Category Archives: US News

Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election

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Trump meanwhile promises to ‘put down’ leftwing protests and says US Marshals killing Portland suspect was ‘retribution’

Roger Stone, whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Russia investigation was commuted by Donald Trump, has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.

The long-time Republican strategist and dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, lied about contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election regarding emails hacked from Democratic party accounts.

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Go west: Trump and Biden take campaign to Arizona and Nevada

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Donald Trump was headed for Nevada on Saturday, aiming to erode poll leads enjoyed by Joe Biden there and in Arizona, another key state, as the 3 November presidential election draws near.

Related: Trump in Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs

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Trump uses Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs

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Fox News will broadcast an interview on Saturday night in which Donald Trump accuses Joe Biden of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Related: Trump ally who sought to change CDC Covid reports claims he was fighting 'deep state'

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Crowd cheers as Charlottesville takes down statue of Confederate soldier

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  • Bronze known as ‘At Ready’ has stood for 111 years
  • University town rocked by white supremacist march in 2017

Engineers in Charlottesville, Virginia worked to remove a 900lb Confederate statue on Saturday, a moment of symbolic reckoning in the university town that was rocked by a white supremacist march in August 2017.

Related: Black Virginia state senator charged with 'injury' to Confederate monument

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Fire crews in Oregon and California fight blazes as officials warn of further deaths

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  • Dozens still missing and tens of thousands forced to flee
  • Lighter winds and rising humidity help firefighters’ efforts

Fire crews in California and Oregon reported making progress on several blazes over the weekend, as lighter winds and lower temperatures aided the battle against the massive fires raging across the west.

But officials in both states told residents to brace for bad news, as rescue teams start combing through towns and neighborhoods leveled by the infernos.

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California governor: ‘We are in the midst of a climate emergency’ – video

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The California governor, Gavin Newsom, said ‘this is not a world that anyone should be experiencing’ as he surveyed charred mountain terrain devastated by wildfires. ‘If you do not believe in science, I hope you believe in observed evidence,’ he added. More than 68,000 people are under evacuation orders in California where the largest fire in state history has burned over 740,000 acres in the Mendocino National forest

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Trump ally who sought to change CDC Covid reports claims he was fighting ‘deep state’

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A former Trump campaign official now spokesman for the US health department sought to change key reports on the coronavirus pandemic, in some cases “openly complaining” that they “would undermine the president’s optimistic messages about the outbreak”, according to internal emails seen by Politico.

Related: Trump told a reporter his biggest secret: that he is a danger to the American people | Richard Wolffe

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As fires burn the west, top Democrats stay quiet on the climate crisis

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Nancy Pelosi has been notably tepid on green legislation – so are the Democrats serious about fighting climate change?

With hundreds of thousands of Americans forced to evacuate their homes in the western US, Donald Trump hasn’t said a word about the wildfires blazing across multiple states in nearly three weeks.

Related: Oregon fires force hundreds of thousands to flee as deaths rise

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Dozens missing in Oregon as historic fires devastate western US

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Dozens of people are missing and at least 23 people are believed to have been killed as historic wildfires in the western US forced evacuations, stretched fire crews thin and spawned misinformation.

Residents of Portland, Oregon, awoke on Friday to air thick with smoke pollution that dimmed the sun and turned the skies blood-orange red. Hundreds of firefighters are battling two large wildfires that threatened to merge near the most populated part of Oregon, including the suburbs of Portland, and the governor said dozens of people are missing in other parts of the state.

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9/11 memorial ceremonies mark 19th anniversary of attack – video report

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Ceremonies were held across the US in remembrance of the victims of the al-Qaida attack on 11 September 2001.

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden were among the attendees at memorial services in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to honor the 40 passengers who died aboard Flight 93.

At the Pentagon, US army chief general Mark Milley spoke in defense of a free press when listing examples of  US armed forces' "values". 

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Covid-19: Fauci says US life won’t return to normal until deep into 2021

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  • Expert: no return to ‘a degree of normality’ until next year
  • Current American data on virus cases and deaths ‘disturbing’

The White House coronavirus taskforce’s most senior public health expert, Anthony Fauci, said on Friday that it would probably take another year before life returns to a sense of “normality” in the US, even if a successful Covid-19 vaccine is approved in the next few months.

Related: Bob Woodward rejects criticism that he sat on Trump 'deadly' virus remarks

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Bahrain to normalise ties with Israel, Donald Trump announces

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Arab country is latest to make agreement as part of US president’s diplomatic push

Bahrain has agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and will join the United Arab Emirates in signing an agreement at the White House on Tuesday.

