President’s 10,000th false claim came on Friday when he discussed the Charlottesville protests, the Washington Post reports
Donald Trump has made more than 10,000 false or misleading claims since he became president in January 2017, according to a count by factcheckers at the Washington Post.
Trump’s strike rate of “alternative facts” – a phrase made infamous by senior adviser Kellyanne Conway – has increased rapidly in recent months, the paper said on Monday.
Continue reading...‘When you chip away at the press, you chip away at our democracy’, Pultitzer-winning historian Ron Chernow tells Trump-free event
As Donald Trump flailed his arms and railed against the media at a raucous campaign rally on Saturday night, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian delivered an elegantly scathing rebuke at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) annual dinner.
America the split screen nation – so evident in polarised reactions to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference – was on vivid display again in two speeches.
Continue reading...Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to protect the press, but his barbs have resulted in journalists being harassed
Andrés Manuel López Obrador swept the Mexican left into power with promises of respecting the press and ending the killing of journalists.
Related: 'They went to execute him': fourth Mexican journalist killed so far in 2018
Continue reading...Congresswoman received death threats following video Trump posted – but he didn’t technically violate the rules
The rules just aren’t the same for Donald Trump as they are for the rest of us. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apparently admitted as much this week on a phone call with Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar.
As reported by the Washington Post, Dorsey, often criticized for his inaction when it comes removing hateful and threatening content from the platform, was asked by Omar why he hadn’t taken down a video posted by Trump earlier in the month. The video, which spliced together misleading and out of context comments from Omar about the issue of Islamophobia with footage of the 9/11 attacks, was clearly targeted harassment to anyone who saw it.
Continue reading...The video, widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later
Tesla has sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media which showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding, the latest in a string of fire incidents involving the company’s cars.
The video, time stamped Sunday evening and widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later. A video purportedly of the aftermath showed a line of three cars completely destroyed.
Continue reading...In the genealogy company’s commercial, a white man gives a black woman a ring and says they can ‘escape to the north’
Ancestry.ca, the Canadian outpost of the genealogy site Ancestry.com, has taken down an ad that was criticized for appearing to romanticize slavery. It was deemed an irresponsible retelling of an already reprehensible history.
ooooh my god LMAOOO who approved this ancestry commercial??? pic.twitter.com/Isy0k4HTMA
Continue reading...Leica, whose biggest growth market is China, say short film was not officially sanctioned
Western companies trying to do business in China learned long ago that they must bow, at least in part, to the political demands of an authoritarian state. So when the German camera-maker Leica released an advert featuring perhaps the greatest political taboo in contemporary Chinese history, it looked like an unusually audacious gamble.
In fact the short film referencing the Tiananmen Square crackdown appears to have been an extraordinary – and potentially very expensive – mistake.
Continue reading...Officers urge dissidents to step away from violence after Lyra McKee shot in Derry riots
Police in Northern Ireland have issued a call for peace in memory of the journalist Lyra McKee, who died after being shot during rioting in Derry on Thursday night.
Evoking the 29-year-old’s own words about the power of conversation, police encouraged relatives of dissident republicans, who have been blamed for shooting McKee, to urge their family members to step away from violence and pursue peace.
Continue reading...BBC Newsnight presenter once spotted former US president perusing ancient erotic text
The Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis has said she once caught Bill Clinton perusing the Kama Sutra in a hotel gift shop.
The BBC presenter said she spotted the former US president with the risque reading material following a day of interviews.
Continue reading...Number of organisations and individuals permanently banned for being ‘dangerous’
Years after the company first dismissed fears it was empowering extremists, Facebook has permanently banned a number of far-right organisations and individuals including the British National party (BNP), the English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First .
The ban, which came into effect at midday on Thursday, extends beyond the groups and individuals specifically cited as hate organisations: posts and other content that “expresses praise or support” for them will also be banned, as will users who coordinate support for the groups.
Continue reading...The setup looked potentially hostile but became a free, hourlong commercial for the Sanders candidacy, broadcast to Fox viewers
At every turn they clapped and cheered, enamored with the candidate’s prescriptions for universal healthcare, a humane attitude toward immigrants and the rejection of climate change denialism.
Bernie Sanders was the candidate, and the people clapping and cheering were audience members who turned out in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for a televised town hall on Monday night sponsored by none other than Fox News.
