Laura Goldman says she expects Maxwell to seek plea deal over charges relating to exploitation of young girls
Ghislaine Maxwell would never say anything about the Duke of York’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, according to one of her friends.
Maxwell appeared in court in the US on Thursday accused of helping disgraced financier Epstein “identify, befriend and groom” multiple girls, including one as young as 14.
Continue reading...Fourth of July weekend in US sees cases surging; WHO changes timeline of how it was alerted to virus; housing estates in Melbourne locked down. Follow developments live
What we’re learning about Covid as US states open up
How Victoria’s outbreak divided Australia
Scotland and Wales attack UK government’s shambolic travel changes
As some countries and regions are reintroducing restrictions and imposing local lockdowns, Thailand’s nightlife venues were allowed to reopen on 1 July after having been shut for three months.
My colleague Rebecca Ratcliffe reports from Bangkok.
Related: 'Let’s do karaoke!': Bangkok nightlife eases out of lockdown
Israel is one of several countries so far that are seemingly paying the price for lifting lockdown restrictions early, as the government tries to grapple with rising infections.
Over the last 24 hours 1,008 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19, raising the number of active cases in Israel to 10,060, according to data released by the Health Ministry.
Continue reading...US president enflames national tensions with attack on ‘leftwing revolution’ and plan for national memorial of statues of ‘American heroes’
Standing beneath Mount Rushmore on the eve of American independence day, Donald Trump staged a defiant celebration of what critics say is white identity politics and warned the nation’s history is under siege from “far-left fascism”.
The US president defended the symbolism of statues and monuments before a packed crowd at an event that revelled in political incorrectness calculated to enflame the country’s current divisions and enrage liberal critics. There were few face masks and even fewer people of color on stage or in the stands.
Continue reading...Ex-Fox News presenter is key fundraiser for Trump re-election campaign and latest of president’s circle to contract the disease
US records highest daily increase in coronavirus cases
The girlfriend of Donald Trump Jnr, the US president’s eldest son, has tested positive for the coronavirus, US media have reported.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is a former Fox News television personality and a senior fundraiser for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, is just the latest person in Trump’s inner circle to contract the potentially deadly virus. The news also comes as the US is experiencing a huge spike in coronavirus cases and amid withering criticism of Trump’s response to the crisis.
Continue reading...Avoiding a lengthy prison sentence is incentive to cooperate, but may be difficult given her high-up position
While Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest Thursday in relation to her confidant Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes answered some questions about her life – revealing, for example, that she hid at a sprawling, million-dollar New Hampshire estate, where she was picked up in a morning raid – still more questions arose about what’s next for the mysterious British socialite.
Related: Prince Andrew under pressure after arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell
Continue reading...Pressure grows on Duke of York to ‘speak up’ after the arrest of his friend Ghislaine Maxwell
The Duke of York was accused of subjecting alleged victims of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein to a “torture test” by his silence as lawyers for the women increased the pressure following the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell.
As Maxwell, 58, remained in custody on charges of facilitating former boyfriend Epstein’s sexual exploitation of underage girls, lawyers for multiple women demanded Prince Andrew “be a man”, “speak up” and stop “deliberately avoiding” US authorities.
Continue reading...‘This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn,’ Frederick Douglass lamented 13 years before Reconstruction. Since the 19th century, abolitionists, suffragists and civil rights activists have seized the Fourth of July as an occasion to protest injustices sustained by those omitted from the founding fathers’ vision. In the 20th century, the civil rights movement and Vietnam war brought to light legacies of slavery, imperialism and sexism that continue to challenge the narrative of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. Today, the potency of Black Lives Matter has established civil disobedience as an unwavering American tradition
Continue reading...Frequency of heatwaves and cumulative intensity has risen through the decades, research finds
Heatwaves have increased in both length and frequency in nearly every part of the world since the 1950s, according to what is described as the first study to look at the issue at a regional level.
The study found the escalation in heatwaves varied around the planet, with the Amazon, north-eastern Brazil, west Asia (including parts of the subcontinent and central Asia) and the Mediterranean all experiencing more rapid change than, for example, southern Australia and north Asia. The only inhabited region where there was not a trend was in the central United States.
Continue reading...Philippines reports largest single-day increase in cases; Florida confirms 10,000 new cases in one day; Brazil infections nearing 1.5m
Authorities in northern Nigeria’s biggest city Kano have lifted a three-month lockdown imposed to contain a coronavirus outbreak linked to hundreds of deaths.
State governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje announced the lifting of the curfew in a broadcast, insisting the key trading hub had seen a sharp drop in infections.
We can beat our chest and say we are winning the case and there is no longer any need for the lockdown.
There will be free movement for all.
Despite imposing an early lockdown, containment may be unravelling in Bolivia amid poverty, an underprepared health system and a bitter political standoff, report Laurence Blair and Cindy Jiménez Bercerra in La Paz.
When Pedro Flores and a group of fellow doctors arrived in the Beni, Bolivia’s tropical northern province, at the end of May, they knew the crisis caused by coronavirus would be severe. But what they found still left them shaken.
There were no medical supplies, there were no ventilators, no oxygen.
