Category Archives: US News

Coronavirus live news: cases spreading out of control in Hong Kong; UK infection rate flat, says ONS head

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Record 100 new daily cases confirmed in Hong Kong; UK’s head of Office for National Statistics calls for scaling up of testing; South Africa’s cases become fifth-highest worldwide

Thirty-nine people were detained after police were attacked with “a hail of bottles” at an open-air party in central Frankfurt attended by thousands of youngsters, police in the German city said today..

Five officers were injured in the riot that began at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT) when police intervened to stop a brawl involving around 30 people in Frankfurt’s historic Opera square.

People who travel outside of Ireland have been warned they will invalidate their travel insurance even if the place they visit is on a so-called ‘green list’ of safe countries to by published this week, the Irish Times reports.

It added that travel insurance exclusions denying cover to people who travel contrary to official guides are the norm across the sector. At present, the advice from the Irish Government is that non-essential journeys overseas should be avoided.

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Barack Obama leads tributes to civil rights leader John Lewis – live

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Donald Trump has broken his silence on the passing of John Lewis with a tweet posted moments ago.

“Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing,” he wrote. “Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.

Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing. Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.

Joe Biden will run campaign ads during Donald Trump’s eagerly awaited interview with Fox News Sunday tomorrow – to go a bit Friends for a second, that being The One In Which Trump Says Biden Wants To Defund The Police And Chris Wallace Says Hang On A Minute, Not So, And Trump Gets A Little Testy.

Related: Trump clashes with Fox News interviewer over false claim about Biden

Related: 'The virus doesn't care about excuses': US faces terrifying autumn as Covid-19 surges

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John Lewis, US civil rights hero and Democratic congressman, dies at 80

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Lewis helped Martin Luther King organise the March on Washington in 1963 and once suffered a fractured skull at the hands of state troopers

John Lewis, the civil rights leader and Democratic congressman, has died. He was 80.

Related: John Lewis obituary

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Kanye West asks fans to help get him on South Carolina’s presidential ballot

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Rapper asks supporters to sign petition calling for him to be added to state’s ballot as doubts persist over how seriously to take his bid

Kanye West has asked fans to sign a petition calling for him to be added to the presidential election ballot in South Carolina.

Related: Kanye West will appear on Oklahoma presidential election ballot

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Portland mayor demands removal of camouflage-clad agents detaining protesters – video

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The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has demanded that Donald Trump remove camouflage-clad federal agents deployed to the city after they attacked Black Lives Matter protesters and some detained people far from the federal property they were sent to protect

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Portland mayor demands Trump remove federal agents from city

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  • People detained far from property agents were sent to protect
  • Trump looking for a confrontation, says governor

Militarized federal agents deployed by Donald Trump to Portland, Oregon, fired tear gas at protesters again late on Friday night, even as the city’s mayor demanded the agents be removed and the state’s attorney general vowed to seek a restraining order against them.

Related: Camouflaged federal agents have descended on Portland. Trump's DHS is out of control | Trevor Timm

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John Lewis remembers ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma – video report

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John Lewis, the civil rights hero and Democratic congressman, has died at the age of 80. In 1965 he headed a march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, and was knocked to the ground and beaten by police. The incident, along with other beatings during peaceful protests, brought attention to racial oppression in the US south. 20 years later he recalled the events for the documentary series Eyes on the Prize for Washington University in St Louis


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Civil rights activist and politician John Lewis – a life in pictures

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The civil rights leader John Lewis, known at the ‘conscience of America’, has died. Born the son of sharecroppers in Alabama on 21 February 1940, he attended segregated public schools and, inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr, became active in the civil rights movement. From university onwards he organised sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, took part in the Freedom Rides, was chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and was a key speaker at the historic March on Washington in 1963. He led one of the pivotal moments in the civil rights movement, a march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama that was brutally attacked by state troopers.

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New California coronavirus rules will prevent most schools from reopening in autumn – live

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The White House will not allow the CDC to testify at next week’s hearing fo the Committee on Education and Labor about how to safely reopen schools.

Virginia representative Bobby Scott joined other lawmakers Friday in speaking out against the Trump administration’s efforts to block theCDC from appearing before the committee.

A judge on Friday ruled the Trump administration cannot block a California program that caps carbon emissions from the transportation sector.

The cap and trade program aims to improve air quality and allows California companies to trade emissions credits with companies in Quebec. The administration sued to block it, saying it intrudes on the federal government’s foreign policy authority – particularly its withdrawal from environmental treaty the Paris agreement.

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Jamaal Bowman wins New York primary in major victory for progressives

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The former teacher, who earned the support of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren, ousted 16-term Eliot Engel

Jamaal Bowman, a former teacher endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren, has ousted the 16-term Democratic congressman Eliot Engel in the race for New York’s 16th district, marking a major win for the party’s progressive wing.

Bowman had been leading Engel and candidate Christopher Fink since the 6 July primary but the race had not been called by the Associated Press until Friday. In the end Bowman defeated Engel with 55% of the vote, a margin of roughly 12,000 votes, when the race was called. Bowman had declared victory earlier in the month when in-person voting had concluded.

