Category Archives: US News

Coronavirus live news: Egypt loosens lockdown despite surging infections as India passes 500,000 cases

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US records highest daily new infections; Brazil records nearly 47,000 new cases; Covid cases with unknown source rise in Melbourne. Follow the latest

The Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Health reported 855 new coronavirus cases on Friday, as well as six new deaths, bringing the country’s total number of infection cases to 30,619.

The Caribbean country’s death toll now stands at 718, according to health authorities.

A global fundraising meeting on Saturday raised€6.15bn ($6.9bn) from the United States, the European Commission and numerous countries to fight Covid-19, with many participants stressing that an eventual vaccine should be available to anyone who needs it.

The pledging summit, part of a joint initiative by the EU executive and advocacy group Global Citizen, also included a globally televised and streamed fundraising concert featuring Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Shakira, Chloe X Halle, Usher and others.

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US restricts visas for Chinese officials over Hong Kong freedoms

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Secretary of state Mike Pompeo says visa restrictions apply to ‘current and former’ communist party officials, but does not name them

The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said Washington will impose visa restrictions on Chinese officials responsible for restricting freedoms in Hong Kong, but he did not name any of those targeted.

The move on Friday comes ahead of a three-day meeting of China’s parliament from Sunday, which is expected to enact new national security legislation for Hong Kong that has alarmed foreign governments and democracy activists.

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Facebook policy changes fail to quell advertiser revolt as Coca-Cola pulls ads

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Company follows Unilever’s lead after platform announces shift in how it handles hate speech

Facebook has announced changes to its policies around hate speech and voter suppression, but the measures have done little to quell the wave of companies pulling advertising from the platform amid backlash over how the company handles hate speech online.

The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, on Friday announced tweaks to a number of policies, hours after the multinational Unilever said it would pull its advertisements from the platform for the next six months.

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EU to restrict most US residents from visiting amid pandemic, reports say

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Officials draw up ‘safe list’ of countries whose residents can visit, with Russia and Brazil also excluded

The European Union is set to restrict most US residents from visiting the region when travel restarts due to concerns about the coronavirus, according to multiple reports.

EU officials are in the process of settling on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the bloc in July, but the US, Brazil and Russia are set to be excluded, Reuters reported. With coronavirus continuing to spread in the US at alarming rates, the possibility of allowing American tourists into the EU is not even part of the ongoing discussion, six diplomats familiar with the talks told the Washington Post.

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Mike Pence hails ‘truly remarkable progress’ as US sees record new coronavirus cases – video

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Amid the surge of new cases in the United States, the White House coronavirus task force, led by Mike Pence, held its first briefing in nearly two months, signalling a recognition that the administration can't ignore the alarming increases. The vice president took the opportunity to hail the 'remarkable progress' the Trump administration has had in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak as a surge across the South and West sent the number of confirmed new infections per day to an all-time high of 40,000

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Pence claims ‘remarkable progress’ as Covid-19 cases hit new record in US

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US reports 40,000 new coronavirus cases in previous 24 hours, the highest daily total of the pandemic

Mike Pence on Friday hailed “truly remarkable progress” in America’s battle with the coronavirus pandemic, despite the US reporting a record 40,000 new cases in the previous 24 hours, the highest daily total of the outbreak.

With new cases rising in a majority of states in the last few days after swift moves to reopen for business, especially across the south and west, the vice-president sought to deliver encouraging news as the head of the White House coronavirus taskforce as the body offered its first public briefing in two months.

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European Union reportedly set to ban US travelers over Covid-19 concerns – as it happened

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We’re ending our live coverage for the day, thanks for following along. A summary of some key events:

California’s governor has granted clemency to 21 prisoners as Covid-19 outbreaks have continued to infect thousands behind bars in an escalating public health crisis.

Gavin Newsom, who has faced mounting pressure to release people en masse from state prisons, announced Friday that he is granting commutations to 21 people, a move that reduces their sentences and creates a potential path for their release. He also announced pardon grants for 13 people, a step that restores some rights for those who have already served sentences.

There's growing pressure on @GavinNewsom to grant clemency to elderly + vulnerable women who are domestic violence survivors and at high risk of death in prison.

