The Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron, urged protesters to make their voices heard peacefully after only one police officer involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, Brett Hankison, was indicted by a grand jury. Hankinson faces three charges of wanton endangerment for endangering people living in nearby apartments, but he was not charged for shooting Taylor. The other two officers present, who also fired multiple times at Taylor in her apartment, were not charged
Continue reading...Category Archives: US News
Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies
Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said ‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show
Leaked chat logs show Portland-area pro-Trump activists planning and training for violence, sourcing arms and ammunition and even suggesting political assassinations ahead of a series of contentious rallies in the Oregon city, including one scheduled for this weekend.
The chats on the GroupMe app, shared with the Guardian by the antifascist group Eugene Antifa, show conversations between Oregon members of the Patriots Coalition growing more extreme as they discuss armed confrontations with leftwing Portland activists, and consume a steady diet of online disinformation about protests and wildfires.
Continue reading...Breonna Taylor decision: two officers shot in Louisville as protests erupt across US – live
- Both officers suffer non-life-threatening injuries, says chief
- Crowds gather in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere
- Lawyer Ben Crump condemns ‘outrageous’ announcement
- Kamala Harris: family deserves justice ‘yesterday, today and tomorrow’
- Just one officer charged with wanton endangerment
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg will lie in repose for two days at supreme court
- FDA commissioner says science, not politics, will steer vaccine approval
- Sign up for our First Thing newsletter
A few moments ago, a driver drove into a group of protestors. There were no serious injuries, Denver police have confirmed, and a man has been detained.
#DPD Officers are at Colfax & Broadway in response to a vehicle that drove into a protest occurring at that location. No injuries are reported. One male has been detained. #Denver. pic.twitter.com/Ge8zDLZTju
JUST IN: Video from a @denverpost reporter shows the moment a driver ran their car over a protester outside the Colorado State Capitol.
The protester, Kate, told @ShellyBradbury she was not badly hurt.
Denver police say a man has been detained. https://t.co/LNPZVmAiTO
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family of Breonna Taylor, has told CNN the indictment is, “like killing Breonna all over again.”
He called her death, “Legalized genocide of people of color, because no matter how much evidence we have, they always find a way to try to legally justify it.”
Continue reading...‘I cry before work’: US essential workers burned out amid pandemic
Essential workers reported stress caused by increased workloads, understaffing, fears over Covid and struggles in enforcing social distancing
Terri Prunty Kay has worked as a cashier at Walmart in Sonoma county, California since 2011. She had never cried at work because of treatment from customers before the pandemic.
“It’s been a nightmare,” she said. “The first three months there were item limits. Everyone was angry and combative. Now it’s the masks.”
Continue reading...Global report: Donald Trump calls 200,000 US coronavirus deaths ‘a shame’
US president says it could have been 2.5 million deaths; Japan considers easing border controls; WHO announces record weekly cases
President Donald Trump has said the 200,000 US deaths from coronavirus were “a shame” in response to a reporter’s question about the milestone in the country’s fight against the pandemic.
As Trump was departing for an election campaign event in Pittsburgh he told the media: “I think if we didn’t do it properly and do it right, you’d have 2.5 million deaths.”
Continue reading...Kissing cowboys: the queer rodeo stars bucking a macho American tradition
Photographer Luke Gilford couldn’t believe his eyes when he first stumbled across a gay rodeo. He set out to capture the joyous, tender, authentic world he saw there
Luke Gilford was at a Pride event in northern California in 2016 when he was drawn to a stand by the sound of Dolly Parton singing 9 to 5. What he found there would change his life. Members of the local chapter of the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association were promoting what they do, and how they live. Gilford looked on in astonishment. “I grew up around this world,” he says. “I had no idea this existed. I really didn’t think it was real.”
A sought-after film-maker and photographer, to whom Barbara Kruger is a mentor and Pamela Anderson and Jane Fonda muses, Gilford cuts a striking figure. A New York Times profile that same year recounted how you could often catch a glimpse of him downtown, in a hand-me-down cowboy hat, football-style shoulder pads over his bare torso.
Continue reading...Trump memo on Comey firing was ‘tinfoil helmet material’, Mueller prosecutor says
- Andrew Weissmann will publish memoir next week
- ‘You could almost feel the spittle coming off the paper,’ he writes
Donald Trump’s original draft statement justifying his firing of the former FBI director James Comey was “tinfoil helmet material”, according to a top prosecutor who worked for the special counsel Robert Mueller, and who in a new book calls the draft “excruciatingly juvenile, disorganized and brimming with spite, incoherent and narcissistic”.
Related: Mueller too timid in Trump-Russia investigation, top prosecutor claims
Continue reading...Trump says 200,000 US coronavirus deaths ‘a shame’ – video
The US president says: 'Well, I think it’s a shame' when asked by a White House reporter about the 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the US – a fifth of the global total and the highest of any country worldwide. He claims the US could have had 2.5 million deaths 'if we didn't do it properly'. Trump also repeats his accusation that China is at fault for the pandemic.
Continue reading...Cindy McCain rebukes Trump and publicly endorses Joe Biden for president
McCain was motivated in part by Trump’s recent comments on the military, where he called war heroes ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’
Cindy McCain has endorsed Joe Biden for president, a stunning rebuke of Donald Trump by the widow of the Republican party’s 2008 nominee.
Cindy McCain tweeted on Tuesday: “My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost. There’s only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is Joe Biden.”
Continue reading...Elon Musk says cheaper, more powerful electric vehicle batteries are 3 years off
Tesla CEO acknowledged the design and manufacturing process of the new cells, which he says will be half as expensive, is not complete
Elon Musk described a new generation of electric vehicle batteries that will be more powerful, longer lasting, and half as expensive as the company’s current cells at Tesla’s “Battery Day” on Tuesday.
