Category Archives: US News

Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in ‘childish’ Trump’s foreign policy

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On the golf course, Lindsey Graham urged restraint on Iran, while James Mattis slept in his clothes in case of emergency, book says

Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.

Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.

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Coronavirus live news: record daily rise in cases in France and Greece

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French cases near 10,000 in a day; single biggest rise in Greece; Portugal limits gatherings to 10 people; Mexico signs agreement for Sputnik V vaccine

Here’s a quick summary of the biggest developments before we head over to a new blog. Thanks for following along.

Brazil recorded 40,557 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 983 deaths from the disease, the health ministry said on Thursday.

The country has registered more than 4.2 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 129,522, according to ministry data.

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Trump claims US is ’rounding the corner’ as coronavirus death toll nears 200,000 – live

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A panel of three federal judges blocked the Trump administration on Thursday from excluding undocumented immigrants from the census totals used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets.

Trump acted unlawfully in July when he ordered the Commerce Department to produce data that would allow him to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count, the panel said. Federal law is clear that only a single data source - the census count of total population - can be used to apportion the 435 seats in the US House among states, the judges wrote. The decennial census does not ask about citizenship status and by requesting a second set of data outside of the decennial census, Trump ran afoul of the law.

Unprecedented wildfires and rushed evacuations in Oregon have wreaked havoc on the state’s incarcerated population, with thousands now packed into a single overcrowded prison that was already a major Covid-19 hotspot.

A destructive and rapidly spreading fire in Marion county prompted the state to evacuate three prisons on Tuesday, transferring 1,450 people to the Oregon state penitentiary (OSP) in Salem. Evacuees are sleeping on the floor and on emergency beds throughout OSP, including in indoor recreational areas, program rooms and other facilities not typically used for housing.

Related: Oregon fires: evacuated prisoners sleep on floor in packed Covid-19 hotspot

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US wildfires: Oregon has ‘never seen this amount of uncontained fire’, governor says – live

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Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, said today that the fires in the state have burned nearly 937 sq miles (2,426km).

“We’ve had this trauma all over Washington,” Inslee said, KHQ-TV reported. The governor was touring the farm town of Malden, which is 35 miles south of Spokane: “But this is the place where the whole heart of the town was torn out.”

Stunned residents of the small Oregon town of Phoenix walked through a scene of devastation Thursday after one of the state’s many wildfires wiped out much of their community, including a mobile home park, houses and businesses, the AP reports on the ground.

There were flames across the street from me, flames to the right of me, flames to the left of me. I just watched everything burn.”

Burned out cars, charred lawn ornaments, rubble. That’s what’s left of this Phoenix mobile home park, which covers abt 20 acres. Flames and smoldering embers still visible here. Everything is blackened by fire.

This was home to abt 300 people. pic.twitter.com/DrDobLKVev

Mayor Chris Luz talks about the loss of Puck’s Donuts. pic.twitter.com/4qz2gLy9Jb

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Afghan government to start peace talks with Taliban

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Negotiations to end the long civil war were agreed as part of a withdrawal deal signed by the US

The Afghan government and the Taliban will open peace talks on Saturday, trying to reach a power-sharing deal as American troops leave the country after nearly two decades.

The negotiations to try to end the long civil war were agreed as part of a withdrawal deal that the US signed with the Taliban in February, but have stalled for months over details of a promised prisoner exchange.

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Joe Biden decries Trump’s ‘almost criminal’ Covid response

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  • Democrat tells CNN president ‘waved the white flag’ on virus
  • Trump attacks ABC’s Jon Karl as ‘a disgrace to your employer’

Joe Biden has branded Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “almost criminal” after book revelations that the US president admitted in early February the disease was “deadly stuff” but deliberately played it down.

As the death toll from Covid-19 nears 200,000 in America, the world’s highest, Biden excoriated his opponent in November’s election over the way he did not address the defining crisis of his presidency early and comprehensively.

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Teacher, 28, dies of Covid-19 as US schools prepare for return to classrooms

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  • Demetria Bannister taught elementary school in South Carolina
  • New York City to resume in-person classes in 11 days

A 28-year-old elementary school teacher in Columbia, South Carolina, died this week from complications due to Covid-19, authorities have said.

Demetria “Demi” Bannister, who taught third grade at Windsor elementary school, died on Monday.

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Oregon fires force 500,000 to evacuate as blazes across American west kill 15

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  • Unprecedented fire conditions burn more than 900,000 acres
  • Firefighting resources are stretched thin in three states

More than 500,000 people in Oregon have been forced to evacuate as unprecedented wildfires rage across the state, amounting to more than 10% of the population, authorities said Thursday.

