Zimbabwe: Elephants die from 'bacterial disease'

More than 30 elephants were found lying on their stomachs, according to wildlife officials.

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Trump admits greenhouse gases contribute to climate change 'to an extent'

For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump acknowledged that human-generated greenhouse gases contributes to climate change.

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People with irregular or unusually long menstrual cycles may have a higher risk of dying young

Menstruation hormone disruptions may be linked to risk of dying from cardiovascular illness, higher chance of other health problems, says a new study

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Biden Staffer Suggests ‘Intolerant’ Views of Orthodox Catholics, Jews, Muslims Should Disqualify Them from Supreme Court

A staffer on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign on Monday suggested that Orthodox Catholics, Jews and Muslims should not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court because of their “intolerant” beliefs.The comments came during a Twitter conversation between Biden campaign deputy data director Nikitha Rai and Brookings Institute senior fellow Shadi Hamid in which Rai attacked Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic beliefs. A search for Rai's Twitter account now yields a message saying, "This account doesn't exist."Hamid had responded to a tweet that said Barrett was a trustee at a Catholic school that opposed same-sex marriage as homosexual acts are "at odds with Scripture." Hamid replied, “Wait, why is this news? Isn’t this the standard position for any orthodox Catholic?” “Unfortunately yes,” Rai said. When Hamid pointed out that Orthodox Muslims and Jews generally hold the same view, Rai said, “True. I’d heavily prefer views like that not be elevated to SCOTUS, but unfortunately our current culture is relatively intolerant. It will be awhile before those types of beliefs are so taboo that they’re disqualifiers.”> Here’s a @JoeBiden staffer saying that orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Judaism should be made “taboo” and driven from the public sphere. Beneath all the talk of “interfaith” and “pluralism,” this is what they really believe. pic.twitter.com/PrN8S1qaLG> > -- Jeremy McLellan (@JeremyMcLellan) September 29, 2020The former vice president often touts his Catholic faith on the campaign trail, though critics note that some of Biden’s positions — such as his support for abortion and same-sex marriage — stand in opposition to Catholic teachings.Barrett’s faith has been widely scrutinized in the media as “extreme” and cult-like since the president announced he would nominate the 48-year-old Notre Dame professor to fill the vacancy on the Court left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Barrett, a former clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, has been attacked for her faith for years now, beginning with her 2017 confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee when Democrats questioned whether her Catholicism should disqualify her from being a judge.“Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said at the time.“The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein added. “And that’s of concern.”

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Voters react to first 2020 presidential debate

The latest CBS News Battleground Tracker polls show how Americans are responding to the first presidential debate. CBS News Elections and Surveys Director Anthony Salvanto joined CBSN's Elaine Quijano on "Red and Blue" to discuss the results.

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The Trump Campaign Is Quietly Purging Brad Parscale From Their Website

