Hurricane Delta rapidly intensified on Tuesday, becoming a category 4 storm with 140mph winds, on course to hammer south-eastern Mexico and the US Gulf coast.
Related: Top Pentagon leaders quarantine amid White House Covid outbreak – live
Continue reading...The 80-year-old man was knocked unconscious after confronting a patron in a West Seneca bar over not wearing a face covering
An 80-year old man has died after being shoved to the ground during a confrontation at a bar with another patron who was not wearing a mask.
Rocco E Sapienza confronted another patron at a bar in West Seneca, New York, on 26 September because he was not wearing a mask, Erie county prosecutors said on Monday. Donald M Lewinski, 65, then shoved Sapienza, who fell and struck his head on the floor, said district attorney John Flynn.
Continue reading...The top general in the US military, Mark Milley, and several other members of the US joint chiefs of staff who advise Donald Trump entered quarantine on Tuesday, as the president, infected with the coronavirus himself, continued to recuperate at the White House.
While the number of White House staff and aides who have tested positive is unknown, given the administration’s cloak of secrecy around the outbreak, total cases appeared to number in the dozens, making the White House one of the hottest active zones for virus circulation in the entire US.
Continue reading...Former first lady says president ‘not up to the job’ in passionate plea for voters to support Joe Biden
Michelle Obama has released a video sharply criticising Donald Trump’s record as president, particularly over the coronavirus pandemic and his approach to racial injustice, and urging the Americans to vote for Joe Biden.
Describing him as “not up to the job” in the 24-minute video posted to her social media channels, the former first lady said the Trump presidency was accompanied by “a constant drumbeat of fear, division and chaos that’s threatening to spiral out of control.”
Continue reading...In a speech highly critical of the president, the former first lady made an impassioned plea to Americans to vote for Joe Biden in the election on 3 November. Among the condemnations of Trump's presidency, she criticised his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying he 'doubled down on division and resentment', adding: 'What the president is doing is, once again, patently false ... it’s morally wrong ... and yes, it is racist'
August complex fire expanded beyond 1m acres, elevating it from a mere ‘megafire’ to a new classification: ‘gigafire’
California’s extraordinary year of wildfires has spawned another new milestone – the first “gigafire”, a blaze spanning 1m acres, in modern history.
Related: California fires set bleak record as 4m acres destroyed
Continue reading...Details of link to Kevin Ranaghan raise fresh questions about supreme court nominee’s involvement with People of Praise
Amy Coney Barrett lived in the home of one of the founders of the People of Praise while she was a law student, raising new questions about the supreme court nominee’s involvement with the secretive Christian faith group that has been criticized for dominating the lives of its members and subjugating women.
Related: Amy Coney Barrett: quick confirmation under threat as three senators infected
Continue reading...Exclusive: if discovery is confirmed it will have global implications as 90% of people breathe dirty air
Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen.
Continue reading...Rulings in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have eased mail-in voting restrictions but higher courts could yet intervene
America is less than a month away from election day, but high-stakes fights over access to the ballot have been moving through US courts for months. Democrats and civil rights groups have sought to ease restrictions on voting by mail amid the Covid-19 pandemic, while Republicans and the Trump campaign have sought to keep them in place.
In recent weeks, courts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all key battleground states, have issued hugely consequential rulings that could decide whether tens of thousands more votes are counted in November. Those three states will probably help decide who wins the election and Trump won each by less than one percentage point in 2016.
Continue reading...‘People are tired, we know,’ says Belgian PM of new measures; Lazio and Campania already enforcing face-covering rules
Reuters reports that US cruise operator Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd has extended suspension of sailings until 30 November, excluding those originating from Hong Kong, as the Covid-19 crisis continues to hurt the demand for voyages.
The company said its cruise brand Celebrity Cruises will suspend its 2020-21 winter program in Australia and Asia, while its Azamara cruises will suspend winter sailings throughout Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and South America.
The US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tested negative for Covid-19 in a test conducted on Tuesday, his campaign said in a statement.
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The Democratic nominee for the presidency, Joe Biden, is talking in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, right now.
He is giving a speech in that historic place, site of a turning point in the US Civil War, saying America “can and must” figure out how to work across partisan lines again.
Here’s the full statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (third in line to act as president should Donald Trump and Mike Pence become incapacitated, which is worth mentioning with coronavirus now openly stalking the White House and other corridors of federal power).
Continue reading...After a three-day stay at a military hospital to treat symptoms of coronavirus, a contagious Donald Trump returned to the White House and immediately took off his face mask while posing for cameras.
Video footage suggests the US president was experiencing laboured breathing during part of the photo op in which he also gave two thumbs up and saluted as he watched Marine One lift off from the south lawn.
