. Are they the result of ‘mass hysteria’? Or are they from attacks with an energy weapon and, if so, who is responsible? And has there been a cover-up?
Shortly after 1am one night in April 2019, a CIA officer on a work trip to London was jolted awake in his hotel room by the most intense head pain he had ever experienced. His body was soaked with sweat and he felt like his eyes were spinning in their sockets. He manoeuvred his way out of bed, hoping to make it to the bathroom to vomit, but found his sense of balance had deserted him. Eventually, he fell back into a fitful, shallow sleep.
The next day, arriving at the work meeting he had travelled for, the officer found he could not remember the names of colleagues in the room, people he knew well. As the meeting got under way, he could barely follow the discussion. Initially, he chalked it up to a terrible – if rather odd – case of food poisoning. But over subsequent weeks, worrying symptoms persisted: brain fog, loss of balance and increasingly harsh tinnitus.
President complains about not winning prize in year he started war with Iran and says: ‘We will not forget, Norway’
Donald Trump complained Friday about not winning the Nobel peace prize for 2026, a year in which he started a war with Iran.
At what was supposed to be a rally for other Republican candidates in Syracuse, New York, the US president devoted a long portion of his speech airing his grievances with the Nobel committee.
US president says agreement needed to lower fuel prices, but move likely to create fresh crisis with Ukraine and Nato allies
Donald Trump is on a fresh collision course with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European allies after his stunning agreement to buy Russian diesel upended years of US and western pressure on the Kremlin to end its war against Ukraine.
Zelenskyy reacted furiously to Trump’s announcement of the deal with Vladimir Putin on Friday, calling it “absolutely terrible” and “not fair and not honest”.
Motorist, reportedly trying to beat a traffic light, barrels through busy intersection and slams into pedestrians
At least one person was killed and nine injured in New York City’s eastern Bronx when a motorist barreled through a busy intersection, slammed into pedestrians and triggered a chain-reaction crash involving several vehicles, according to authorities and media reports.
The horrifying collision happened shortly after 2pm in the Bronx’s Allerton neighborhood, with the driver at the center of the crash reportedly saying he was trying to beat a traffic light.
Manhattan prosecutors say murder case over 2024 killing can proceed under ‘exception’ to state double jeopardy law
Manhattan prosecutors filed paperwork on Friday opposing Luigi Mangione’s arguments for dismissing his state-level case in the killing of the UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson.
Mangione on 14 August pleaded guilty to federal charges in Thompson’s 4 December 2024 killing outside a Midtown hotel – weeks before his scheduled 8 September New York state murder and weapons trial. The killing prompted an intense manhunt but also sparked an outpouring of rage against the practices of the for-profit US healthcare industry.
Actor was robbed of his watch after being struck in the head by two attackers wielding a gun and a knife
The Pretty Little Liars actor Keegan Allen was battered and robbed by attackers wielding a knife and gun in West Hollywood, he said on Thursday in a social media video showing him bloodied and alarmed.
The Los Angeles county sheriff’s department confirmed in a statement shared with news outlets that it was investigating a violent robbery matching the weapons, block and time described by Allen on social media, where users responded with shock and supportive comments.
Locals also express fear after man shot in the neck while his child was in the back of his car
Residents of Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood were furious at federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday but also scared after an officer shot their neighbor who had his child in the back of his car.
Orlando Perez had parked his car on the corner of 225th St and Marble Hill Avenue on Thursday night and witnessed ICE arresting Oscar Belgal, 28, after he had been shot in the neck, apparently with an assault-style rifle.
It is odd for the US defense secretary to be laying the groundwork for an event that could be organized by Tehran
Pete Hegseth’s plans to stage a public execution resemble a grotesque Iran-imitation game.
Having failed over the past seven months to defeat the Tehran regime on the battlefield, the self-styled “secretary of war” now proposes to mirror its notorious practice of enforcing the death penalty as a grand public spectacle.
Judge says justice department policy of checking state voter rolls against a federal immigration database is unlawful
A federal judge ruled on Friday that the US justice department’s policy of collecting states’ unredacted voter rolls to check them against a federal immigration database is unlawful.
The ruling, by the US district judge Sparkle Sooknanan, was a setback for Donald Trump, who has pushed his administration to ramp up investigations into non-citizen voting ahead of the November midterm elections, with control of Congress at stake.
Zacharia will replace Karoline Leavitt, who left the role at the end of August after giving birth to her second child
Donald Trump on Friday announced that he had picked Katie Zacharia to be the next White House press secretary, lining up a conservative commentator he called a “devoted fan” to be his most prominent spokesperson.
A ICE officer shot and injured a man in New York during an enforcement operation, federal officials said. The man was conscious and hospitalized, authorities said, and the shooting quickly sparked angry protests from local residents and elected officials in the neighborhood. Early reports indicated that agents had surrounded the man and a five-year-old child in his car on a busy street before firing multiple rounds, the city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said in a statement.
Governor halts execution of William Lee Thompson, after Christa Pike survived failed lethal injections
Ron DeSantis cancelled a planned execution in the state on Friday, days before a 74-year-old man was due to be killed by lethal injection.
The move – the first time Florida’s governor has withdrawn a death warrant in his nearly eight years in office – comes just over a week after the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee.
Multiple hospitalized after Avianca flight from Medellín to New York had to divert to Miami due to strong turbulence
At least eight people were injured when an Avianca flight encountered severe turbulence and had to make an emergency landing in Miami early on Friday.
Miami-Dade fire rescue said one person was rushed to a trauma center with severe injuries while seven others were taken to area hospitals in ambulances.
The US is facing worldwide condemnation over a “barbaric” plan to execute a disabled man by firing squad and livestream it to the public, with critics comparing the Trump administration to dictatorships in Iran and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, would be livestreamed on 3 December.
Boarding up windows and filling sandbags and fuel tanks are part of routine hurricane preparation for residents of the Gulf coast. Isaias strengthened into a category 3 hurricane on Friday morning as it barreled toward the US Gulf coast, and states of emergency have been declared in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. Isaias is forecast to make landfall on Friday night, somewhere along the Alabama-Florida line, with surging seas up to 7ft (2.1 meters) and waves as high as 30ft
US president renews his efforts to oust Cook despite supreme court ruling that her firing was unconstitutional
Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is establishing a committee to investigate Lisa Cook, the US Federal Reserve governor, over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud, renewing his efforts to oust her despite a June supreme court ruling that her earlier firing was unconstitutional.
Trump said a committee will consult with justice department officials to decide whether there is “cause” for her removal. The White House will hold an in-person hearing on 5 November to consider the allegations against Cook, which will be closed to the public but transcribed and published. Cook will be able to submit a written statement to present her own evidence and will be subject to examination from White House and her own legal counsel.
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