PoliticsThe Daily BeastDon Jr. Didn’t Get the Memo About Raising Biden Expectations Before Debate
After weeks and months of President Donald Trump characterizing former Vice President Joe Biden as an senile old man who can't string two sentences together, his campaign has finally realized that they should start raising expectations for his performance at the first debate this Tuesday night. Apparently, Donald Trump Jr. didn't get the memo. The president's eldest son kicked off his Fox & Friends appearance by attacking CNN's Jake Tapper for not pressing Jill Biden harder on her husband's history of making “gaffes” during an interview on State of the Union Sunday.
U.S.The IndependentBreonna Taylor: Officer who may have fired fatal shot looking to retire after receiving 'countless threats'
A Kentucky police officer who may have fired the shot that killed Breonna Taylor is seeking to retire after receiving “countless threats”, his family has said. According to an online fundraising drive apparently organised by the family of Myles Cosgrove, it is no longer safe for the Louisville officer to remain in his job. It said his relatives were trying to raise enough money for him to stand down from the force, and take care of his family.
NewsUSA TODAYTeacher says he can no longer teach kindergarten after parent complained about tattoos
A heavily tattooed French schoolteacher said he was prevented from teaching kindergarten after a parent complained his appearance scared their child. Sylvain Helaine, 35, said the parent of a 3-year-old student at the Docteur Morere Elementary School in Palaiseau complained their son had nightmares after seeing him. Although the boy was not in his class, Helaine said he was removed from the classroom for two months and then prohibited from teaching children under the age of 6 years old.
- NewsKGO – San Francisco
Bay Area air quality expected to deteriorate: Here's when it will get bad
Most of the Bay Area has moderate air quality right now, but things are starting to head downhill. Here's when you might seeing - and smelling - smoky skies.
PoliticsThe WeekWhy a Biden blowout is still the most likely result
The 2016 election was always a much closer and more dynamic race, Trump was facing a much more unpopular opponent, and a much larger number of voters were undecided. None of those are the case this time. This year we have experienced a global pandemic which has so far killed over 200,000 Americans, a massive economic disruption, multiple Trump administration scandals, and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
NewsBusiness Insider'Motherf-----': Former Mueller prosecutor describes the moment his team nailed Paul Manafort for financial fraud
Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor on the special counsel Robert Mueller's team, vividly detailed in his upcoming book the moment he uncovered incriminating evidence against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. "Motherf-----," one FBI agent on Mueller's team said when Weissmann showed him what he'd found. Another prosecutor "let out a freewheeling hoot" when she saw the evidence, Weissmann writes.
CelebrityThe IndependentProfessor ripped for suggesting Amy Coney Barrett is a ‘White coloniser’ who uses two Black children as ‘props’
A Boston University professor was ripped for implying Amy Coney Barrett is a “white coloniser” who uses her two adopted Haitian children as “props.” Ibram X Kendi is now facing backlash and calls for his sacking after making the claims on social media. Ms Barrett, a white woman, has seven children including two Black children she and her husband adopted from the impoverished Caribbean island.
PoliticsNBC NewsI voted for Trump as soon as I became a citizen. Here's why I'm doing it again.
There, growing up under the privations of a communist regime, I learned — despite the best efforts of my teachers and the government's propaganda — to admire the United States of America, and I dreamed about one day having the God-given rights, like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the right to elect my own leaders, enshrined in and guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Then, as now, I didn't care about so-called political correctness when choosing a candidate; I realize many other Latinos favor more government involvement in our lives and young Latinos trend more liberal, but I'd had quite enough of groupthink in Cuba. Beyond that, Trump delivered on the 2016 campaign promises that were important to me then: He lowered taxes; he appointed judges to the federal bench who hew strictly to the Constitution; he has, at every turn, pushed for merit-based immigration; and he has rescinded a whole host of unnecessary regulations.
PoliticsThe Daily BeastTrump’s 2016 Campaign Listed Millions of Black Voters It Wanted to Stop From Voting, Leak Reveals
LONDON—Over three million Black voters in key states were identified by President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign as people they had to persuade to stay at home on Election Day to help him reach the White House. The revelation comes from an enormous data leak obtained by the British news network Channel 4. It shows that, four years ago, the Trump campaign prepared files on almost 200 million American voters and separated some out into eight different categories.
