Stephanie Winston Wolkoff reportedly taped the first lady’s ‘harsh comments’ and plans to share them in a book, Melania & Me
Melania Trump will speak at the Republican national convention on Tuesday night, in the shadow of an extraordinary report that she was taped making derogatory comments about her husband’s adult children and even Donald Trump himself.
Related: RNC 2020: a two-hour glimpse into the upside-down world of Trump TV
Continue reading...App says in blogpost it strongly disagrees with White House position that it is a national security threat
TikTok, the fast-growing video sharing app, announced it was suing the US government on Monday over an executive order banning transactions with the Chinese company in the US.
In a blogpost, TikTok said it strongly disagreed with the White House’s position that the company was a national security threat, saying it had “taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s US user data”.
Continue reading...
Here’s a rundown of Sunday’s events. We’ll be back tomorrow for all Monday’s news.
More a campaign-style press announcement than traditional news conference, Trump abruptly ends the proceedings after taking only three questions, including one from One America News Network.
The US president insisted today’s announcement, which comes one day after he accused “the deep state, or whoever, over at” the FDA of deliberately slowing coronavirus vaccine and therapy development, “has nothing to do with politics” despite its conspicuous timing on the eve of the Republican national convention.
Continue reading...The former FBI director James Comey has said Steve Bannon is “in a world of trouble”, after the former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser was arrested on a charge of skimming donations from a fundraising campaign for a wall on the border with Mexico.
Related: 'Conmen, grifters and criminals': why is Trump's circle so at odds with the law?
Continue reading...
New York governor Andrew Cuomo said the state will give voters a chance to correct missing signatures and other clerical errors so their absentee ballots can be counted in anticipation of a wave of mail-in voting for the November election.
Election officials are expecting an even bigger flood of mail-in votes in November than for the June primary, after which results were delayed for six weeks.
Cuomo said late Friday he’d sign yet temporarily tweak legislation that calls for notifying voters about such problems and provides for fixing them.
Under the version that passed the Legislature last month, the voter would have seven business days to file a form to fix the problem after a notice was mailed, in many situations.
The Associated Press has more from Portland, Oregon, where protesters against police brutality and structural racism clashed again with federal agents and law enforcement officers overnight. Such confrontations were the subject of a Trump tweet this morning, in which the president once again expressed his willingness to send in the national guard:
About 200 people marched to a police precinct station on yet another night of violence for Oregon’s largest city.
Demonstrators hurled bottles and rocks at officers and pointed lasers at them, damaging police cars and causing minor injuries for several officers, Portland police said.
Continue reading...John Brennan led the agency as it and others concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump
The former CIA director John Brennan was interviewed on Friday by US attorney John Durham’s team, as part of its inquiry into the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016.
Related: US Senate report goes beyond Mueller to lay bare Trump campaign's Russia links
Continue reading...Letters from 13 of 15 members underscore US isolation as it seeks to ‘snap back’ measures against Tehran
The extent of US isolation at the UN has been driven home by formal letters from 13 of the 15 security council members opposing Trump administration attempts to extend the economic embargo on Iran.
The letters by the council members were all issued in the 24 hours since the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, came to the UN’s New York headquarters to declare Iran in non-compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal.
Continue reading...WHO says European countries registering an average of 26,000 new cases a day; Germany records 1,707 new infections; South Korea has week of triple figure daily cases; India records highest daily infections yet
The coronavirus pandemic has reignited debate in Germany about cutting the working week to four days to help preserve jobs during and after the economic shock.
But the idea remains highly controversial.
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray, I’ll be running the global coronavirus blog for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch with any story suggestions or personal experiences you’d like to share.
Continue reading...Trump described NZ’s ‘terrible’ surge, despite 90 active cases in country; Ibiza to ban pool parties, as Spain infections surge. Follow the latest
These look like scenes of yesteryear but thousands of people packed out a water park in Wuhan, China, over the weekend as much of the rest of the world remained under lockdown restrictions.
VIDEO: Crowds packed out a water park over the weekend in the central Chinese city of #Wuhan, where the #coronavirus first emerged late last year, keen to party as the city edges back to normal life pic.twitter.com/SJFBmx5sU8
The Philippines’ health ministry confirmed 4,836 novel coronavirus infections, the seventh consecutive day of reporting more than 3,000 daily cases, Reuters reports.
