Ex-president touched upon a range of topics from crime to immigration in his speech with mostly made-up statistics
Donald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.
His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point.
Continue reading...Named Debby, the storm system had maximum sustained wind speeds of 40mph and was moving toward the state
A tropical storm with near hurricane strength winds and life threatening storm surges is expected to crash into Florida’s Big Bend area on the northern Gulf coast shoreline by Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center said.
As of 5pm ET on Saturday, the storm, named Debby, had maximum sustained wind speeds of 40mph and was moving off the coast of Havana, Cuba, and towards Florida. The National Hurricane Center has designated Debby with an advisory 6.
Continue reading...Ricky Alderete sentenced for three offenses before Kansas unveiling of new statue of baseball and civil rights pioneer
A man who stole a bronze statue of Jackie Robinson that was cut off at the ankles and found days later on fire in a trash can in a Kansas park will spend about 15 years in prison, though most of that sentence is related to a burglary a few days after the January statue heist.
A judge sentenced Ricky Alderete on Friday in three different cases he said in court stemmed from his addiction to fentanyl.
Continue reading...Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg’s success spurred talk about transportation secretary’s veepstakes chances
While Kamala Harris cleared her campaign diary this weekend to finalize her choice of running mate ahead of a swing-state presidential campaign blitz next week, political spouses were hard at work.
The vice-president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, and Chasten Buttigieg, husband of the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg – a potential running mate for Harris at the top of November’s Democratic ticket whose candidacy has been strengthening in recent days – were on New York’s Fire Island on Friday for a sold-out event that raised $321,000.
Continue reading...Ex-president says he will only debate on Republican-friendly channel on 4 September, while Harris demands he stick to original network
Donald Trump says he would be willing to debate Kamala Harris on the friendly environs of Fox News in September – but the vice-president has not signed on to what would be a switch-up.
Trump had previously agreed to appear on ABC News and debate Joe Biden a second time this year before the president ended his re-election campaign.
Continue reading...Two suspects were killed and a third was injured when police stormed the house to rescue a deputy trapped inside
A Florida sheriff’s deputy was killed and two other deputies were wounded while attempting to reach the first officer in what police called an ambush shooting inside a home.
The three deputies were shot at a house in Eustis, Florida, on Friday night, Peyton Grinnell, the Lake county sheriff, said during a news conference at the scene.
Continue reading...The national park had an average 24-hour temperature of 108.5F that month, beating its previous record in 2018
Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth, recorded its hottest month ever on record in July, the National Park Service (NPS) announced.
In a statement released on Friday, the NPS revealed that the park had an average 24-hour temperature of 108.5F (42.5C), in turn beating out its previous record of 108.1F (42.3C) set in 2018.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here
Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters are marching through central London, UK.
Protesters waved banners reading “stop arming Israel”, “ceasefire now” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
This terrorist operation was carried out by firing a short-range projectile with a warhead of about 7 kilograms - causing a strong explosion - from outside the accommodation area.
Continue reading...IDF soldiers have shared scores of videos of their conduct in Gaza. The American-Israeli soldier says his videos were ‘taken out of context’
An American-Israeli man deployed in Gaza with a combat engineering unit of Israel’s armed forces posted videos online that show indiscriminate fire at a destroyed building and the detonation of homes and a mosque.
One video posted by the man, Bram Settenbrino, and filmed from the shooter’s viewpoint, shows dozens of rounds being fired into the ruins of a building. Another video shows what appears to be an armored vehicle’s fire-control system trained on a mosque before it is razed to the ground. Others depict the detonation of several homes as soldiers cheer.
Continue reading...Hamas killing is further snub to Biden administration, which does not share methods or objectives of Israeli leader
Standing alongside Donald Trump in Florida a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu was vague on the latest prospect of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.
“I hope we are going to have a deal. Time will tell,” the Israeli prime minister said, two days after his controversial address to a joint session of the US Congress.
Continue reading...US secretary of defense pulls rank and withdraws agreements for trio accused of involvement in 2001 terror attacks
The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has revoked a plea deal for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases, according to a memo sent to Susan Escallier, who is overseeing the war court proceedings.
The short-lived deal came 16 years after prosecution of the three men began.