Here in Trinidad most people have a relative, a friend, a neighbour who has died. We’re in a health disaster.
Related: Bolivia in danger of squandering its head start over coronavirus
Continue reading...Officer Joseph Mensah was found to have acted in self-defence in two of the shootings, with another currently under review
Jay-Z’s social justice initiative Team Roc has called for a Wisconsin police officer to be fired and prosecuted, after he shot and killed three people while on duty.
Joseph Mensah, of Milwaukee suburb Wauwatosa, killed Alvin Cole, Antonio Gonzales and Jay Anderson in three separate incidents between 2015 and 2020. He is under review for the most recent killing, of Cole, but the earlier two were deemed self-defence and he did not face charges.
Continue reading...The Fourth of July is traditionally for barbecues, fireworks, boisterous partying and various hijinks to celebrate Independence Day. But this year, with coronavirus cases soaring to all-time highs, medical experts warn that the normal US holiday exuberance could instead create infection “superspreader” events.
Related: 'It's very troubling': alarm grows over Covid-19 spike among young Americans
Continue reading...Royal ‘bewildered’ after US attorney asks him to come forward following arrest of his friend over alleged sex crimes
Pressure on Prince Andrew to speak to FBI investigators was mounting after his friend Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and perjury as part of its ongoing inquiry into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
At a press conference in New York in which prosecutors detailed the allegations facing Maxwell, they urged the Prince to come forward.
Continue reading...New York City man Damien Bend was arrested for arson in connection with a house fire ignited by illegal fireworks in Brooklyn, NY. The house was his own. Video released by Fire Department New York shows a firework shot from Bend's hand enter the house through an open window, unseen by Bend and two others. Bend then re-enters the house to retrieve and let off more fireworks, before the blaze inside is out of control. The vision was released as New York City clamps down on a rise in illegal fireworks
Donald Trump has declared the US economy is 'roaring back' after news of a fall in unemployment nationwide. The results come as states across the country have been gradually lifting Covid-19 restrictions. While 4.8m jobs were added in June, parts of the country have also experienced record numbers of new coronavirus cases
Continue reading...Little respite for Duke of York over friendship with British socialite and Jeffrey Epstein
The arrest by the FBI of the British woman Ghislaine Maxwell on multiple charges related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein throws an uncomfortable spotlight once more on the Duke of York.
It comes less than one month after a bad-tempered war-of-words between Prince Andrew’s lawyers and US prosecutors over the royal’s cooperation – or alleged lack of it – over their investigation into the late billionaire.
Continue reading...Ghislaine Maxwell, the close friend of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been charged over her 'critical role' in helping the now late billionaire groom underage victims and for lying under oath.
Maxwell was accused by many women of recruiting them to give Epstein massages, during which they were pressured into sex.
Continue reading...The US recorded a new all-time daily high of 52,000 new Covid-19 cases on 1 July, according to Johns Hopkins University figures, as Donald Trump repeated his belief the virus would ‘just disappear’.
America has now had more than 2.7 million confirmed cases - more than double that of Brazil, the second most-affected country. Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s top infectious disease expert, has said the country is ‘going in the wrong direction’, infections could more than double and the subsequent death toll ‘is going to be very disturbing’.
The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington looks at why a patchwork approach to lifting lockdowns, as well as the president’s mixed messages on wearing a mask, have led to confusion across the country and why some states are having to clamp down
A fast growing mountain of toxic e-waste is polluting the planet and damaging health, says new report
At least $10bn (£7.9bn) worth of gold, platinum and other precious metals are dumped every year in the growing mountain of electronic waste that is polluting the planet, according to a new UN report.
A record 54m tonnes of “e-waste” was generated worldwide in 2019, up 21% in five years, the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor report found. The 2019 figure is equivalent to 7.3kg for every man, woman and child on Earth, though use is concentrated in richer nations. The amount of e-waste is rising three times faster than the world’s population, and only 17% of it was recycled in 2019.
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Meanwhile, there’s breaking news from the Supreme Court, via The Washington Post (added bolds from me):
A lower court had granted a request from the House Judiciary Committee for access to redacted portions of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. But in May, the Supreme Court put a hold on that ruling until the high court could decide whether the issue warranted its intervention.
On the campaign trail and often in public remarks about economic news the president has promised that the final two quarters of 2020 would be a substantial improvement from earlier numbers.
He made that argument again at this press conference.
Continue reading...Sweden records 947 new cases in a day; Russia cases pass 660,000; Indonesia reports record daily infections rise; Middle East at ‘critical threshold’ says WHO
US president Donald Trump celebrated a government report showing the country gained 4.8m jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 11.1% last month, when states began allowing businesses to reopen from strict shutdowns aimed at containing the coronavirus pandemic.
“Today’s announcement proves that our economy is roaring back,” Trump said, rattling off different sectors that saw job gains according to the monthly report.
Oman’s health minister said the sultanate has witnessed a “scary” surge in Covid-19 cases that required boosting hospital capacity, especially for intensive care units.
The country reported another 1,361 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday and three deaths in the last 24 hours, to take its total count to 42,555 cases with 188 deaths.
In the last six weeks there has been a radical change which is very disturbing and scary.
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