Tesla’s new larger cylindrical cells will provide five times more energy, six times more power and 16% greater driving range, Musk said, adding that full production is about three years away.
Continue reading...China rejects Donald Trump’s ‘baseless’ coronavirus accusations – video
China’s UN representative Zhang Jun said the country rejected 'baseless accusations' around coronavirus before introducing President Xi Jinping.
In a video address, Donald Trump said the UN had to take action against China and called for Beijing to be held accountable by the UN for 'releasing the virus'
Continue reading...‘Our 1945 moment’: UN faces fears of a ‘great fracture’ at general assembly
Amid prerecorded speeches, secretary-general issues warning over US-China rivalry at an unprecedented moment
“Today, we face our own 1945 moment,” the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said as he opened the UN’s 75th general assembly, to a thinly populated chamber of socially distanced diplomats.
Guterres meant the historical reference as a call to action inspired by the generation who had survived the second world war and sought to build a new world. A similarly concerted effort, he said, would be needed to defeat Covid and the pandemics that may follow, and the climate emergency.
Continue reading...Coronavirus live news: Italy introduces border tests for French visitors; new cases at highest level, warns WHO
Italian health minister says ‘we have to be cautious’; Iran death toll one of worst in Middle East; Madrid residents advised not to travel
- Weekly number of new cases at highest level, says WHO
- Trump wrongly claims Covid affects ‘virtually’ no young people
- Boris Johnson sets out new UK restrictions at ‘perilous turning point’
- Face shields ineffective at trapping aerosols, says supercomputer
- UK coronavirus updates – live
The EU Council, scheduled for later this week, has been postponed after its president tested positive, reports Euronews political editor, Darren McCaffery.
MEANS: EU Council due to be held this Thursday and Friday has been postponed until next week, 1st and 2nd of September
The UN summit is proving to be a bad-tempered event.
In a recorded video, the US president, Donald Trump, called Covid-19 the “China virus”, adding: “We must hold accountable the nation that unleashed this plague upon the world.”
Continue reading...Romney says he supports voting on Trump’s supreme court nominee
Republican who voted to convict Trump at impeachment trial said decision is ‘based on the immutable fairness of following the law’
Donald Trump received a major boost on Tuesday when Republican senator Mitt Romney announced his support for considering the US president’s supreme court nominee.
Related: 'Fill that seat': Trump's weaponizing of the courts will be his lasting legacy
Continue reading...United Nations general assembly: China rejects Trump’s ‘baseless’ Covid accusations – live
Follow live as Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – among others – deliver video messages
...and we have photos of Xi Jinping’s background:
Some more analysis, this time from our diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, on Turkey’s talk:
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used his general assembly address to set out Turkey’s bitter objections to its exclusion from the East Mediterranean, but said he was ready to resume talks bound by international law to address their contested maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean. By his recent rhetorical standards, the speech was one of Erdoğan’s mildest.
Continue reading...Alleged Isis members can be tried in US after UK high court ruling
British officials hand over evidence after mother of one of accused men loses challenge
The prosecutions of two alleged Islamic State members accused of carrying out a series of beheadings can go ahead in the US after British officials handed over key evidence.
The material was given to Washington after high court judges sitting in London dismissed a challenge brought by the mother of one of the accused men.
Continue reading...Number of new weekly coronavirus cases at record high, says WHO
Announcement comes as Covid deaths increased by 27% in Europe week on week
The weekly number of new recorded coronavirus infections worldwide was last week at its highest level to date, the World Health Organization has announced, as deaths from Covid-19 in Europe increased by more than a quarter week on week.
Almost 1 million people have now died from the coronavirus since it emerged in China at the beginning of the year.
Continue reading...A third of my country was just underwater. The world must act on climate | Sheikh Hasina
The climate crisis and Covid-19 are crying out for international cooperation, writes the prime minister of Bangladesh
One-third of my country was underwater last month. The heaviest rains in almost a decade began and have still not abated. More than 1.5 million Bangladeshis are displaced; tens of thousands of hectares of paddy fields have been washed away. Millions of my compatriots will need food aid this year.
Calamities, alas, never strike alone. The floods, which come in the wake of widespread destruction caused by Cyclone Amphan in May, are making it more difficult to contain the coronavirus. More than 2.4 million people had already been moved from the destructive path of the storm without delivering them into the even greater danger of Covid-19. Yet while the infection and death rates have been contained, concerns remain until a foolproof safeguard is acquired. Economic lockdowns have hit our textile industry and exports and forced hundreds of thousands of our international migrant workers to return home, with the vast majority remaining unemployed.
Continue reading...Facebook suspends environmental groups despite vow to fight misinformation
Facebook blames mistake in system for restrictions on groups including Greenpeace USA
Facebook has suspended the accounts of several environmental organizations less than a week after launching an initiative it said would counter a tide of misinformation over climate science on the platform.
Groups such as Greenpeace USA, Climate Hawks Vote and Rainforest Action Network were among those blocked from posting or sending messages on Facebook over the weekend. Activists say hundreds of other individual accounts linked to indigenous, climate and social justice groups were also suspended for an alleged “intellectual property rights violation”.
Continue reading...Trump races to fill supreme court seat as Republicans fall into line
Democrats’ hopes of keeping seat empty fade as two key Republican senators signal support for moving quickly
Donald Trump has raced to cement a conservative majority on the US supreme court before the presidential election on 3 November, and Democrats’ hopes of keeping the seat empty have faded as two Republican senators signalled their support for moving quickly.
The president said on Monday he would name his third supreme court nominee on Friday or Saturday, following memorials for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal justice who died aged 87 on Friday.
Continue reading...