The Washington Post
Biden, in Kenosha, vows that America will address racism and ‘original sin’ of slavery
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden thrust his campaign into the roiling national debate over police violence and racial justice on Thursday as he traveled to Kenosha, Wis., and pointedly embraced the nation’s racial reckoning, vowing improvements if elected president.
During an emotional meeting held in a church not far from looted downtown buildings, Biden made some of his most direct comments yet on the subject of race, growing introspective at times and speaking barely above a whisper. He said the shock over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, and the shooting that paralyzed Jacob Blake in Kenosha on Aug. 23, has provided the first window in generations for the nation to address centuries-old problems.
“We’re finally now getting to the point where we’re going to address the original sin in this country . . . slavery, and all the vestiges of it,” Biden said. “I can’t guarantee you everything gets solved in four years. But I can guarantee you one thing, it will be a whole heck of a lot better, we’ll move a lot further down the road.”
After Trump’s remarks, election officials warn that trying to vote twice is a crime and could undermine the system
A chorus of election officials, legal analysts and social media companies on Thursday rushed to condemn and counter … Trump’s suggestion this week that his supporters attempt to vote more than once, warning that doing so could constitute a crime and expressing fear that he was undermining the election system.
The pushback included pointed statements from an array of federal and local officials as well as direction action from Facebook and Twitter to attempt to limit the spread of the president’s misinformation.
Trump had urged supporters during an official White House event in North Carolina on Wednesday to send in a ballot through the mail and then attempt to cast another one at polling sites on Election Day in an effort to test the system. He has stated repeatedly that universal mail-in voting would lead to rampant fraud, despite evidence to the contrary.
‘The United States is in crisis’: Report tracks thousands of summer protests, most nonviolent
About 93 percent of the racial-justice protests that swept the United States this summer remained peaceful and nondestructive, according to a report released Thursday, with the violence and property damage that has dominated political discourse constituting only a minute portion of the thousands of demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd in May.
The report, produced by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, also concluded that an escalation in the government response to protests and a sharp uptick in extremist activity means the United States faces a growing risk of “political violence and instability” ahead of the 2020 election.
The Atlantic
Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
Bloomberg
Worst-Ever Arctic Fires Released Record Amount of CO2
The Arctic has experienced the worst fire season on record for the second year in a row, with giant wildfires sending over one third more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than last year.
Fires raging across the Arctic Circle emitted 244 million tons of carbon dioxide for the first six months of the year, compared to 181 million tons for the whole of 2019, according to Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service or CAMS.
“We’ve known for a long time that the rate of change of climate and temperature at northern latitudes has been two to three times faster than the global average,” said Mark Parrington, senior scientist at CAMS. “What we’re now seeing is a symptom of that more rapid rate of change.”
Facebook, Twitter Flag Trump for Misleading Posts on Voting
Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. flagged posts from … Donald Trump, the latest effort by the companies to crack down on misleading voting information. Twitter added labels to two tweets from Trump for “encouraging people to potentially vote twice,” the company said.
Trump suggested on Twitter Thursday morning that people vote in person as well as by mail to be “ASSURED THAT YOUR PRECIOUS VOTE HAS BEEN COUNTED.” That could be interpreted as advising people to vote twice, which is illegal.
The same post was also flagged on Facebook, where the company added a label that directed users to its voting information center. “Voting by mail has a long history of trustworthiness in the U.S. and the same is predicted this year,” Facebook wrote on the label appended to the president’s post.
Los Angeles Times
China cracks down on Inner Mongolian minority fighting for its mother tongue
Parents walked toward a wall of metal barriers, holding the hands of their first-graders as dozens of police and men in dark clothes watched and scowled in the afternoon light. One by one, mothers and fathers let their children go into an elementary school that seemed more ominous than it did the year before.
A grandfather stood behind a tree with tears in his eyes as students filed through metal detectors, red scarves tied around their necks, and climbed the steps toward their classrooms. “All ethnic groups must embrace tightly like the seeds of a pomegranate,” read a slogan from Chinese President Xi Jinping printed in Mandarin on the wall.
“They are talking about great ethnic unity. Is this what unity looks like?” said the Mongol grandfather, who did not give his name. He and his wife, Ochir Bao, a woman in her 60s, had come to this school — Hohhot National Experimental School, an elementary school in the region’s capital with mostly Mongol students — to watch their grandson go to class against his will.
