Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Donald Trump has defended his handling of race issues in the US, declaring three times during the final presidential debate he is 'the least racist person in this room'. Trump was questioned on his handling of incidents such as describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a symbol of hate and saying protesting Black athletes should be fired. Presidential rival Joe Biden called Trump 'one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern history. He pours fuel on every racist fire', before adding 'this guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn'
Donald Trump presented a fantasy world in which fossil fuels are ‘very clean’ but realpolitik tempers Biden’s climate crisis stance
In Donald Trump’s world – laid bare during Thursday night’s final presidential debate with his Democratic rival Joe Biden in Nashville – fossil fuels are “very clean”, the US has the best air and water despite his administration’s extensive regulatory rollbacks, and the country can fix climate change by planting trees.
Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the US after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs.
In private letter Yang reveals he spent a decade spying in countries including Hong Kong and the US, according to friend
An Australian writer detained in China on charges of espionage spent a decade working as a Chinese spy, including in Hong Kong and the United States, a close friend claims.
Yang Hengjun was detained in January 2019 and held in various forms of secretive and punitive detention until he was formally charged this month for alleged espionage on behalf of another country. The early stages of trial are under way.
More than half a million people in the US could die from Covid-19 by the end of February next year, but around 130,000 of those lives could be saved if everybody were to wear masks, according to estimates from a modelling study.
The estimates, from a study by researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, show that with few effective Covid-19 treatment options and no vaccines yet available, the U.S. faces “a continued COVID-19 public health challenge through the winter”.
Large, populous states such as California, Texas and Florida will likely face particularly high levels of illness, deaths and demands on hospital resources, the study found.
US president Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 221,000 Americans so far, has become the top election issue for him and Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Polls have shown that Americans trust Biden more than Trump to handle the crisis.
Filming in Venice of Mission Impossible 7 with Tom Cruise has been temporarily suspended due to a suspected case of Covid among the film crew.
Officially, a reason has not yet been given by the film’s production company, but, according to Italian media reports, the over 100 extras were told there was a suspected case of Covid-19 among the Americans and that, as a result, filming would be postponed to a later date.
Antiviral treatment is first to treat coronavirus approved by FDA; France extends curfew; Study finds between 130,000 and 210,000 US deaths could have been avoided. Follow the latest
Australia’s Victoria state - the epicentre of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak - on Friday reported that active coronavirus cases have fallen to a four-month low, paving the way for an acceleration in the easing of social distancing curbs, Reuters reports.
The nation’s second-most populous state, which recorded just one new infection in the past 24 hours, said there are now 100 active cases - the lowest since 19 June.
“This is a good number. This is a very clear sign that the strategy is working,” Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.
The active infections are a relief to state authorities amid heightened fears of a fresh cluster after a case in a school in Melbourne’s northern suburbs prompted authorities to order 800 people to self-isolate.
However, with new case numbers in single digits for nine consecutive days, Andrews is expected to announce on Sunday an accelerated timetable for easing restrictions in a boost to Australia’s ailing economy.
Melbourne’s roughly 5 million residents were granted more freedom to move about on Monday after a months-long lockdown, but public gatherings remain tightly limited and retailers and restaurants must operate only on take-away or delivery orders.
Australia has recorded just over 27,400 Covid-19 infections, far fewer than many other developed countries. Victoria accounts for more than 90% of the 905 deaths nationally.
Mexico’s health ministry reported on Thursday 6,612 additional cases of the novel coronavirus and 479 more deaths in the country, bringing the official number of cases to 874,171 and the death toll to 87,894.
Health officials have said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
Amy Coney Barrett’s supreme court nomination was advanced by a unilateral Republican vote to the full Senate despite Democrats’ refusal to participate in the Senate judiciary committee hearing for what they called a ‘naked power grab’.
Democratic senators stood outside the Capital and boycotted the vote to install Donald Trump’s third supreme court nominee less than two weeks before the election.
No supreme court nominee has ever been installed so close to a presidential election and, just four years ago, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and senator Lindsey Graham, who now chairs the judiciary committee, said that installing a nominee in an election year would be a shameful defiance of the will of voters
Mustafa al-Kadhimi also urges Europe to assist the Middle Eastern nation’s debt-ridden economy
Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, has warned that he is being forced into an impossible balancing act between the US and Iran, as he urged Europe to come to the aid of his country’s debt-ridden economy.
Appointed as prime minister in June, Kadhimi – a British citizen and former journalist – came to power after unprecedented street protests over corruption, and has since governed with a simple programme of early elections, better security and preventing the collapse of his oil-dependent economy.
Document contains details about Jeffrey Epstein relationship
Maxwell charged with involvement in Epstein’s sexual crimes
A court document containing detailed information about Ghislaine Maxwell and her relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unsealed on Thursday morning in New York just moments before a court-imposed deadline.
