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'Most believe that it was an accident': Pentagon chief contradicts Trump on Beirut explosion

Less than 24 hours after President Trump said some “great generals” told him they thought that yesterday’s massive explosion in Beirut was an “attack” involving “a bomb of some kind,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper seemed less than convinced by that explanation.

Within 11 days of schools opening, dozens of students and teachers have gotten COVID-19: 'I truly wish we'd kept our children home'

Schools began reopening several weeks ago. Dozens of students and staff have already tested positive for COVID-19.

California hotel brawl near Disneyland involves about 100 people, police say

A brawl at a hotel near Disneyland on Wednesday involved as many as 100 people and two people were hospitalized, police said.

Letters to the Editor: Heads up, Joe Biden — Kamala Harris has always been campaigning for her next job

Kamala Harris is the junior senator from California, so what has she done for our state?

As legal battle over school reopening proceeds, DeSantis stresses importance of sports

Flanked by coaches, athletes and politicians, Gov. Ron DeSantis Thursday used sports to emphasize his support of school reopenings.

China sentences 3rd Canadian to death on drug charges

China has sentenced a third Canadian citizen to death on drug charges amid a steep decline in relations between the two countries. The Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate Court announced Xu Weihong’s penalty on Thursday and said an alleged accomplice, Wen Guanxiong, had been given a life sentence. Death sentences are automatically referred to China’s highest court for review.

Portland's Black police chief says violent protesters have 'taken away from' the Black Lives Matter movement

While the protests in downtown Portland have largely been peaceful, there have been violent offshoots in other parts of the city this week.

Fox’s Chris Wallace: Trump Only Wants More Debates Because He’s Losing

Fox News host Chris Wallace has no illusions about why the Trump campaign is suddenly demanding a fourth debate against former Vice President Joe Biden. After Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade echoed the president’s stated concerns about the debates happening after early voting starts in some states, his radio show guest shot down the idea of either moving the schedule up and adding a fourth debate earlier in September. “If they were to open it up and say, no, let's set another debate, I just think that it would jeopardize a lot of things,” Wallace, who moderated the third and final debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016. “If Donald Trump were leading, instead of trailing in the polls, my guess is he wouldn’t want it, so they'll have the debates.”When Kilmeade suggested that Wallace should “get in the face” of the Commission on Presidential Debates and threaten to walk as a potential moderator if they don’t change the schedule, Wallace just laughed and said sarcastically, “Yeah, they’re really dependent on me.” Earlier in the week, the Trump campaign put out its wishlist of moderators for the debates. There were a number of Fox News personalities on it, but Chris Wallace’s name was conspicuously missing. That is likely due to Wallace’s tough grilling of the president late last month. Kilmeade tried to get Wallace to criticize Biden’s most recent gaffe, but he wouldn’t take the bait, instead saying, “This is why the debates are going to be must-see TV” and adding, “Donald Trump has some pretty interesting things that he says every once in a while, too.”Chris Wallace Confronts Trump Campaign Spox Jason Miller: Admit ‘You’re Losing’Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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.

Pope Francis appoints 6 women to senior roles

Pope Francis has ensured there are more women officials at the Vatican than ever before.

Videos show Black inmate John Neville saying 'I can't breathe' before fatal injury; sheriff apologizes

A North Carolina sheriff apologized before videos were released showing John Neville telling jailers he can't breathe as he was fatally injured.

Canadian shopper explodes in racist rant over liquor store mask policy

Footage of a man exploding in a racist rant after reportedly refusing to wear a mask in a liquor store in Canada has gone viral online.In the video, an older white man not wearing a mask can be seen yelling at two men wearing masks.

Biden on congressional gridlock: 'If there's no way to move other than getting rid of the filibuster, that's what we'll do'

In an interview with representatives of the associations of Black and Hispanic journalists, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden showed a willingness to end the use of the legislative filibuster while maintaining it’s unlikely that such a measure would be necessary if he’s elected in November. He said that he expects the Democratic Party to win five to six seats in the Senate as well as the White House. Biden’s response is part of an interview that will air Thursday at the combined convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists. The convention is being held online this year due to the coronavirus.

