- U.S.Yahoo News
Why a Black man from Louisiana is serving a life sentence for stealing hedge clippers
According to Louisiana law, the crime of attempted simple burglary carries no more than 12 years behind bars, but because the 1997 offense was his fourth felony, Bryant, who is Black, received a life sentence in 2000. The justices declined to review the sentence, which was upheld by the state appeals court in 2019, according to the decision. One justice recused himself.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Conspiracy-mongering Republican seeking John Lewis seat gets social media boost from Trump
On Thursday evening, amid a fairly typical burst of presidential Twitter activity, President Trump retweeted two recent posts from the account of Angela Stanton-King, a Republican congressional candidate who has repeatedly used her social media feeds to promote content related to QAnon and other fringe conspiracy theories, including wildly implausible internet rumors about sex trafficking of children. Trump has also flirted with QAnon memes on social media, although his retweets of Stanton-King were not related to the loosely knit group whose followers have been described by the FBI as “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists.” In the first tweet, which was originally posted last week, Stanton-King describes herself as “a proud Black woman who supports @realDonaldTrump” and is “done with the Democrat Party lying to my community.”
- U.S.The Independent
Coronavirus: Nine test positive at Georgia school where photo of crowded corridor went viral
Nine people have tested positive for Covid-19 at a Georgia high school just days after a photo of a packed hallway went viral. Six students and three staff members who were at North Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia last week have tested positive, according to a letter sent to parents on Saturday. The letter stated: "We have anticipated that Covid-19 would impact us as it has nearly every community, and the district has worked in partnership with the Department of Public Health (DPH) to proactively implement safety precautions and response plans.
- WorldBusiness Insider
New Zealand has now gone 100 days with no new local COVID-19 cases — and it hasn't been on lockdown since June
New Zealand just marked 100 days with no new domestic COVID-19 cases. All restrictions on New Zealand businesses were lifted by June, but its borders remain closed to outside visitors. Now, bars, restaurants, and sporting events are open for business across New Zealand — but health officials say they're staying vigilant for another possible outbreak.
- WorldAssociated Press
Is France helping Lebanon, or trying to reconquer it?
It was almost as if Emmanuel Macron forgot that Lebanon is no longer a French protectorate. Visiting explosion-ravaged Beirut this week, France's leader comforted distraught crowds, promised to rebuild the city and claimed that the blast pierced France's own heart. “France will never let Lebanon go,” Macron said.
- PoliticsNational Review
Should Judge Sullivan Be Disqualified from Flynn Case? An Appeals Court Is Asking
At the time, that court's three-judge panel had not yet heard oral argument on Michael Flynn's mandamus petition — i.e., Flynn's request that the panel find that federal district judge Emmet Sullivan was acting lawlessly. Sullivan had not only failed to grant the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn; he had appointed a former federal judge (the overtly anti-Trump John Gleeson) to posit the argument abandoned by DOJ — to wit, that Flynn should proceed to sentencing because he had pled guilty to a false-statements charge, waiving his right to contest the case any further in exchange for the government's agreement not to file any other charges.
- PoliticsYahoo News Video
Trump allows some unemployment pay and defers payroll tax
President Trump on Saturday claimed the authority to defer payroll taxes and replace an expired unemployment benefit with a smaller amount after negotiations with Congress on a new COVID-19 rescue package collapsed.
- WorldBBC
MV Wakashio: Mauritius declares emergency as stranded ship leaks oil
The island nation of Mauritius has declared a "state of environmental emergency" after a vessel offshore began leaking oil into the ocean. MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off the Indian Ocean island on 25 July and its crew was evacuated. But the large bulk carrier has since begun leaking tons of fuel into the surrounding waters.
- U.S.AFP
Head of US Christian college steps aside in flap over photo
Jerry Falwell Jr. has taken an indefinite leave of absence as president of a prominent US evangelical university amid a furor over an Instagram picture of him and a young woman, both with pants partly unzipped. The 58-year-old Falwell, whose father was one of the country's best-known televangelists and who founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, is stepping aside at the request of the school's trustees. A terse statement Friday from the Christian university said the trustees' executive committee had asked Falwell to "take an indefinite leave of absence from his roles as President and Chancellor of Liberty University, to which he has agreed, effective immediately."
