Former U.S.A. Gymnastics Coach Faces 14 Charges of Lewdness With a Minor

By BY MARIE FAZIO from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2ZTV4l6

Comet streaking past Earth, providing spectacular show

A newly discovered comet is streaking past Earth, providing a stunning nighttime show after buzzing the sun and expanding its tail. Comet Neowise — the brightest comet visible from the Northern Hemisphere in a quarter-century — swept within Mercury’s orbit a week ago. NASA's Neowise infrared space telescope discovered the comet in March.

Trump commutes Roger Stone's sentence before three-year prison term was to begin

President Trump commuted the prison sentence for Republican operative Roger Stone, who was to begin serving a three-year jail term on Tuesday.

Ghislaine Maxwell says she hadn't been in contact with Jeffrey Epstein for more than 10 years before his death

Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell filed court documents on Friday asking her released on bail as she awaits trial amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Gilead analysis shows remdesivir reduced coronavirus death risk, more studies needed

Remdesivir has been at the forefront of the global battle against COVID-19 after the intravenously administered medicine helped shorten hospital recovery times, according to data in April from a separate U.S. government trial. In the latest analysis, Gilead said it analyzed data from 312 patients treated in its late-stage study and a separate real-world retrospective cohort of 818 patients with similar characteristics and disease severity. Gilead's late-stage study evaluated the safety and efficacy of five-day and 10-day dosing durations of remdesivir in hospitalized patients.

Utah Governor Declares State of Emergency Due to ‘Civil Unrest’

Utah governor Gary Herbert declared a state of emergency in Salt Lake City late Thursday, citing clashes between police and protesters who flooded the streets after the city district attorney announced that the May police killing of Bernardo Palacios Carbajal was justified. “In the case of the Salt Lake City Officer Involved Critical Incident that resulted in the death of Bernardo Palacios Carbajal, District Attorney Sim Gill’s findings provide significant evidence of the justifiable actions of Salt Lake City police officers,” Mayor Erin Mendenhall said in a statement. “This evidence shows that our officers acted according to their training and the state law regarding use of lethal force.”Protesters broke windows to the district attorney’s office, leading police to deem the demonstration an unlawful gathering, the Salt Lake City Police Department said. Demonstrators then disrupted traffic in the city’s downtown area and allegedly used pepper spray on officers. One officer was taken to a nearby hospital. Police arrested two protesters, the department said. The state of emergency order, which closes the Utah State Capitol grounds to the public, will stay in effect until at least July 14. Herbert also offered Utah's Department of Public Safety to Salt Lake City.In May police fired 34 shots at Palacios, leaving him with more than a dozen wounds, after a report of someone making “threats with a weapon,” CNN reported. “I know that for some, today’s decision does not feel like justice,” Mendenhall said. “It has become increasingly apparent in our city and across the nation that there is a difference between what so many feel is morally correct, and what is considered appropriate and justified under the law.”

These Arizona teachers shared a classroom for summer school. All 3 contracted COVID-19. 1 died.

An Arizona teacher is dead after contracting COVID-19. Two others tested positive after teaching in the same classroom. They hope schools stay closed.

Coronavirus Whistleblower: Exclusive Fox News Interview

Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a virologist from Hong Kong, tells Fox News in an exclusive interview about the early research she says she conducted into COVID-19, and why she believes that research was withheld from the world.

In Rare Public Comments, Mueller Defends Prosecution of Roger Stone

By BY PETER BAKER from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3gQjG5a

The Lincoln Project's 'Never Trump' ads expertly troll a president who never fails to take the bait

The Lincoln Project, which was created by a group of anti-Trump Republican political operatives last December, believes there is a logic to being a metaphorical fly buzzing around the president’s head. 

"It's going to happen again," says former New Zealand PM Clark tasked with WHO COVID-19 review

New Zealand's former prime minister Helen Clark warned if the world remained "flat-footed" in its response to pandemics it faces future economic, social and political crisis, after she was appointed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to lead a review of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. WHO announced late on Thursday that Clark and Liberia's former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will lead a panel scrutinising the global response. The COVID-19 outbreak originated in China in late 2019 and has infected a reported 12.16 million people globally and 550,242​ have died, according to a Reuters tally.