President Donald Trump’s campaign still won’t clarify the status of its erstwhile campaign manager Brad Parscale, who was taken into custody by police outside of his Florida home over the weekend. But the campaign is quietly purging its website of Parscale’s presence.Since Tuesday, the campaign has removed a video of Parscale from the homepage of its “Army for Trump” election monitoring operation. It also deleted a page on the main campaign website featuring a video of Parscale and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and senior campaign adviser. The video of their discussion, billed as a Q&A on the state of the campaign, has also been removed from YouTube. Those deletions were first flagged on Twitter by the writer Jeryl Bier.One Trump campaign page discussing the event with Lara Trump remained online as of Wednesday morning. After The Daily Beast flagged it in a comment request sent to the campaign, that page was removed as well.The campaign did not respond to that comment request, which sought to clarify Parscale’s role with the Trump reelect and determine whether he remains an employee or consultant. He was Trump’s campaign manager until July, when he was replaced by former White House political director Bill Stepien. Parscale remained in a senior role for the campaign.The apparent effort to scrub Parscale from campaign web properties comes in the wake of a police incident outside his home on Sunday. According to the police report, Parscale’s wife called authorities to report that he was threatening to commit suicide, had loaded a firearm in front of her, and had physically assaulted her during a prior domestic dispute.Body camera footage showed police tackling and handcuffing Parscale as they detained him under a Florida law that allows authorities to involuntarily commit someone who is believed to be a danger to himself or others.The Trump campaign initially released a statement saying, “Our thoughts are with Brad and his family as we wait for all the facts to emerge.” It followed up with another statement that used the incident to criticize the president’s political opponents. “The disgusting, personal attacks from Democrats and disgruntled RINOs have gone too far, and they should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to this man and his family,” Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director, said.The incident marked a dramatic downfall for a man widely credited with an instrumental role in Trump’s 2016 election victory. Parscale, a digital vendor from Texas, was plucked out of obscurity and installed as the campaign’s digital director. His profile was even high enough that the Trump campaign purchased about $340,000 in Facebook and Instagram ads that ran on Parscale’s own pages on those sites.But Parscale’s central role on the 2020 campaign in particular has also drawn criticism and scrutiny, particularly over tens of millions of dollars in funds spent through entities owned, run, or otherwise tied to Parscale. In June, the Trump campaign reportedly initiated an internal audit to determine whether he had mispent significant amounts of campaign money.That scrutiny has also targeted Parscale’s personal life and his increasingly lavish spending on homes, boats, and sports cars. Parscale and the campaign have consistently denied that he misspent campaign money or used it for personal gain.In the wake of his detention over the weekend, the Daily Mail reported that Parscale was “under investigation” for pocketing as much as $50 million from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. But the story did not specify who exactly was doing the investigating, and the campaign and the RNC both denied the report.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get 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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Father and son chase and shoot at two teens riding ATVs, Mississippi police say

Police are looking into possible hate crime charges

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U.S. renews pressure on Europe to ditch Huawei in new networks

Telecoms company Huawei Technologies is part of China's surveillance state, complicit in human rights abuses, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday, as Washington renewed pressure on Europe to ban the company from fifth-generation (5G) networks. Keith Krach, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, stepped up warnings as Germany and Italy consider their next-generation mobile networks, in his first tour of European capitals since the COVID-19 pandemic hindered travel in March. Huawei [HWT.UL] is "an arm of the CCP surveillance state and a tool for human rights abuse," Krach told a German Marshall Fund think-tank event, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

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McConnell shields Judge Amy Coney Barrett from questions about election outcome as she meets with senators

The Senate majority leader refused to answer if Ms Barrett should recuse herself from election-focused cases

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China Accelerates Its Crackdown on Foreign Journalists

