Category Archives: Donald Trump

Coronavirus news live: no new Covid-19 deaths in Spain for first time since March

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Pakistanis urged to ‘live with the virus’; employee in Israeli prime minister’s office tests positive for Covid-19; Czech Republic will welcome foreign travellers from 15 June

UK ministers have been accused of not taking seriously the threat posed to black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) Britons by Covid-19, after it was reported that the release of an official review of the issue had been delayed over fears of potential civil unrest.

According to Sky News, officials are concerned about the effect the publication could have amid global anger over the death of George Floyd, an African American man who pleaded for air as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck.

Related: Ministers accused of not taking Covid-19 threat to BAME Britons seriously

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Seven former foreign secretaries urge UK to take lead on Hong Kong

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Cross-party initiative reflects concern response to China’s imposition of security laws cannot be left to Donald Trump

Britain must take the lead in co-ordinating the international response to China’s efforts to impose draconian security laws in Hong Kong, seven former Conservative and Labour UK foreign secretaries have come together to declare.

Related: Hong Kong officials lash out at Trump plan to strip city of special status

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Global report: coronavirus cases pass 6 million as Donald Trump postpones G7

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Trump hopes to expand G7 in delayed summit; Brazil’s death toll passes France; Mexican health care workers to march

The number of people infected by the coronavirus around the world has passed 6 million, as the pandemic forced Donald trump to postpone the G7 summit in Washington.

According to the latest data from the Johns Hopkins University tracking site, there have now been more than 6,059,000 cases of the disease around the world, with 369,126 deaths.

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Trump cancels summit but says he will invite Putin to later G7 event

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US president intends to convene 11 nations at later date in push to counter China

Donald Trump has been forced to cancel a planned face-to-face summit of G7 leaders in June and now wants to host an expanded meeting in September dedicated to countering China, to which Vladimir Putin would be invited.

Trump revealed on Saturday that he had cancelled the June meeting, which he had billed as a symbol of the US “transitioning back to greatness”, after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, told him in a phone call that she saw the summit in Washington DC as a health risk. Hundreds of security staff, journalists and officials also attend the two-day summits.

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Trump justice department forces out top FBI lawyer in Flynn case – report

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A top FBI lawyer who was criticised on Fox News for his role in the investigation of Michael Flynn has resigned after being asked to do so by senior figures at the Department of Justice, NBC News reported on Saturday.

Related: What is 'Obamagate' and why is Trump so worked up about it?

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‘A national crisis’: how the killing of George Floyd is changing US politics

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As people protest across the US, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have offered divergent responses that point to a divisive political debate on race relations

Riots in Minneapolis and across the US triggered by video footage showing George Floyd, a black man, killed under the knee of a police officer, has caused a dramatic shift in the national political debate in America and thrust race to the center of the stage.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden offered divergent responses that point to an even more divisive political debate on race relations and between Democrats and Republicans playing out in the months ahead.

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Trump wants America looking at the stars as he drags it through the gutter

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The president is due to attend the rescheduled launch of a manned SpaceX rocket – a welcome diversion from the coronavirus crisis

Making America great again just wasn’t enough. “President Trump is making space great again,” the Republican National Committee declared this week.

Donald Trump returns to Cape Canaveral in Florida on Saturday to witness the rescheduled launch of a SpaceX rocket carrying Nasa astronauts that was delayed by weather three days earlier.

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Hong Kong officials lash out at Trump plan to strip city of special status

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Criticism follows the US president accusing Beijing of breaking its word over Hong Kong for imposing national security laws

Senior Hong Kong government officials have criticised moves by Donald Trump to strip the city of its special status in a bid to punish China for imposing national security laws on the global financial hub.

Speaking hours after Trump said the city no longer warranted economic privileges and some officials could face sanctions, security minister John Lee told reporters on Saturday that Hong Kong’s government could not be threatened and would push ahead with the new laws. 

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Facebook declines to take action against Trump statements

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Twitter responded to the president’s post, which suggested violence against protesters, by hiding it behind a warning label

As Twitter for the second time in a single week took unprecedented action against a tweet by Donald Trump, Facebook declined to take any enforcement action against the president’s statements.

Trump’s threatening statement on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on Thursday night, “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” echoed a racist 1960s police chief known for ordering patrols of black neighborhoods with shotguns and dogs. It was widely interpreted as a threat and potential incitement to violence against residents of the Twin Cities who have erupted in protest against the alleged police killing of George Floyd, a black man who begged for his life as a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.

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Donald Trump announces US plans to sever all ties with WHO – video

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Trump has announced that the US will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization and will redirect the funds to 'other bodies'.

