Category Archives: US News

‘I have never seen anything like this’: Oregon towns emptied and confusion spreads amid fires

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In Molalla and other western towns, fear, uncertainty and disinformation gripped residents as hundreds of thousands in the state evacuate

Hundreds of thousands of people in Oregon were ordered to leave their homes on Thursday as wildfires encroached on their properties. The evacuations clogged highways, emptied entire towns and sparked confusion in a state that has not grappled with wildfires of this size before.

Large-scale evacuations in the state began within the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon’s largest city. Clackamas county, home to some 420,000 people in the metro’s south, was already under varying levels of fire alert when officials on Thursday afternoon told residents of the city of Molalla to leave.

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Officers charged in George Floyd killing seek to place blame on one another

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  • Former police quartet appear in court for special hearing
  • Floyd died after Derek Chauvin held his knee on his neck

Attorneys for four former Minneapolis officers charged in the killing of George Floyd say each should get his own trial, as the officers point fingers at one another.

Related: 9/11 remembered amid raging wildfires and coronavirus recriminations – live

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Twitter and Google join Facebook in tightening rules on US election claims

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Platforms will target unverified claims of election rigging and premature results declarations

Premature claims of victory will be blocked from Twitter and Google in the run-up to November’s US presidential election, as both companies follow Facebook in trying to fight the prospect of a stolen vote.

Under its new rules, Twitter will treat as harmful misinformation any tweet which makes false claims about election rigging, or prematurely claims to announce the election results.

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Trump and Biden attend 9/11 memorial ceremonies – US politics live

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In the latest sign of how ugly the presidential race has become, Trump baselessly accused Joe Biden of using performance-enhancing drugs in a new interview.

Fox News released a clip from Trump’s recent interview with host Jeanine Pirro, which will air in full tomorrow night.

"I think there's probably, possibly drugs involved. That's what I hear." -- during interview with Judge Jeanine, Trump casually accuses Joe Biden of using performance enhancing drugs pic.twitter.com/RVWJMqPNhn

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong picking up the blog from smoky Oakland, California. I’ll have more news and politics coming your way for the rest of the evening.

First up: QAnon-supporting candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene’s election to Congress is all but assured after her Democratic opponent, Kevin Van Ausdal, abruptly dropped out of the race to represent Georgia’s 14th district.

A message from Kevin Van Ausdal pic.twitter.com/Y5LtVcpK2B

Related: 'Mind-bogglingly irresponsible': meet the Republican donors helping QAnon reach Congress

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Nasa is looking for private companies to help mine the moon

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The agency announced it is buying lunar soil from a commercial provider as part of a technology development program

Nasa has announced it is looking for private companies to go to the moon and collect dust and rocks from the surface and bring them back to Earth.

The American space agency would then buy the moon samples in amounts between 50 to 500 grams for between $15,000 to $25,000.

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When will we know who’s won the US election?: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Sam Levine about why election night might turn into election week … or month

This week the question might seem a simple one, but it isn’t. Jonathan asks Sam Levine in New York about how the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the US election on 3 November, and the conversation leads to Jonathan reminiscing about the infamous 2000 presidential election, when George W Bush narrowly (and potentially wrongly) pipped Al Gore to the Oval Office. So, when will we know who’s won this year?

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Drone vision captures razed communities and burnt-out cars after Oregon wildfires – video

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Footage shot over Eagle Point shows flattened residential areas after nearly 100 major wildfires ripped through the US west. At least three people have been killed in Oregon with the governor, Kate Brown, warning that the state faces further hardship as authorities battle to contain the blazes

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A new squeeze? Snake mystery after lone, elderly python lays clutch of eggs

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The oldest snake in captivity – known only as 361003 – hasn’t been near a male python for two decades

Experts at a US zoo are trying to figure out how a 62-year-old ball python laid seven eggs despite not being near a male python for at least two decades.

Three of the eggs from the snake in St Louis zoo remain in an incubator, two were used for genetic sampling and snakes in the other two eggs did not survive, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The eggs were laid on 23 July and should hatch in about a month.

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Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in ‘childish’ Trump’s foreign policy

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On the golf course, Lindsey Graham urged restraint on Iran, while James Mattis slept in his clothes in case of emergency, book says

Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.

Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.

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Coronavirus live news: record daily rise in cases in France and Greece

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French cases near 10,000 in a day; single biggest rise in Greece; Portugal limits gatherings to 10 people; Mexico signs agreement for Sputnik V vaccine

Here’s a quick summary of the biggest developments before we head over to a new blog. Thanks for following along.

Brazil recorded 40,557 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 983 deaths from the disease, the health ministry said on Thursday.

The country has registered more than 4.2 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 129,522, according to ministry data.

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Trump claims US is ’rounding the corner’ as coronavirus death toll nears 200,000 – live

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A panel of three federal judges blocked the Trump administration on Thursday from excluding undocumented immigrants from the census totals used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets.

