Hawaii prepared for Hurricane Douglas on Sunday, with predictions of high winds, rain and storm surge.
Related: Hurricane Hanna: storm hits Texas counties struggling with Covid-19
Continue reading...The confrontation between protesters and federal paramilitaries in Portland escalated early on Sunday morning, when demonstrators finally broke down a steel fence around the courthouse after days of trying.
Related: What is happening in Portland and what does Trump hope to gain?
Continue reading...Double Oscar-winning actor, who won acclaim for multiple Hollywood costume dramas before moving to Paris, has died
Olivia de Havilland, the fragrant queen of the Hollywood costume drama, has died at the age of 104.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, her publicist said she had died from natural causes in Paris, where she lived.
Continue reading...A car drove through a crowd and a person was shot in the Denver suburb of Aurora on Saturday during demonstrations against racial injustice.
The Aurora police department said on Twitter that protesters were walking on Interstate 225 when a vehicle drove through them, and a protester fired a weapon, wounding at least one person who was taken to a hospital in stable condition
Continue reading...WHO says 1m cases reported per week for last five weeks; Florida’s infections overtake New York’s; North Korea holds emergency meeting after suspected Covid-19 case reported
Twenty-one new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed at a caravan park in England.
The local county council fears the number of cases at the site in Shropshire , which is in the town of Craven Arms, will continue to rise before infection control measures start to take effect.
President Donald Trump has announced his itinerary for next month amid the pandemic.
Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August 15th. We will make it later in the season!
Continue reading...Fears that voter suppression would keep significant numbers of voters from the ballot box have been exacerbated by Covid-19
The 2020 election is shaping up to be a presidential contest unlike any other in American history.
Even before the pandemic, there were deep concerns over how voter suppression would shut significant numbers of Americans out of the ballot box. Covid-19 has exacerbated those fears as states rapidly ramp up their vote by mail apparatus to curb long lines and crowds at the polls.
Continue reading...On another night of confrontation with federal agents, activists said their message was in danger of being forgotten
Teal Lindseth surveyed the sea of mothers she was about to lead into the firing line.
“I look at this crowd and I don’t see many black people,” lamented the 21-year-old African American activist. “Oregon is white as hell. Whitewashed.”
Continue reading...Nonpartisan organisation Bread for the World says Yoho agreed to step down following incident with congresswoman
A nonpartisan Christian organisation that seeks to end hunger says it has asked for and received the resignation of Republican congressman Ted Yoho from its board of directors, following what it called his “verbal attack” on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Democrat congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez had accused Yoho of using a vulgar and sexist insult while upbraiding her during a confrontation last Monday on the steps of the Capitol. Yoho maintained he did not use the words cited, though a reporter who witnessed the incident confirmed the language as she described it.
Continue reading...Donald Trump hit the links with football great Brett Favre on Saturday at his golf club in the suburban New Jersey hamlet of Bedminster.
White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere shared a photo of the US president alongside Favre, the three-time NFL MVP who played the bulk of his career with the Green Bay Packers and was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016.
Continue reading...Sinclair Television said on Saturday it would delay airing an interview with a conspiracy theorist who claims baselessly that Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, created the coronavirus behind the current pandemic.
Related: A disgraced scientist and a viral video: how a Covid conspiracy theory started
Continue reading...Black Lives Matter protesters used leaf blowers to blow back teargas in clashes with federal troops in Portland, Oregon. On the 57th day of protests in the city, thousands of demonstrators marched on a federal courthouse where they have clashed with officers throughout the week. The troops, deployed by Donald Trump against the wishes of Portland's mayor, fired teargas and pepper rounds into the crowd, and some responded by throwing fireworks back
The White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin were on Capitol Hill on Saturday, for talks with aides to Senate Republicans over the next coronavirus relief package.
Related: 'Nobody’s ever seen anything like this': how coronavirus turned the US election upside down
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Among real storms blowing around the US today, hurricanes are approaching Texas and Hawaii while a tropical storm heads for the Caribbean. The Associated Press is keeping watch here.
Among other kinds of storm, the kinds that blow themselves out on Twitter, the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his partner, the musician Grimes, appear to have had a public argument about pronouns.
Related: Explain it to me quickly: did Elon Musk and Grimes really name their baby X Æ A-12?
Miami Dade county has now recorded more than 100,000 cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. According to the Miami Herald, there were 3,424 new cases reported on Saturday. The county’s population is around 2.7 million.
Continue reading...Hanna is first hurricane of 2020 Atlantic season and could bring 6in to 12in of rain through Sunday night
Hurricane Hanna rumbled toward the Texas Gulf coast on Saturday, lashing the shore with wind gusts and rain and threatening to bring storm surge and tornadoes to a part of the country trying to cope with a spike in coronavirus cases.
Related: 'A summer unlike any other': heatwaves and Covid-19 are a deadly combination
Continue reading...Lewinsky made light of affair with Bill Clinton in ‘I have a joke’ tweet that quickly went viral
Monica Lewinsky has made light of her affair with Bill Clinton with a tweet that quickly went viral.
“I have a joke” was trending on Twitter on Friday, prompting users to offer up one-line witticisms. When one user tweeted “I have a Charles Manson joke and it kills”, Lewinsky offered her own take: “I have an intern joke and it … nevermind.”
Continue reading...Hotels and restaurants are turning away US guests, citing high Covid-19 rates and lax quarantine. Some fear this will backfire
Ireland has long greeted American tourists with open arms and the Irish salutation céad míle fáilte, literally, “a hundred thousand welcomes”.
An especially warm welcome awaits visitors who are big spenders and descendants of the diaspora.
Continue reading...America is “staring down the barrel of martial law” as it approaches the presidential election, a US senator from Oregon has warned as Donald Trump cracks down on protests in Portland, the state’s biggest city.
Related: This is what happens when the War on Terror is turned inward, on America | Hamilton Nolan
Continue reading...Door forced open after consular staff move out to heckling by anti-communist protesters
A group of men who appeared to be American officials were seen forcing open a back door of the Chinese consulate in Houston as a US closure order took effect at 4pm on Friday.
Related: US-China tensions escalate after closure of Houston consulate
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Donald Trump signed four executive orders related to prescription drug pricing at a White House event with HHS secretary Alex Azar and Florida governor Rod DeSantis, among others. Most attendees at the event wore masks, but Trump did not.
The executive orders come as Trump appears to have all but given up on controlling the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 145,000 people in the US – by far the most of any country.
Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California, picking up the live blog for the rest of your Friday afternoon.
Yesterday, a judge in King County, Washington ordered five Seattle news outlets to comply with a subpoena and turn over unpublished video and photos from a 30 May protest.
Michele Matassa Flores, the Seattle Times’ executive editor, said the paper strongly opposed the subpoena and “believes it puts our independence, and even our staff’s physical safety, at risk.
“The media exist in large part to hold governments, including law enforcement agencies, accountable to the public,” Matassa Flores said. “We don’t work in concert with government, and it’s important to our credibility and effectiveness to retain our independence from those we cover.”
This ruling enforcing the subpoena is beyond disappointing. The right to protect sources and material exists so the press isn't used as an arm of law enforcement.
Journalists' work is protected, which is why we supported the challenge to this subpoena.https://t.co/OQEVLENdXz
This turns journalists into an arm of the government. We are not here to do surveillance for police. https://t.co/wlu4XAEgo3
Continue reading...US and Russian officials will meet in Vienna on Monday to discuss whether and how to regulate the militarisation of space, in the wake of an alleged Russian satellite-launched missile test.
The two governments agreed to hold a “space security exchange” in January, but the meeting was put off as a result of the pandemic.
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