US supreme court backs Black voters challenging Georgia election rules

Ruling comes as plaintiffs say current Georgia public service commission election system discriminates against Black voters

Black voters challenging Georgia’s method of electing members to the state’s public service commission scored a preliminary US supreme court order in their favor late Friday.

The decision came after conflicting rulings from lower courts earlier this month, offering up a rare example of the supreme court’s 6-3 conservative majority’s siding with voters over state officials.

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Louisiana woman faces ‘horrifically cruel’ abortion choice over fetus missing skull

Nancy Davis, denied abortion in home state despite fetus being diagnosed with fatal skull condition, forced to travel for procedure

A pregnant Louisiana woman faced with either carrying a skull-less fetus to term – for the baby to likely die within hours – or traveling several states away to obtain an abortion has hired a prominent civil rights attorney as she weighs how to move forward.

Nancy Davis, 36, has retained lawyer Ben Crump as she becomes the latest to embody the gut-wrenching decisions some women are being forced to make after the US supreme court’s decision in June to strip away nationwide abortion rights, according to a statement from the attorney’s office.

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Ukraine launches fresh strike on Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquarters

Video on Twitter appears to show reported drone attack on Sevastopol and plumes of smoke over the city

Ukraine has launched a fresh strike on Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquarters at Sevastopol, where officials in the annexed Crimean peninsula said that at least one drone had been shot down by air defences.

The reported attack on Saturday morning – a day after explosions erupted near military bases in Russian-held areas of Ukraine and Russia itself – came on the same day that 12 civilians were reportedly wounded when a Russian missile hit a residential area of a Ukrainian town.

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Family of Bill Paxton settles wrongful death lawsuit with Los Angeles hospital

US actor, who starred in Apollo 13, died in 2017 from stroke 11 days after undergoing heart surgery at Cedars-Sinai

Bill Paxton’s family has struck an agreement to settle its wrongful death lawsuit against a hospital and surgeon who operated on the late actor’s heart shortly before his 2017 death, a court filing showed Friday.

Notice of the settlement came as a 19 September trial date for Paxton’s family’s lawsuit loomed. Assuming the judge presiding over the case ultimately approves it, the agreement would all but wrap up the claims that Paxton’s wife, Louise, and their children, James and Lydia, leveled against Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai medical center and surgeon Ali Khoynezad.

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Gibraltar prepares for first auction of a Russian oligarch’s detained superyacht

Proceeds of the sale of Axioma, valued at £65m, will benefit JP Morgan rather than the Ukrainian people

A £65m superyacht of a Russian oligarch hit by sanctions will be auctioned off by the Gibraltar government on Tuesday, becoming the first of the luxury vessels to be sold off since restrictions were imposed on hundreds of rich Russians after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, the 72.5-metre Axioma is not being sold for the benefit of the Ukrainian people but for a US investment bank, JP Morgan, which claims the yacht’s billionaire owner, Dmitry Pumpyansky, owes it more than $20m (£17m).

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‘I live in fear’: Vanessa Bryant testifies at trial over Kobe’s crash images

For three hours, Bryant provided testimony against Los Angeles county for invasion of privacy over photos of her husband’s corpse

Vanessa Bryant testified on Friday that she was only beginning to grieve the loss of her husband, basketball star Kobe Bryant, and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna when she was faced with the fresh horror of learning that sheriff’s deputies and firefighters had shot and shared photos of their bodies at the site of the helicopter crash that killed them.

“I felt like I wanted to run, run down the block and scream,” she said, her tears turning to sobs and her voice quickening. “It was like the feeling of wanting to run down a pier and jump into the water. The problem is I can’t escape. I can’t escape my body.”

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‘Dangerous misogynist’ Andrew Tate booted from Instagram and Facebook

The self-described sexist was removed for violating Meta’s policies on ‘dangerous organizations and individuals’

Controversial online influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate has been banned from Meta platforms Instagram and Facebook.

The former kickboxer and reality TV star was removed for violating Meta policies “on dangerous organizations and individuals”, the company confirmed by email.

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Foot (and shoe) found floating in a Yellowstone park hot spring

Park officials are investigating the discovery, spotted in Abyss Pool in the southern part of the national park

An investigation is under way after a Yellowstone employee spotted part of a foot, in a shoe, floating in a hot spring in the national park.

The discovery was made on Tuesday at Abyss Pool, in the southern part of Yellowstone, and led to the temporary closure of the West Thumb Geyser Basin and its parking lot.

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Islamic State member El Shafee Elsheikh sentenced to life in prison

The former British national was involved in taking hostage and beheading American journalists and aid workers

A federal judge on Friday handed a life sentence to an Islamic State cell member who had a role in a hostage-taking scheme leading to the beheadings of American journalists and aid workers.

The punishment from Judge TS Ellis III for the former British national El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, came after a jury convicted him in April at the end of a six-week trial.

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Putin and Xi ‘could meet in September’ at summit in Samarkand

Wall Street Journal suggests Russian and Chinese leaders could hold discussions in Uzbek city

Xi Jinping could meet Vladimir Putin in mid-September at a regional summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, it has been reported.