Man fights with bear after it enters home with 10 kids inside, Alaska officials say

He went toe-to-toe with the 300-pound predator, and it didn’t go very well

Cuomo clears New York schools statewide to open, carefully

New York’s governor said Friday that he would allow children statewide to return to classrooms for the start of the new school year, citing the state’s success in battling the coronavirus pandemic. The announcement by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo clears the way for schools to offer at least some days of in-person classes, alongside remote learning. “Everywhere in the state, every region is below the threshold that we established,” Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters.

Satellite imagery shows scale of destruction after explosion at Beirut port

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs, Inc. and Maxar Technologies shows the damage sustained by yesterday’s explosions at the Port of Beirut in Lebanon.

Germany floats a new NATO spending yardstick: 10 percent

Officials are pushing for a new yardstick to measure Berlin's contributions to NATO, suggesting the country could shoulder 10 percent of alliance requirements.

Trump falsely said NASA 'was closed and dead' before he was president and appeared to take credit for a private SpaceX launch

The US president made false claims about NASA in a Wednesday tweet that reshared video of SpaceX's private launch of a Starship Mars-rocket prototype.

Sen. Susan Collins says House COVID relief bill is dead on arrival, urges Democrats to be more realistic

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joins Guy Benson on 'The Guy Benson Show.'

MS-13 gang members charged with sex trafficking, other charges in abuse of 13-year-old runaway

Federal prosecutors allege that gang members beat the girl, raped her and prostituted her in Virginia and Maryland.

