New Yorkers urged to conserve water after driest October in 150 years

Mayor Eric Adams asks residents to take shorter showers as city agencies ordered to prepare conservation plans

New York’s mayor urged residents to take shorter showers, fix dripping faucets and otherwise conserve water, issuing a drought watch Saturday after a parched October in the city and in much of the United States.

A drought watch is the first of three potential levels of water-saving directives, and Eric Adams pitched it in a social media video as a step to try to ward off the possibility of a worse shortage in the United States’ most populous city.

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Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib declines to endorse Kamala Harris

The Palestinian American ‘squad’ member has been critical of Harris and the Democratic party’s inaction on Gaza

Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib declined to endorse Kamala Harris at a union rally in Detroit, where the war in Gaza is the top issue for the largest block of Arab American voters in the country.

Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, is the only one of the so-called leftist “Squad” that has not endorsed the Democrat candidate. The other three members – Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York – endorsed Harris in July.

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US politics live: Women’s marches hit the streets in support of Harris as both candidates target east coast – as it happened

Harris leading Trump in new Iowa poll in startling reversal, pulling ahead of Trump 47% to 44%

Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump head to North Carolina on Saturday to try to clinch support in the south-eastern battleground state just three days before Tuesday’s US presidential election.

It will be the fourth day in a row that vice-president Harris and former president Trump visit the same state on the same day, underlining the critical importance of the seven states likely to decide the race, which opinion polls show to be on a knife’s edge, Reuters reported.

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Shark bites off surfer’s leg in Hawaii

A 61-year-old man was surfing on Friday morning when a shark bit him, completely severing his leg

A shark bit a Maui surfer on Friday and severed his leg, authorities said.

The man, 61, was surfing off Waiehu Beach Park on Friday morning when a shark bit him. Police officers who arrived to the scene first tried to control the bleeding with tourniquets. His right leg was “completely severed just below the knee,” Maui county said in a news release.

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Indiana prosecutors claim man confessed to killing two teens on hiking trail in 2017

Richard Allen’s alleged admission came after investigators struggled over case of Liberty German and Abigail Williams

Prosecutors in the trial of Richard Allen, who is accused of killing two teenage girls in Indiana, continued this week to build their case with testimony from a prison psychologist and law enforcement officials who lent credence to the allegation that Allen confessed to the murders while in prison in 2023.

Allen’s alleged admissions came after investigators struggled for years to find the person who killed Liberty “Libby” German, 14, and Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, in 2017 on a hiking trail outside the small town of Delphi.

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US students score win in push for fossil fuel divestment by private high schools

Concerned students press for their high schools – some with $1bn endowments – to reinvest in clean energy

A high school in California has decided not to invest in coal, oil or gas, instead pledging to put money into clean energy. It’s the latest win in a new fossil fuel divestment campus campaign launched by high schoolers across 11 countries that is gaining support in the US.

The Nueva School, an elite private school outside San Francisco, pledged in spring 2024 to invest a portion of its $55m endowment in renewable power. The commitment followed months of pressure from students.

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Elon Musk’s canvassing operation sued in California for alleged labor law violations

Plaintiffs accuse America Pac of several violations during its operation to support Orange county’s Michelle Steel

Elon Musk’s troubled canvassing operation on behalf of Donald Trump and the Republican party is now facing a lawsuit in southern California filed by two women who say they were cheated out of wages and expenses as they knocked on doors for an embattled Republican congresswoman.

The suit accuses Musk’s America PAC, which has poured more than $100m into this year’s election campaign, of “willful violations of the California labor code” by paying the plaintiffs less than it promised and refusing to make up the difference.

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Supreme court rejects Republican bid to throw out thousands of Pennsylvania ballots; Harris says Trump’s Cheney remarks ‘disqualifying’ – live

Justices rule swing state can count provisional ballots of voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected; Harris condemns Republican nominee’s gun remarks

Joe Biden has released the following statement on the latest job report:

In October, unemployment was unchanged at 4.1%, but the devastation from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and new strike activity, lowered job growth. Job growth is expected to rebound in November as our hurricane recovery and rebuilding efforts continue. In addition, I want to congratulate the leadership of the Machinists and Boeing for negotiating a new contract proposal that will be voted on by union members. Machinists at Boeing have sacrificed over the years and deserve a strong contract.

America’s economy remains strong, with 16m jobs created since I took office, including an average 180,000 jobs created each month over the last year – more than the year before the pandemic. We have the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years, our economy has grown more than any presidential term this century, incomes are up $4,000 over prices, and inflation has fallen nearly to its 2% target.

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Trump repeats attack on Liz Cheney and laments bad hair day at Michigan rally

Ex-president’s speech comes as race enters final stretch, amid battle with Kamala Harris to woo Michigan voters

Donald Trump on Friday tried to energize his voters during a rally in Warren, Michigan, delivering an address replete with his characteristic fear-mongering about immigrants and tangents including musings about his hair.

The former president also repeated his aggressive attack on former Republican representative Liz Cheney, one day after he said she should be under fire with rifles “shooting at her”.

