Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
In rare news conference, the director of national security says Iran has sent spoofed emails to intimidate voters
Russia and Iran have obtained some US voting registration information and are attempting to sow unrest in the upcoming election, the government’s national intelligence director said in a rare news conference Wednesday night.
“We have already seen Iran sending spoofed emails, designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump,” said John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence.
Former president told voters in swing state Pennsylvania: ‘What we do now these next 13 days will matter for decades to come’
Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday to deliver a scathing – and occasionally humorous – condemnation of his successor while envisioning an America led by his former vice-president, Joe Biden.
Sleeves rolled and wearing a black mask that read VOTE, Obama assailed Donald Trump over his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president.
Barack Obama has praised young Black Lives Matter demonstrators saying they gave him 'optimism', during a discussion with black male community leaders ahead of a drive-in rally for Joe Biden on Wednesday night.
At his Philadelphia campaign event, Obama emphasized the need for young voters to make it to the polls to ensure a better future for the country
The reputation of Rudy Giuliani could be set for a further blow with the release of highly embarrassing footage in Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to Borat.
In the film, released on Friday, 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.
Lawyers struggling to find parents deported to Central America, says ACLU, after US government removed 1,030 children in 2018
Three years after Donald Trump ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants crossing into the US, lawyers are still struggling to find the parents of 545 children separated from them under the “zero-tolerance” policy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In a court filing, the ACLU said that about two-thirds of the parents had been deported back to the country of origin in Central America, leaving their separated children behind. In the rush to carry out Trump’s orders, the locations of the parents were not recorded and three years later they still cannot be found.
After winning the 2016 election, Donald Trump promised to deliver new jobs and economic prosperity to Youngstown, Ohio, a city suffering from decades of decline. But four years on those promises never manifested. Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone meet residents who lost their jobs and had their families split by economic necessity, and witness how the demise of the city’s only newspaper made it harder to hold politicians accountable for their failures
State is currently faring better than the US as a whole, but experts and public health officials expect a fall surge
After a brutal summer of increased infection and overburdened hospitals, California is having a moment of respite in coronavirus transmission as much of the nation and the world experiences yet another rise in cases.
But experts and public health officials warned Californians to practice caution.
Four US states reported a record one-day increase in Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday including Wisconsin, a hotly contested state in the 3 November election, as infections keep rising across the Midwest and beyond.
Coronavirus deaths hit daily records in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin, according to a Reuters analysis. Wisconsin also reported a record daily increase in new cases together with Illinois and Ohio, the analysis showed.
The US is likely to have enough safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines available to inoculate the most vulnerable Americans by the end of 2020, health and human services secretary Alex Azar said.
The US government is “cautiously optimistic” that one or two vaccines, likely from Pfizer or Moderna, will be available by the end of the year and can begin to be distributed to Americans, officials said during a news conference.
Meanwhile, it seems Trump supporters in North Carolina were asked to avoid QAnon clothing.
The president refused to disavow QAnon during an NBC town hall last week. “I don’t know about QAnon,” he insisted.
A Trump campaign worker ahead of the President’s rally in Gastonia, NC, is informing attendees as they arrive at the main entrance that they cannot wear any QAnon attire.
Events in the US are being watched closely as Iran’s presidential election looms in early 2021
Even if Joe Biden triumphs at the polls, Iran’s weakened government may only have a few months to negotiate a revived nuclear deal before facing its own electoral challenge by hardliners who oppose any engagement with the west.
The narrow window has prompted calls for Biden to offer a phased approach to rejoining the Iran nuclear deal abandoned by Donald Trump in 2018, in order to show progress before the Iranian presidential election.
Spacecraft ‘kissed the surface’ in brief landing on asteroid 200m miles away from Earth in US-first mission
A Nasa spacecraft has successfully landed on an asteroid, dodging boulders the size of buildings, in order to collect a handful of cosmic rubble for analysis back on Earth.
The space agency team behind the Osiris-Rex project said preliminary data showed the sample collection went as planned and that the spacecraft had lifted off the surface of asteroid Bennu.
Lawyers had argued that the transcripts should remain sealed in part to protect her right to a fair trial
Transcripts of interviews lawyers conducted with Ghislaine Maxwell involving her former boyfriend, the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, should be released as soon as possible, a New York judge ordered on Tuesday.
It’s worth noting that Mitch McConnell said the Senate would consider a coronavirus relief bill “at some point” if a deal is reached between House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin.
That phrasing leaves it very unclear when the Senate would take up a coronavirus relief package if an agreement is reached.
Mitch McConnell said he would put a coronavirus relief bill on the Senate floor for a vote, if the White House and congressional Democrats can reach a deal on the package.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin are expected to discuss the negotiations again in about a half an hour, and Pelosi has said she is “optimistic” about reaching an agreement.