Putin’s Got Big Problems in Russia’s Provinces

MOSCOW—The city of Khabarovsk, a sprawling, industrial metropolis about 5,000 miles east of the capital—the Bolsheviks turned it into a hub for serving Siberian prison camps, in the middle of nowhere by design—is about as far from the seat of Russian power as geographically possible. But it’s suddenly at the center of Russian politics these days. For the past three weeks, thousands of people have come out daily in Khabarovsk to protest the country’s top-down rule, what President Vladimir Putin once called his “vertical of power. “Wake up, cities, our Motherland is in trouble,” protesters chanted in the rain one Friday evening. Banners that read, “Putin, you lost my trust!” and “Down with the Tsar!” floated above people’s heads.Despite the Kremlin’s best efforts to hide them, problems have been bubbling up in Russia’s provinces, transforming local issues into the most dynamic arena for dissent, protest, and opposition in the country’s political system and fueling Russia’s version of post-lockdown unrest.   The arrest of Khabarovsk’s popular regional governor sparked the anti-Putin uprising that has drawn up to 60,000 people into the streets in this usually sleepy backwater. The arrested governor was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which had for years been loyal to Putin. Yet even the party’s leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, told The Daily Beast that the provincial protests could spread, as people are fed up with the lies and media manipulation in the Putin system. “This is a genuine, wonderful, peaceful protest, but federal television channels do not cover them, and that offends people,” he said.Millions of Russians are still watching the Far East rallies online. People are outraged by unemployment, corruption, pollution, and failing government. “For as long as we have a one-party system, you will have the Khabarovsk protests,” Zhirinovsky recently declared from the tribune of the State Duma. “I have suggested to them a long time ago to have at least two parties, but they want to have the majority,” Zhirinovsky told The Daily Beast about Putin’s United Russia party. Putin continues the tradition of single-party system that began under Lenin, Zhirinovsky said.Two thousand miles away from Khabarovsk sits another provincial city, Norilsk, with its giant factory that is the source of a fifth of the world’s nickel and half of the precious metal palladium. Norilsk is the world’s northernmost city and also Russia’s most polluted; visitors stepping off a plane are greeted by air that leaves an unforgettable metallic taste in the mouth. But even by Norilsk’s own abysmal standards, this summer was a horrific one for the environment: Its factory, Norilsk Nickel, spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of red-hued diesel fuel into what locals now call “rivers of blood.” The rain smells of chemicals. The diesel fuel spill was caused by the collapse of a rust-covered storage tank at a heat and power plant on May 29. Local bureaucrats and the factory kept quiet about the disaster for two days as the red, oily rivers spread pollutants through the fragile tundra environment in what Greenpeace would later call the “biggest environmental catastrophe in the history of Russia’s Arctic.” Authorities initially tried to hide the disaster, in the same way state television channels have attempted to ignore the protests in Khabarovsk. Russians only learned of the spill from social media. Six weeks later, with still no word of any official reprimand for the spill, the factory dumped another round of toxic waste—this time, intentionally—right onto the tundra.Two reporters from the independent paper Novaya Gazeta, Yelena Kostyuchenko and Yuri Kozyrev, had traveled to Norilsk after the spill to see the pollution with their own eyes. The reporters discovered a stream with orange bubbles and a lake covered in white foam, surrounded by dead trees. But it had nothing to do with the diesel spill. “Two large pipes were pumping and dumping white toxic waste with a sharp chemical smell onto the tundra when we arrived,” Kostyuchenko told The Daily Beast. Novaya Gazeta’s report raised the alarm with local prosecutors and police, so the factory sent a bulldozer to quickly dismantle the pipes. Then, the bulldozer accidentally crushed a police car while backing up. Environmentalists witnessed a wild scene: A huge number of Norilsk Nickel’s security services were demolishing their factory’s pipes in front of police and officials from the emergency ministry and Russia’s natural resources regulatory agency, Rospotrebnadzor.Meanwhile, some Russian politicians started to call for the Kremlin to take control of the factory—owned by the country’s richest oligarch, Vladimir Potanin—and nationalize it. Potanin, a former member of the Communist Party, obtained the Norilsk factory on the cheap during the privatization of the 1990s. Since then, he’s seemed untouchable. After all, according to Kremlin-watcher Mikhail Zygar, the billionaire has always paid up for problems at the factory in the only currency that counts: loyalty to the Russian president. “People like Potanin are happy to pay for all [Putin’s] projects, for anything he ever wants,” said Zygar, author of All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. Soviet and post-Soviet bureaucrats have a long history of attempting to hide the truth about disasters from the public, no matter how deadly—most famously after the 1986 nuclear accident in Chernobyl. Last year, an experimental missile exploded in the Arctic, releasing radioactivity into the air, and the official reaction was silence. So, too, in the first days after the fuel spill. Officials were even reluctant to break the bad news to Putin himself. “One has to earn the right to report bad news to Vladimir Vladimirovich,” said Sergei Markov, a political analyst close to the Kremlin. “It must have taken a few days before the decision-makers on various steps of power figured out who would be the one to break the news.”On the fifth day after the fuel spill, four people lined up shoulder to shoulder to report the truth about the accident to Putin in an online meeting: the oligarch Potanin; Svetlana Radionova, the head of Rospotrebnadzor; Yevgeny Zinichev, the minister of emergency situations; and Viktor Uss, the Krasnoyarsk regional governor.Zinichev told the president that “the event itself, the emergency situation, was localized on June 1. We have installed booms, so there is no development.” Radionova, in contrast, talked about “unprecedented” pollution. “We registered an increase by dozens of thousands of times,” after the diesel fuel spilled into the rivers, she told Putin.Potanin was the last to speak. He promised to dip into his wealth and pay for the damage. The accident would cost “not a ruble from the state budget.” Putin wanted to know how much, exactly, the company was going to pay. The billionaire paused.Putin pressed Potanin on how much money he was willing to pay to compensate for the damage. “Billions and billions” of rubles, or tens of millions of dollars, the oligarch finally told the president. “And how much does one reserve tank cost that you are going to replace now? If you replaced it on time, there would not have been such damage and such cost to the environment,” the president replied.According to Forbes Real Time, which gauges wealth, in the weeks after the accident Potanin’s net worth dropped by more than $3.6 billion, but he is currently worth $23 billion, which still allows him the title of Russia’s richest man. The World Wide Fund for Nature has addressed an open letter to Potanin, calling him personally to “take the full responsibility” for polluting the Arctic.  But money for the clean-up aside, Potanin is unlikely to face real repercussions for the spill. Earlier this summer Putin’s inspector,  Radionova, flew to Norilsk to calculate fines for the factory—but, according to Transparency International, she flew there on Potanin’s own Bombardier Challenger private jet, instead of taking a regular flight. Radionova has also been accused of corruption by the foundation of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which revealed documents for luxurious real estate in Moscow and Nice that suggest Radionova is the owner. “Such wealth cannot be explained. It is so outrageous,” Navalny said in his report on YouTube, viewed by more than 3 million people. Meanwhile, experts warn that Russia is ill-equipped to prevent another environmental disaster. After the diesel spill, a member of the board of directors at Norilsk Nickel, Yevgeny Shvarts, admitted on a television talk show that the storage tank that had collapsed was the newest piece of equipment at his company. “This is terrifying: One of Russia’s richest companies considers a tank made in 1985 their newest piece of equipment. That means things are much worse than we thought,” the show’s host, Vladimir Slivyak, told to The Daily Beast. He expressed concern that many other Russian factories are also storing diesel fuel in even older tanks: “Such accidents might take place any time.” 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.