U.S.The IndependentWhite nationalist from Charlottesville rally nicknamed ‘Crying Nazi’ is charged with threatening to rape a woman
The white nationalist nicknamed the “Crying Nazi” after he was featured in a documentary about clashes in Charlottesville has been found guilty of extortion and threatening to rape a woman. Christopher Cantwell, 39, was convicted on Monday of one count of transmitting extortionate communications and one count of threatening to injure property or reputation, according to the US Attorney's Office for the District of New Hampshire. Federal prosecutors said Cantwell used the Telegram messaging app to threaten to rape a Missouri man's wife if he did not give him personal information about the leader of a white supremacist group called Bowl Patrol.
WorldAssociated PressFrench hospitals delay operations to cope with COVID surge
Hospitals in the Paris and Marseille regions are delaying some scheduled operations to free up space for COVID-19 patients as the French government tries to stem a rising tide of coronavirus infections, the health minister said Sunday. As restaurants and bars in Marseille prepared to shut down Sunday night for a week as part of scattered new French virus restrictions, Health Minister Olivier Veran insisted that the country plans no new lockdowns. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists proposed in Le Monde newspaper this weekend that France lock down its population for the first three weeks of December, to allow families to get together safely for the end-of-year holidays and “save Christmas.
WorldReutersVirus sows dread in India's festival season as infections cross six million
India reported on Monday that novel coronavirus infections had topped 6 million, nowhere near the number required for herd immunity in country of 1.3 billion people, and raising anxiety going into the peak period for Hindu religious festivals. India added a million cases in just 11 days, according to a Reuters tally of government data, and it has the second-highest number of infections, behind the United States which crossed 7 million last week. India's festival season, which climaxes in October and November with the popular Hindu celebrations of Dussehra and Diwali, poses additional challenges, as officials try to dampen the usual large public celebrations and cross-country travel.
HealthBusiness InsiderDr. Birx reportedly played a central role in pressuring CDC to advise for school reopening despite surges in coronavirus cases this summer
Documents obtained by The New York Times show officials in President Donald Trump's administration pressured the Centers for Disease Control to relax guidelines for school reopenings earlier this summer. Dr. Deborah Birx, a physician on the White House Coronavirus Task Force directly took a role in asking the CDC to include documents that undermined the threat of coronavirus to school-aged children in mid-July. In early July, Trump criticized the CDC for advising schools to not reopen.
PoliticsNational ReviewLindsey Graham Hints There is ‘More Damning’ Information about the Russia Investigation to be Released
Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) on Sunday said to “stay tuned” for more “damning” information after he released records showing the main source for the Steele dossier had previously been the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation for his connections with Russian intelligence. “There's a day of reckoning coming just stay tuned, and there's more coming, there's something else coming, more damning than this believe it or not,” said the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in an appearance on Fox News. As part of the Senate panel's probe into the Russia investigation, Graham released declassified documents that showed the FBI had investigated Igor Danchenko, British former intelligence officer Christopher Steele's main source for his dossier, as a possible “threat to national security” a decade ago as a result of his connections with Russian intelligence.
WorldThe IndependentPope Francis ‘refuses’ to meet with US Secretary of State after criticism of Vatican’s controversial China deal
Pope Francis has reportedly refused to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during his visit to Rome over a dispute between the Vatican and China. Mr Pompeo plans to visit the Vatican this week to protest the imminent renewal of a two-year-old deal between the Catholic church and China, which the secretary of state has claimed would endanger the church's moral authority. He is slated to meet with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the foreign minister for the Vatican.
BusinessReutersU.S. charges former Amazon manager and her family members with insider trading
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday charged a former finance manager at Amazon.com, Inc. and two of her family members with insider trading in advance of the company's earnings announcements between January 2016 and July 2018. The SEC alleged that Laksha Bohra, who worked as a senior manager in Amazon's tax department, acquired and tipped her husband Viky Bohra with highly confidential information about Amazon's financial performance. The complaint alleges that Viky Bohra and his father, Gotham Bohra, then traded on this confidential information, reaping illicit profits of approximately $1.4 million.
WorldAssociated PressConservatives lead in French Senate elections, Greens gain
France's main conservative party looked set to keep control of the Senate and the Greens made new gains in partial elections Sunday that posed a new challenge to President Emmanuel Macron's struggling centrist movement. Nearly half of the chamber's 348 seats were up for grabs in the vote, an indirect election in which some 90,000 local elected officials like city councilors choose the senators. As results gradually came in Sunday night, Senate President Gerard Larcher of the Republicans party tweeted that the center-right majority was intact, and that he would run for another term as Senate leader “to restore the confidence that our country so lacks.”
