A sheriff’s deputy in Georgia has been fired after being captured on video repeatedly punching a Black man during a traffic stop, authorities said on Sunday.
Related: Two Los Angeles sheriff's deputies wounded in Compton attack
Continue reading...Peter Strzok was removed from Russia investigation and fired by the FBI over text messages critical of Trump
Donald Trump is “compromised by the Russians”, a former member of Robert Mueller’s investigation insisted on Sunday, contending that the president is “incapable of placing the national interest ahead of his own”.
Related: Trump attacks Robert Mueller's 'hit squad' in row over 'wiped' phones
Continue reading...The revelation that Donald Trump deliberately downplayed the coronavirus pandemic forced key aides on to desperate defence on Sunday, barely 50 days from the presidential election.
Related: Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election
Continue reading...Politicians strongly criticised the US president for his response to the escalating wildfire crisis in the west coast after he claimed 'forest management' was the main culprit for the emergency.
The death toll from wildfires choking the west coast of the US continued to rise on Sunday as authorities said more bodies were likely to be found in the charred ruins of towns across several states
Continue reading...The shooting of two Los Angeles county sheriff’s deputies in an apparent ambush prompted a manhunt, reaction from the president and protests outside the hospital where the wounded deputies were being treated on Saturday night.
The deputies were shot while sitting in their patrol car at a Metro rail station, around 7pm and not far from the the Compton sheriff’s station. They were able to radio for help, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said. The department shared video of the shooting, showing a person open fire through the passenger-side window.
Continue reading...Cases hit daily record in Czech Republic; Austria ‘experiencing start of second wave’; 74 people at an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne
An Israeli cabinet minister, who heads an ultra-orthodox Jewish party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative coalition, has tendered his resignation in protest at a looming coronavirus lockdown. Housing minister Yaakov Litzman argued the restrictions would unfairly impede religious celebrations of Jewish holidays.
The rules - the most extensive Israel will have imposed since a lockdown that ran from late March to early May - are expected to go into effect on Friday, the Jewish new year Rosh Hashana, and span into the Yom Kippur fast day on 27 September.
This wrongs and scorns hundreds of thousands of citizens. Where were you until now? Why have the Jewish holidays become a convenient address for tackling the coronavirus...?
We have to move on, to make the decisions necessary for Israel in the coronavirus era, and that is what we will do in this session.
India has reported 94,372 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, taking total cases past 4.7 million.
The daily increase was down on the record global spike in the previous 24 hours of 97,570 new cases and came after three days of recording more than 95,000 new cases. Infections have been growing faster in India than anywhere in the world.
Continue reading...The president’s campaign has paid out $800m, but at a crucial phase he is making cuts while Joe Biden is outspending him
More than $180,000 per second. That is what Donald Trump’s two TV ads during the Super Bowl worked out at in February, offering vivid proof of the outsized role of money in American politics – and of his re-election campaign’s premature and profligate spending.
The 2020 presidential election has been described by both sides as the most important in living memory and is certainly proving the most expensive. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded both campaigns and, in the pandemic-enforced absence of shaking hands and kissing babies, may prove even more influential than usual.
Continue reading...China says curbs ‘legitimate and necessary’ as tensions rise
The US has called a decision by Beijing to impose restrictions on all American diplomats on Chinese soil an “escalation”, the latest rebuke in a tit-for-tat dispute over foreign missions.
Relations between the world’s top two economies have deteriorated in recent months, with both sides locked in fierce recriminations over trade disputes, human rights and the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Trump meanwhile promises to ‘put down’ leftwing protests and says US Marshals killing Portland suspect was ‘retribution’
Roger Stone, whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Russia investigation was commuted by Donald Trump, has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.
The long-time Republican strategist and dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, lied about contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election regarding emails hacked from Democratic party accounts.
Continue reading...Donald Trump was headed for Nevada on Saturday, aiming to erode poll leads enjoyed by Joe Biden there and in Arizona, another key state, as the 3 November presidential election draws near.
Related: Trump in Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs
Continue reading...Fox News will broadcast an interview on Saturday night in which Donald Trump accuses Joe Biden of taking performance-enhancing drugs.
Related: Trump ally who sought to change CDC Covid reports claims he was fighting 'deep state'
Continue reading...Engineers in Charlottesville, Virginia worked to remove a 900lb Confederate statue on Saturday, a moment of symbolic reckoning in the university town that was rocked by a white supremacist march in August 2017.
Related: Black Virginia state senator charged with 'injury' to Confederate monument
Continue reading...Fire crews in California and Oregon reported making progress on several blazes over the weekend, as lighter winds and lower temperatures aided the battle against the massive fires raging across the west.
But officials in both states told residents to brace for bad news, as rescue teams start combing through towns and neighborhoods leveled by the infernos.
Continue reading...The California governor, Gavin Newsom, said ‘this is not a world that anyone should be experiencing’ as he surveyed charred mountain terrain devastated by wildfires. ‘If you do not believe in science, I hope you believe in observed evidence,’ he added. More than 68,000 people are under evacuation orders in California where the largest fire in state history has burned over 740,000 acres in the Mendocino National forest
Continue reading...A former Trump campaign official now spokesman for the US health department sought to change key reports on the coronavirus pandemic, in some cases “openly complaining” that they “would undermine the president’s optimistic messages about the outbreak”, according to internal emails seen by Politico.
Continue reading...Nancy Pelosi has been notably tepid on green legislation – so are the Democrats serious about fighting climate change?
With hundreds of thousands of Americans forced to evacuate their homes in the western US, Donald Trump hasn’t said a word about the wildfires blazing across multiple states in nearly three weeks.
Related: Oregon fires force hundreds of thousands to flee as deaths rise
Continue reading...Dozens of people are missing and at least 23 people are believed to have been killed as historic wildfires in the western US forced evacuations, stretched fire crews thin and spawned misinformation.
Residents of Portland, Oregon, awoke on Friday to air thick with smoke pollution that dimmed the sun and turned the skies blood-orange red. Hundreds of firefighters are battling two large wildfires that threatened to merge near the most populated part of Oregon, including the suburbs of Portland, and the governor said dozens of people are missing in other parts of the state.
Continue reading...Ceremonies were held across the US in remembrance of the victims of the al-Qaida attack on 11 September 2001.
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden were among the attendees at memorial services in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to honor the 40 passengers who died aboard Flight 93.
At the Pentagon, US army chief general Mark Milley spoke in defense of a free press when listing examples of US armed forces' "values".
Continue reading...The White House coronavirus taskforce’s most senior public health expert, Anthony Fauci, said on Friday that it would probably take another year before life returns to a sense of “normality” in the US, even if a successful Covid-19 vaccine is approved in the next few months.
Related: Bob Woodward rejects criticism that he sat on Trump 'deadly' virus remarks
Continue reading...Arab country is latest to make agreement as part of US president’s diplomatic push
Bahrain has agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and will join the United Arab Emirates in signing an agreement at the White House on Tuesday.
“Even great warriors get tired of fighting, and they’re tired of fighting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, portraying the deals as peace agreements, although neither Gulf monarchy has ever been at war with Israel, and both had already established extensive informal ties. Bahrain has long advocated Israel’s integration in the region.
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