McConnell, Graham, others in GOP break from Trump to vow peaceful transition of power

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other prominent GOP lawmakers have broken from President Donald Trump's comments about transition of power if he loses the November election. Well, we're going to have to see what happens,” Trump told reporters Wednesday when asked whether he'd commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses on Election Day. Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful — there won't be a transfer, frankly.

• 
  Top U.S. Republicans pledge peaceful transition as Trump sows election doubts

  Reuters
• 
  Bernie Sanders details Trump's efforts to steal election in urgent call to action

  The Independent

Pregnant woman rescues husband from shark attack in Florida

A pregnant woman dived into the sea in the Florida Keys to save her husband from an attacking shark. Police said Andrew Charles Eddy, 30, was snorkelling on Sombrero Reef but was bitten by the shark almost immediately after entering the water. His wife, Margot Dukes-Eddy, saw the shark's dorsal fin and her husband's blood filling the water, and dived in "without hesitation", officials said.

• 
  Pregnant woman saves husband from shark attack after seeing 'blood filling the water'

  The Independent
• 
  Pregnant woman pulls husband to safety after shark attack

  AOL Associated Press

GOP Sen. Cory Gardner stayed mum on meatpacking coronavirus outbreaks as he received industry donations

Early in the pandemic, meatpacking factories' close quarters became home to massive COVID-19 outbreaks throughout the country. An outbreak at the JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado led to at least 291 confirmed cases and six deaths — the biggest localized outbreak in the state. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) explicitly called for an investigation at the facility, as did a JBS employee union, which called out Gardner for failing to provide promised coronavirus tests for workers.

The USPS claimed it can't restore some mail sorting machines because it 'dismantled' them

The US Postal Service claimed in a court filing Wednesday that it has already taken apart high-speed mail sorting machines and therefore can't put them back into service. The USPS claimed it was "not possible" to restore machines it had "dismantled" for parts, only those that had merely been "disconnected." A federal judge issued an injunction last week requiring the USPS to reverse those and other changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, calling them an "an intentional effort" by Trump and DeJoy "to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections."

Democrats, not Republicans, are hypocrites on filling SCOTUS seat

In 2016, President Obama appointed Merrick Garland to fill the seat left vacant by the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that “Article II, Section II of the Constitution grants the Senate the right to withhold its consent, as it deems necessary” and that tradition holds that when a Supreme Court vacancy exists in an election year when there is a president of one party and a Senate controlled by the other, the nomination should wait until after the election. 11 Republican Senators, in a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, wrote in February of 2016 that you have to go back to 1888 “in order to find an election year nominee who was nominated and confirmed under divided government, as we have now.”

• 
  Trump won’t commit to peaceful transfer of power — so what could happen if he loses?

  Miami Herald
• 
  GOP voters give mixed views on power transfer remark

  Reuters Videos

Chen Qiushi: Chinese journalist missing since February 'under state supervision'

A Chinese citizen journalist who disappeared in February after reporting on the outbreak of the coronavirus has been found, a friend has said. The whereabouts of Chen Qiushi have not been known since he was allegedly "quarantined by force". A friend has now uploaded a video to YouTube saying he is in "good health" but is under government supervision.

A nightmare comes true for 12 Hong Kongers arrested at sea, now in Chinese detention

Word came on Aug. 26: The Chinese coast guard had stopped a boat reportedly headed toward Taiwan and taken 12 Hong Kongers on board into detention. “He is trapped in another hell,” said the girlfriend, who spoke on condition of using only her first name, Alice, and withholding her boyfriend's name for fear of retribution under a new national security law recently imposed on Hong Kong to silence dissent as China tightens its hold on the former British colony. A month has passed since the “Hong Kong 12,” as they have been nicknamed in the city, were detained for alleged illegal border crossing in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, just over an hour's drive from Hong Kong but a world away in terms of legal protections.