Wildfires searing through the American west have killed at least 15 people, leveled entire neighborhoods and forced stretched firefighting crews to make tough decisions about where to deploy.

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Pelosi: Woodward interview shows Trump’s contempt for supporters – video

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Nancy Pelosi has said that Donald Trump’s interview with Bob Woodward, where the president said he intentionally downplayed the coronavirus pandemic to avoid panic, was evidence of ‘contempt’ for Americans’ health.

During her weekly press conference, the House speaker said Trump’s comments were not a sign of real leadership

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Pompeo: ‘substantial chance’ senior Russian officials behind Alexei Navalny poisoning

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US secretary of state strikes more strident tone after Donald Trump said at the weekend he had not seen any proof of poisoning

The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said there was a “substantial chance” the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was ordered by senior Russian officials.

“I think people all around the world see this kind of activity for what it is,” Pompeo said in a radio interview with conservative host Ben Shapiro. “And when they see the effort to poison a dissident, and they recognise that there is a substantial chance that this actually came from senior Russian officials, I think this is not good for the Russian people.”

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Trump ‘wanted to play down’ Covid despite knowing deadliness, Bob Woodward book says – as it happened

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From me and Joan E Greve:

Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, is refusing to enforce a White House coronavirus taskforce recommendation to close bars and require people to wear masks after Covid-19 infections in some of the state’s cities surged.

Meanwhile, coronavirus cases have risen sharply across the whole midwest in recent weeks, putting the region at the forefront of America’s pandemic. The region accounted for six of the eight states with the highest number of new Covid-19 cases by early September even as infections fell in other parts of the US previously among the worst hit.

Related: Iowa refuses to close bars and require masks as Covid-19 cases surge in cities

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Winds fuel wildfires in California as blazes rage across US west

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Region sees amber skies while Washington state faces more acres burned in a day than typically burn in a year

Large, fast-moving fires raged on across the American west on Wednesday, destroying hundreds of homes in the Pacific north-west and sending a dense plume of smoke that turned skies amber across parts of the region.

Related: California, Oregon and Washington battle dozens of fires – live updates

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Trump loyalists interfered to downplay Russia election threat – whistleblower

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Brian Murphy claims he was demoted for refusing to accept fabrication of intelligence to match Donald Trump’s rhetoric

Trump loyalists running the Department of Homeland Security manipulated intelligence reports to play down the threat of Russian election interference and white supremacists and exaggerate the threat of antifa and anarchist groups, according to the department’s former top intelligence official.

The official, Brian Murphy, said he was demoted in August from his position running the department’s office of intelligence and analysis because of his refusal to go along with the fabrication of intelligence to match Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and for making formal complaints about the political pressure. He filed a whistleblower reprisal complaint on Tuesday.

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Trump official preventing Fauci from discussing Covid children risk – report

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Dr Paul Alexander reportedly told Fauci’s spokesperson he should not use TV interview to advocate mask-wearing by children

A health official hired by a Donald Trump appointee has been working to prevent Dr Anthony Fauci from talking about dangers that Covid-19 poses to children, Politico reported on Wednesday.

The attempts by Dr Paul Alexander – who serves as a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) assistant public affairs secretary – were described in emails obtained by Politico.

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‘I don’t want to create panic’: Trump defends coronavirus remarks he made to Bob Woodward – video

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Donald Trump said he was 'trying to avoid panic' by not revealing the severity of Covid-19, despite CNN audio published on Wednesday from an interview in February in which he acknowledged the virus was 'deadly'.

The president, who defended his comments to the journalist Bob Woodward for Woodward's book Rage, insisted his strategy was focused on encouraging Americans to remain calm, as the virus spread across the country

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Trump’s Covid-19 response a ‘life and death betrayal’ of Americans, says Biden – video

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Joe Biden took the offensive against Donald Trump during a campaign event in Warren, Michigan after CNN released audio of Trump telling the journalist Bob Woodward in February that he knew coronavirus was ‘deadly’ and airborne.

Biden said the president had ‘failed to do his job on purpose’ as he knew the danger of Covid-19 but downplayed the severity of the virus for months

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Trump knew Covid was deadly but wanted to ‘play it down’, Woodward book says

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US president gave Bob Woodward 18 interviews, forming basis of new book Rage, and said of virus: ‘This is deadly stuff’

Donald Trump knew the extent of the deadly coronavirus threat in February but intentionally misled the public by deciding to “play it down”, according to interviews recorded by one of America’s most venerated investigative journalists.

The US president gave Bob Woodward 18 interviews between December 2019 and July 2020. They form the basis of his revelatory new book, Rage, obtained on Wednesday by the Washington Post and CNN, in which Trump is condemned by his own words.

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