Maxwell had kept a low profile and her whereabouts were unknown since Epstein’s arrest last July on sex trafficking charges
Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and close friend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been arrested, an FBI spokesman has said.
Maxwell was accused by many women of recruiting them to give Epstein massages, during which they were pressured into sex. Those accusations, until now, never resulted in criminal charges.
Continue reading...Leon Panetta becomes latest prominent public figure to accuse Trump of effectively surrendering to the virus and abandoning Americans to their fate
Donald Trump has “essentially gone awol from the job of leadership that he should be providing a country in trouble” during the coronavirus pandemic, a former defence secretary and CIA director said on Wednesday.
Related: US setting new coronavirus case records as 'Russian bounty' row continues - live updates
Continue reading...Many of the workers risking their lives amid the pandemic are burdened with student debt. We owe them more than just applause
Every day at 7pm, New Yorkers have cheered, applauded and banged pots and pans for frontline workers. One of those they have cheered for is Shana-Kay Henry, a physician assistant in the city, who, like thousands of others, is praised as a hero for her brave caretaking efforts during the pandemic.
Continue reading...US president Donald Trump has played down allegations Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan, claiming it’s a hoax by ‘the newspapers and the Democrats’. Trump initially said he had not been told of the allegations, while the White House later claimed there was no consensus in the intelligence community over the reports’ veracity
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Donald Trump is criticizing New York City’s plan to paint “Black Lives Matter” on 5th Avenue outside Trump Tower — calling it a “symbol of hate.”
NYC is cutting Police $’s by ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and yet the @NYCMayor is going to paint a big, expensive, yellow Black Lives Matter sign on Fifth Avenue, denigrating this luxury Avenue. This will further antagonize New York’s Finest, who LOVE New York & vividly remember the....
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has said that both the CIA and Pentagon did pursue intelligence assessments that suggested Russia had offered bounties for killing US troops in Afghanistan, and that US intelligence briefed international allies, as the administration steps up its defense of the handling of the military bounty scandal.
“We had options ready to go,” O’Brien said on a Fox news show. But added: “It may be impossible to get to the bottom of it.”
American servicemembers are being targeted with Russian bounties. As a Marine, I'm disgusted that nothing's been done about it. Mitch, you get regular security briefings. What did you know and when did you know it?
Man up and tell the truth. #MoscowMitch
Analysis: The only people dismissing the Russia bounties intel: The Taliban, Russia and Trump https://t.co/hbWx8PitRX
Continue reading...Spain and Portugal reopen border as global tourism industry predicted to lose up to £2.6tn
The first tourist flights in four months landed on the Greek island of Crete, and Spain and Portugal reopened their land border as European countries continued to ease travel restrictions, as Brazil recorded 60,000 deaths.
A charter plane carrying 172 passengers from Hamburg landed at Heraklion airport on Crete at 8am, minutes after another aircraft had arrived from the Czech Republic, re-establishing the island’s air links with the outside world.
Continue reading...Concerns mount over Trump’s handling of the crisis as he posts erratic tweets attacking the media and Democrats
The US recorded more than 44,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, a new record one-day increase as it struggles with the pandemic, while concerns mount over Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis and his recent silence on the issue.
Eight states reported new single-day highs of freshly diagnosed cases, and the dire numbers follow a warning by the public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci that the US is “going in the wrong direction” and infections could more than double, to reach 100,000 cases a day.
Continue reading...Testing has found positive cases at North Carolina facilities, but officials refuse to release the information
A chicken processing facility in western North Carolina reportedly underwent widespread testing for Covid-19 in early June.
Workers at the plant were scared. Several employees had already tested positive and the company, Case Farms – which has been repeatedly condemned for animal treatment and workers’ rights violations – was not providing proper protective equipment.
Continue reading...Global tourism stands to lose up to $3.3tn, says UN; Ryanair pilots take pay cut to avoid job losses; tourist flights to Greece resume; global cases pass 10.5m
The US has suffered 560 more deaths and registered another 43,644 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said, taking the respective totals to 127,299 and 2,624,873.
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Colorado, Utah and Oklahoma are having primaries today.
Here’s what we’re watching:
Bernie Sanders wants lawmakers to cut the US military budget by 10%. In an opinion piece published in the Guardian, he writes:
At this unprecedented moment in American history – a terrible pandemic, an economic meltdown, people marching across the country to end systemic racism and police brutality, growing income and wealth inequality and an unstable president in the White House – now is the time to bring people together to fundamentally alter our national priorities and rethink the very structure of American society.
In that regard, I have been disturbed that for too long, Democrats and Republicans have joined together in passing outrageously high military budgets while ignoring the needs of the poorest people in our society. If we are serious about altering our national priorities, then there is no better place to begin with than taking a hard look at the bloated $740bn military budget that is coming up for a vote in the Senate this week.
