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Donald Trump has threatened Portland protesters with "very strong offensive force" as the federal government and residents continue to clash in the liberal city. The president warned he might send the National Guard to stop the "terrorists" in the city.In Albuquerque, meanwhile, activists vowed to meet federal agents with peaceful protests and civil disobedience as Trump said the government's response would expand to more cities, including Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson put some planned measures to ease the U.K.'s lockdown on hold Friday, just hours before they were due to take effect, saying the number of new coronavirus cases in the country is on the rise for the first time since May. Under the new restrictions, people from different households in Greater Manchester, England’s second largest metropolitan area, have been asked to not meet indoors.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden is still looking good in key swing states across the country.In May, a poll from the British consulting firm Redfield & Wilton Strategies put Biden ahead of President Trump in six states Trump won in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Redfield & Wilton Strategies' July poll shows Biden still has a lead in all of those states, and even widened it in three of them.While Biden had a 4 percent lead over Trump in Arizona, a 2-point lead in Florida, and an 8-point lead in Michigan in May, he has an 8, 7, and 12 percent lead, respectively, in those states as of July. Biden maintained his 10-point lead in Wisconsin over the past two months. Meanwhile Biden lost traction in North Carolina, where he had a 45-43 lead over Trump in May but has a 43-42 lead as of July, and Pennsylvania, where his margin fell from 48-39 to 48-41.Redfield & Wilton surveyed anywhere from 742 to 1,121 registered voters in each of the states, with larger populations corresponding to larger sample sizes. The polls were conducted from July 19-24.More stories from theweek.com The White House reportedly scrapped a national testing plan because the virus was mostly hitting blue states Josh Hawley's good idea to stop modern slavery New Lincoln Project video imagines what it's like to wake up from a coma in 2020
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Venezuela's supreme court said on Friday it had approved a request to Italy for the extradition of Rafael Ramirez, a once powerful oil minister and former head of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, on corruption charges. Authorities opened a probe into Ramirez over alleged graft in late 2017 and sought an Interpol red alert for him in early 2018, shortly after he left his later post as Venezuela's United Nations ambassador and began publicly criticizing President Nicolas Maduro's handling of the economy, which remains in freefall.
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College football standout Danroy "DJ" Henry Jr., 20, was shot and killed by a white police officer outside a New York bar on Oct. 17, 2010, as he drove away from a disturbance he was not involved in. Nearly 10 years later, celebrities join the victim’s family to demand that the case be reopened.
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CNN host Jake Tapper has demanded that Republican congressman Jim Jordan apologise for playing an edited video that misleadingly showed reporters describe the George Floyd protests as “peaceful”.On Tuesday, attorney general William Barr took part in his first congressional hearing since he took the role, and faced questions on topics including his response to the protests and the subsequent deployment of federal law enforcement agents to cities such as Portland, Oregon.
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President Trump said Tuesday that he has never discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin the intelligence indicating that Russia paid Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops despite several phone calls between the two heads of state since the intelligence was made known.“I have never discussed it with him,” Trump said in an interview with "Axios on HBO."Asked why he did not confront Putin over the alarming revelation, Trump responded, “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news.”Trump also cited previous U.S. tactics during the Cold War, when the U.S. provided support to Afghan soldiers fighting the Soviet Union, in an effort to downplay the Kremlin's intervention in Afghanistan."Well we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia too. You know, when they were fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan," Trump said. "I'm just saying we did that too."Trump has reportedly spoken to Putin at least eight times, including on Thursday, since reports broke last month that U.S. intelligence found that at least one American soldier, as well as a number of Afghan civilians, died as a result of secret bounty payments that Russia paid to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to target American forces.Intelligence about the alleged bounty offerings by Russia to Taliban fighters was reportedly included in the president's daily written intelligence briefing in February, but the White House claims Trump was not verbally briefed on the matter until the New York Times's June 26 report on the issue. The Times reported that some bounties as high as $100,000 were paid for each U.S. or allied troop killed.Several American service-members died as a result of monetary rewards that a Russian military intelligence unit offered to terrorist militants to target U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, the Washington Post said in a similar report.The intelligence community is, however, split over the reliability of the reports on Russian bounty payments. The National Security Agency strongly dissented from the assessment by the CIA and other intelligence agencies alleging the bounty scheme.The U.S. has long accused Russia of supporting the Taliban with weapons and other aid but has never accused Moscow of soliciting Taliban members with bounties to kill U.S. forces and allies. The Kremlin and Taliban have both denied the reports.