Trump later waved and walked inside, where masked staff were visible, only to reemerge for what appeared to be a film shoot. In the film, which he tweeted soon after, Trump offered some bizarrely contrary advice about the virus, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans: 'Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it'
The president’s carelessness about others’ safety shows he will do almost anything not to lose in November
The desperation that has driven Donald Trump to leave hospital prematurely and theatrically pull off his mask on the White House balcony while in the throes of coronavirus infection gives some measure of how dangerous the next four weeks will be.
Many students of Trump’s life and career have warned that he would be prepared to sacrifice anyone – even those closest to him – to spare himself the humiliation of a one-term presidency, but even they surely could not have anticipated how literal that sacrifice would be.
Continue reading...In a suburb of Chicago, the world’s first government-funded slavery reparations programme is beginning. Robin Rue Simmons helped make it happen – but her victory has been more than 200 years in the making
It began with an email. On an especially cold day in Evanston, Illinois, in February 2019, Robin Rue Simmons, 43 years old and two years into her first term as alderman for the city’s historically Black 5th ward, sent an email whose effects would eventually make US history. The message to the nine-member equity and empowerment commission of the Evanston city council started with a disarmingly matter-of-fact heading: “Because ‘reparations’ makes people uncomfortable.”
She continued:
Continue reading...President poses near his staff and downplays threat of virus after three days at military medical center
A contagious Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday and immediately took off his face mask for a photo op, despite being in close proximity to his staff.
After a three-day stay at a military hospital to treat symptoms of coronavirus, the US president stepped off the Marine One helicopter just before 7pm and walked up the south portico staircase. He stopped in front of an illuminated entrance with four US flags, turned to face the south lawn – and brazenly removed his mask while posing for cameras.
Continue reading...Entrepreneur has been arrested in Spain after US prosecutors alleged he hid millions, including in assets such as real estate and a yacht
John McAfee, the antivirus software entrepreneur, has been charged with evading taxes after failing to report millions earned promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements and the sale of the rights to his life story for a documentary, US prosecutors have alleged.
McAfee hid assets from the Internal Revenue Service, including real estate property, a vehicle and a yacht, in the names of other people, prosecutors said.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has returned to the White House following his hospital stay at the Walter Reed Medical Center. He removed his surgical mask on the White House balcony and recorded a video message telling people not to be afraid of Covid-19. 'Don't let it dominate you, don't be afraid of it, you're going to beat it,' the US president said. 'I know there's a risk, there's a danger but that's OK'. He suggested he may now be immune to the disease though he added he did not know.
Continue reading...Speaking in Miami, US presidential nominee Joe Biden said he was glad to see his rival Donald Trump's recovery from coronavirus but made a plea for the president to take mask wearing seriously.
'Now that he’s busy tweeting campaign messages, I would ask him to do this: listen to the scientists. Support masks. Support a mask mandate nationwide,' Biden said.
Trump mocked Biden for his mask-wearing habits during last week's presidential debate, before testing positive for coronavirus.
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A fascinating dispatch from Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair, who cites “two Republicans briefed on the family conversations” in reporting that Donald Trump Jr is worried by his dad’s car-ride-and-tweet-storm response to being hospitalised with Covid-19:
‘Don Jr has said he wants to stage an intervention, but Jared and Ivanka keep telling Trump how great he’s doing,’ a source said. Don Jr is said to be reluctant to confront his father alone. ‘Don said, ‘I’m not going to be the only one to tell him he’s acting crazy,’’ the source added.
One area where the family seems united is over the president’s manic tweeting early Monday morning. After Trump sent out more than a dozen all-caps tweets, the Trump children told people they want Trump to stop. ‘They’re all worried. They’ve tried to get him to stop tweeting,’ a source close to the family told me.
…Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr, insisted on working even after his Alzheimer’s disease advanced in the 1990s … Every day Fred Sr would go to the office in Brooklyn and they would give him blank papers to sort through and sign. The phone on Fred’s desk was set up so that it could only dial out to his secretary. “Fred pretended to work,” the family friend said.
A new Times/Siena survey has Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump in Arizona, a traditionally conservative state-turned presidential battleground.
Biden leads Trump 49% to 41% in Arizona, with just 6% of likely voters saying they were undecided. He is buoyed by his lopsided support among Hispanics, women and young people. The candidates are effectively tied in their support among seniors, a critical voting block in the state that has soured on Trump amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
Rise in infection rate in Paris as Spanish authorities clash over Madrid lockdown
Bars in Paris have been ordered to close for two weeks, Madrid residents may no longer leave their city and Ireland is set to introduce tighter national restrictions as governments struggle to contain a Europe-wide surge in Covid-19 cases.
As infections in the Paris area rose to 270 for every 100,000 people – and as high as 500 for every 100,000 among 20- to 30-year-olds – with 36% of intensive care beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, the city’s police chief said bars must close from Tuesday.
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