Border authorities use pandemic powers to expel immigrants

The Honduran woman was nine months' pregnant and exhausted with stomach pain when the Border Patrol found her in the Southern California mountains with her longtime partner and their 9-year-old son. What happened next illustrates how difficult it has become to seek asylum in the United States during the coronavirus pandemic. Alexy, 32, and his son Samuel were whisked to the border in the wee hours of June 28 and returned to Mexico.

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue features first transgender model

This isn't the first time the 23-year-old Brazilian beauty has broken barriers for trans models.

Trump still struggling to articulate his agenda for a second term

The president has been asked three times in the last two weeks to name his top priority items for a second term — and he has struggled to name them.

Pompeo slams UN report on deadly US drone strike on Iranian

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has criticized an independent U.N. human rights expert's report insisting a American drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in January was a “watershed” event in the use of drones and amounted to a violation of international law. The report presented by Agnes Callamard to the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council on Thursday chronicled events around the death of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and the legal implications of his killing as part of a broader look on the use of drone strikes.

Explained: The battle over Turkey’s Hagia Sophia

In Parkland, one side of the street chanted ‘Black Lives Matter.’ The other, ‘U.S.A.’

Four lanes of road separated Black Lives Matter protesters and protesters supporting police Saturday afternoon in Parkland.

Actually, the Supreme Court Just Gave Congress a Big Win

Trump might have won a short-term political battle. But Congress’ subpoena power is clearer than it ever was.

Attorney not disputing suicide findings in Black man's death

An attorney for the family of a Black man found hanging from a tree last month in a Southern California city park did not dispute on Friday investigators' finding that the death was a suicide. The family of Robert Fuller was absorbing the findings and grieving, attorney Jamon R. Hicks said at a news conference. “While the family is still struggling with these initial reports, we have not found any information to suggest foul play,” Hicks said.

Fauci says likely some degree of aerosol transmission of new coronavirus

Fauci on Thursday had said it was a "reasonable assumption" that airborne transmission was occurring even though there was not a lot of solid evidence behind it. Fauci said that to battle the global virus, there needed to be multiple vaccine candidates.

Black Troops Bear a Cost on Bases Named for Confederates, Milley Says

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley made a forceful case for changing the names of bases honoring Confederate generals.

Tyson Foods is ramping up development of robots that can cut meat in response to coronavirus outbreaks in meatpacking plants

According to the CDC, there have been a total of 16,233 coronavirus cases in meat processing facilities across 23 states, contributing to 86 deaths.

Fourth day of virus protests in Serbia

The protests were held as the Balkan nation announced a record daily death toll from COVID-19. Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said earlier Friday the Balkan state recorded 18 fatalities and 386 new cases over 24 hours in what she described as a "dramatic increase". At the same time, Brnabic condemned as "irresponsible" protests held in Belgrade and other cities on Thursday, after demonstrations in the capital on the previous two days had spilled over into violence.

Heat advisory issued as South Florida prepares to break temperature records

If Thursday felt unbearably hot in South Florida, Friday has turned the broiler up a notch.

Trump, in Florida, Seeks to Quell Doubts About His Opposition to Maduro

By BY MICHAEL CROWLEY from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2W8SiaO

As Trump Demanded Schools Reopen, His Experts Warned of ‘Highest Risk’

By BY EILEEN SULLIVAN AND ERICA L. GREEN from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3gNNgIu

Edward Kleinbard, Tax Lawyer Turned Reformer, Dies at 68

By BY JESSE DRUCKER from NYT Business https://ift.tt/2OapXfM

Trump Commutes Sentence of Roger Stone in Case He Long Denounced

By BY PETER BAKER, MAGGIE HABERMAN AND SHARON LAFRANIERE from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2Dw6Drm

Testing, Testing

By BY DAVE EGGERS from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2ZjbDYN

An End to Empty Seats on Canada’s Airlines

By BY IAN AUSTEN from NYT World https://ift.tt/38LFnAP

I Have Cancer. Now My Facebook Feed Is Full of ‘Alternative Care’ Ads.