Former Saudi official accuses Mohammad bin Salman of 'sending hit squad' to kill him

A former senior Saudi intelligence official has claimed that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman sent a hit squad to Canada in an attempt to kill him. In a 107-page complaint, filed in a Washington DC court, Saad Aljabri claimed the assassins were intercepted by Canadian authorities. The incident was alleged to have happened less than two weeks after Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident, was killed in the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul. Mr Aljabri, who was living in self-imposed exile in Toronto, was said to have clashed with the crown prince over issues including the decision to go to war in Yemen, and was dismissed from his cabinet role in 2015. He is suing the crown prince and 24 others for an unset amount of damages In his complaint Mr Aljabri claimed the crown prince "dispatched a hit squad" to Canada in October 2018. The complaint said: "(A) team of Saudi nationals travelled across the Atlantic Ocean from Saudi Arabia ... with the intention of killing Dr Saad."

Students say they were suspended and others threatened with 'consequences' for posting photos of their school's packed hallways

North Paulding High School has cracked down social media sharing after images of a crowded hallway and few masks at the school went viral.

Joshua Wong and other Hong Kong activists charged over banned June 4 vigil

Two dozen people in Hong Kong, including pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, have been charged with participating in an illegal assembly at a vigil on June 4 commemorating the crackdown on protesters in and around Beijing's Tiananmen square in 1989. It was the first time the vigil had been banned in semiautonomous Hong Kong, with police citing coronavirus restrictions on group gatherings in refusing permission for it to take place. The anniversary struck an especially sensitive nerve in the former British colony this year, falling just as China prepared to introduce national security legislation later that month in response to last year's often violent pro-democracy demonstrations.

The COVID-19 Unemployment Crisis May Be Turning Around for Veterans

The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans fell by more than two percentage points to 8.2% in July.

One American is dying every 80 seconds from coronavirus as Trump shrugs off death toll: ‘It is what it is’

At least one person in the United States has died every 80 seconds on average over the last seven days, according to new research, as President Donald Trump said the nation’s soaring death toll “is what it is” in a recent interview.The grim figures were first reported by NBC News on Wednesday, which noted its own tally revealed 7,486 people died in the last seven days due to Covid-19.

Truck drivers have seen their pay slashed during the pandemic — and they're pushing Congress to halt 2 taxes for relief

Truck drivers are calling on Congress to suspend two popular taxes in the industry following months of uncertain work conditions.

Black man's life sentence in stolen hedge clippers case is 'cruel and unusual,' Louisiana judge says

Repeat offender laws sent Fair Wayne Bryant to prison for life after trying to steal hedge clippers. Louisiana’s Supreme Court won't review the case.