Continue reading...President Sisi is playing cat and mouse with us, shutting down our websites and blocking our social media but we won’t give in
As the world watches the peaceful revolution that is changing Sudan in awe and amazement, it is clear that in Egypt, Sudan’s neighbour to the north, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is getting nervous. On the same day as the protests in Khartoum reached a head, several of us who oppose Sisi’s autocratic rule launched an online petition to declare any result from Tuesday’s referendum on proposed constitutional amendments “void”.
Among the amendments Sisi is trying to force on the Egyptian people is a provision that could allow him to remain in power until 2030. The amendments would also increase the control of the military, which would be given powers to police the political sphere in Egypt. They would also give Sisi control over the appointment of judges and the public prosecutor.
Continue reading...UK foreign secretaries wrote to assure Ecuador president over WikiLeaks founder’s extradition
Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, was assured by two British foreign secretaries that Julian Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face the death penalty, according to letters seen by the Guardian.
Letters signed by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his predecessor Boris Johnson, dated 7 March 2018 and 10 August 2018 respectively, confirm a person cannot be extradited if they could face the death penalty, according to British legislation.
Continue reading...The Democratic frontrunner will speak at a Fox News town hall. He says it’s necessary to speak to Trump voters. Others disagree
Bernie Sanders will finish a four-day tour of Trump Country on Monday, with a town hall on the president’s favorite network: Fox News.
Related: Ilhan Omar has had spike in death threats since Trump attack over 9/11 comment
Continue reading...Exclusive: President says he has it in writing from UK that WikiLeaks co-founder’s rights will be respected
Julian Assange repeatedly violated his asylum conditions and tried to use the Ecuadorian embassy in London as a “centre for spying”, Ecuador’s president has said in an interview with the Guardian.
Lenín Moreno also said he had been given written undertakings from Britain that Assange’s fundamental rights would be respected and that he would not be sent anywhere to face the death penalty.
Continue reading...Thousands having difficulty accessing social networks, says tracking site
Facebook was inaccessible to some users on Sunday, according to Downdetector, a website that monitors outages.
The site showed there had been more than 7,700 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook at its peak.
Continue reading...Sending the WikiLeaks founder to face charges in the US would be a disaster for press freedom
It’s not difficult to despise Julian Assange. For seven years, he has attempted to evade rape and sexual assault charges in Sweden by seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He has dismissed the charges as a “radical feminist conspiracy” and tried to smear the complainants as acting on behalf of the CIA. His excuse for refusing to face trial in Sweden – that he would then face extradition to the US – has always been hogwash. He is no safer from extradition in Britain than he would have been in Sweden, as he may soon discover.
There are questions to be asked about WikiLeaks, too. The organisation has been invaluable in allowing whistleblowers to safely publish documents that the authorities would rather have kept hushed up, from the truth about the commodity trader Trafigura’s devastating dumping of chemical waste in Ivory Coast to videos of US helicopter attacks on Iraqi civilians. It is, or certainly was in its early days, an important tool in cutting down to size those in power who would abuse their power.
Continue reading...The post said the Zaha Hadid-designed buildings brought bad luck to tenants
A blog operator must pay $29,000 to a real estate developer for “defamation”, a Chinese court has ruled after alleging a building complex had bad energy.
Published on the WeChat social network in November, the text said an office complex in Beijing brought bad luck to its business tenants because it does not respect feng shui principles.
Continue reading...Murdoch-owned paper published front page that Yemeni American Merchants Association says ‘provoked hatred’
A group of New York corner-store owners has announced a boycott on the sale of the New York Post, arguing that the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper’s attacks on the congresswoman Ilhan Omar are making Muslim Americans less safe.
On Thursday, the Post published a front page featuring an image of the World Trade Center towers in flames on 11 September 2001 and a quote suggesting that Omar, a Somali American congresswoman from Minnesota who wears a hijab, had minimized the seriousness of the terror attacks in a speech last month.
Continue reading...Security costs for the tech billionaire and his family more than doubled last year, as an outcry over Facebook’s practices grew
Facebook more than doubled the money it spent on top executive Mark Zuckerberg’s security in 2018 to $22.6m, a regulatory filing has showed.
Zuckerberg drew a base salary of $1 for the past three years, and his “other” compensation was listed at $22.6m, most of which was for his personal security.
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