These days, foreign journalists are facing unprecedented challenges in China.A March report from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) finds that in 2019, “82% of [foreign] reporters [in China] experienced interference or harassment or violence while reporting. . . . 43% said digital/physical surveillance affected reporting. And 70% reported interviews cancelled due to actions taken by Chinese authorities.” The FCCC also finds that Chinese authorities continue to restrict foreign journalists’ access to certain parts of China, including Xinjiang, where millions of Uighur Muslims languish in internment camps. The most striking finding of the report, however, is that not even a single foreign journalist said working conditions in China had improved from 2018 to 2019.It seems that this state of affairs has only gotten worse in 2020. Just this week, the Washington Post’s Anna Fifield published a story about the difficulties she’d faced as a foreign reporter in China. “Reporting in China increasingly feels like reporting in North Korea,” she tweeted. Beijing has expelled around 17 foreign journalists this year, including 15 Americans, and is threatening to expel more. Chinese authorities also continue to punish some foreign journalists by refusing to renew their visas.In August, Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen of Chinese descent who worked for the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN), was detained by Chinese authorities. No charges were filed, and Cheng simply “disappeared.” China's foreign ministry waited until early September to announce that she was suspected of “criminal activity endangering China's national security.” Her family and friends still do not know her whereabouts, and it is unclear if she has any legal representation.The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s announcement of Cheng’s detention came after the Australian government was forced to mount a frantic mission to extricate the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Bill Birtles and the Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) Mike Smith from the country. Both had been questioned by Chinese authorities regarding their dealings with Cheng, and both sought help from the Australian consulate. They were allowed to leave China only after a five-day diplomatic standoff. Birtles’s former boss, the ex-ABC China bureau chief Matthew Carney, recently disclosed the threats and interrogations that he and his family, including his 14-year-old daughter, had to endure from Chinese authorities back in 2018, which eventually led them to leave the country, too.Early this month, a Los Angeles Times reporter was detained by Chinese police in Inner Mongolia while investigating the central government’s push to teach Mongolian children key curriculums in Mandarin rather than Mongolian. Many parents and students have been protesting that effort, which they view as Beijing’s latest attempt to erase their cultural identity. The Times reporter said plainclothes men “took her to a police station, where she was interrogated and separated from her belongings, despite identifying herself as an accredited journalist. She was not allowed to call the U.S. Embassy; one officer grabbed her throat with both hands and pushed her into a cell.”Beijing’s treatment of foreign journalists is appalling. But surprisingly, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, for decades, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) welcomed foreign journalists when it found them to be of use in helping achieve its strategic policy goals.The most famous example of this phenomenon was American journalist Edgar Snow. In the 1930s, Snow visited the CCP’s stronghold in the Chinese countryside and interviewed its leaders, including Mao Zedong. Back then, the People’s Liberation Army was no more than a ragtag bunch of poorly fed, ill-equipped guerrilla fighters. Mao was dismissed by the ruling Nationalist Party as a “bandit,” and he was virtually unknown to the West. Mao recognized the help that Snow could provide in solving that problem. He granted Snow access that was unavailable to any Chinese journalist and charmed the American. Snow, who was somewhat naive and ideologically left-leaning, fell for Mao’s charisma. Mao asked that the texts of Snow’s interviews be translated from English back to Chinese so he could “correct any inaccuracies” prior to the publication, and Snow granted him his wish.The final output was Snow's 1937 book, Red Star Over China, which presented Mao as a great leader who was candid, thoughtful, and funny. It described the goal of the Communist revolution as the creation of a new China that would be egalitarian and democratic. Nowhere did it mention Mao’s brutal purge of a rival faction within the Communist Party, which ended with the arrest of over 100 party members and the execution of more than a dozen. The purge was an early indication of Mao’s ruthlessness in quashing dissent, and there would be many more like it to come.Unfortunately, the inaccurate portrait painted by Snow’s book cast Mao and the Communists in such a positive light that it won them many domestic and international supporters. This, in turn, set a precedent. Recognizing the propaganda value that Snow had provided, Mao invited him back to China several more times over the next three-plus decades. Each time, he manipulated Snow into serving as his mouthpiece for domestic and international audiences.After Mao’s death, a succession of Chinese Communist Party leaders followed the same template, welcoming foreign journalists to China as the regime launched its campaign of economic reform and opened up to the rest of the world. These leaders recognized that they needed the foreign press to tell stories about China, and sure enough, the resulting stories helped attract badly needed foreign investment and tourism to boost the country’s economy.In a country where corruption is rampant and justice is whatever local authorities say it is, many Chinese people have come to believe that the fastest way to get their grievances heard and resolved is through reporting by journalists, especially foreign journalists. As Yuan Yang, the Financial Times’s deputy Beijing bureau chief, has noted, “Sometimes it is not the coverage itself, but the mere appearance of a foreign journalist on the scene, that gets officials to start listening intently to their problems.”Sadly, even that means of getting authorities’ attention is increasingly being closed off by China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, who demands absolute loyalty from all corners of China including the media. Unlike his predecessors, Xi doesn't see foreign media as a friend or a useful tool, but rather as a threat to the narratives advanced by his propaganda and an obstacle to his goal of building a new, China-centric world order. Especially after the coronavirus outbreak, Xi has needed an obedient media to tell a story of Chinese success under his leadership, which has only increased his incentive to keep a tight leash on critical reporting.Xi seems to believe that China is now wealthy, powerful, and resourceful enough that it no longer needs the prestige that foreign media outlets once lent it; state media can tell the stories he wants told both at home and abroad. Since Xi doesn’t see foreign journalists as useful to his own strategic objectives, Chinese authorities have intensified their attacks on foreign journalists. If any informed observer had any remaining doubts about the true nature of the Chinese regime, this crackdown should have dispelled them.