HealthThe WeekThe coronavirus may have 'one big trick.' Scientists are learning how to stop it.
The coronavirus appears to have "one big trick," Shane Crotty, a professor in the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told Bloomberg. Indeed, new studies published last week in Science found that an insufficient amount of interferon, the production of which may sometimes be inhibited in people with previously "silent" gene mutations and other times is actually disabled by a person's immune response, could signal a more dangerous infection. Writes Bloomberg, the work highlights the potential for interferon-based therapies, which are typically used in in the early stages of a viral infection when it's easier to avoid life-threatening respiratory failure.
WorldReutersKey Pakistan opposition figure's arrest political, party says
Pakistan's anti-graft agency arrested the parliamentary leader of the opposition on corruption charges on Monday after a court rejected a plea for bail, a move his party says is linked to planned opposition protests against Prime Minister Imran Khan. Shehbaz Sharif, a former chief minister of Punjab province and younger brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was arrested outside the Lahore court, his lawyer, Azam Nazir Tarar, said. The charges are linked to alleged money laundering to buy properties abroad, Tarar said.
- NewsKTRK – Houston
Two former Texans and Houston trainer indicted for health care fraud
The men are accused of submitting false medical claims to a trust fund which was created to provide health benefits for former players.
HealthBusiness InsiderElon Musk says he and his family won't get a coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his family aren't planning to get a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available, he told The New York Times' Kara Swisher in an episode of the podcast "Sway" published Monday. There is no evidence Musk and his family are any less susceptible to the highly contagious virus that has so far killed more than 200,000 Americans of all ages. Musk has been outspoken about the coronavirus crisis since the outset and has frequently disputed both the data around the virus as well as the government's response to it, particularly stay-at-home orders.
PoliticsNational ReviewPennsylvania GOP Chairman Claims He Was Taken Out of Context in Atlantic Story on Trump Stealing Election
He told National Review it is true he was the one who broached the subject with Tabas of having the legislature directly appoint electors, but he denied taking Tabas out of context. He said he never reported that Tabas was actually planning to appoint electors, only that he's discussed the possibility with the Trump campaign. Tabas may be attempting to clarify his position, or “adding things maybe he wished he'd said,” Gellman wrote in his Twitter message.
WorldAssociated PressMorocco faces down COVID spread with tough rules
With air and sea borders closed for months and eight cities barring people from entering or leaving, Morocco has been pulling out the stops to stanch the spread of coronavirus. Still, the kingdom on the Atlantic coast, a magnet for tourists in better times, has registered more than 110,000 positive cases since March and has a death toll of 2,041 — the highest among its North African neighbors. Morocco first decreed lockdown measures on March 20, but has been gradually easing restrictions.
PoliticsThe WeekReport: Financial records appear to show Ivanka Trump got 'consulting fees' to reduce father's tax bill
Tax records obtained by The New York Times appear to show that President Trump reduced his taxable income by treating his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, as a consultant, then deducting this as a business expense. The Times reports that Trump Organization tax records show between 2010 and 2018, President Trump wrote off as business expenses $26 million in "consulting fees." The consultants are not listed by name, but the Times compared the tax records to financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she started working at the White House in 2017 as a senior adviser to her father.
CelebrityTODAY'Cake Boss' gets emotional recounting son’s heroics during gruesome bowling machine accident
"Cake Boss" Buddy Valastro grew emotional on TODAY Monday as he recounted how his teen sons jumped into action after the celebrity baker's hand was impaled by a machine in the family's home bowling alley. "I thought I was going to faint, I looked at my hand and there was blood everywhere and I was stuck, the rod going back and forth because the machine goes back and forth," Valastro told Savannah Guthrie from his New Jersey home. Something told me to stay calm.
“Enfranchising 16-year-olds would be good for them and good for our democracy.”
“At 16, most kids have little awareness of politics, civics, or American history.”
“Voting is habit forming...which underscores the importance of having as stable an environment as possible for the youngest voters.”
“Keeping the voting age at 18 is not a slap at 16-year-olds. It is recognition that an informed electorate is the best kind.”
“When young people’s participation lags badly, issues important to them receive short shrift in the public discourse.”