Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
His books were a hit long before he took office, and some Christians see his presidency as a blessing
The pursed, stony expression is familiar in Peter Odoakang’s striking oil painting of Donald Trump, but not the outfit. The US president is portrayed wearing a wine- and peach-coloured agbada and cap, traditional Yoruba attire, fitting him into the mould of a south-western Nigerian leader or “big man”, as Odoakang says.
“People see him in agbada and say wow, it fits him. People really laugh about it and react to it,” says Odoakang, 23, of the portrait commissioned by a company in Lagos, which he says brings Trump’s “personality into our setting”.
US is going in ‘wrong direction’ says Fauci as Covid cases rise in 47 states and patients overwhelm hospitals across the US
The White House coronavirus taskforce is warning of a persistent and broad spread of Covid-19 in the western half of the United States and its members urged aggressive mitigation measures.
“We are on a very difficult trajectory. We’re going in the wrong direction,” said Dr Anthony Fauci, the lead public health official on the taskforce and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Sources say it is unclear if move is attempt to sabotage trade body much criticised by Trump
The US is blocking the appointment of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the next head of the World Trade Organisation despite the former Nigerian finance minister winning the overwhelming backing of the WTO’s 164 members, it has emerged.
Ngozi had moved a step closer to becoming the first woman and the first African to be director of the global trade watchdog after securing the support of a key group of trade ambassadors in Geneva. Soundings taken by a selection panel of three WTO trade ministers found Okonjo-Iweala had far more support than her South Korean rival, Yoo Myung-hee.
The hardline adviser is said to be ready to unleash executive orders deemed too extreme for a president seeking re-election
The architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy, senior adviser Stephen Miller, is said to have a drawer full of executive orders ready to be signed in “shock and awe” style if Trump is re-elected.
The former homeland security department chief of staff, Miles Taylor, said this wishlist was reserved for the second term because it included policies that were too unpopular for a president seeking re-election.
Outrage as USAGM chief Michael Pack rescinds rule that insulates journalists from editorial direction of politically appointed bosses
The US diplomats’ union has denounced an attempt by a Trump appointee to remove the “firewall” protecting the editorial independence of the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other US overseas broadcasters, warning that it marked an attempt to turn them into vehicles for “government propaganda”.
The CEO of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Michael Pack, announced overnight on Monday that he would be rescinding the “firewall rule” insulating journalists from editorial direction from politically appointed management.
Donald Trump Jr has just retweeted Derek Hunter saying that “Leftists really seem to want dead police officers” in connection to the shooting of Walter Wallace Jr in Philadelphia.
Police shot and killed a guy coming at them with a knife who was given ample opportunity to drop it and didn't. Leftists really seem to want dead police officers. https://t.co/askRXGpEzs
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany once praised Joe Biden as “a man of the people” capable of “coming off as human” and “resonating with middle class voters”.
In an interview with a New York radio station in 2015, she also said that though she thought Donald Trump would be more likely to beat Biden, then considering a run for president, than Hillary Clinton, “I think the juxtaposition of kind of the man of the people and kind of this tycoon, is a problem.”
Senate’s confirmation of Barrett, 48, cements rightwing domination of court for years to come
The US Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, delivering Donald Trump a huge but partisan victory just eight days before the election and locking in rightwing domination of the nation’s highest court for years to come.
Here again is a link to the interview with Donald Trump published on Sunday by 60 Minutes, an institution in US television news known for editorial balance and seriousness of purpose. Significantly, the program also reaches millions of older voters, who overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016 but who appear to be splitting their vote this year between the candidates.
In this clip, via Vox’s Aaron Rupar, Trump whines about the difficulty level of the questions he is being confronted with, after interviewer Lesley Stahl refuses to endorse one of his conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation.
I don’t understand how anyone can watch this and draw any conclusion other than Trump is completely unfit for his job pic.twitter.com/DA87zGehXI
Hello and welcome to our round-the-clock coverage as the 2020 US election enters its final lap. Only eight days to go.
On Sunday, the number of early voters in the election surpassed 58m, the number who voted early in 2016. That means the 2020 election will mark the first time in history that more than half of the overall US vote was cast early.