This document, an April 2016 deposition, is among about a dozen long-awaited Maxwell files that have been unsealed, with the first filing involving Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s lawyer alleging the British socialite avoided a question “about allegedly ‘adult’ sexual activity related to Jeffrey Epstein”.
Bank’s Malaysia division agrees to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws
Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $2.9bn (£2.2bn) to settle a US-led investigation into its role in the 1MDB corruption scandal.
The settlement is expected to draw a line under a years-long saga that has cast a shadow over one of the most recognisable names on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs’ Malaysia division also agreed to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws linked to the alleged looting of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.
Victor Gevers claimed he had access to president’s account, De Volkskrant reported, but Twitter said ‘we’ve seen no evidence’
Donald Trump’s Twitter account was allegedly hacked last week, after a Dutch researcher correctly guessed the president’s password: “maga2020!”, Dutch media reported.
Victor Gevers, a security expert, had access to Trump’s direct messages, could post tweets in his name and change his profile, De Volkskrant newspaper reported.
Move is part of a campaign by Trump administration to reorient US foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction
The US has today signed an anti-abortion declaration with a group of about 30 largely illiberal or authoritarian governments, after the failure of an effort to expand the conservative coalition.
The “Geneva Consensus Declaration” calls on states to promote women’s rights and health – but without access to abortion – and is part of a campaign by Trump administration, led by secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to reorient US foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction, even at the expense of alienating traditional western allies.
New definition includes people who come into close contact with infected individuals in multiple short bursts over 24-hour period
The leading US federal public health agency has rewritten its definition of who is at risk of contracting coronavirus to include people who come into close contact with infected individuals in multiple short bursts over a 24-hour period.
The new definition of “close contact” issued on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will sharply expand the pool of those deemed in danger of being infected by the virus.
While the guilty plea was welcomed, there was also anger over the US justice department’s failure to prosecute executives
Lawyers and public relations firms for the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma have spent months pushing an aggressive campaign to deny that the company’s powerful painkiller, OxyContin, unleashed the devastating US opioid epidemic.
They manipulated statistics and attacked critics to paint the company and the Sacklers as victims of an unwarranted smear campaign driven by a sensationalist media and grasping addicts trying to lay their hands on the billions of dollars of profits generated by a legitimate drug.
The Indian state of West Bengal has reported its biggest daily tally of new Covid-19 infections as thousands of people thronged the streets for a major Hindu festival that began last week, Reuters reports.
India has seen a sharp drop in infections since a September peak, but experts have warned it could see a resurgence during Durga Puja this week, and Diwali, the festival of light, in mid-November.
Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia have all reported their highest one-day rise in cases, Reuters reports.
Croatia reported its biggest rise in daily new Covid-19 infections on Thursday with 1,563 new cases, nearly half of which were in Zagreb, where they more than doubled. The capital recorded a high of 705 new infections compared with the previous day’s 337 infections. So far, Croatia, a country of some 4 million people, has recorded 29,850 cases with 406 deaths. There are currently 7,380 active cases.
There’s been quite the online reaction to the scenes of Rudy Giuliani in the new Borat movie. In the film the former New York mayor and current personal attorney to Donald Trump is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist.
It’s just one release in the run-up to the US election seeking to make a political impact. Charles Bramesco writes for us this morning asking can entertainment really affect an election?
The run-up to the presidential election has brought about an explosion of topical projects announcing themselves as a noble bulwark against the encroaching threat of another Trump term. And with them, the age-old debate over what any of this actually accomplishes has been reignited. Every time a film introduces itself as the one we need right now, it must first answer the question of whether a film is what we really need. As of late, the arguments have not been especially compelling.
As President Trump entered the final stretch of the election season, he began making more than 50 false or misleading claims a day. It’s only gotten worse — so much so that the Fact Checker team cannot keep up.
As of 27 August, the tally in our database that tracks every errant claim by the president stood at 22,247 claims in 1,316 days.
Trump administration reportedly considering move against organisations that documented Israeli rights abuses
The Trump administration is reportedly considering labelling a number of leading international humanitarian organisations as antisemitic after they documented Israeli rights abuses against Palestinians, including settlement building in the occupied territories.
The groups include the UK-based Amnesty International and Oxfam as well as the US organisation Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International accused the Trump administration, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, of attempting “to silence and intimidate international human rights organisations”.
Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive
US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.
Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.
In early March, I headed to the California desert to explore my emotions and learn ‘healthy masculinity’ with a group of men
On a Friday evening in early March, two weeks before much of the US went into a coronavirus lockdown, I found myself standing in the California desert, screaming into another man’s face.
The next day, the smell of burning sage wafted through the air as I took my shirt off and wrestled a guy inside a metal dome.