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Blow for Republicans as supreme court rejects appeal over Pennsylvania ballots

Voters in key swing state will be able to cast provisional vote if they forget to put mail-in ballot in secrecy envelope

Pennsylvania voters will be able to cast a provisional vote if they make an error and forget to put their mail-in vote in a required secrecy envelope, the US supreme court ruled on Friday, a decision that could lead to thousands more votes being counted in a key battleground state where the presidential race is extremely tight.

The supreme court announced its decision on Friday on its emergency docket, giving no reasoning for its ruling, which is customary in emergency cases.

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South Carolina executes Richard Moore despite objections from judge and jurors

Moore, 59, was killed on Friday evening as the state pursues a rapid spree of killings

South Carolina has executed a man on death row, despite widespread calls for his life to be spared, including from the judge who originally condemned him to death.

Richard Moore, 59, was killed by lethal injection on Friday evening, minutes after the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, announced he would not be granting him clemency.

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Columbia pays $395,000 to student suspended over protest ‘fart spray’

Israeli student filed lawsuit after suspension for spraying pro-Palestinian protesters with foul-smelling substance

Columbia University has reached a $395,000 settlement with a student who was suspended in January after spraying student protesters with a foul-smelling substance at one of several campus demonstrations in support of Palestine.

The Israeli student who received the payout had been suspended until May.

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US army soldier charged with murder of female sergeant found dead in trash bin

Wooster Rancy, 21, accused in death of Sgt Sarah Roque, 23, whose body was found at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri

A US army soldier has been charged with murder in the death of a fellow service member at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, the military announced Thursday.

The army office of Special Trial Counsel charged the 21-year-old specialist Wooster Rancy on Wednesday with murder and obstructing justice in the death of 23-year-old Sgt Sarah Roque.

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Lebanon’s PM denies US asked him to declare unilateral ceasefire with Israel

Reports of such a request emerge as Israeli jets continues to bombard Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh

The US asked Lebanon to declare a unilateral ceasefire to revive stalled talks to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a report later denied by the Lebanese prime minister

Two unnamed sources, a Lebanese political source and a senior diplomat, made the claim to Reuters, saying the US envoy, Amos Hochstein, had communicated the proposal to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, this week.

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Russia sends ex-US consulate employee to prison for ‘secret collaboration with foreign state’

Robert Shonov worked for 25 years for consulate and was arrested on suspicion of passing secret information about war in Ukraine to US

A Russian former employee of the US consulate in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok has been sentenced to four years and ten months in prison for “secret collaboration with a foreign state”.

Robert Shonov worked for more than 25 years for the US consulate until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions.

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‘People are scared’: Arizonans fear political violence as election looms

Nerves are particularly stretched in Maricopa county, which will likely decide which way the state swings in the polls

Pearl Hubbard picked up some yard signs for Kamala Harris at the vice-president’s speech in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday afternoon, but wasn’t yet sure whether she’d risk displaying them outside her home in a city that sits in some of the most hotly contested political territory in the country.

“I’m scared to put them up,” Hubbard said. “As I drive … I only saw one place that had a [Harris] sign. Just don’t see them. I think people are scared to put them up.”

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Peanut the Instagram-famous squirrel is seized by New York officials

Wild squirrel that was taken in by Mark Longo seven years ago was confiscated after conservation officials received reports of ‘potentially unsafe housing of wildlife’

A New York man who turned a rescued squirrel into a social media star called Peanut is pleading with state authorities to return his beloved pet after they seized it during a raid that also yielded a raccoon named Fred.

Multiple anonymous complaints about Peanut – also spelled P’Nut or PNUT – brought at least six officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to Mark Longo’s home on Wednesday, Longo said.

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Avengers stars assemble to endorse Kamala Harris – by brainstorming an election catchphrase

Actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany appear in video, released days before the US election

The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies have come out in support of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris less than a week before the US election.

In a video posted first on Vanity Fair on Thursday evening, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.

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Stormy Daniels honored at witches’ ceremony in Salem, Massachusetts

Organizers award embattled actor and magic practitioner, under belief she has fallen victim to modern-day witch hunt

Practicing witches from around the world gathered in Salem by the hundreds on Thursday night to honor Stormy Daniels at their annual “magic circle” ceremony recognizing loved ones who have died.

Daniels – the adult film actor who allegedly had an affair with Donald Trump and was at the center of his May criminal trial that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felonies – was chosen to be honored in the Halloween ceremony as the organizers believe that she has been the victim of a modern-day witch hunt.

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Striking Boeing workers to vote on deal offering 38% pay rise and bigger bonus

More than 30,000 workers have been on strike since September and rejected two earlier offers from company

Striking Boeing workers will vote on an improved contract offer on Monday, which includes a 38% pay rise over four years and a bigger signing bonus, their union said on Thursday.

More than 30,000 factory workers who produce Boeing’s strongest-selling 737 Max commercial jet and other planes have been on strike since 13 September and have rejected two earlier offers from Boeing.

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