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Sonic boom heard in Paris and suburbs caused by fighter jet breaking sound barrier

A loud blast heard throughout Paris on Wednesday briefly caused panic as edgy residents feared a bombing five days after a terrorist attack outside the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The noise was caused by a sonic boom as a military jet broke the speed of sound, police said. Pierre Duclos, who was in a café around the corner from the site of the attack on Friday when the explosion-like noise was heard, said: “Everyone looked at each other and a few people got up and went outside. For a while, we thought another terrorist attack was coming and we were all shocked. Some people asked the café owner to close and lock the door. I was here on Friday and frankly I was really worried again today.

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Hathras gang rape: India victim cremated 'without family's consent'

The woman's death after she was gang raped allegedly by upper-caste men has caused huge anger in India.

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N.B.A. Finals Live Updates: Game 1 Lakers vs. Heat

By BY SOPAN DEB AND MARC STEIN from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/3l2NWMe

Anyone Else Want to See Trump ‘Shut Up’?

By BY GAIL COLLINS from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3l1zR1B

Far-Right Group That Trades in Political Violence Gets a Boost

By BY NEIL MACFARQUHAR, ALAN FEUER, MIKE BAKER AND SHEERA FRENKEL from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/30nxtKP

A major Boston hospital has a cluster of cases among its staff and patients.

By BY GIULIA MCDONNELL NIETO DEL RIO from NYT World https://ift.tt/2HMcPh5

Trump Renews Fears of Voter Intimidation as G.O.P. Poll Watchers Mobilize

By BY DANNY HAKIM, STEPHANIE SAUL, NICK CORASANITI AND MICHAEL WINES from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2Sc4nJI

Hopeful Day in Queens: A Slice of Pizza, Served Indoors

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Pennsylvania’s top election official casts doubt on fraud claims in Luzerne County.

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Republicans Scold Trump on White Supremacy, Fearing a Drag on the Party

By BY ALEXANDER BURNS, JONATHAN MARTIN AND MAGGIE HABERMAN from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/33ffFU4

Onions, ironing and 'sex appeal': Who is Tony Abbott?

The gaffe-prone former prime minister is a polarising figure in Australia.

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Families of 12 Hong Kong activists captured at sea by China look for answers

The families of 12 activists captured by China in August demand their swift return.

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US Election: Whoever becomes the next president, social media is changing

Both Trump and Biden want to take away the US law that protects platforms from being liable for what their users post.

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Quebec brings back restrictions as cases rise again

By BY DAN BILEFSKY AND IAN AUSTEN from NYT World https://ift.tt/3jt1osJ

Draymond Green Doesn’t Mind Missing the N.B.A. Finals. This Year.

By BY MARC STEIN from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/3cOR63p

Trump’s top intelligence official releases unverified and previously rejected Russia information.

By BY JULIAN E. BARNES, ADAM GOLDMAN AND NICHOLAS FANDOS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2Gp6k3a

Bad Call Sends Kristina Mladenovic Spiraling Again

By BY BEN ROTHENBERG from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2Gie6Mb

The Facebook Pages With the Largest Share of Debate Conversation

By BY DAVEY ALBA from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/3n663Tg

Researchers say a Project Veritas video accusing Ilhan Omar of voter fraud was a ‘coordinated disinformation campaign.’

By BY MAGGIE ASTOR from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3jlJl7K

Meron Benvenisti Dies at 86; Urged One State for Jews and Palestinians

By BY SAM ROBERTS from NYT World https://ift.tt/2ScqTlK

Trump Sent a Warning. Let’s Take It Seriously.

By BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/30kXM4d

The Morning

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Barrett told senators that Trump offered her the nomination much sooner than was previously known.