In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed cases had increased to 169,213, while there were seven additional deaths – bringing the total toll to 2,687.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has called out New Zealand for its recent Covid-19 outbreak, saying places once hailed as a success story in the pandemic are now facing a 'big surge' in cases. However, New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern said there was 'no comparison' between the situation in her country and that in in the US
Israel’s relationship with neighbours is no longer defined by occupation, Palestinians say
Shortly after Donald Trump announced he had brokered a “huge breakthrough” deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the White House published a list of bullet points detailing what it had achieved.
Only at the bottom, just after “expanded business and financial ties between these two thriving economies”, did the very last sentence blandly mention what had previously been the key regional issue: the fate of the Palestinians.
Continue reading...The US president’s hair-washing complaints have prompted a proposal on easing of shower-pressure standards.
The Trump administration presented rule changes that would allow showerheads to boost water pressure, after Donald Trump complained that bathroom fixtures did not work to his liking.
The Department of Energy plan followed Trump's comments last month at a White House event on rolling back regulations where he said he believed water did not come out fast enough from fixtures. ‘My hair … I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect,' he said
Continue reading...Bob Woodward’s second book on the Trump White House has a title, Rage, and promises to reveal the secrets of “25 personal letters exchanged between [Donald] Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that have not been public before”.
Related: It Was All a Lie review: Trump as symptom not cause of Republican decline
Continue reading...Joseph Wu tells visiting US health secretary Taiwan lives under constant threat of its freedoms being quashed by Beijing
China is trying to turn Taiwan into another Hong Kong, the island’s foreign minister warned on Tuesday as he met with a senior US official making a historic diplomatic trip.
A crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong has gathered pace since China imposed a sweeping security law on the financial hub in June, with opposition politicians disqualified and activists arrested.
Continue reading...Donald Trump was abruptly escorted out of a press briefing by a Secret Service agent on Monday after an armed suspect was shot outside the White House.
The president was just minutes into his coronavirus briefing when a Secret Service agent asked Trump to leave the podium and quickly exit the room along with other administration officials.
Continue reading...US considers blocking infected citizens returning; Australian outbreak trends down; Singapore economy plunges 43%
Nearly five months to the day since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, Covid-19 infections have passed 20 million cases. In acknowledging the milestone, the health body’s chief warned against despair, saying if the virus could be suppressed effectively, “we can safely open up societies”.
Global cases reached one million at the start of April. By 22 May, there were 5 million cases. That figure had doubled to 10 million cases by the end of June, and, seven weeks later, it had doubled again to 20 million infections.
Continue reading...US has the highest number of cases and the highest number of deaths in the world as former vice president attacks Donald Trump over coronavirus ‘failures’
The US on Sunday passed the grim milestone of 5m coronavirus cases, as Donald Trump’s executive orders seeking to break a political impasse over further economic relief were denounced by a Republican as “unconstitutional slop” and Joe Biden accused the president of issuing little more than “excuses and lies”.
Recriminations have been flying in Washington since talks on further aid for the unemployed and for states struggling with a public health crisis collapsed on Friday.
Continue reading...Letter signed by US state department representative calls for ‘immediate release’ of adult children of Saad Aljabri
The Trump administration has issued a rare rebuke of Saudi Arabia over the detention of two of the adult children of a former Saudi intelligence official who has been credited with protecting Americans from al-Qaida threats.
A letter signed by a state department official said any persecution of Saad Aljabri’s family members by Saudi authorities was “unacceptable” and urged the “immediate release” of the two children, Omar and Sarah Aljabri, who were arrested from their home in Riyadh in March and have been held in detention indefinitely.
Continue reading...Executive order comes as TikTok faces scrutiny from US lawmakers and Trump administration over national security concerns
Donald Trump has issued a pair of executive orders that would ban any US transactions with the Chinese companies that own TikTok and WeChat, saying the US must take “aggressive action” in the interest of national security.
Executive orders issued late on Thursday would prohibit “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,” with the companies, beginning in 45 days.
Continue reading...President floundered in conversation with Axios, claiming Covid-19 was ‘under control’ and attacking mail-in voting
Donald Trump stumbled through his second damaging interview in as many weeks, floundering in a conversation with the news website Axios over key issues he is tasked with responding to as president.
It’s been just over two weeks since the president made a series of shocking statements in a one-on-one interview with Fox News, but he packed another host of extraordinary claims into a 37-minute interview released on Monday night by Axios.
Continue reading...