The novel coronavirus has ravaged California’s Latino communities, with many people who are front-line workers catching COVID-19 and then spreading the disease to family and neighbors.
This grim cycle of illness and death ends at places like Continental Funeral Home. Mortuaries that serve Latino communities have been overwhelmed by families in need of help since March, with bodies in some cases stacking up as operators tried to improvise funerals that previously might have drawn extended family and mourners from far and wide.
“It’s been so difficult for the families,” said Magda Maldonado, director of Continental Funeral Home. “They have been unable to express their condolences properly or participate in service.”
San Francisco Chronicle
Delta on the Edge
In a California landscape defined — and divided — by water, a single issue unites the people who live here: digging in against the tunnel.
In spring and summer, when the skies are warm and the shadows thin, California’s snowy Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades unleash billions of gallons of fresh water each day, a melted bounty that nourishes the state’s mightiest rivers before converging slowly on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Here, across a sun-baked plain of rickety towns and sprawling countryside, the cool water winds through streams and sloughs. It fills irrigation ditches that feed cornfields and vineyards. It flows through shallow bays flanked by wooden fishing piers and riverside homes. Finally, it’s pumped off to the sinks and showers of two-thirds of Californians, many giving little thought to where the water came from — and just how vulnerable the supply has become.
The delta is an unlikely frontier, and an even more improbable battleground. So close to the Bay Area, but apart. Hidden beyond freeways and tucked beneath the wide open of the Central Valley. Vital to the future, yet wrapped in the past.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia lieutenant governor shelves plan to study systemic inequality
As politicians and governments across the country respond to protests over racial injustice, Georgia’s lieutenant governor’s office said budget constraints and lack of interest stopped it from appointing a panel that in the coming months would have studied systemic inequality.
State Sen. Bruce Thompson filed a resolution to create the committee when lawmakers returned to the Capitol in June — after weeks of protests across the nation in response to footage of George Floyd dying when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly 10 minutes.
Senate Resolution 959 authorized the creation of a committee to study systemic “inequalities that are suffered by identifiable groups of persons.”
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan’s chief of staff, John Porter, called the resolution “awfully vague.”
“We weren’t sure what direction the issue could take,” Porter said. “At the end of the day, these matters deserve a much greater platform than a study committee in a compressed time frame.”
The Dallas Morning News
American Airlines chops 83,000 flights from its October schedule
American Airlines has cut 83,000 domestic flights from its October schedule during the last two weeks, even as it holds on to hope that another round of federal stimulus grants could save jobs and service to some cities.
Fort Worth-based American Airlines has cut its global schedule by 55% from a year ago for the October month, the company confirmed, including a 48% decrease in domestic flying as the COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of letting up and passengers show little eagerness to return to the skies.
It leaves American with about 99,000 flights for October, slightly more than it has planned for a slimmed down September schedule. The carrier continues to shrink its schedules the closer it gets to the actual month of flying, an indication of how tricky it is to forecast demand during a global health pandemic, said Jeff Pelletier, managing director of Dallas-based Airline Data Inc.
The New Orleans Advocate
After Hurricane Laura, evacuees to New Orleans scramble for assistance: 'We need food, clothes'
In the week since Hurricane Laura ravaged their homes and upended their lives, more than 10,000 southwest Louisiana evacuees made it to New Orleans, a city no stranger to the devastation hurricanes can cause.
But after avoiding — or in some cases, surviving — the calamities of the storm, they are now left to navigate a patchwork of local, state and federal agencies for everything from a daily meal and baby diapers to federal grants and assistance.
"We need food, clothes. I don't even have a gown to sleep in," said Mary Hotard, 80, of Cameron, who was waiting at the resource center at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center with her son on Wednesday. He had hurt his leg working on a tugboat and needed the cast removed. “I went through Rita and Ike. This is a lot worse.”
NPR News
At Voice of America, Trump Appointee Sought Political Influence Over Coverage
At the Voice of America, staffers say the Trump appointee leading their parent agency is threatening to wash away legal protections intended to insulate their news reports from political meddling.
"What we're seeing now is the step-by-step and wholescale dismantling of the institutions that protect the independence and the integrity of our journalism," says Shawn Powers, until recently the chief strategy officer for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA.