Seattle City Council Won’t Slash Police Budget, but OKs Cop Layoffs

A majority of Seattle’s City Council on Wednesday voted down a proposal to slash the police department’s remaining 2020 budget by 50 percent. But the council did pass a slew of other defunding efforts, including ones that would cut 100 officers from the agency this year through layoffs and attrition.The vote by the budget committee—which came one day after the city’s mayor and police chief held a press conference to criticize the proposal—signaled some progress for Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality advocates who’ve pushed to defund departments across the U.S. and reallocate funds to community services, including housing and youth programs.The budget-cut plan, proposed by council member Kshama Sawant, would have cut $54 million from the Seattle PD immediately through layoffs and reallocated it to programs, including $34 million for affordable housing. Sawant was the only member to vote in favor of the proposal, while another council member abstained and the remaining seven voted against it.While the council’s budget committee voted on a variety of amendments related to police funding, activists marched from a King County juvenile detention facility to City Hall. One reporter on scene captured demonstrators chanting, “Bad boys. Bad boys. Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when we defund you?”Shootings Rise in Big Cities Along With Calls to Defund the PoliceSeattle’s vote comes on the heels of other local governments, including the Washington D.C. Council, passing legislation to dismantle or cut the budgets of police departments. In late June, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously approved a proposal to disband the city’s police department—and replace it with a new Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention—following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed May 25 by a Minneapolis cop who kneeled on his neck during an arrest.Minneapolis’ charter commission voted 10-5 against the city council’s proposal on Wednesday, saying they needed more time to review it. The decision meant voters won't get to decide on the amendment on a November ballot. The Seattle council’s budget committee unanimously passed a series of amendments, including adding $4 million to the Human Services Department for a community safety initiative which would be an “alternative to traditional policing.” The funding for that effort would come from a loan authorized by separate legislation.They also voted to cut $886,000 from the Seattle PD and reallocate it to a proposal that would add $10 million for community-led organizations “to increase public safety.” (The remaining $9.1 million would come from interfund loan to be addressed in separate legislation.) The cuts approved included $36,000 from the police department’s remaining 2020 budget for implicit bias training; $50,000 from SPD’s 2020 travel budget; and $800,000 from the department’s recruitment and retention activities. > Protesters gathering near the youth jail for today’s march to City Hall. Saw a handful of bike cops on my way over, though they seem to be around the block now. pic.twitter.com/8vf6r3EW9W> > — Heidi Groover (@heidigroover) August 5, 2020The committee also unanimously approved a “consent package” which includes ordering the police chief to eliminate the mounted unit and public affairs unit, each of which has four officers; lay off five members of the community outreach unit; lay off two members of the 29-officer SWAT team; and let go of 30 officers through attrition. All told, the council approved a reduction of 54 officers from the department.This package also included $50,000 in funding to contract with a community-based organization to create a non-police 911 response system.On Monday, KOMO News revealed the proposal to slash the Seattle Police Department’s budget by 50 percent appeared to be “losing steam” among the nine council members. The remainder of the Seattle PD’s unspent budget is an estimated $188 million, the outlet reported.Council member Sawant slammed her colleagues in an interview with the TV outlet and on Twitter, where she claimed Democrats on the budget committee “ganged up against our movement’s proposals to Defund the police...”> To see Democratic Party politicians in their real role, watch today's Seattle City Council Budget Committe, where they ganged up against our movement's proposals to Defund the police by at least 50%, fund community programs, and increase significant funds for affordable housing.> > — Kshama Sawant (@cmkshama) August 4, 2020“I’m not surprised,” Sawant told KOMO News, “but it’s quite interesting to see how council members are now displaying how they actually stand and I hope members of the public are watching.”Last month, protesters targeted the homes of two council members who supported reducing the police budget but wouldn’t commit to slashing it by 50 percent, the Seattle Times reported. The demonstrations allegedly included making noise outside one councilor’s home at night and leaving notes on his door warning, “Don’t be racist trash.”In June, another group visited Mayor Jenny Durkan’s residence, which was tagged with spray paint, according to the Times. Durkan asked the council to probe Sawant for taking part in that protest but council president Lorena González declined. Meanwhile, Police Chief Carmen Best said her neighbors had to stop a “large group of aggressive protestors” from trespassing at her home on Saturday. One of the demonstrators, Nicole Gitaka, told King 5, a local news station: “All we were doing was walking and they met us with guns, I don’t know who the aggressor is at that point, but I don't think it’s us.”> Crowd gathers across from the site for the new youth jail for a march and rally pertaining to the city council’s vote today on defunding the SPD seattleprotest seattleprotests pic.twitter.com/MuTzTIU74h> > — Elizabeth Turnbull (@LizTurnbull5) August 5, 2020This summer, Seattle police swept through an autonomous protest zone known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest Area (CHOP) with blast balls and pepper spray, arresting at least two dozen people after Durkan issued an executive order to clear the area.Previously called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), the six-block stretch near downtown was occupied by demonstrators in the wake of Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter protests. But the site also brought multiple shootings, including the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy, and injuries to both cops and protesters. One Tacoma man was charged with arson for torching the police department's East Precinct building during the CHOP protest.Last week, the head of Seattle’s police union warned defunding cops would bring higher crime rates and make CHOP or CHAZ “look like child’s play.”Was Seattle’s Notorious Protest Zone Doomed by Recent Shootings?On Tuesday, Durkan and Best held a press conference to ask council members to hold off on deep cuts to the police budget until 2021.Durkan said the city shouldn’t make “hasty decisions” when it comes to defunding the police department. “We should make right decisions,” Durkan told reporters. “That doesn’t mean slow; it just means thoughtful.”“The chief and I, again, we are absolutely committed, committed to reimagining how policing works in the city, to having a better community-based response, to have a public health and harm reduction based response,” Durkan added. “But we also know that policing is complicated and that sometimes you do need a police officer to respond.”For her part, Best said “there are some good approaches” in the council’s proposals and that “some of the ideas SPD already had and has raised before.”“But what is problematic is these are approaches without any clarity on how they will become reality. What is the plan? “ Best asked. “The push from Council and some of our community is to do these large-scale changes in 2020 with no practical plan for community safety. And I believe wholeheartedly that is completely reckless.“Council has directed me to lay off 70 or more officers basically overnight,” the chief added. “And I cannot do that in good faith knowing there are no systems in place to bridge the gap.”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.

