Florida senate race goes to hand recount ... May pushes on with Brexit plan despite broad opposition ... Zuckerberg claims he did not know about PR firm’s Soros attack

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s headlines. If you’d like to receive this briefing by email, sign up here.

Sign up for the US morning briefing



Top story: 63 confirmed dead in Camp fire, with 631 missing

Authorities in northern California raised the number of people missing or unaccounted for in the state’s deadliest ever wildfire by more than 500 on Thursday, as the confirmed death toll from the Camp fire climbed to 63. The Butte county sheriff’s office lists 631 individuals whose whereabouts and fate remain unknown after the fire in and around the town of Paradise. The blaze is still raging over about 140,000 acres.

Police shooting. One man and two dogs were killed after police officers were involved in a shooting during the fire evacuation. The dead man is said to have been a suspect in a 2014 double murder.

Schools closed. Schools in the San Francisco Bay Area were closed on Friday as smoke from the fire caused dangerous levels of air pollution.

Florida election not over as Senate race goes to hand recount

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Election officials in Florida are preparing for a hand recount in the state’s US Senate race. Photograph: Michele Eve Sandberg/AFP/Getty Images

The midterm election remains undecided in Florida, where officials have ordered a hand recount of ballots in the US Senate contest between the state’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, and the Democrat Bill Nelson. The race to replace Scott is probably over, however, after a recount appeared to confirm that the Democrat Andrew Gillum had lost his bid to be the state’s first African American governor, with the Republican Ron DeSantis the victor.

State of disarray. Eighteen years after Bush v Gore, David Smith finds out why Florida is still the state “where good elections go to die”.

2020 vision. Democrats did better than first thought at the midterms. Tom McCarthy asks what the results can teach the party as it prepares for 2020.

Theresa May pushes on with Brexit plan despite broad opposition

Play Video 2:23 Highlights from Theresa May's LBC phone-in - video

The UK prime minister, Theresa May, has vowed to press ahead with her Brexit plan despite a series of resignations and widespread criticism of the agreement she has struck with the EU. As the turmoil continued in Westminster, sources said May had offered the job of Brexit secretary to her environment minister, Michael Gove, a leading leave campaigner, but he refused the role unless he was allowed to renegotiate the deal.

No confidence. May could face a vote of no confidence from her own Conservative MPs. Rajeev Syal examines this and five other possible scenarios for the coming days.

Paranoid fantasy. Brexit is based on a powerful, reactionary delusion, writes Fintan O’Toole: that Britain is a defeated nation, and that the EU is its imaginary invader.

Zuckerberg claims he did not know about PR firm’s Soros attack

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zuckerberg says he has ‘tremendous respect’ for George Soros. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters

The Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has insisted he was unaware of his company’s relationship with a PR firm that harnessed an antisemitic narrative to undermine Facebook’s critics. Definers Public Affairs linked groups that criticised Facebook to George Soros, the Jewish philanthropist who is the subject of widespread antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Good intentions? Zuckerberg said he had “tremendous respect” for Soros, but echoed the PR messaging, adding: “The intention was not to attack an individual but to demonstrate that a group that was presenting itself as a grassroots effort … was not in fact a spontaneous grassroots effort.”

Crib sheet

North Korean state media say Kim Jong-un has supervised a test of a new “ultramodern weapon”, the first public acknowledgement that his regime is continuing its weapons development programme.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which has been sold at auction for $90.3m. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

David Hockney ’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) has been sold for $90.3m at Christie’s in New York, an auction record for a work by a living artist.

Julian Assange has been charged in secret and in absentia by US authorities, an apparent mistake in a separate court filing has indicated.

The two most senior living leaders of the Khmer Rouge have been found guilty of genocide by a Cambodian tribunal, almost 40 years after the fall of Pol Pot’s brutal Communist regime.

Listen to Today in Focus: a day of Brexit chaos

Anushka Asthana joins the Guardian’s political team in Westminster as May’s Brexit plan unravels. Plus: in an exclusive extract from her memoir, Michelle Obama recalls how she met her husband, Barack.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chichibuga beach at sunset. Photograph: Akiyoshi Kuramoto

The Japanese beach that became an Instagram sensation

Chichibuga beach – a flat strand of sand beside the Seto sea on the least populated of Japan’s four main islands – was little known until its stunning sunsets began to show up on social media. Now, thanks to Instagram, it’s a thriving tourist destination, writes Isabel Choat.

Mumford & Sons: ‘The banjo is underrated’

As the London-based folk-rockers release their new album, Delta, Marcus Mumford and his bandmates tell Rachel Aroesti about their Grenfell charity, marriage to Carey Mulligan, and meeting Jordan Peterson.

The man who dropped two nuclear bombs

Alan Pringle was a 22-year-old RAF co-pilot when he was chosen to take part in Britain’s atomic bomb trials in the South Pacific in 1956. “We saw the sky lit up; 10,000ft above our eye level was a writhing molten mass. I was in a state of awe.”

New York City’s new pastime: throwing axes

With the world axe-throwing championship due to be broadcast on ESPN for the first time in December, New Yorkers can try their hand at the perilous sport at Brooklyn’s new Bury the Hatchet bar. Adam Gabbatt learns to “respect the axe”.

Opinion

Facebook hired a Republican PR agency to undermine its critics. In the process, it became a tool of the right. Alex Hern says that should teach the company to steer well clear of politics.

What the scandal shows is that, even as Facebook grew into a company that desperately wanted to play on the political stage, it was always the one getting played instead.

Sport

Wayne Rooney has bid a tearful farewell to international soccer after his final appearance in an England shirt, helping to propel a new generation of players to a 3-0 victory over the USA.

Tom Brady remains one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, but there are signs that the 41-year-old is slipping from his pedestal, writes Oliver Connolly.

Sign up

The US morning briefing is delivered by email every weekday. If you are not already receiving it, make sure to subscribe.

Sign up for the US morning briefing

Support the Guardian

We’d like to acknowledge our generous supporters who enable us to keep reporting on the critical stories. If you value what we do and would like to help, please make a contribution or become a supporter today. Thank you.