Trump acted unlawfully in July when he ordered the Commerce Department to produce data that would allow him to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count, the panel said. Federal law is clear that only a single data source - the census count of total population - can be used to apportion the 435 seats in the US House among states, the judges wrote. The decennial census does not ask about citizenship status and by requesting a second set of data outside of the decennial census, Trump ran afoul of the law.

Unprecedented wildfires and rushed evacuations in Oregon have wreaked havoc on the state’s incarcerated population, with thousands now packed into a single overcrowded prison that was already a major Covid-19 hotspot.

A destructive and rapidly spreading fire in Marion county prompted the state to evacuate three prisons on Tuesday, transferring 1,450 people to the Oregon state penitentiary (OSP) in Salem. Evacuees are sleeping on the floor and on emergency beds throughout OSP, including in indoor recreational areas, program rooms and other facilities not typically used for housing.

Related: Oregon fires: evacuated prisoners sleep on floor in packed Covid-19 hotspot

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US wildfires: Oregon has ‘never seen this amount of uncontained fire’, governor says – live

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Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, said today that the fires in the state have burned nearly 937 sq miles (2,426km).

“We’ve had this trauma all over Washington,” Inslee said, KHQ-TV reported. The governor was touring the farm town of Malden, which is 35 miles south of Spokane: “But this is the place where the whole heart of the town was torn out.”

Stunned residents of the small Oregon town of Phoenix walked through a scene of devastation Thursday after one of the state’s many wildfires wiped out much of their community, including a mobile home park, houses and businesses, the AP reports on the ground.

There were flames across the street from me, flames to the right of me, flames to the left of me. I just watched everything burn.”

Burned out cars, charred lawn ornaments, rubble. That’s what’s left of this Phoenix mobile home park, which covers abt 20 acres. Flames and smoldering embers still visible here. Everything is blackened by fire.

This was home to abt 300 people. pic.twitter.com/DrDobLKVev

Mayor Chris Luz talks about the loss of Puck’s Donuts. pic.twitter.com/4qz2gLy9Jb

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Afghan government to start peace talks with Taliban

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Negotiations to end the long civil war were agreed as part of a withdrawal deal signed by the US

The Afghan government and the Taliban will open peace talks on Saturday, trying to reach a power-sharing deal as American troops leave the country after nearly two decades.

The negotiations to try to end the long civil war were agreed as part of a withdrawal deal that the US signed with the Taliban in February, but have stalled for months over details of a promised prisoner exchange.

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Joe Biden decries Trump’s ‘almost criminal’ Covid response

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  • Democrat tells CNN president ‘waved the white flag’ on virus
  • Trump attacks ABC’s Jon Karl as ‘a disgrace to your employer’

Joe Biden has branded Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “almost criminal” after book revelations that the US president admitted in early February the disease was “deadly stuff” but deliberately played it down.

As the death toll from Covid-19 nears 200,000 in America, the world’s highest, Biden excoriated his opponent in November’s election over the way he did not address the defining crisis of his presidency early and comprehensively.

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Teacher, 28, dies of Covid-19 as US schools prepare for return to classrooms

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  • Demetria Bannister taught elementary school in South Carolina
  • New York City to resume in-person classes in 11 days

A 28-year-old elementary school teacher in Columbia, South Carolina, died this week from complications due to Covid-19, authorities have said.

Demetria “Demi” Bannister, who taught third grade at Windsor elementary school, died on Monday.

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Oregon fires force 500,000 to evacuate as blazes across American west kill 15

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  • Unprecedented fire conditions burn more than 900,000 acres
  • Firefighting resources are stretched thin in three states

More than 500,000 people in Oregon have been forced to evacuate as unprecedented wildfires rage across the state, amounting to more than 10% of the population, authorities said Thursday.

Wildfires searing through the American west have killed at least 15 people, leveled entire neighborhoods and forced stretched firefighting crews to make tough decisions about where to deploy.

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Pelosi: Woodward interview shows Trump’s contempt for supporters – video

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Nancy Pelosi has said that Donald Trump’s interview with Bob Woodward, where the president said he intentionally downplayed the coronavirus pandemic to avoid panic, was evidence of ‘contempt’ for Americans’ health.

During her weekly press conference, the House speaker said Trump’s comments were not a sign of real leadership

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Pompeo: ‘substantial chance’ senior Russian officials behind Alexei Navalny poisoning

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US secretary of state strikes more strident tone after Donald Trump said at the weekend he had not seen any proof of poisoning

The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said there was a “substantial chance” the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was ordered by senior Russian officials.

“I think people all around the world see this kind of activity for what it is,” Pompeo said in a radio interview with conservative host Ben Shapiro. “And when they see the effort to poison a dissident, and they recognise that there is a substantial chance that this actually came from senior Russian officials, I think this is not good for the Russian people.”

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