Here’s how you can apply for up to $2,000 in COVID relief

Applications for the program, which kicked off Wednesday, are now available online in English, Creole and Spanish.

Court reverses order to shut down Dakota Access pipeline

A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed a judge’s order that shut down the Dakota Access pipeline pending a full environmental review. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with pipeline owner Energy Transfer to keep the oil flowing, saying a lower-court judge “did not make the findings necessary for injunctive relief.” The appeals court said it expects the parties to “clarify their positions” in the lower court.

Letters to the Editor: Online learning poses serious challenges. Here's how new college grads can help

How a national tutoring program for new college graduates could ease the burden on teachers.

Children rapidly deported from the United States strain Guatemalan shelters

Hundreds of migrant children rapidly expelled from the United States under a coronavirus immigration policy are returning to shelters in Guatemala where virus testing and bed capacity are regularly stretched to their limits. Shelter operators, government officials in the Central American nation and international organizations said they are seeing rising numbers of children being sent back to Guatemala alone, with some unable to return to their homes because of domestic abuse or gang violence. "Child protection services, which were already overstretched and under-resourced have now been further compromised by COVID-19," said United Nations children's agency UNICEF spokesman Christopher Tidey.

China accused of deploying more amphibious weapons to eastern coast as tensions with Taiwan rise

China has deployed more amphibious weapons in coastal cities across the 110-mile wide strait that separates China from Taiwan, according to reports of recent satellite images. The images published in Canadian military magazine Kanwa Asian Defence show that more Type 05 vehicles had been deployed to China’s Eastern Theatre Command, according to the South China Morning Post. The Type 05 is a family of amphibious tracked armoured fighting vehicles developed for the navy marine corps of the People's Liberation Army. It comes amid rising tensions between Taiwan and China. China’s communist rulers seek to annex the island of 23 million, which functions like any other nation with its own democratic government and military but lacks widespread recognition as an independent state because of opposition from Beijing. Beijing has warned it may resort to force if Taipei, which rejects Chinese sovereignty claims, resists its attempts to unify. “The PLA ground forces want to play an active role in the Taiwan issue because so far their weapon systems are powerful enough to attack Taiwan without the help of missile force,” said Andrei Chang, editor of Kanwa Asian Defence.