- U.S.Miami Herald
It is the state’s largest PPP loan scheme. Three from South Florida have been charged
Three South Florida people have been charged with collaborating in a $24 million loan scheme to bilk a federal program meant to aid businesses ailing from the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said. It is the state's largest alleged fraud case involving the Small Business Administration's relief program. The defendants, arrested this week and granted bonds in Fort Lauderdale federal court, are accused of submitting 90 loan applications to the SBA's Paycheck Protection Program that Congress authorized after the virus struck the country in March.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Trump calls audience at his Bedminster golf club a 'peaceful protest'
At a surprise press briefing Friday at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., President Trump said his audience of well-to-do supporters was involved in a “peaceful protest” and therefore did not need to adhere to state coronavirus guidelines prohibiting large gatherings. Trump was asked about his earlier assertion that the pandemic was “disappearing” by a reporter who noted that the crowd in attendance seemed to be violating New Jersey restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus. “You're wrong on that because it's a political activity and they have exceptions, political activity and it's also a peaceful protest,” Trump responded.
- U.S.The Independent
New York is moving homeless people into luxury hotels to protect them against coronavirus and wealthy neighbourhoods aren't happy
But in recent days, residents of some wealthier areas of New York where some of the hotels are located have complained about what they describe as anti-social behaviour and drug use by homeless people in their neighbourhoods. In the Upper West Side, where the median house price is more than $1.8m, some residents have started a Facebook group to express their displeasure over the use of three high-end hotels in the area. Our community is terrified, angry and frightened,” one member of the 'Upper West Siders For Safer Streets' group told the New York Post.
- U.S.Business Insider
A 17-year-old high school student developed an app that records your interaction with police when you're pulled over and immediately shares it to Instagram and Facebook
Aaditya Agrawal A 17-year-old New Jersey high school student has developed an Android app that allows users to record their interactions with police and then notify a loved one or share it to social media, like Instagram. Aaditya Agrawal told Business Insider that he was compelled to create the app in part after a close friend of his, who is Black, was pulled over without cause. "You see it in the news all the time, but when it happens to one of your close friends — and he tells you how it felt for that to happen to him — then you understand the significance," he said.
- U.S.Associated Press
Remains recovered after California Marine tank sinks
Authorities on Friday recovered the bodies of nine people killed when a Marine landing craft sank in hundreds of feet of water off the Southern California coast, authorities said. The remains of seven Marines and a Navy sailor were found after underwater salvage operations that followed the sinking on July 30. They will be flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to be prepared for burial by mortuary affairs teams, according to a statement Friday night from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
- ScienceThe Guardian
Nasa to change 'harmful' and insensitive' planet and galaxy nicknames
Nasa has signaled it is joining the social justice movement by changing unofficial and potentially contentious names used by the scientific community for distant cosmic objects and systems such as planets, galaxies and nebulae. In a statement last week, the space agency said that as the “community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful”. Nasa added that it is “examining its use of unofficial terminology for cosmic objects as part of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion”.
- U.S.NBC News
A white person and a Black person vote by mail. Whose ballot is more likely to be rejected?
But the changes that states are scrambling to make ahead of November to help protect voters from COVID-19 — expanding their mail and absentee voting systems while reducing the number of polling locations — risk supersizing the issues of racial discrimination and disenfranchisement that Black, Hispanic and other voters of color have already spent generations fighting. The cause was dear to the late Rep. John Lewis, the longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia and a giant of the civil rights movement, who was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for marching in support of voting rights in March of 1965 at a time when poll taxes and literacy tests were written into law.
- U.S.USA TODAY
250 students and staff quarantined in Georgia school district after one week of school
After only one week of school, more than 250 students and teachers from one Georgia school district will be quarantined for two weeks after several teachers and students tested positive for COVID-19, according to the district's website. Cherokee County School District, which is just north of Atlanta, is sharing regular updates on coronavirus cases in its schools on its website. As of Friday, at least 11 students, ranging in age from first to 12th grade, and two staff members from various elementary, middle and high schools, have tested positive for the virus, prompting the school to send almost 250 students and staff home for 14 days due to possible exposure.
