Former president addresses delegates amid reports Oprah Winfrey is expected to make an appearance
Kamala Harris’s campaign raised four times as much money last month than Donald Trump’s campaign, Reuters is reporting, citing federal disclosures filed late on Tuesday.
The Harris campaign told the Federal Election Commission it raised $204m in July, compared to $48m reported by Trump’s main fundraising group.
Continue reading...Mayor says no damage or casualties reported as 11 drones are downed
Ukraine’s parliament voted on Wednesday to ratify the Rome Statute, a senior lawmaker said, paving the way for Kyiv to join the International Criminal Court.
In a Telegram post, Yaroslav Zhelezniak said 281 deputies had voted for the measure, a key requirement for Ukraine to eventually join the European Union.
Continue reading...Influencer’s property among four searched as part of investigation into alleged trafficking and sex with a minor
Masked armed police raided the Bucharest home of the misogynist social media influencer Andrew Tate on Wednesday amid fresh claims about trafficking and underage sex.
Police said officers conducted four searches as part of an investigation into alleged crimes including human trafficking and sex with a minor.
Continue reading...English banker Jonathan Bloomer and American lawyer Chris Morvillo reportedly confirmed as among bodies recovered by Italian rescuers
Reuters, citing a source, reports that one of the two bodies found by divers is a “heavily built man.”
Italian rescue divers have found two bodies inside the sunken luxury yacht, Reuters reported citing a source.
Continue reading...Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin hold the election key – can the Democrats see off the challenge from Trump?
Away from the deafening roar of the party faithful that nightly fills the Democratic national convention in Chicago an urgent question is being asked behind the scenes: how can the party convert the energy that has exploded around Kamala Harris’s belated candidacy into actual votes on election day?
All eyes are on the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where the identity of the 47th US president is likely to be settled. The outsized significance of the three states in the race is evident in the scramble of the presidential candidates to woo them.
Continue reading...Government denies new cybersecurity measures responsible for up to 40% drop in internet speeds across the country
For the free online tech skill classes advertised, there were hundreds of Facebook “likes” and in the end 1,500 people signed up. But on the first day last week, only a handful of those registered managed to log in to the live session. The internet was working at a snail’s speed.
“We received hundreds of complaints,” says the course tutor, Wardah Noor, founder of the IT training firm XWave, based in Layyah, in the Pakistani province of Punjab.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: Following the return of six killed Israeli civilians, Benjamin Netantahu is facing calls from inside and outside the country to find a way to stop the conflict
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Good morning. There were 115 Israeli hostages, dead and alive, left in Gaza; now there are 109. Yesterday, the Israel Defense Forces said that it had recovered the bodies of six civilians taken by Hamas on 7 October last year – Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell and Chaim Peri – from tunnels under the city of Khan Younis. While the families of all six had already announced that their loved ones were believed dead, that physical confirmation was devastating all the same.
Meanwhile, at least 12 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school yesterday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said, adding that the building was being used to house displaced people. Israel claimed that it was a command and control centre for Hamas. The count maintained by Gaza’s health authorities of dead Palestinians stands at more than 40,000.
Autumn budget | Rachel Reeves is planning to raise taxes, cut spending and get tough on benefits in October’s budget, amid Treasury alarm over the state of the public finances. Changes could include rises in inheritance tax and capital gains tax, while Reeves may also reject pressure to remove the two-child benefit cap.
US politics | Amid chants of “Yes, she can!”, Barack Obama gave the closing speech on the second night of the Democratic national convention and said: “We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.” He was introduced by his wife Michelle, who said that Harris had sparked hope and alleviated “a palpable sense of dread about the future”.
Italy | Six missing people are now presumed dead after a yacht sank off the coast of Sicily. They are tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah; Morgan Stanley International chair Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy; and lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda. A body recovered on Monday was confirmed as that of the vessel’s chef, Recaldo Thomas.
Health | Scotland’s drug deaths remain the worst in Europe, as ministers pledged to intensify efforts to deal with the problem after a “hugely concerning” 12% increase in fatalities last year.
Spain | The world’s oldest known person, Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in 1907 and lived through two pandemics and two world wars, has died in her home in north-eastern Spain at the age of 117. Branyas got Covid-19 aged 113 in 2020 but made a full recovery and was said to be “completely lucid”.
Continue reading...Ex-president falsely claims US is in grip of violent crime wave, and vows to shield officers from legal accountability
Donald Trump has pledged to shield police officers from legal accountability if he is re-elected as president after falsely claiming the US is in the grip of a wave of violent crime that he blamed on the Black Lives Matter movement and migrants crossing the Mexican border.
Speaking to police officers in Michigan on Tuesday, the former president sought to pin responsibility for the imagined crisis on his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, who he characterised as among “Marxist district attorneys” with a record of being anti-police and pro-criminal during her term as the DA in San Francisco in the 2000s.
Continue reading...Ex-president headlining in Chicago on Tuesday brings memories of 2004 appeal for unity that inspired Democrats
From “skinny kid with a funny name” to elder statesman: Barack Obama, the former US president, will be the headline speaker at the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Tuesday – 20 years after he first burst on to the national political scene.