Trump was ‘stating a fact’ when he said children are less susceptible to coronavirus, White House insists

Donald Trump was “stating a fact” when he said that children are less susceptible to Covid-19, a White House official has said after Facebook removed a post in which the president made false claims about the virus.Courtney Parella, deputy national press secretary, accused Facebook and Twitter of “flagrant bias” after the tech giants penalised Trump and his campaign team for promoting a video in which the president claimed children are “almost immune” from the disease.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch says remote staffers will continue working from home until the end of 2020, even as primetime hosts push to reopen the country

Murdoch's memo comes as popular Fox News hosts push for states to reopen schools and businesses, even as new cases spike across the country.

A Florida man has been arrested over claims he spat on a child's face and told him: 'You now have coronavirus'

Jason Copenhaver confronted the boy after the child refused to remove his face mask in a restaurant, the Treasure Island Police Department said.

Virginia business owner reacts to employee's house arrest for defending shop from robber

Worker arrested after defending himself from armed robbery; Arlington Smoke Shop owner Jowan Zuber speaks out.

US consulate in Hong Kong calls collusion claims 'ludicrous'

The US consulate in Hong Kong on Friday said it was "ludicrous" to suggest its diplomats meeting with pro-democracy politicians could breach the city's new national security law, a charge levelled in a recent Chinese state media report. Earlier this week, China's state-owned tabloid Global Times ran a story suggesting a recent meeting between US Consul General Hanscom Smith and a pro-democracy politician could violate the new legislation. Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong at the end of June targeting subversion, secession, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces.

American Airlines employee at Phoenix airport dies from COVID-19

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help the family of Winsome Chua, an American Airlines employee in Phoenix who died of COVID-19.

‘I can’t teach when I’m dead.’ UGA staff, students hold die-in over reopening plans

“When I said I was dying to get back to my classroom, I didn’t mean it literally.”

Letters to the Editor: Jackie Lacey's husband has a right to protect his home. Why charge him with assault?

David Lacey didn't hurt anyone when Black Lives Matter demonstrators showed up at his home shortly after 5 a.m. one morning.

Russia warns it will see any incoming missile as nuclear

Russia will perceive any ballistic missile launched at its territory as a nuclear attack that warrants a nuclear retaliation, the military warned in an article published Friday. The harsh warning in the official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) is directed at the United States, which has worked to develop long-range non-nuclear weapons. The article follows the publication in June of Russia’s nuclear deterrent policy that envisages the use of atomic weapons in response to what could be a conventional strike targeting the nation’s critical government and military infrastructure.

Sturgeon: I would 'very possibly' have joined in protest against my own exams policy

Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of hypocrisy after admitting she “very possibly” would have joined in protests against her own exams policy, had it affected her while she was at school. The First Minister, who is under mounting pressure over a results day “debacle” which saw 124,000 grades arbitrarily downgraded, said she would have felt “aggrieved” if her own results had been reduced under a system put in place on her watch. Pupils from the poorest parts of Scotland were more than twice as likely to see their Highers grade lowered than those from the richest areas, under a “moderation” process brought in following the cancellation of this year’s exam diet due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Teengagers angry at the way they have been judged are planning to hold a protest outside the SQA offices in Glasgow on Friday.

China threatens countermeasures as Taiwan prepares for U.S. visit

China on Thursday threatened to take countermeasures over a trip to Taiwan by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, as the Chinese-claimed island geared up for its highest-level U.S. official visit in four decades. The visit, which begins on Sunday, adds to tensions between Beijing and Washington over everything from trade and human rights to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a daily briefing in Beijing that any attempt to deny or challenge the "one China" principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China, would end in failure.

Teen ‘mastermind’ accused of crippling Twitter hack is linked to deadly home robbery

A Florida teenager who is accused of participating in last month’s Twitter bitcoin scam, which saw several of the world’s highest-profile accounts hacked, has reportedly been linked to an attempted robbery that ended in a lethal shooting.An investigation by the Tampa Bay Times has found that 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark, who is credited by police as one of the “masterminds” of the scam, has also been named in the case of a burglary seven months ago that saw one teenager killed and another wounded.

Baltimore is investigating after officials removed 5 approved Black Lives Matter murals

The city department blamed a "miscommunication" for the error, but also said a staff member accused of problematic behavior is under investigation.