- WorldThe Telegraph
Kim Jong-un sends aid to North Korean border city in lockdown
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the distribution of aid to the border city of Kaesong after the area was locked down last month to fight the coronavirus, state media said on Sunday. Authorities raised the state of emergency to the maximum level for the city in July, saying they had discovered the country's first suspected virus case. A train carrying goods arrived in the "totally blocked" city of Kaesong on Friday, the official KCNA news agency reported.
- U.S.Time
Police Officer Fired After Allegedly Mishandling Explicit Photos of Slain University of Utah Student
A police officer in Logan, Utah, was fired after a state investigation concluded he “mishandled” explicit photographs that were used to extort University of Utah student Lauren McCluskey, the Logan Police Department announced Friday. In October 2018, 21-year-old McCluskey told the University of Utah Police Department that her ex-boyfriend Melvin Rowland was extorting her for money by threatening to release explicit photographs of her. She then sent those photographs to Officer Miguel Deras, the on-duty campus police officer, according to a report summarizing the Utah Department of Public Safety's (UDPS) investigation into Deras' conduct.
- U.S.Yahoo News
Bars over schools: Why your kids will probably learn from home this fall
But he has not provided any federal guidance on how, exactly, schools can reopen safely and what the federal government will do in order to ensure that they are safely able to do so. Everyone is looking to our federal government to show some leadership here,” Duncan told lawmakers on Thursday, adding that it was unfair to ask school superintendents to make “life-or-death public health decisions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did issue a nine-page checklist for schools, but it contains broad, sometimes obvious recommendations, such as appointing a person to consult “local health officials about the school's approach to planning for COVID-19.
- WorldBBC
India landslide: Dozens feared dead after flooding in Kerala
At least 22 people have been killed after monsoon-season floods triggered a landslide in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Houses in Idukki district were swept away after torrential rain and flooding late on Friday night. Rescuers have been recovering bodies from under debris but 44 people remain missing, Idduki MP Dean Kuriakose told the BBC.
- BusinessBusiness Insider
After Elon Musk criticized Bernie Sanders' brand of socialism, Sanders took him to task for taking billions of dollars in government support
Andy Clayton King/AP Photo Bernie Sanders and Elon Musk got into a tiny tussle on Twitter Friday over "socialism." Sanders on Thursday introduced a bill that would place a 60% tax on the wealth gained during the coronavirus crisis by billionaires including Musk and use the money raised to pay all American's out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for a year. In response to an article about the bill, Musk tweeted out a meme that essentially criticized Sanders for spending other people's money to fund "free government programs."
- WorldAssociated Press
A father, a sister, a son: Beirut blast takes a heavy toll
A DOTING HUSBAND AND FATHER Soha Saade and her husband, Jihad Saade, were at Saint George Hospital, caring for their 6-year-old daughter, Gemma, who was being treated for Hodgkin lymphoma. The daughter had one more day of treatments left at the hospital before they were scheduled to leave. They saw smoke billowing outside and Soha went with nurses to see if there was any reason for worry.
- U.S.The Independent
Woman confronting vandals covered in paint during renewed Portland protests
Protesters in Portland allegedly threw white paint over a woman, as demonstrators clashed with police for a third consecutive day. On Friday, following two days of protests marred by vandalism, more than 200 people clashed with police, as two other Black Lives Matter protests marched peacefully through the city. As the peaceful demonstrations took place, a separate group gathered at a park in east Portland and marched to the local precinct.
- U.S.Miami Herald
Coronavirus won’t stop Souls to the Polls in Florida — but it will look different
This election, Black faith leaders are encouraging parishioners to vote on either Sunday before the primary on Aug. 18. And instead of lining up to vote inside polling places, some churches are encouraging their members to drive this Sunday to early voting centers and deposit mail ballots at outdoor drop boxes instead of sending them through the U.S. Postal Service. The deadline to request a mail ballot is 5 p.m.
“It may be a campaign tactic, but older workers, be forewarned. Ageism runs deep in our culture.”
“Genuine concerns about the capacities of people who want the world’s most powerful job mingle bizarrely with insults.”
“Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both old. But the media should not be making mental illness a campaign issue, on either side.”
“The Trump campaign is now betting his reelection’s already slim chances on Biden proving Trump’s diagnosis is right.”
“The nightmare scenario for Democrats is that, at a pivotal moment, Biden will struggle to put together a coherent thought.”