2 Black Lives Matter demonstrators are facing life in prison. Experts say the 'deeply disturbing' potential sentences are an 'unprecedented' form of government overreach.

Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman are facing life in prison after officials said they lit a police van on fire with a Molotov cocktail at a Black Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn in May. Experts told Insider that the charges are "unprecedented" and "deeply disturbing." Early on the morning of May 30, New York police officers arrested two lawyers during a Black Lives Matter protest.

Forget rooftop pools and private yoga rooms — the most important new luxury home amenity is a state-of-the-art air filtration system

Real estate agents in California have seen a surge of requests from clients for homes that come with high-quality air filtration, reports The Los Angeles Times' Sean Dean. California has been battling historic wildfires that have severely worsened air quality. The country also continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic, and as people are spending more time in their homes, the wealthy want to ensure that the air inside is as clean as it can be.

PMC Bank collapse: 'We lost our money and then our son'

When India's Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank (PMC) went under in 2019, nearly a million depositors were cut off from their life's savings. On 20 September, 2019, Raunak Modi deposited all his money - and that of his family's - in an account they held in PMC bank. The money he deposited in PMC bank also included a large amount he got after selling his house in Mumbai.

UAE reopens all seven regions to foreign visitors

The United Arab Emirates will resume issuing visas to foreign visitors to all seven of its regions as of Thursday after a six-month suspension imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported. Dubai, the region's tourism and business hub and one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, had already lifted its own visa ban in July. The Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship said in a statement carried in state media that the decision was taken as part of the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in the Gulf state as well as efforts to support economic recovery plans.

Feds put first Black inmate to death since execution restart

A man who killed a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa was executed Thursday, the first Black inmate put to death as part of the Trump administration's resumption of federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause. Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead shortly before 7 p.m. EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. After robbing and locking Todd and Stacie Bagley in the trunk of their car, the then-19-year-old Vialva shot them in the head and burned their bodies in the car.

• 
  First black inmate put to death since Trump administration resumed executions

  The Independent
• 
  U.S. executes first Black man since resumption of federal death penalty

  Reuters

'Smoke with freedom': Mexicans get high in marijuana garden outside Senate

A cannabis 'garden' sprouting next to Mexico's Senate building has become a smoker's paradise, with Mexican stoners lighting up joints without fear of arrest. The cannabis seeds sowed in a plaza by Mexico's Senate by pro-marijuana activists in February have mushroomed into strikingly large plants, and become symbolic of a drive to legalize marijuana in a nation riven by drugs-related violence. "Being able to smoke here (in the garden) in freedom is very important to me," said Marco Flores, a barista sitting on a bench overlooking the Congress building.

U.S.-Trained Forces Are Raping Women in Cameroon—and Rebels Are Beheading Them

IKOM, Nigeria—Lucy was contemplating closing early for the day when soldiers—believed to be from the Cameroon government's notorious Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR)—stormed her shop in the northwestern Cameroon town of Bamenda at the end of August, dragged her outside, asked her to take off the shirt she was wearing, and forced her to sit on the bare ground for hours. “When I asked them what I had done wrong, one of them gave me a terrible slap and began to kick me all over my body,” Lucy, who sells foodstuffs close to a market in Bamenda, told The Daily Beast via telephone. On the same day Lucy was brutalized by government forces in Bamenda, about 80 other women—mostly traders at the local food market—were detained at a police station for three days, many of them beaten and wounded by soldiers who were searching for English-speaking separatists following the killing of a police officer days before.

Biden is slightly healthier, study says, but both presidential candidates may be 'super-agers'

The presidential candidates and their supporters will likely keep belittling the other guy as a doddering old fool, but a group of geriatric experts say in a new paper that both President Trump and challenger Joe Biden appear to have the physical and cognitive tools to make it through four years in the White House. In fact, the two candidates' relative good health and other advantages — parental longevity, access to top-notch healthcare and abstinence from smoking and drinking — suggest both men are likely to become long-living “super-agers,” who thrive well into their 80s, or beyond, according to a draft report written by three medical doctors and four researchers with expertise in public health, survival analysis and statistics. Three of the authors of the paper — Stuart Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Dr. Bradley Willcox, director of research in the Department of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Hawaii's medical school; and UCLA Professor Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, an authority on the demographics of aging — wrote previously about how presidents tend to outlive average Americans.