Related: A 10% cut to the US military budget would help support struggling Americans | Bernie Sanders
Continue reading...Mike Pompeo opposes lifting embargo, which is due to end in October, citing risk to stability
A US attempt to destroy the Iran nuclear deal, reimpose sanctions and extend a UN embargo on arms sales to Iran risks a “generational setback for the cause of multilateralism and international law”, Iran’s foreign minister has told the UN security council.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN also said the latest US moves to isolate Tehran was like “putting its knee to the neck of the Iranian people”. Vassily Nebenzia described the policy as “a maximum suffocation policy” and said the US’s goal was to make Iran the scapegoat for an uncontrollable escalation in the Middle East.
Continue reading...Time and again, the president has failed to protect military personnel. For Trump, he always comes first, no matter who dies
Donald Trump likes to suggest he has got the back of US soldiers battling America’s foes around the world. It was a big theme of his 2016 campaign and his West Point speech earlier this month. So great was his boundless care for America’s fighting men and women, he said, that he would halt the endless, costly foreign wars prosecuted by his predecessors – and bring them home.
Related: Trump's ties to Putin under fresh scrutiny in wake of Russia bounty reports
Continue reading...Advocates have long worried about potential for an outbreak at Matamoros camp, where an estimated 2,000 migrants live
Three asylum seekers have tested positive for coronavirus in a sprawling border encampment, marking the first cases in a settlement that advocates have long viewed as vulnerable amid the pandemic.
Since confirmed cases of coronavirus in Mexico began rising in March, advocates and government officials have worried about the potential for an outbreak in the Matamoros camp, where an estimated 2,000 migrants live in tents on the banks of the Rio Grande river.
Continue reading...Donald Trump is facing renewed questions over his relationship with Vladimir Putin after reports that he was briefed in writing in February that Russia paid bounties for the deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Related: 'Russian bounties' intelligence was in Trump written daily briefing – reports
Continue reading...Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House infectious diseases expert gave a stark warning to the public of a dangerous surge in coronavirus cases in the US, particularly in the south and west.
Fauci said the current figures ‘speak for themselves’ in the middle of his testimony to the US Senate in response to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s questioning on the spread of the virus as states reopened
LA closes beaches and businesses as hospitals fill up while Bavaria announces ‘test offensive’
California has reported record new infections following its reopening as Los Angeles county ordered all beaches closed for 4 July and the re-shuttering of some businesses.
Amid warnings hospitals were filling up and others could run out of intensive care beds in the coming weeks, the state broke its record on Monday for the highest number of new coronavirus cases reported in a single day, with more than 8,000 – the third time in eight days the state has broken a record for new cases.
Continue reading...This new track sees Kanye at his very best, corralling his anger with masterful focus into an apocalyptic vision of America
America, divided along racial and political lines and led by its own Herod, faces an invisible plague and a public reckoning against its history of violence. It’s against this Biblical backdrop that Kanye West imagines the next apocalyptic event, in one of his most focused and arresting tracks for years.
Wash Us in the Blood sees the rapper call for a blood rain to deliver black America from evil. We’re at the point, perhaps, where normal water won’t wash; an emergency where we need something stronger. That sense of alarm is amplified by the two-note siren motif, a flattened-out version of the feedback sound on The Life of Pablo’s Feedback or Yeezus’s Send It Up, another of his warnings that puts the listener on alert. It gets your blood up.
Continue reading...Israeli PM’s suggestion that deadline may be missed follows Benny Gantz saying Covid-19 is more urgent than annexation
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is struggling to push through his West Bank annexation plans, slated to start as soon as Wednesday, facing opposition from Palestinians, the international community and even his own government.
Netanyahu had pledged to begin the process of annexing Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley from 1 July, as part of a peace plan devised by Donald Trump’s US administration. But he hinted at a delay on Tuesday, saying annexation talks would continue “in the coming days” with US officials.
Continue reading...‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign gathers momentum as ad boycott spreads outside US
Almost a third of advertisers are considering joining a month-long boycott of Facebook as the social network struggles to convince advertisers that it is doing enough to fight hate speech on its platform.
The unprecedented corporate snub has been revealed in survey by the World Federation of Advertisers, whose big-spending members control nearly $100bn (£81bn) in spending.
Continue reading...A family were fishing on a lake in Wisconsin when they spotted a bear with a plastic jar stuck on its head. After several attempts at moving their boat next to the bear and removing the jar, they were finally able to free the animal. 'Never dreamt we would ever do this in our life time,' Tricia Hurt wrote on Facebook. 'Out on Marshmiller Lake yesterday with Brian Hurt and Brady Hurt when we spotted this poor bear. He made it to shore after all that'
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