I spoke directly with some of them. LISTEN to their own words ⬇️ (thread):https://t.co/btI8Ns7wMw #SixNineteen

Patricia Wright has terminal liver cancer, is currently in chemotherapy and likely has months to live. She told me she just wants to see her children and grandchildren before she dies: pic.twitter.com/0ydwwgCem1

Related: California governor grants clemency to 21 prisoners as thousands infected with Covid-19

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More young people infected with Covid-19 as cases surge globally

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Greater social contact among under-40s suggested as cause of increase, but others say it is a sign of better testing

The age profile of new infections in the coronavirus pandemic appears to be younger following resurgences in countries such as the United States, Israel and Portugal linked to greater social contact among under 40s following the loosening of restrictions.

The trend has been most marked in the US and noted by scientists at the World Health Organization, who have also seen infections of younger people in the developing world contributing to the shifting demographics.

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‘Please for the love of God do not vote for my dad’: Republican’s daughter voices opposition

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Conservative Robert Regan blames daughter’s ‘socialist university’ but says he’s ‘happy she feels confident’ to oppose him publicly

It’s not the usual rallying cry one might expect from a political candidate’s child as their father runs for office, but the daughter of a Republican candidate has urged people in Michigan to “please for the love of god” not vote for her father.

“Tell everyone,” Stephanie Regan wrote in a viral tweet – which has now been liked more than 180,000 times on Twitter.

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How ‘white fragility’ reinforces racism – video explainer

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Robin DiAngelo’s bestselling book White Fragility has provoked an uncomfortable but vital conversation about what it means to be white. As protests organised by the Black Lives Matter movement continue around the world, she explains why white people should stop avoiding conversations about race because of their own discomfort, and how 'white fragility' plays a key role in upholding systemic racism

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Voting is our most fundamental right – let’s make sure it’s open to everyone | Terri Sewell and Vanita Gupta

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The bill HR4 would put the teeth back into the Voting Rights Act. For the sake of racial progress, the Senate must pass it

Over the past weeks, Americans across the spectrum of race, age, geographic location and gender, have begun to have difficult and complicated conversations about the nature of systemic racism and the long standing institutions that have permitted the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many other African Americans, without consequence.

This idea of systemic racism – that racism is not simply the moral ineptitude of individual bad actors, but that it is in fact built into the very mechanisms that undergird our democracy – is evident around our society. We can see it in employment, our criminal legal system, policing, and prominently in our voting laws and practices.

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Coronavirus live news: Bolsonaro says he may have had coronavirus as cases rise in 27 US states

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Mike Pence to hold first coronavirus task force briefing in weeks on Friday; Texas pauses next phase of reopening; Brazil registers 39,483 new cases; Follow the latest updates

Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for the Guardian from Wellington:

It was a case of “plenty of room at the inn” for a hotel in a New Zealand ski resort town during the country’s strictest weeks of Covid-19 lockdown, with eight babies born there due to a lack of local maternity facilities.

The hotel, the Ramada at Remarkables Park in Queenstown, accommodated parents, babies and their midwives free of charge while the births happened, according to the website Stuff.

“Our ‘Ramada babies’ will always be welcome here and we look forward to them visiting in future." - Ramada Suites by Wyndham Remarkables Park Queenstown Manager Suzanne Pentecost.#RamadaSuitesbyWyndhamRemarkablesParkQueenstown

Read more: https://t.co/JC22As58al pic.twitter.com/hUvKmxtXkE

Steven Morris, Helen Pidd and Archie Bland report:

A major incident was declared after tens of thousands of people defied pleas to stay away and descended in their droves on beaches in Bournemouth and other stretches of the Dorset coast.

Related: Major incident declared as people flock to England's south coast

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Coronavirus live news: global death toll exceeds 490,000; soldiers sent to Italian town amid tension over new outbreak

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WHO needs $31.3bn over 12 months for vaccines; France plans 1.3m tests to find ‘hidden clusters’; Mike Pence to hold first taskforce briefing in weeks

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has offered to help hospitals in other states struggling to cope with Covid-19 cases.

He also criticised states that reopened their economies before getting the virus under control, saying there was “undeniable, irrefutable evidence” those states made a mistake.

The global death toll has passed 490,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The figure has reached 490,632 with the US accounting for 124,509 fatalities, the highest of any country.

