Ex-UK ambassador Kim Darroch say pollsters could be undercounting Donald Trump supporters
The former UK ambassador in Washington, Kim Darroch, has warned of a “genuine risk” of violence in the aftermath of a close-run US election in November.
Darroch noted that although Joe Biden is maintaining a significant lead nationwide, the margins in some battleground states are shrinking, and he suggested pollsters could be systematically undercounting Donald Trump supporters.
Continue reading...The US president is urged to recognise the changing climate and what it means to forests, during a briefing on the wildfires in California on Monday. Trump interrupts an official, Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of California’s Natural Resources Agency, to argue the climate 'will start getting cooler, you just watch'. Crowfoot responds: 'I wish science agreed with you.' To which Trump retorts: 'I don’t think science knows actually'
Continue reading...Joe Biden addressed record-setting wildfires in the western US while on the presidential campaign, calling Donald Trump a 'climate arsonist'.
Meanwhile Donald Trump arrived in California, citing the importance of forest management.
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Trump has landed in California, where he will receive a briefing on the west coast wildfires, which have already claimed at least 35 lives.
“There has to be good, strong forest management, which I’ve been talking about for three years with the states, so hopefully they’ll start doing that,” Trump said.
Trump is in California mispronouncing "Oregon" and insisting that wildfires are caused be poor forest management pic.twitter.com/zydXDoe3DT
Joe Biden closed his climate speech by noting he continues to pray for Americans on the west coast who have been affected by the wildfires.
“We see the light through the dark smoke. We never give up. Always,” Biden said.
Continue reading...This summer was the hottest ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, according to US government scientists.
Related: Bigger than London, bigger than New York City: visualizing the size of fires in the US
Continue reading...DNA evidence proved Robert DuBoise, who was released from prison last month, did not commit 1983 crime
After 37 years behind bars, a Florida man was formally cleared on Monday of a 1983 rape and murder which DNA evidence proved he did not commit.
Related: Pennsylvania man who wrongly spent 23 years on death row is freed
Continue reading...This interactive map shows the total area burned since 15 August in America’s west, compared with various major cities
Record-breaking wildfires are burning across the American west.
The blazes scorching parts of California, Oregon and Washington state have destroyed millions of acres, leveled entire towns and displaced hundreds of thousands. Dozens of people have been reported dead or missing.
Continue reading...Cybersecurity experts concerned by possible intent behind use of big data to compile lists featuring everyone from low-key individuals to the royal family
The personal details of millions of people around the world have been swept up in a database compiled by a Chinese tech company with reported links to the country’s military and intelligence networks, according to a trove of leaked data.
About 2.4 million people are included in the database, assembled mostly based on public open-source data such as social media profiles, analysts said. It was compiled by Zhenhua Data, based in the south-eastern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Continue reading...Joe Biden holds a steady lead in the polls but plenty of time remains for surprises and even the act of voting is controversial
The election to decide whether Donald Trump will serve a second term as president has already begun, with voters in North Carolina filling out absentee ballots, Minnesotans preparing to start early in-person voting on Friday and other states revving up their election machinery.
But for most Americans, today marks 50 days until election day, 3 November, when voters will take varying degrees of health risks – and face hurdles to voting of varying heights – to cast their ballots in person for Trump or his potential Democratic successor, Joe Biden.
Continue reading...Public Health England also records nine further deaths; 14 refugees test positive after Lesbos fire; Silvio Berlusconi leaves hospital after treatment
French health authorities on Monday reported 6,158 new Covid-19 infections over the past 24 hours, sharply down from Saturday’s record high since large-scale testing began of 10,561 and Sunday’s tally of 7,183.
The Monday figure always tends to dip as there are fewer tests conducted on Sundays.
Related: Covid-19: Marseille and Bordeaux announce new restrictions
The Chinese city of Ruili will test all people there after authorities reported two new coronavirus cases imported from neighbouring Myanmar, state media reported late on Monday.
Ruili is part of Dehong Prefecture in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan. The city asked residents to quarantine at home, according to state television CCTV.
Continue reading...Oracle reported to be ‘technology partner’ after Donald Trump set a 15 September deadline for US businesses to stop dealing with Bytedance
Bytedance will not sell TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft, the US tech-giant said in a statement, with reports it has instead picked a consortium led by Oracle as a “technology partner”.
ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok’s US business since Donald Trump threatened last month to ban the service if it was not sold. The president’s executive order in August gave Americans until 15 September to stop doing business with the video platform’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, or it would be shut down in the US. It effectively set a deadline for a potential pressured sale of part of the tech company to an American bidder.
Continue reading...Attacking Joe Biden and seeking to exploit reports that his rival is struggling with Latino voters, Donald Trump boasted on Sunday of receiving “the highly honoured Bay of Pigs Award” from Cuban Americans in the battleground state of Florida.
Perhaps inevitably, and to the glee of the internet, no such award exists.
Continue reading...A sheriff’s deputy in Georgia has been fired after being captured on video repeatedly punching a Black man during a traffic stop, authorities said on Sunday.
Related: Two Los Angeles sheriff's deputies wounded in Compton attack
Continue reading...Peter Strzok was removed from Russia investigation and fired by the FBI over text messages critical of Trump
Donald Trump is “compromised by the Russians”, a former member of Robert Mueller’s investigation insisted on Sunday, contending that the president is “incapable of placing the national interest ahead of his own”.
Related: Trump attacks Robert Mueller's 'hit squad' in row over 'wiped' phones
Continue reading...The revelation that Donald Trump deliberately downplayed the coronavirus pandemic forced key aides on to desperate defence on Sunday, barely 50 days from the presidential election.
Related: Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election
Continue reading...Politicians strongly criticised the US president for his response to the escalating wildfire crisis in the west coast after he claimed 'forest management' was the main culprit for the emergency.
The death toll from wildfires choking the west coast of the US continued to rise on Sunday as authorities said more bodies were likely to be found in the charred ruins of towns across several states
Continue reading...The shooting of two Los Angeles county sheriff’s deputies in an apparent ambush prompted a manhunt, reaction from the president and protests outside the hospital where the wounded deputies were being treated on Saturday night.
The deputies were shot while sitting in their patrol car at a Metro rail station, around 7pm and not far from the the Compton sheriff’s station. They were able to radio for help, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said. The department shared video of the shooting, showing a person open fire through the passenger-side window.
Continue reading...Cases hit daily record in Czech Republic; Austria ‘experiencing start of second wave’; 74 people at an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne
An Israeli cabinet minister, who heads an ultra-orthodox Jewish party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative coalition, has tendered his resignation in protest at a looming coronavirus lockdown. Housing minister Yaakov Litzman argued the restrictions would unfairly impede religious celebrations of Jewish holidays.
The rules - the most extensive Israel will have imposed since a lockdown that ran from late March to early May - are expected to go into effect on Friday, the Jewish new year Rosh Hashana, and span into the Yom Kippur fast day on 27 September.
This wrongs and scorns hundreds of thousands of citizens. Where were you until now? Why have the Jewish holidays become a convenient address for tackling the coronavirus...?
We have to move on, to make the decisions necessary for Israel in the coronavirus era, and that is what we will do in this session.
India has reported 94,372 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, taking total cases past 4.7 million.
The daily increase was down on the record global spike in the previous 24 hours of 97,570 new cases and came after three days of recording more than 95,000 new cases. Infections have been growing faster in India than anywhere in the world.
Continue reading...The president’s campaign has paid out $800m, but at a crucial phase he is making cuts while Joe Biden is outspending him
More than $180,000 per second. That is what Donald Trump’s two TV ads during the Super Bowl worked out at in February, offering vivid proof of the outsized role of money in American politics – and of his re-election campaign’s premature and profligate spending.
The 2020 presidential election has been described by both sides as the most important in living memory and is certainly proving the most expensive. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded both campaigns and, in the pandemic-enforced absence of shaking hands and kissing babies, may prove even more influential than usual.
Continue reading...China says curbs ‘legitimate and necessary’ as tensions rise
The US has called a decision by Beijing to impose restrictions on all American diplomats on Chinese soil an “escalation”, the latest rebuke in a tit-for-tat dispute over foreign missions.
Relations between the world’s top two economies have deteriorated in recent months, with both sides locked in fierce recriminations over trade disputes, human rights and the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
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