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A Republican senator in Alabama celebrated a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member’s birthday at the same time hundreds were honouring the life of civil rights hero John Lewis.State Representative Will Dismukes took part in an event marking the KKK grand wizard and former Confederate Army General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, as Alabama honoured the late Georgia Democrat this weekend.
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A statue in a Tel Aviv square of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enjoying a "Last Supper" feast added new bite on Wednesday to mounting protests against his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Netanyahu, whose popularity has plunged in opinion polls amid 21.5% unemployment, said his depiction in a mock tableau of Jesus's final meal before his crucifixion, was tantamount to a death threat. In the installation, Netanyahu sits alone at a grand 10-metre (33 ft) long table, with two candelabras, grabbing at a huge cake resembling an Israeli flag.
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The United States is criticizing a number of eastern and central European nations, including Poland, for failing to compensate Holocaust victims and their families and communities for property seized during Nazi occupation in World War II as the numbers of survivors dwindles due to age. In a report issued Wednesday, the State Department called out Bosnia, Belarus, Ukraine and particularly Poland for not having acted on restitution claims. Croatia, Latvia and Russia were also taken to task in the report, which is likely to draw angry responses from the governments identified.
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Joe Biden's vice presidential pick has been one of Washington's best kept secrets but a supposedly accidental news publication and Biden's own teasingly displayed notes are raising expectations that the winner is Kamala Harris. Speculation over the choice of VP is a parlor game played every four years in Washington, but this time the stakes are unusually high. Biden would be 78 on taking office -- the oldest US president ever -- and he has hinted that he might not seek a second term, making his deputy the prime candidate to take on the party's nomination.
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The Chicago Police Department's new deputy chief of criminal networks was found dead on Tuesday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, the latest in a history of suicides at the department.Dion Boyd, 57, was sworn into his new post on July 15 after 30-years on the force. Superintendent David Brown urged officers to keep an eye out for colleagues who could be in distress."Let's always remember to take care of ourselves and each other," Brown said at a press conference.The national suicide rate among police officers is about 18 per 100,000 as of 2017, however the rate in Chicago is 60 percent higher."One of the shocking statistics for me was that cops kill themselves at a higher rate than bad guys kill the police. And when you put it in those numbers, you realize that there’s a real problem," Phil Cline, executive director of the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, told WBBM radio. “And it’s not something the just sprung up in the last year or so. It’s been a problem for a while."Boyd's body was found at the department's Homan Square facility, a secretive site that houses the anti-gang and bomb and arson squads. Various abuses allegedly occurred at the site, including reports of excessive force used in interrogations uncovered by The Guardian in 2016.Chicago police are currently attempting to clamp down on shootings that have plagued the city since Memorial Day weekend.While shootings typically rise in the city throughout the summer months, this year has seen a particularly sharp uptick. Chicago has recorded about 2,000 shooting victims so far this year, compared to roughly 1,400 over the same period in 2019.The seasonal rise seems to have been exacerbated by the impact of coronavirus lockdowns on inner city neighborhoods, as well as anti-police sentiment stemming from the George Floyd protests roiling the U.S.
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A new survey has found more evidence to suggest that people can become infected with COVID-19 through aerosol transmission, which could be prevented by wearing a mask. Carried out by data scientists in the UK, Norway, and the US, the study is one of the first to investigate which personal and work-related factors can lead to COVID-19 transmission. After surveying 2,000 people in the UK and US, the researchers found that the data from both countries suggests that aerosol transmission of the virus -- via microdroplets which are so small that they remain suspended in the air for several hours -- is very likely.