According to the Wall Street Journal, preparations are being made for the Chinese president to travel to Samarkand on 15 September for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

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Salman Rushdie: writers gather in New York to read author’s works in solidarity

Event organized by Pen America champions freedom to write after novelist survived assassination attempt last week

Crowds gathered near the steps of the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan on Friday morning, as writers read works by the novelist Salman Rushdie, who survived an assassination attempt in western New York last week.

The event, Stand With Salman; Defend the Freedom to Write, was organized by Pen America, the library and Rushdie’s publisher, Penguin Random House.

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Americans should focus on Biden’s accomplishments, says chief of staff – as it happened

Ron Klain argues president has made a historic impact and that focus shouldn’t be on inflation or Afghanistan withdrawal

Democratic leaders went on the attack against Mike Pence, as the former vice-president under Donald Trump heads to Iowa today amid increased speculation of a potential 2024 campaign.

Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, sharply criticized Pence’s repeated calls for a national abortion ban in the wake of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.

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Black man left paralyzed after Texas police allegedly slam him on to concrete

Civil rights activists and Christopher Shaw’s lawyers are demanding justice after he was severely injured while in police custody in 2021

Lawyers of a Black Texas man and civil rights activists are calling for justice after he was allegedly grabbed and slammed on to concrete ground by police officers at a jail in Beaumont, Texas, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.

On Wednesday, lawyers of 41-year-old Christopher Shaw hosted a press conference that called for justice for Shaw, who was severely injured while in custody in June 2021.

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Biden’s chief of staff says president is comparable to historic predecessors

Ron Klain compares Biden’s achievements to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson in interview

In a bullish interview, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, compared Joe Biden’s achievements in his first two years in office to historic successes under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson.

Speaking to Politico, Klain said: “The president has delivered the largest economic recovery plan since Roosevelt, the largest infrastructure plan since [Dwight D] Eisenhower, the most judges confirmed since Kennedy, the second-largest healthcare bill since Johnson, and the largest climate change bill in history.”

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California man found guilty of two 1980s murders thanks to new DNA technology

In 2006 detectives discovered DNA evidence, but it was 12 more years before they could identify suspect using genealogy websites

Prosecutors in California secured the conviction of a 1980s double murderer after the first use by Los Angeles county detectives of online genealogical databases to identify a suspect.

Horace Van Vaultz, now 67, killed Selena Keough, 20, in Montclair in 1981, and Mary Duggan, 22, in Burbank in 1986, but escaped justice for 36 years until investigators were able to link him to DNA from the victims.

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Republican says comment Garland should be executed was ‘facetious’

Carl Paladino, a Republican candidate for Congress in New York, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler

A Republican candidate for Congress in New York said he was “being facetious” when, in the same interview, he said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, should be executed for authorising the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida home.

The candidate, Carl Paladino, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler, as “the kind of leader we need today”.

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Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit | First Thing

Justice department opposed release of document but Florida federal judge says portions of it ‘could be presumptively unsealed’. Plus, meet the strippers who have filed to unionize

Good morning.

In a surprise move, the justice department has been ordered to redact the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Donald Trump’s resort in Florida in such a way as not to jeopardize the investigation in case it is decided next week that the document can be unsealed.

Why doesn’t the justice department want to release the affidavit? Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence section, opposed the release of a redacted affidavit since, given it contains significant grand jury information and investigative techniques, the redactions would be so extensive that it would show “nothing of substance”.

What else is happening? Liz Cheney has released a recording of the call she made to her Trump-backed opponent who claimed she did not concede in the Wyoming US House primary.

What does the report say? In her report, the federal police investigator Lorena Lima Nascimento said that untrue claim could generate public “alarm over a nonexistent danger” and constituted a misdemeanor.

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Apple security flaw ‘actively exploited’ by hackers to fully control devices

The vulnerability has affected various models of the iPhone, iPad and Mac, with experts advising updating products to secure them

Apple disclosed serious security vulnerabilities for iPhones, iPads and Macs that could potentially allow attackers to take complete control of these devices on Wednesday.

The company said it is “aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited”.

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Instagram and Facebook suspend Robert Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine group

Critics calls move ‘too late too little’ after group repeatedly violated policies on Covid-19 misinformation

Instagram and Facebook have suspended a prominent anti-vaccine group led by Robert Kennedy Jr for repeatedly violating rules prohibiting misinformation about Covid-19.

The non-profit, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), is one of the most influential anti-vaccine organizations active on social media, where it has spread misleading claims about vaccines and other pandemic-related public health measures.

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Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit for possible release

Justice department opposed release of document but Florida federal judge said portions of it ‘could be presumptively unsealed’

The Justice department must redact the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Donald Trump’s resort in Florida in such a way not to jeopardise the investigation in case he decides to unseal the document next week, a federal magistrate judge ordered on Thursday.

The surprise order from Judge Bruce Reinhart charted a middle ground between the justice department’s motion to oppose unsealing any part of the affidavit, and motions from a coalition of media outlets – and calls from the former president – to release the highly sensitive document.

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