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Trump clashes with Fox News interviewer over false claim about Biden

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Challenged by an interviewer about his claim Joe Biden wants to defund the police, Donald Trump called for a copy of the policy charter Biden agreed with Bernie Sanders and released this week. The document did not prove his claim.

Related: 'The guy stinks and he’s a racist': Anthony Scaramucci on Donald Trump

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California announces strict rules that will keep most schools closed

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Governor Gavin Newsom said public schools will not be allowed to hold in-person classes if their county is on a monitoring list

California’s governor has announced strict rules for school reopening that would prevent the vast majority of students from returning to classrooms in the fall as coronavirus cases hit their highest levels yet in the state.

Governor Gavin Newsom announced the new guidance on Friday, which mandates that public schools in California counties that are on a monitoring list for rising coronavirus infections cannot hold in-person classes, and will have to meet rigorous criteria for reopening.

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Ex-officer accused of human rights crimes in Argentina found living in Berlin

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Luis Esteban Kyburg, who allegedly oversaw deaths of at least 150 during dictatorship, escaped to Germany in 2013

A former naval officer, charged with human rights crimes during Argentina’s bloody 1976-83 dictatorship, has been discovered living in Berlin – despite being the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Luis Esteban Kyburg, the alleged commander of an elite navy unit believed responsible for the deaths of at least 150 people, was filmed by the Bild tabloidwalking down the streets of Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain district .

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Trump’s campaign reshuffle shows he’s figured out he’s losing

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Trump’s campaign has lurched from bad to worse, but will demoting Brad Parscale save it?

Brad Parscale once memorably compared the Donald Trump re-election campaign to the planet-smashing Death Star from the Star Wars films. “In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time,” he tweeted on 7 May.

Now, Parscale resembles one of those hapless imperial officers, usually played by a British actor, lifted off his feet and choked by Darth Vader’s distant but deadly grip as retribution for letting rebels escape.

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Silicon Valley has deep pockets for African startups – if you’re not African

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American venture capital and private equity is dominating Africa, but it’s mostly funding other white foreign founders as black entrepreneurs struggle to raise financing

“Sorry for asking, but do you understand that the money belongs to the company and is not your personal fund?”

When Jesse Ghansah saw this question in an email from a prominent white investor in San Francisco while fundraising for his first startup four years ago, he refused the deal.

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‘Reckless, callous, cruel’: teachers’ chief denounces Trump plan to reopen schools

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‘Angry’ AFT president Randi Weingarten tells Guardian proposal from Trump and Betsy DeVos could result in teaching exodus

Plans put forward by Donald Trump and his education secretary to reopen America’s schools in the fall are “reckless” and could result in many teachers leaving the profession, the president of one of the country’s biggest teaching unions has warned.

Related: Betsy DeVos insists all US children should be in school this fall

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Coronavirus live news: record 24-rise in worldwide Covid-19 cases as Australian parliament to be postponed

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Increase of 237,743 cases globally; EU ‘no closer to agreeing rescue package’; Brazil cases pass 2m

That’s where we might leave this blog for now. You can keep up to date with global news on The Guardian website or come join me on the new Guardian live blog launching soon.

Labor MP Amanda Rishworth is also speaking with ABC. She agrees the parliament must follow medical advice, but says the cancellation of this sitting fortnight makes it difficult for the opposition to scrutinise government.

Question time is a really important forum which the opposition can ask the government questions, and every MP has a chance to raise their voice in parliament. So this is critically important that we have parliament sitting. It is a really important vehicle.

Yes, there is the Covid committee, but parliament itself is the opportunity for every MP from around the country to bring the concerns of their constituents. So it does make it more challenging [if it is not sitting].

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Protests predicted to surge globally as Covid-19 drives unrest

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New analysis finds economic shock of pandemic coupled with existing grievances makes widespread public uprisings ‘inevitable’

The economic impact of coronavirus is a “tinderbox” that will drive civil unrest and instability in developing countries in the second half of 2020, according to new analysis.

Highest risk countries facing a “perfect storm”, where protests driven by the pandemic’s economic fallout are likely to inflame existing grievances, include Nigeria, Iran, Bangladesh, Algeria and Ethiopia, the analysis said.

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Barr condemns Disney and Hollywood for ‘kowtowing’ to China

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Attorney general’s speech is part of continuing Trump administration offensive against Beijing

The US attorney general, William Barr, has assailed the Walt Disney Company and Hollywood studios, accusing them of “kowtowing” to the Chinese Communist party.

Barr’s allegations are part of a sustained diplomatic and public relations offensive by the Trump administration against Beijing, which the attorney general accused of engaging in “economic blitzkrieg – an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s pre-eminent superpower”.

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‘So happy I have this on bodycam’: Bemused US police catch kangaroo on the run – video

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Police officers captured an unlikely suspect bouncing through a Florida neighbourhood on Thursday morning. One officer is heard saying: 'I am so happy I have this on bodycam. Bob, in your how many years have you ever seen a kangaroo?' After receiving a call about a kangaroo running loose, Fort Lauderdale police officers managed to tie a lead around the two-year-old male and place him in a squad car. The marsupial was taken to a stable where the police department keeps its horses.

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