“Even great warriors get tired of fighting, and they’re tired of fighting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, portraying the deals as peace agreements, although neither Gulf monarchy has ever been at war with Israel, and both had already established extensive informal ties. Bahrain has long advocated Israel’s integration in the region.

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‘I have never seen anything like this’: Oregon towns emptied and confusion spreads amid fires

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In Molalla and other western towns, fear, uncertainty and disinformation gripped residents as hundreds of thousands in the state evacuate

Hundreds of thousands of people in Oregon were ordered to leave their homes on Thursday as wildfires encroached on their properties. The evacuations clogged highways, emptied entire towns and sparked confusion in a state that has not grappled with wildfires of this size before.

Large-scale evacuations in the state began within the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon’s largest city. Clackamas county, home to some 420,000 people in the metro’s south, was already under varying levels of fire alert when officials on Thursday afternoon told residents of the city of Molalla to leave.

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Officers charged in George Floyd killing seek to place blame on one another

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  • Former police quartet appear in court for special hearing
  • Floyd died after Derek Chauvin held his knee on his neck

Attorneys for four former Minneapolis officers charged in the killing of George Floyd say each should get his own trial, as the officers point fingers at one another.

Related: 9/11 remembered amid raging wildfires and coronavirus recriminations – live

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Twitter and Google join Facebook in tightening rules on US election claims

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Platforms will target unverified claims of election rigging and premature results declarations

Premature claims of victory will be blocked from Twitter and Google in the run-up to November’s US presidential election, as both companies follow Facebook in trying to fight the prospect of a stolen vote.

Under its new rules, Twitter will treat as harmful misinformation any tweet which makes false claims about election rigging, or prematurely claims to announce the election results.

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Trump and Biden attend 9/11 memorial ceremonies – US politics live

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In the latest sign of how ugly the presidential race has become, Trump baselessly accused Joe Biden of using performance-enhancing drugs in a new interview.

Fox News released a clip from Trump’s recent interview with host Jeanine Pirro, which will air in full tomorrow night.

"I think there's probably, possibly drugs involved. That's what I hear." -- during interview with Judge Jeanine, Trump casually accuses Joe Biden of using performance enhancing drugs pic.twitter.com/RVWJMqPNhn

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong picking up the blog from smoky Oakland, California. I’ll have more news and politics coming your way for the rest of the evening.

First up: QAnon-supporting candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene’s election to Congress is all but assured after her Democratic opponent, Kevin Van Ausdal, abruptly dropped out of the race to represent Georgia’s 14th district.

A message from Kevin Van Ausdal pic.twitter.com/Y5LtVcpK2B

Related: 'Mind-bogglingly irresponsible': meet the Republican donors helping QAnon reach Congress

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Nasa is looking for private companies to help mine the moon

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The agency announced it is buying lunar soil from a commercial provider as part of a technology development program

Nasa has announced it is looking for private companies to go to the moon and collect dust and rocks from the surface and bring them back to Earth.

The American space agency would then buy the moon samples in amounts between 50 to 500 grams for between $15,000 to $25,000.

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When will we know who’s won the US election?: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Sam Levine about why election night might turn into election week … or month

This week the question might seem a simple one, but it isn’t. Jonathan asks Sam Levine in New York about how the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the US election on 3 November, and the conversation leads to Jonathan reminiscing about the infamous 2000 presidential election, when George W Bush narrowly (and potentially wrongly) pipped Al Gore to the Oval Office. So, when will we know who’s won this year?

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Drone vision captures razed communities and burnt-out cars after Oregon wildfires – video

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Footage shot over Eagle Point shows flattened residential areas after nearly 100 major wildfires ripped through the US west. At least three people have been killed in Oregon with the governor, Kate Brown, warning that the state faces further hardship as authorities battle to contain the blazes

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A new squeeze? Snake mystery after lone, elderly python lays clutch of eggs

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The oldest snake in captivity – known only as 361003 – hasn’t been near a male python for two decades

Experts at a US zoo are trying to figure out how a 62-year-old ball python laid seven eggs despite not being near a male python for at least two decades.

Three of the eggs from the snake in St Louis zoo remain in an incubator, two were used for genetic sampling and snakes in the other two eggs did not survive, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The eggs were laid on 23 July and should hatch in about a month.

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