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The Chicago Police Department's new deputy chief of criminal networks was found dead on Tuesday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, the latest in a history of suicides at the department.Dion Boyd, 57, was sworn into his new post on July 15 after 30-years on the force. Superintendent David Brown urged officers to keep an eye out for colleagues who could be in distress."Let's always remember to take care of ourselves and each other," Brown said at a press conference.The national suicide rate among police officers is about 18 per 100,000 as of 2017, however the rate in Chicago is 60 percent higher."One of the shocking statistics for me was that cops kill themselves at a higher rate than bad guys kill the police. And when you put it in those numbers, you realize that there’s a real problem," Phil Cline, executive director of the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, told WBBM radio. “And it’s not something the just sprung up in the last year or so. It’s been a problem for a while."Boyd's body was found at the department's Homan Square facility, a secretive site that houses the anti-gang and bomb and arson squads. Various abuses allegedly occurred at the site, including reports of excessive force used in interrogations uncovered by The Guardian in 2016.Chicago police are currently attempting to clamp down on shootings that have plagued the city since Memorial Day weekend.While shootings typically rise in the city throughout the summer months, this year has seen a particularly sharp uptick. Chicago has recorded about 2,000 shooting victims so far this year, compared to roughly 1,400 over the same period in 2019.The seasonal rise seems to have been exacerbated by the impact of coronavirus lockdowns on inner city neighborhoods, as well as anti-police sentiment stemming from the George Floyd protests roiling the U.S.
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An art expert has pinpointed the exact spot where Vincent van Gogh was painting just hours before he shot himself, museum officials announced on Tuesday at a ceremony commemorating the 130th anniversary of his suicide. The picture, Tree Roots, was identified as the Dutch post-impressionist painter’s last work a few years ago. Now, an early postcard has made it possible to locate the scene it depicts in Auvers-sur-Oise, a village north of Paris. Willem van Gogh, the great-grandson of the artist’s brother Theo, and Emilie Gordenker, director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, unveiled a plaque at the spot, which will soon be opened to the public. It is a short walk from the Auberge Ravoux, the former inn where Van Gogh spent his last 70 days before dying in his garret room on 29 July 1890.
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The head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention says he has been injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine in an attempt to persuade the public to follow suit when one is approved. “I’m going to reveal something undercover: I am injected with one of the vaccines,” Gao Fu said in a webinar Sunday hosted by Alibaba Health, an arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant, and Cell Press, an American publisher of scientific journals. Gao did not say when or how he took the vaccine candidate, leaving it unclear whether he was injected as part of a government-approved human trial.
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U.S. civil liberties advocates on Tuesday asked a federal court in Portland, Oregon, to hold federal agents in contempt for violating a temporary court order barring attacks on journalists and legal observers monitoring protests in the city. The filing by the American Civil Liberties Union came during a wave of protests against police violence and racism in Portland in which federal agents have clashed with protesters who have lit fires and thrown objects at the federal courthouse.
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German police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have begun digging up land close to a former home of the prime suspect. Detectives using heavy equipment, including an excavator, started work early on Tuesday examining an allotment just outside Hannover, the city where Christian Brückner lived temporarily in 2017. Julai Meyer from the prosecutor's office in nearby Braunschweig told the Telegraph: "I can confirm that the search is being carried out in connection with the investigation into the Maddie McCann case and is still ongoing. I can't disclose any further details about the operation.” Brückner, a convicted paedophile, who was living in the Algarve when Madeleine went missing in May 2007, was named as the prime suspect in her disappearance last month. German authorities have said they are convinced she is dead and claim to have evidence linking Brückner to the case.
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The baseball season descended deeper into crisis Tuesday, states like Mississippi and South Carolina cast about for more hospital beds, and governors in some of the hardest-hit places staunchly resisted calls to require masks, despite confirmed cases of the coronavirus soaring. Major League Baseball suspended the Miami Marlins’ season through Sunday because of an outbreak that has spread to at least 15 of the team's players, and a series of games this week between the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies was called off as a precaution. States like Florida, Arizona and Texas are in dire condition, and the virus also has been spreading farther north in recent days, causing alarm among public health officials who fear states are not doing enough to avoid catastrophic outbreaks like those in the Sun Belt.