As McConnell continues his cynical, revisionist version of how we’ve ended up at this moment – awaiting the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett – the supreme court, one member short, is still working.
Just now, the court upheld a federal appeals court ruling that blocks a deadline extension for mail-in-ballots, awarding a victory for Republicans in a crusade against expanding voting rights and access.
After four years of Trump, protected places such as national monuments and wildlife refuges have opened to oil drilling, new maps show – with more on the way
Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, is having a field day over the comments of the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows this morning. In a rare moment of transparency, Meadows admitted to a Sunday political talk show that the Trump administration had no intention of containing coronavirus, saying: “We’re not going to control the pandemic”.
Cuomo said that thinking was tantamount to giving in to the virus. “They surrendered without firing a shot. It was the great American surrender,” he said on Sunday, as reported by the Daily News.
After the Senate voted to move forward with the final vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell spoke on the Senate floor, celebrating the lasting influence of the vote for posterity.
“By tomorrow night, we’ll have a new member of the United States Supreme Court,” he told the chamber.
McConnell, just after the Senate votes to limit debate on Amy Coney Barrett: "A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come."
Also, McConnell's right hand, which was deeply bruised earlier this week and prompted several Qs about his health, appears much better. Most of the bruising is gone https://t.co/WPFJcqsog2
Lawyer for group issues scathing response to legal letter
Times Square ads blame Trump advisers for Covid deaths
The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square.
Confirmation of a sixth conservative on the nine-member court is due on Monday, the result of ruthless Republican politics
The almost certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court on Monday represents a “power grab” by Republicans facing possible wipeout at the ballot box, activists and analysts say.
Donald Trump seeks to score points from deal; Palestinians call it ‘a new stab in the back’
Israel and Sudan have agreed to work towards normalising relations in a deal brokered by the US that would make Sudan the third Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past two months.
Donald Trump sealed the agreement in a phone call on Friday with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his Sudanese counterpart, Abdalla Hamdok, and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional military council.
Move is part of a campaign by Trump administration to reorient US foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction
The US has today signed an anti-abortion declaration with a group of about 30 largely illiberal or authoritarian governments, after the failure of an effort to expand the conservative coalition.
The “Geneva Consensus Declaration” calls on states to promote women’s rights and health – but without access to abortion – and is part of a campaign by Trump administration, led by secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to reorient US foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction, even at the expense of alienating traditional western allies.
Trump administration reportedly considering move against organisations that documented Israeli rights abuses
The Trump administration is reportedly considering labelling a number of leading international humanitarian organisations as antisemitic after they documented Israeli rights abuses against Palestinians, including settlement building in the occupied territories.
The groups include the UK-based Amnesty International and Oxfam as well as the US organisation Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International accused the Trump administration, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, of attempting “to silence and intimidate international human rights organisations”.
Lawyers struggling to find parents deported to Central America, says ACLU, after US government removed 1,030 children in 2018
Three years after Donald Trump ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants crossing into the US, lawyers are still struggling to find the parents of 545 children separated from them under the “zero-tolerance” policy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In a court filing, the ACLU said that about two-thirds of the parents had been deported back to the country of origin in Central America, leaving their separated children behind. In the rush to carry out Trump’s orders, the locations of the parents were not recorded and three years later they still cannot be found.
Still in New Zealand and Suff reports that 440 fishermen from Russia and the Ukraine arrived on Friday and are isolating at the Sudima Hotel, near Christchurch Airport. The outlet says:
Stuff previously reported about 440 fishermen from Russia and Ukraine were due to arrive (in NZ) on two flights chartered by fishing companies – the first of which is thought to have touched down from Moscow via Singapore on Friday.
Many of the 237 people onboard have been isolating at the Sudima Hotel, near Christchurch Airport, since their arrival.
The New Zealand Herald is reporting that 11 international sailors in a Christchurch hotel have tested positive for Covid – 14 more cases are “under further investigation”, according to the ministry of health.
“All are imported cases detected at routine day 3 testing. None involve cases in the community,” the ministry said, according to the Herald.
The UK prime minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday he would impose tougher lockdown restrictions on the Greater Manchester region in the north of England despite failing to reach a deal on funding support with local leaders.