Voice of America's mission is a form of soft diplomacy: to embody democratic principles through fair reporting and to replace a free press in countries where there is none. VOA and its four sister networks together reach more than 350 million people abroad each week.
After Beirut Explosion, Lebanon Sees A Spike In Coronavirus Infections
Lebanon is seeing a dramatic increase in the spread of the coronavirus since last month's massive explosion at Beirut's port, which damaged much of the capital city. Since the Aug. 4 blast, the number of COVID-19 cases has increased by some 220%, according to an assessment by the International Rescue Committee.
"This is on top of everything else that people have to contend with," Matias Meier, the country director for the aid group, said in a statement. After the blast, many people "lost both their home and their source of income in an instant."
In the early months of the pandemic, Lebanon managed to keep the infection rate low by quickly imposing stay-at-home orders that were well enforced and included a strict curfew. Those orders were lifted and then reimposed several times.
The Guardian
Amazon tragedy repeats itself as Brazil rainforest goes up in smoke
Jair Bolsonaro smiles down from a propaganda billboard at the entrance to this scruffy Amazon outpost, welcoming travelers to his “route to development”.
But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after a devastating outbreak of Amazon fires caused global outrage – the fires are back, and many fear Brazil’s leader is instead steering his country towards environmental ruin. […]
“The Amazon is condemned to destruction,” despaired one former top official at Brazil’s enfeebled environmental agency, Ibama, accusing the far-right populist of overseeing a wholesale “demolition” of protection efforts.
Vaccine-derived polio spreads in Africa after defeat of wild virus
A new polio outbreak in Sudan has been linked to the oral polio vaccine that uses a weakened form of the virus. News of the outbreak comes a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that wild polio had been eradicated in Africa.
The WHO linked the cases to a strain of the virus that had been noted circulating in Chad last year and warned that the risk of spread to other parts of the Horn of Africa was high. […]
While so-called vaccine-derived polio is a known risk, the emergence of these cases so soon after the announced eradication of wild polio in Africa is a setback.
Deutsche Welle
Navalny poisoning: Confronting Russia, EU has limited options
Chancellor Angela Merkel has described the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, who is currently being treated at Berlin's Charite Hospital, as "attempted murder." Lab tests found that the nerve agent Novichok, which was developed in the Soviet Union, had "without a doubt" been used to poison the Russian opposition politician.
Merkel, joined by the European Union and NATO, has demanded an explanation from the Russian government. But the Kremlin has dismissed the accusations that Navalny was poisoned and said that it wants to examine the lab results. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has announced that Germany will confer with its partners on what an "appropriate answer" could be in the next few days.
In DC, US seeks to force new deal between Serbia and Kosovo
Twenty-one years have passed since NATO bombs drove Serbian forces out of Kosovo, where Slobodan Milosevic, the president of what remained of Yugoslavia, was carrying out a campaign of cleansing against the largely ethnic Albanian population. In 2008, Kosovo declared independence. About 100 countries currently recognize its sovereignty.
But the government of Serbia wants the former province back, claiming that the region's medieval monasteries and battlefields were the heart of Yugoslavia before the 1990s civil war. Kosovo's government wants full international recognition as an independent nation and [membership] in global organizations such as the United Nations. The EU has mediated the conflict since the 1990s but the sides have made little progress.
Now, the United States is turning up the heat, inviting the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia to travel to Washington, DC, in an effort to force a breakthrough. The calculus is clear: With Donald Trump skating from one diplomatic defeat to another, he is hoping that a deal before the US presidential election in November will give him the chance to present "a historic foreign policy success."
Vox
The federal government has banned some evictions. Here’s who is eligible for relief.
It’s a huge step that could help ward off a major homelessness crisis in America. But it’s also one that Democrats and housing advocates say is avoiding the root problem, which Congress could solve by passing a second round of pandemic-related financial stimulus, and one that could face significant legal challenges, to boot.
The public health agency invoked federal health law to impose the policy, saying “housing stability helps protect public health because homelessness increases the likelihood of individuals moving into congregate settings, such as homeless shelters, which then puts individuals at higher risk to COVID-19,” according to the order.
Under the ban, landlords would face criminal penalties for evicting qualifying tenants for nonpayment of rent. According to the policy, property owners are still allowed to evict for other reasons, such as illegal activity or destruction of property. The moratorium replaces a previous eviction ban that expired at the end of July.