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Oakland moves to bar police from schools as bigger cities reject change

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Movement to get officers out of schools sees progress even as Chicago and Los Angeles school boards vote to keep them in place

A growing movement to get police officers out of US schools saw a major victory this week when Oakland’s school board voted to eliminate the school district’s dedicated police department.

But in Chicago and Los Angeles, despite protests by youth activists, support from teachers’ unions, and an outpouring of public support, school boards voted to keep police in public schools, at least for now.

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‘He’s like a child’: Biden attacks Trump’s coronavirus response – video

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Joe Biden on Thursday travelled to must-win Pennsylvania to attack Donald Trump for what the former vice-president characterised as trying to gut healthcare protections during a pandemic. Biden, who was born in the Pennsylvania rust-belt city of Scranton, has mostly stayed put in his Delaware home in recent months amid coronavirus concerns but has slowly resumed some campaigning. He headed to Lancaster to try to weaken the Republican president's standing with swing-state voters

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Drain brain: Nasa offers prize money for best lunar loo design

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Agency hopes to attract novel solutions for its Artemis mission to the moon in 2024

“It certainly isn’t the prime focus of the mission,” said Nasa’s Mike Interbartolo. “We’re not going back to the moon so we can say we pooped on the moon, but we don’t want an Apollo situation either.”

Interbartolo, is project manager for the Lunar Loo Challenge, a Nasa competition launched on Thursday that hopes to attract new and innovative solutions to the problem of capturing and containing human waste in space.

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Exclusive: Viber severs ties with Facebook in growing boycott

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Service adds to firms shunning Facebook over refusal to act against Donald Trump posts

The messaging service Viber, the fifth biggest with more than a billion users around the world, is severing all ties to Facebook as part of a growing boycott of the company by commercial partners.

The campaign, initially started in the US after Facebook’s refusal to take action against posts from Donald Trump which critics said incited violence, has now grown to become an international movement.

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Trump administration sent $1.4bn in stimulus checks to dead people

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US Government Accountability Office said almost 1.1 million dead people received payments of about $1,200 each

The Trump administration sent almost $1.4bn in coronavirus stimulus payments to dead people, according to its own watchdog’s report.

In the report released on Thursday, the US Government Accountability Office (USGAO) said almost 1.1 million dead people received payments of about $1,200 each, as of 30 April.

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US politics: police officers fired in North Carolina over racial slurs video – live updates

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The Associated Press are reporting that Donald Trump is facing renewed criticism over his plans to celebrate Independence Day with a showy display at Mount Rushmore.

Native Americans who view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to native people are planning protests for the presidents’s 3 July visit.

As mentioned earlier, Donald Trump isn’t expected to be seen wearing a face mask during his trip to Wisconsin later today, despite the fact that everybody else will.

This isn’t the only time that the president has made himself an exception to the rule. In this video, my colleague Maanvi Singh looks back at how Trump has long been contradicting and defying science during the coronavirus outbreak, and the impact this has had on the country’s faltering handling of the pandemic.

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Coronavirus live news: cases surge in Europe since lockdown easing, says WHO

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Cases worldwide growing by 1m per week; Latin American death toll expected to reach 390,000 by October; Texas hospitals near capacity; volunteers receive first doses of experimental vaccine

Guardian analysis of coronavirus data, in combination with the University of Oxford’s coronavirus government response tracker, has identified that 10 of the 45 most badly-affected countries are also among those rated as having a “relaxed response” to the pandemic, underlining the mitigating impact of effective government public health policies. You can read the Guardian investigation here.

The countries include the US - which is experiencing its largest increase in coronavirus cases since April; Iran, Germany and Switzerland - two European countries where the R rate has risen above one this week [...]

A country has been classed as being “relaxed” if its stringency index score is under 70 out of 100, according to the latest data from the University of Oxford’s tracker. The tracker assesses countries’ public information campaigns, containment measures and closures to give them a score out of 100 on their stringency index.

More on the rise of cases in Israel.

With 532 new infections reported by the health ministry in the past 24 hours, Israel has seen the emergence of a number of hotspots including in the Sea of Galilee resort of Tiberias, as well as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – the highest daily total in more than two months.

Related: Israel brings back tracking system amid surge in Covid-19 cases

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