Obama, a state legislator from Illinois, was days from his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the Senate when he was given a slot at the party’s 2004 convention in Boston. “Rising star to woo voters with upbeat keynote speech,” was the Guardian headline on 27 July 2004.
Continue reading...UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and daughter among those thought to have been trapped when storm hit off Sicily
Six people are now presumed dead after the super yacht they were onboard sank in a violent storm off the coast of Sicily.
Divers tried in vain on Tuesday to gain access to the inside of the sunken 56-metre Bayesian luxury vessel, where rescue crews believe those missing may have been trapped.
Continue reading...Pontoon bridge across Seym River blown up as Ukrainian army reportedly captures another village in Kursk region
Fierce fighting has continued inside Russia as Ukrainian troops tried to seize more territory and used kamikaze drones to blow up a Russian pontoon bridge across a strategic river crossing.
Satellite images showed that the temporary bridge on Tuesday had disappeared and there were large puffs of grey smoke. Russian forces built the pontoon between the villages of Zvannoe and Glushkovo after Ukrainian missiles destroyed three bridges across the Seym River.
Continue reading...Party deletes video after viewers list gaffes, including scenes of US, Serbia and Slovenia – plus Russian jets
Canada’s Conservative party has deleted a social media campaign video with a heavily nationalist message after much of the video featured scenes from other countries, including Ukrainian farmers, Slovenian homes, London’s Richmond Park and a pair of Russian fighter jets.
The video, titled “Canada. Our Home” was initially posted to X on Saturday, with various scenes overlaid by a speech from the party leader, Pierre Poilievre. The Conservatives, who lead the governing Liberals in the polls, are preparing for what is widely expected to be a bitterly contested federal election.
Continue reading...Head of Africa CDC Jean Kaseya urges international community to support rollout of testing and vaccinations
African health officials have appealed to the international community not to impose travel bans on countries dealing with an outbreak of mpox, but instead to support the continent in rolling out testing and vaccinations.
There have been about 1,400 new cases and 24 deaths linked to a new variant of mpox over the past week, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Continue reading...Record sea temperatures in the Mediterranean contributed to waterspout that hit Bayesian
Record temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea this summer contributed to the freak storm that sank a superyacht off the coast of Sicily, with similar extreme events expected to increase in frequency and intensity as the climate crisis tightens its grip, Italian scientists have said.
One person is confirmed to have died and rescuers are searching for six missing people, including the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, after the 56-metre Bayesian capsized in the early hours of Monday.
Continue reading...What we know about four Britons and two Americans still unaccounted for after boat sank during storm
Fears are growing for six people who are missing after a superyacht, the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily when it was hit by a tornadic waterspout during a storm on Monday morning.
On Monday the body of one man, the yacht’s chef, was recovered from the water. There were 15 survivors. A rescue mission is under way to search for six others who remain unaccounted for. The four Britons and two Americans have all been named. Here is what we know about them.
Continue reading...The rape-murder of a trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital has caused outrage across India. Here, her father recalls her urge to help others and their struggle to support her studies
The father of the trainee doctor murdered during a rest break at a Kolkata hospital has spoken of his daughter’s love of medicine and the way her family had worked to support her vocation.
“We are a poor family and we raised her with a lot of hardship. She worked extremely hard to become a doctor. All she did was study, study, study,” he told the Guardian by telephone.
Continue reading...Exclusive: research tracks dozens of oil and fuel shipments that could have aided Israel’s war on Gaza
Israeli tanks, jets and bulldozers bombarding Gaza and razing homes in the occupied West Bank are being fueled by a growing number of countries signed up to the genocide and Geneva conventions, new research suggests, which legal experts warn could make them complicit in serious crimes against the Palestinian people.
Four tankers of American jet fuel primarily used for military aircraft have been shipped to Israel since the start of its aerial bombardment of Gaza in October.
Continue reading...Russian forces advancing so fast families are under orders to leave nearby towns and villages
Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday passed a bill that paves the way for a ban of the Russia-linked minority Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), lawmakers said.
The legislation prohibits the Russian Orthodox Church on Ukrainian territory and envisages a ban, to be approved by a court decision, on religious organisations “affiliated” with it.
Continue reading...Spot price increases to $2,522.99, with record run meaning standard gold bar is worth more than $1m
Gold prices have hit a fresh high as increasing hopes of US interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve prompted investors to buy more of the precious metal.
The spot price of gold rose to a record $2,522.99 (£1,941.69) on Tuesday morning, up 0.7% on the day. Gold bars generally weigh 400 troy ounces (12.4kg), so a standard gold bar is now worth more than $1m.
Continue reading...Thomas was one of ten crew members onboard Bayesian yacht, says Italian coastguard, as passengers including tech tycoon Mike Lynch remain missing
Lorenzo Tondo reporting from Porticello
Fabio Cefalù, 36, a fisher from Porticello, was one of the first to attempt providing assistance to the Bayesian.
We went to see what had happened. We only saw the floating debris of the boat. We immediately called the Coast Guard.
The sea was terrible. The wind very strong. The storm destroyed my solar panels. The vessel was hit head-on. I thought I would find someone in the sea. But nothing. The boat had disappeared from the radar.
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