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Top Intelligence Official Releases Unverified, Previously Rejected Russia Information

By BY JULIAN E. BARNES, ADAM GOLDMAN AND NICHOLAS FANDOS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/33dw773

Watch Live Debate Stream: Trump vs Biden

By BY THE NEW YORK TIMES from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/34dnCIH

Twins’ Playoff Misery Continues, Courtesy of the Depleted Astros

By BY TYLER KEPNER from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/3ieKlZY

In the Breonna Taylor Case, a Battle of Blame Over the Grand Jury

By BY SHAILA DEWAN, WILL WRIGHT AND JOHN ELIGON from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3kYO1AO

Cuomo and De Blasio Need a United Front on Coronavirus Hot Spots

By BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2G2aIW0

Chris Christie helped run Trump’s debate prep. He’ll also be a debate pundit for ABC.

By BY MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/34970Sm

What Polls Say About the 2020 Race as Biden and Trump Square Off

By Giovanni Russonello from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3jgyzzu

Biden and Trump’s First Debate: What to Watch For

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How to Watch the First Presidential Debate

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Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Is ‘Very Likely to Work,’ Studies Suggest

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Russian cleaner sweeps to power in surprise village vote

'Flabbergasted' Marina Udgodskaya only entered the race as her boss needed someone else to stand.

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Chris Wallace: First debate host and Fox anchor unloved by Trump

Chris Wallace, known for his tough interviewing of all politicians, hosts the first US presidential debate.

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Coronavirus: The disabled Indians losing their livelihoods

As Covid hits India, many disabled people are losing their jobs and can't afford food and healthcare.

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Donald Trump argues he was entitled to limit tax payments as Democrats go on the attack

Donald Trump has attempted to justify minimising his tax payments as the Democrats argued reports he contributed nothing in federal income taxes for a decade showed he was out of step with ordinary Americans. The US president said in a tweet he was “entitled” to leverage business losses and tax credits to limit his tax payments “like everyone else” as he tried to contain the fallout from the New York Times investigation. Mr Trump continued to deny the reporting was accurate, claimed the information was illegally obtained and said he had paid “millions of dollars” in taxes. He also hinted he could release financial statements showing his wealth, though gave no timeline. The comments suggested a two-pronged strategy: To both delegitimise the reporting, which said he paid no federal income taxes in 11 of the 18 years the paper scrutinised, and argue that limiting tax payments showed business savviness. The campaign of Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, released an attack advert going after Mr Trump’s reported payment of just $750 dollars in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he won the election, and again in 2017, his first year in office. The 30-second video compared the average annual amount certain workers had paid in income tax, such as $7,239 for an elementary school teacher and $5,283 for a firefighter, with Mr Trump’s $750 figure.

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How can you safely have a Thanksgiving meal? CDC has tips for families during COVID-19

Here’s what health officials say about dinners and travel for the upcoming holiday.

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'Motherf-----': Former Mueller prosecutor describes the moment his team nailed Paul Manafort for financial fraud

Another prosecutor "let out a freewheeling hoot" when she saw the evidence, Weissmann writes. "If this holds up," Weissmann told them, "he's dead."

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Don 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. “Once a Democrat operative, all of it—always a Democrat operative,” he said, unconvincingly.“Joe Biden can’t remember where he is 50 percent of the time,” Trump Jr. declared. “He forgets the office that he’s running for.” He added, with no sense of irony, “If Donald Trump made one Joe Biden-type error, once, it would be all over! Joe does it every day.”“So that’s why he’s in debate prep,” he continued, mocking his father’s opponent for doing his homework. “He can’t be on the campaign trail because he needs to be able to perform for two hours, despite having done this for 50 years.”Is Trump or Biden More Likely to Keel Over on Debate Night?But he wasn’t done. He called Biden “the guy who’s most inept in terms of speaking, in terms of ability” and telling the Fox hosts, “You would think that after half a century in Washington, D.C., Ainsley, you’d be able to remember your platform, you’d be able to remember a couple talking points and not need a TelePrompter. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”In recent weeks, Trump’s top campaign staff have been doing whatever they can to undo the president’s attempts to lower expectations for Biden’s performance. “Joe Biden is not formidable anywhere else but he is formidable on the debate stage,” campaign manager Bill Stepien told NBC News this month.Communications director Tim Murtaugh went even further, telling Fox News, “Biden spent decades skillfully debating in the Senate, won two debates while running for vice president and just came through 11 debates in Democratic primaries where he defeated two dozen challengers. Joe Biden is a master debater who knows what he is doing.”And yet, like his father, Donald Trump Jr. seems unable to help himself from giving Biden an exceedingly low bar to overcome. At least he didn’t accuse him or anyone else from his family of being on drugs this time.Later in his Fox & Friends interview, Trump Jr. actually seemed to realize what he had done, backtracking a bit to claim, “Joe Biden should be decent in the debate, he’s been doing it for half a century. I’m worried about Joe Biden the other 22 hours of the day where he can’t seem to leave the basement.”The message seemed to be, don’t let a successful debate performance fool you.Jimmy Kimmel on Donald Trump Jr.’s Attempts to ‘Cancel’ Him and Hosting the Virtual EmmysRead more at The Daily Beast.Get 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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Three killed in Northern California wildfire; thousands flee