The US president criticised the WHO, claiming it was 'controlled' by China. Trump also announced the US would begin a process to eliminate policy exemptions that give Hong Kong 'special treatment' due to new security laws imposed on the region by China

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Coronavirus live news: global deaths near 360,000 as Philippines has biggest daily spike in cases

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Up to six people can gather in UK parks from Monday; Donald Trump says he would take hydroxychloroquine again; drug combination triples death risk in cancer patients

I’m signing off now (it’s Friday afternoon here in Sydney). I leave you in the hands of my wonderful colleague Alexandra Topping, who assures me it’s a glorious morning in London.

Thanks all for your comments and correspondence. Be well all of you.

Bloomberg reports:

Renault SA plans to eliminate about 14,600 jobs worldwide and lower production capacity by almost a fifth as part of cost reductions aimed at outlasting the downturn that has rocked the global auto industry.

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Trump signs executive order to narrow protections for social media platforms

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Move comes amid president’s feud with Twitter after it fact-checked him for the first time

Donald Trump has fired a shot across the bows of “big tech” companies by signing an executive order that aims to narrow their protections from liability over the content posted on their services.

The move came as the US president stepped up his attacks against social media giants after Twitter fact-checked him for the first time over a false assertion that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud.

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George Floyd killing: Trump calls protesters ‘thugs’ as fires erupt in Minneapolis on third night of unrest – live

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Completely surreal. Watching the Third Precinct burn surround by thousands of people in complete anarchy. pic.twitter.com/qNVNAJIlA7

Reports that Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey will hold a press conference shortly.

Mayor Frey will hold a news briefing, set to start in a few minutes, about tonight's protests/burning of the 3rd Precinct. @ChaoStrib will have the livestream.

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Trump expected to sign executive order in bid to target Twitter and Facebook

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  • Move could erode legal protections for social media platforms
  • Twitter placed warning on Trump tweets that spread falsehoods

Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that could erode legal protections for social media companies for content posted on their platforms, potentially opening them to liability claims over controversial content.

Related: Trump focuses on possible social media regulation as US coronavirus death toll passes milestone – live

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Biden sets solemn tone as Trump waits 15 hours to mark Covid-19 milestone

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As the toll of Americans killed by the coronavirus passed 100,000, the president was lashing out at Twitter for factchecking his posts

Four hours after Johns Hopkins University recorded that 100,000 American lives were lost to the coronavirus, Joe Biden released a solemn speech.

“My fellow Americans, there are moments in our history so grim, so heart-rending, that they are forever fixed in each of our hearts as shared grief. Today is one of those moments,” said Biden, speaking directly to the camera from an office adorned with American flags.

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Zuckerberg says Facebook won’t be ‘arbiters of truth’ after Trump threat

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President announced plan to strip social media companies of liability protections after Twitter factchecked his tweets

Two years after admitting under political pressure that Facebook must do more to prevent disinformation campaigns on its platform, founder Mark Zuckerberg told Fox News on Thursday that the company should step away from regulating online speech.

Related: Trump expected to sign executive order in bid to target Twitter and Facebook

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Trump campaign attempts to remove satirical cartoon from online retailer

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Cartoonist Nick Anderson calls president ‘adolescent’ after work parodying bleach-injection claim sparked a legal manoeuvre

The Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson has described Donald Trump as an “adolescent wannabe authoritarian”, after the US president’s re-election campaign failed to pull one of Anderson’s cartoons mocking Trump’s inaccurate suggestion that injecting disinfectant could protect against Covid-19.

Anderson put his cartoon The Trump Cult up for sale on the online retailer Redbubble this month. The illustration shows Trump with supporters in Maga hats, serving them a drink that has been labeled “Kool-Aid”, then “Chloroquine” and finally “Clorox”, a US bleach brand. The cartoon is a reference to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where more than 900 people died after drinking cyanide-laced punch at the order of cult leader Jim Jones, and to Trump’s widely denounced idea of injecting bleach to protect against coronavirus. Trump has also been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a protection against Covid-19, despite a study showing it has been linked to increased deaths in patients.

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As 100,000 die, the virus lays bare America’s brutal fault lines – race, gender, poverty and broken politics

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The US’s brutal fault lines – of race, partisanship, gender, poverty and misinformation – rendered it ill-prepared to meet the challenges of Covid-19

In one of the rare expressions of empathy that Donald Trump has displayed during the course of the coronavirus pandemic, he talked earlier this month about the disease claiming so many lives it was “filling up Yankee Stadium with death”.

Now the death toll from Covid-19 stands at almost twice the capacity of the Yankees’ home stadium, and has reached another booming landmark: 100,000 deaths.

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US passes 100,000 coronavirus deaths as states relax lockdown measures

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US recorded more deaths from the disease than any other country in the pandemic

The United States has recorded more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, moving past a grim milestone even as many states relax mitigation measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The US has recorded more deaths from the disease than any other country in the pandemic, and almost three times as many as the second-ranking country, Britain, which has recorded more than 37,000 Covid-19 deaths.

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