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If it’s a “hearing,” Bill Barr asked with an irked tongue in cheek, “aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be heard?”His frustration was more than justified. Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) and the other Democrats who control the House demanded for months that Barr come to a “hearing” and “testify.” But of course, it wasn’t anything like an actual hearing, and they didn’t want him to testify -- as in actually answer questions. The session was a coveted election-year opportunity for Democrats to berate the attorney general of the United States in five-minute installments, accusing Barr of corruption, perjury, violating his oath, betraying the Constitution -- at one point, even of killing thousands of COVID-19 victims (apparently, by being attorney general during a pandemic).Especially at the beginning of the hearing, Barr easily parried the hostile questions -- soliloquies with question-marks at the end. He picked apart their misstatements and disingenuous premises, and answered with aplomb. Democrats thus dropped the threadbare pretense that this was a hearing. In the main, the rest of the afternoon was devoted to raging, mock-anguished perorations about how Trump is a dictator and how Barr is helping him destroy our democracy.These were punctuated by the occasional petulant demand that Barr answer “yes or no” a question that was either loaded or incoherent. When Barr would begin to answer, there would be foot-stomping, indignant, “I’m reclaiming my time” interruptions, claims that there was no question pending (usually after a question had just been posed), and then more Democrat filibustering about how the American people could clearly see that Barr was afraid to answer their questions . . . that they wouldn’t let him answer.It was an embarrassing spectacle.Some days, it just feels like we’re doomed. Today is one of those days. And not simply because this should have been an important oversight hearing featuring an important witness -- one whom a serious committee would have wanted both to hear out and to challenge. It is, after all, the nature of the Justice Department’s work that there are many tough judgment calls; no one gets them all right.What happened on Capitol Hill Tuesday was a debacle to despair over because Democrats do not act this way because they are preternaturally rude. They act this way because their voters expect and demand that they act this way.It is not hard to understand, even if it is hard to accept. Democrats do not merely disagree with Donald Trump. They abhor him. Their supporters and media friends so loathe him that each “hearing,” each issue, becomes a contest of who can be the most indecorous and contemptuous. Who among us can spew the most bile?Barr brings out the worst in them, which is saying something. He is learned and quick, he is prepared, and he doesn’t get rattled. Unlike many government officials, he thrives in the give-and-take of civil discourse.So then we obviously must not permit civil discourse.The pols are becoming indistinguishable from the ends of the spectrums where they draw their support. In the Democrats’ case, these include people who see America as a despicable, incorrigibly racist force for imperialism and exploitation. They see Republicans and their “deplorable” supporters, Trumpists in particular, as the instantiation of these abominations.Again and again, Barr explained that in Portland, a federal courthouse is under siege. The executive branch of the federal government has a duty to protect such installations. The very Congress to which Barr was trying to testify has enacted law that obliges the executive branch to safeguard federal courthouses. It is simply a fact that, had the Trump administration not acted to send more law enforcement agents -- not “troops” as Democrats claim, not “stormtroopers” as House speaker Nancy Pelosi slanderously put it, but law enforcement officers -- the courthouse would now be destroyed. And the taste of destroying it would have whet the anarchic appetite for more destruction.It is impossible that Democrats do not know the difference between peaceful protesters and rioters, but they mulishly pretend the latter are the former. They either turn a blind eye toward the ongoing mayhem or maintain, straight-faced, that the destruction is a righteous reaction to Trump. That is the deal: No stratagem that paints the president and his administration as deserving of anything more than contempt is beyond the pale.The transparent point is a cynical political one: Don’t engage the opposition, don’t talk out our disagreements. Portray the opposition as such anathema that voting for the incumbent president in November would be too monstrous to contemplate.At a minimum, it means there is no point in having congressional hearings. What it portends, though, is far more dire than that. It doesn’t matter how you feel about Donald Trump or Bill Barr. A faction that would rather delegitimize than debate its opposition can do that to anyone or anything. At that point, it’s about power, not policy or progress. Anyone who wants power that badly shouldn’t be anywhere near it. A Haven for the Sane If you think there should be a corner of our journalistic and intellectual life that defends right reason and is an alternative to the unhinged mainstream media, and if you have been alarmed at the sound of the American mind slamming shut at so many institutions recently, please lend National Review your support. SUPPORT NR TODAY
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Only the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Peru and Chile have a higher per capita rate, the tally shows, with U.S. deaths making up nearly 23% of the global total of just over 661,000. The increase of 10,000 COVID-19 deaths in 11 days is the fastest in the United States since early June. The pace of infections has accelerated since the U.S. death toll passed 100,000 on May 27.