The pandemic is forcing Democrats to ask: How important is door-knocking, anyway?
Among the many impossible-to-predict consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for the 2020 presidential campaign, this may be one of the most surprising: The Trump campaign is taking door-knocking much more seriously than the Biden campaign.
Door-to-door canvassing — where campaign workers knock on doors to either persuade residents to vote for their candidate or remind the already persuaded to turn out — is traditionally a strong suit of Democratic campaigns. “Field,” as it’s called, is where many leading party strategists, from 2008 Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to 2020 Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, came up. Political scientists have written whole books about Obama’s effort to mobilize millions of volunteers for field operations in 2008 and 2012. In 2016, the conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton was a heavy favorite to defeat Trump derived partly from a sense she had a better “ground game.”
But in 2020, the politics of Covid-19 mean that pattern is reversed. Trump is knocking on doors, and Biden just isn’t.
The Daily Beast
Postal Chiefs Warn: Workers’ ‘Heroic’ Efforts Won’t Save the Vote
The embattled leadership of the U.S. Postal Service warned its elections-integrity task force on Thursday about “issues in the supply chain,” particularly from printers, that risk voters not getting ballots and election mail, according to a recording of the inaugural meeting of the task force acquired by The Daily Beast.
"With the dramatic increase of ballots compared to previous elections, in some cases a tenfold increase in the number of ballots in some states, there are some issues in the supply chain,” a senior USPS official informed the group, which consisted of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and other senior USPS officials. […]
At least one USPS official who attended the task force meeting told The Daily Beast they considered USPS leadership’s warnings of supply-chain disruption ahead of the balloting to be a cover for leadership’s failures.
‘Increasingly Alarming’: Coronavirus Is Swamping Campuses Weeks After Reopening
Amidst a national debate on how to safely reopen schools during the coronavirus pandemic, several colleges and universities took the plunge, inviting students back to dorms and classrooms with strict health guidelines.
More than a third of the nation’s 5,000 higher education campuses have reopened, with students from out of state ordered to quarantine, masks mandated and routine self-checks for symptoms instituted across the board. To comply with social distancing guidelines, parties or large gatherings are forbidden.
But, just a few weeks into the fall semester, the experiment is faltering. Colleges and universities across the country are struggling to contain surges of COVID-19 cases on campus. As of Tuesday, more than 25,000 students and campus staff in at least 37 states had tested positive for the virus—mostly concentrated in southern states that were already struggling to contain a COVID-19 crisis.
Ars Technica
There’s a partisan schism over the timing of a Google antitrust lawsuit
Attorney General William Barr is pressuring the career lawyers at the Department of Justice to complete work on a potential antitrust case against Google by the end of September, The New York Times reports. It's the latest sign of a long-simmering dispute within the government about the timing and scope of the government's attack on the Silicon Valley behemoth.
Antitrust enforcement against Google has become a rare issue of broad bipartisan agreement. Fifty states and territories have joined a coalition preparing to bring its own antitrust lawsuit against Google. That means that most Republican-controlled states are participating in the effort, as are most Democratic-controlled states.
Liberals have traditionally favored vigorous enforcement of antitrust law across the economy. Conservatives have traditionally favored more restraint, but they seem particularly keen to enforce antitrust law against technology platforms they view as biased against conservatives.
NSA spying exposed by Snowden was illegal and not very useful, court says
The National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone metadata from telecom providers was illegal, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The court also found that the phone-metadata collection exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden was not necessary for the arrests of terror suspects in a case that the US government cited in defending the necessity of the surveillance program.
The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the 2013 convictions of "four members of the Somali diaspora for sending, or conspiring to send, $10,900 to Somalia to support a foreign terrorist organization." But the Somalis' challenge of the NSA spying program yielded some significant findings. In part, the ineffectiveness of the phone-metadata collection helped ensure that the convictions would be upheld because the illegally collected metadata evidence wasn't significant enough to taint evidence that was legally collected by the government. The government got what it needed from a wiretap of defendant Basaaly Saeed Moalin's phone, not from the mass collection of metadata.
The court's three-judge panel unanimously "held that the metadata collection exceeded the scope of Congress's authorization in 50 U.S.C. § 1861, which required the government to make a showing of relevance to a particular authorized investigation before collecting the records, and that the program therefore violated that section of FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]," the ruling said.