Northern California's wine country was on fire again Monday as strong winds fanned flames in the already scorched region, destroying homes and prompting overnight evacuation orders for more than 50,000 people. In Sonoma County, residents of the Oakmont Gardens senior living facility in Santa Rosa boarded brightly lit city buses in the darkness overnight, some wearing bathrobes and using walkers. The fire threat forced Adventist Health St. Helena hospital to suspend care and transfer all patients elsewhere.

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The South African cleric taking on the church over a rapist priest

Reverend June Major has gone on hunger strike twice to demand that the church take action against her alleged attacker who still practises as a priest

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China's UK envoy warns Britain to avoid lectures over human rights

China's ambassador to London has told Britain that it will suffer "setbacks" in its relationship with Beijing if it continues to raise issues about human rights. The warning came after a junior Foreign Office minister took Beijing to task at a Chinese embassy function on Monday, held to mark the 71st anniversary of the People's Republic. In his remarks, James Duddridge said that while Britain wanted to retain good relations with China, it was also concerned about Beijing's erosion of democracy in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang. Mr Duddridge’s comments drew a cool response from Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador, who is understood to have replied pointedly that as Hong Kong was no longer under British rule, Beijing was not obliged to listen to British concerns. Mr Liu added that China's policies in Xinjiang, where the government has been accused of putting up to two million people into "re-education" camps, were designed to combat terrorism. Unless Britain and China observed a policy of "non-interference" in each other's internal politics, he continued, their relationship "would suffer setbacks or even retrogression." Mr Liu, 64, who has been China's envoy to London since 2010, is one of a new generation of Chinese diplomats who have eschewed the low profile traditionally favoured by their predecessors. Earlier this year, he hinted that some Chinese companies might pull out of Britain after the government reversed its decision to allow telecoms giant Huawei a key role in the 5G network. Last year, he also criticised the then Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, over his support for pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong, saying the protests were "a matter about breaking laws". His robust reply to Mr Duddridge's comments, which were made during an online gathering of guests, will be seen as a further indication of how relations between London and Beijing have cooled. Traditionally, routine diplomatic functions are not seen as forums where political differences are aired. Other Chinese ambassadors have already taken up a much more aggressive tack than Mr Liu, developing what become known as "wolf-warrior" diplomacy - a new, assertive dialogue to remind the world that China is now a superpower. Named after a Chinese film in which Beijing's troops defeat US enemies in Africa and Asia, the "wolf warrior" tactic was pioneered by Zhao Lijian, until last year China's envoy to Pakistan. In July last year, he got in a vicious Twitter spat with Susan Rice, a former advisor to Barack Obama, about China's treatment of Uighur Muslims, in which he suggested America improve its own record on race relations. It culminated in Ms Rice urging the Chinese government to recall him to Beijing.

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43 Student Journalists Quit N.Y.U. Paper After Dispute With Adviser

By BY KATIE ROBERTSON from NYT Business https://ift.tt/33aRExm

Behind the White House Effort to Pressure the C.D.C. on School Openings

By BY MARK MAZZETTI, NOAH WEILAND AND SHARON LAFRANIERE from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2S41uLc

Read the Presentation the White House Sent to the C.D.C. on Reopening Schools

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