Continue reading...Washington is bracing for Iran and its allies to respond to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which Tehran blames on Israel
The US military will deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Friday, as Washington braces for Iran and its regional allies to make good on a promise to respond to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
After the back-to-back assassinations of Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut the evening before, international diplomats have scrambled to head off a full-fledged regional war. Rising tensions have spurred a growing list of major airlines into cancelling flights to Tel Aviv or Beirut, including Lufthansa, Delta and Air India.
Continue reading...Hullabaloo over clip posted by Cherelle L Parker dispersed when it emerged it was in support of Josh Shapiro and not an announcement
A political and media “firestorm” broke out briefly in Philadelphia on Friday over whether the city’s mayor had published a tweet and video mistakenly revealing that Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, was Kamala Harris’s eagerly awaited vice-presidential pick.
Heralding a “scoop”, Ernest Owens, a reporter for outlets including Philadelphia Magazine, said: “Philly political sources have told me that a staffer connected with Mayor Cherelle Parker’s team accidentally posted the video today.
Continue reading...Singer, 43, arrested in June, has license suspended in New York state as judge threatens attorney with gag order
Justin Timberlake made a virtual court appearance on Friday in his drunken driving case on Long Island, saying little during the brief proceeding as a judge accepted his not-guilty plea and suspended his right to drive in New York.
Police in the seaside village of Sag Harbor arrested Timberlake on 18 June after they say he ran a stop sign, veered out of his lane and got out of his BMW smelling of alcohol.
Continue reading...A Washington Post report details that an Egypt-linked group withdrew funds days before Trump’s inauguration
A spokesperson for Donald Trump blamed “Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors” for a bombshell report on Friday about a secret criminal investigation into whether Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the authoritarian ruler of Egypt, sought to give the former president $10m during his victorious 2016 White House run.
“The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed,” Steven Cheung told the Washington Post, which published the report on Friday.
Continue reading...Activists say they never agreed to leave their homeland and vow to continue fighting for democracy in Russia
Russian dissidents freed as part of a prisoner swap between Moscow and the west have shared their mixed feelings about the deal and vowed to continue their political activity from abroad.
The exchange represented a “difficult dilemma”, said the Russian liberal opposition politician Ilya Yashin at an emotional press conference in Bonn.
Continue reading...This blog has now closed. Read more on the Harris delegate story here
Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, is widely speculated to be among Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential finalists.
Martin Pengelly explores Shapiro’s background for the Guardian:
July was the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history.
Team Harris raised more across grassroots channels in the four days following President Biden’s endorsement of Vice-President Harris than Trump’s big donor-reliant operation raised in the entire month.
More than 3 million donors made over 4.2m contributions – with more than 2 million donors making their first donation this cycle.
This month, 94% of all our donations were under $200, and teachers and nurses continue to be among the most common donor occupations.
Compared with June, we saw more than 10 times the number of gen Z donors, and more than eight times the number of millennial donors.
Sixty per cent of all donors in July were women.
Coalition groups that organized calls since launch – like Black Women for Harris, Latinas for Harris, and White Dudes for Harris – raised more than $20m for Team Harris.
Continue reading...Vice-president ‘honored’ to be nominee after securing delegate votes – but nomination not official until Monday
Kamala Harris said on Friday she was “honored” to have secured enough votes from delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, making her the first Black woman and person of south Asian heritage to lead a major party ticket.
Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced that the vice-president had earned the majority of delegates’ votes to become the party’s nominee to challenge Donald Trump in November, though her nomination would not be official until Monday, the end of the virtual roll-call vote.
Continue reading...Acting director Ronald Rowe says ‘this was a failure’ and admits errors in communications and surveillance
The US Secret Service takes “full responsibility” for the events that led up to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last month, the acting director of the agency said on Friday.
In a press conference in Washington, Ronald Rowe, who replaced Kimberly Cheatle after she stood down from her position as director of the service after Trump was shot, said: “This was a failure.”
Continue reading...Negotiations, which began months earlier, originally included release of late opposition leader
At Cologne airport on Thursday evening, a group of associates of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny gathered waiting for a plane to arrive from Ankara. On board were 13 people who, until that morning, had been incarcerated in Russian prisons, including three people who had worked as Navalny’s regional coordinators in various Russian cities and been jailed for “extremism”.
After a swap in Turkey, they were now free, along with the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans, who were heading back home on a separate plane.
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