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As states in the South and Southwest grapple with how to control the spread of the coronavirus, officials on President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force cautioned the nation’s governors Tuesday that a new set of states is beginning to experience an uptick in positive cases and recommended that local leaders implement mask mandates and close bars to contain the outbreaks.Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator for the task force, said the positivity rate in states such as Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Colorado was increasing and warned they should quickly take action before they fall into what she described as the “red COVID zones” category. Birx defined the red zones as those states with more than 100 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people and more than a 10 percent test positivity rate.“By the time you see hospitalizations, your community spread is so wide that you’ve flipped into a red state incredibly quickly,” Birx said, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Daily Beast. “By the time you see it, up to 80 or 90 percent of your county already has more than 10 percent positivity rate.”The warnings from Birx and other task force officials come as the administration is pushing states across the country to reopen schools, a point Vice President Mike Pence reiterated on the call. Pence said the task force would support whatever decision state leaders make but that the team was beginning to see evidence that “encouraging masks,” closing bars, and limiting indoor gatherings were slowing the spread in some of the hot spot states. Birx was more explicit with her advice, saying that the “100 percent mask mandates” played a significant role in containing the virus in those states.Trump in the past has resisted mask wearing and said in a Fox News interview this month that he would not impose a national mask mandate. On Monday, Trump retweeted a video shared by his son Donald Trump Jr. that featured a doctor saying masks were unnecessary. Twitter restricted Donald Trump Jr.’s account and removed the video from the platform.Trump Pushes Fake COVID Cure From Fringe Doctors, Banned by FacebookDr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top vaccine official, was also on the call with governors and said states should adhere to Birx’s recommendations even if it wasn’t politically expedient to do so. “You may be reluctant to do that because the general population is saying, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not that bad,’” Fauci said, referring to the advice of implementing mask mandates and restricting large gatherings of people. “You are worse than you think you are because where you are now is going to be reflected and what you are going to see… weeks from now. I know it may sound intrusive but it really isn’t.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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Police have arrested a man in connection with a fire set at the Democratic Party Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, last week.Officials announced on Wednesday that they had arrested 29-year-old Matthew Egler on arson charges that morning.
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Florida had 217 fatalities in the last 24 hours and Texas had at least 302 with some counties yet to report. Florida also reported 9,446 new cases, bringing its total infections to over 451,000, the second highest in the country behind California. Florida's total death toll rose to 6,457, eighth highest in the nation, according to a Reuters tally.
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Last week, a 24-year-old defector returned to North Korea the way he left in 2017, authorities say, but with a coronavirus pandemic raging in the background this time, his illicit trip drew far more attention. Facing a sexual assault investigation, Kim evaded high-tech South Korean border control systems by crawling through a drain pipe and swimming across the Han River to the North on July 19, the South Korean military has said. Kim's story as a defector begins and, so far, ends in the city of Kaesong, a North Korean border town that hosted a now-shuttered inter-Korean factory park and liaison office.
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President Donald Trump’s lawyers filed fresh arguments Monday to try to block a criminal subpoena for his tax records, saying it was issued in bad faith, might have been politically motivated and calling it a harassment of the president. Lawyers filed a rewritten lawsuit in Manhattan federal court to challenge the subpoena by a state prosecutor on grounds they believe conform with how the U.S. Supreme Court said the subpoena can be contested. The high court ruled earlier this month that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. could subpoena tax records from Trump’s accountant over his objections.
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The airport in the central Vietnamese tourism hotspot of Danang was packed on Monday after three residents tested positive for the coronavirus and the evacuation of 80,000 people began. The Southeast Asian country is back on high alert after authorities on Saturday confirmed the first community infections since April, and another three cases on Sunday, all in or around Danang. A further 11 cases linked to a Danang hospital were reported late on Monday.
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Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell are trying to stop her accusers from posting evidence online ahead of her trail, according to a proposed protective order submitted to a judge on Monday.The British socialite’s legal team wants to prevent prosecutors working for women who claim she recruited them for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein from releasing any information, including “nude, partially nude or otherwise sexualised images, videos or other depictions of individuals”.
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