Moscow mayor urges more home-working as Russia's new COVID cases hit three-month high

The mayor of Moscow urged businesses on Friday to get more people to work from home as Russia's daily tally of new coronavirus cases hit its highest since June 23. In Moscow, the tally of new cases rose almost 50% overnight to 1,560 from 1,050 the previous day. Russia lifted many of its lockdown restrictions in June and many shops, businesses and public transport in the capital of more than 12.5 million people are operating largely as normal.

• 
  Coronavirus UK: Highest ever daily total as 6,634 new infections recorded

  The Independent
• 
  Moscow mayor orders elderly to stay home as virus rebounds

  AFP

Falling highway sign crushes passing pickup truck, kills driver, Ohio police say

A driver was killed in Ohio Thursday morning after a highway sign tumbled and crushed his truck, police say. A dump truck was leaving an interstate construction site in Cleveland when it struck a highway sign on westbound I-480, WEWS reported. The dump truck's bed was raised, which caused it to hit the sign, according to Cleveland.com.

Trump advisor diagnosed with head cancer following leave of absence

Michael Caputo, the top spokesman at the Department of Health and Human Services who recently took temporary leave from his position after he accused the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of sedition, has been diagnosed with cancer, a spokesperson has said. The spokesperson for Mr Caputo, David DiPietro, a Republican state assemblyman in western New York, said in a statement on Thursday that doctors had diagnosed the official with a metastatic head and neck cancer or "squamous cell carcinoma” that originated in his throat, reports said.

Trump Campaign Uses Russian Footage in Ad—Again

An advertisement for President Donald Trump's reelection campaign emphasizes that he is the only candidate whose economic plan will be “made in the USA”—but part of the ad itself was made in Russia. Eight seconds into Trump's latest ad boosting his work on the economy, wordily titled “We built the greatest economy in world history and now we're doing it again!”, the spot cuts from standard images of factory workers in hard hats and children playing in fields to a conveyor belt with cardboard boxes digitally superimposed with the label “MADE IN USA.” The Trump campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment about the source of the footage, has previously run into trouble with the use of B-roll in its digital and on-air advertisements.

GOP elections board members in NC resign over absentee deal

The two Republican members of North Carolina's state elections board have resigned after signing off on a legal settlement to alter absentee ballot rules for this fall. Ken Raymond and David Black informed the State Board of Elections late Wednesday of the resignation, each citing in part frustration with the tentative agreement filed in court earlier this week that aimed to end litigation filed by advocacy groups and voters. The full five-member board — Raymond, Black, and the three Democratic appointees — had signed off on the settlement last week, according to state board Chair Damon Circosta.

• 
  Allegheny Co. Sending Out Mail-In Ballots

  CBS-Pittsburgh
• 
  Make your vote count by avoiding these common mistakes

  WTVD – Raleigh/Durham

China prepares to declare victory in global vaccine race - and assures the world theirs is safe

This sprawling new facility in south Beijing is already producing thousands of doses per day of a coronavirus vaccine developed by SinoVac, which the Chinese pharmaceutical firm says will be rolled-out across the world early next year. Sinovac is one of four Chinese vaccines in last-stage human trials, a higher number than any other nation in the world. “Our goal is to provide the vaccine to the world, including the US, EU and others,” CEO Yin Weidong said this week, though it remains to be seen if the company can win approval in Western countries with tough regulatory processes.

• 
  Kids May Not Get a COVID Vaccine Until Fall 2021 — at the Earliest

  Fatherly
• 
  Black Physicians to Independently Test the Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines

  The Root