By BY ANNE BORDEN KING from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3fib4Ej

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

President Trump commutes Roger Stone's sentence, days before prison term set to begin

07/10/20 5:03 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Appeals court denies Roger Stone's request to delay start of sentence, says he must report to prison Tuesday

07/10/20 4:20 PM

Ghislaine Maxwell seeks bail, citing coronavirus, and denies Jeffrey Epstein charges

Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of late financier Jeffrey Epstein, on Friday forcefully denied charges she lured underage girls for him to sexually abuse and said she deserves bail, citing the risk she might contract the coronavirus in jail. Maxwell, 58, filed her request in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, eight days after being arrested in New Hampshire, where authorities said she had been hiding at a sprawling property she bought while shielding her identity. A spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in Manhattan declined to comment.

Mayor helps paint 'Black Lives Matter' outside Trump Tower

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio grabbed a roller Thursday to paint “Black Lives Matter" in front of the namesake Manhattan tower of President Donald Trump, who tweeted last week that the street mural would be “a symbol of hate.” De Blasio was flanked by his wife, Chirlane McCray, and the Rev. Al Sharpton as he helped paint the racial justice rallying cry in giant yellow letters on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower. “When we say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ there is no more American statement, there is no more patriotic statement because there is no America without Black America,” de Blasio said.

No regrets: wounded Hong Kong police vow to keep enforcing law

Nine months ago he was burned by corrosive liquid hurled during anti-government protests, but Hong Kong police officer Ling says he has no regrets and remains devoted to being a law enforcer. Officers like Ling have formed the spear tip of Beijing's pushback against huge and often violent pro-democracy protests in the restless finance hub. Now the police have been given expanded powers under a sweeping new national security law imposed by Beijing that aims to crush the democracy movement once and for all.

Florida Democrats return PPP money amid scandal

The party’s own lawmakers criticized the acceptance of at least $780,000 as highly questionable if not illegal and unethical.

'A slap in the face:' Goya faces boycott over Trump praise

The CEO of food company Goya is facing an uproar over his praise for President Donald Trump, with some Latino families purging their pantries of the products and scrambling to find alternatives to the beloved beans, seasoning and other products that have long been fixtures in their cooking. Hispanics have also been disproportionately hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and related economic recession, causing them to question Trump's handling of both. On Wednesday, he welcomed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the White House, calling Mexico a cherished partner.

Prominent mayor of S.Korea's capital found dead

Longtime Seoul City Mayor Park Won-soon was found dead according to police on Friday.

This comes after his daughter reported him missing at 5:17pm local time, saying his phone was off and that he had left a message "like a will."

Hundreds of police took part in the hours-long search, utilizing both drones and dogs.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the mayor's body was found at Mt. Bugak in northern Seoul around midnight, near where his phone signal had last been detected.

The agency did not give a cause of death.

A police official told reporters at a televised briefing at the scene there was no sign of foul play, although a detailed investigation would be needed.

As mayor of the city of nearly 10 million people, Park was one of South Korea's most influential politicians and played a high-profile role in its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

He was seen as a potential presidential hopeful for the liberals in the 2022 presidential elections.

The Yonhap news agency said a former secretary of Park had filed a complaint on Wednesday over alleged incidents of sexual harassment.

Police said an investigation was underway after a criminal complaint had been lodged against Park, without elaborating.

Formerly a prominent human rights activist and lawyer, Park had been the mayor of Seoul since 2011, pursuing a slew of policies promoting gender equality.

Two arrested after coughing on Walmart employees, refusing to wear masks, AZ cops say

Police said one of the suspects tried to flee the scene.

Gilead analysis shows remdesivir reduced coronavirus death risk, more studies needed

Remdesivir has been at the forefront of the global battle against COVID-19 after the intravenously administered medicine helped shorten hospital recovery times, according to data in April from a separate U.S. government trial. In the latest analysis, Gilead said it analyzed data from 312 patients treated in its late-stage study and a separate real-world retrospective cohort of 818 patients with similar characteristics and disease severity. Gilead's late-stage study evaluated the safety and efficacy of five-day and 10-day dosing durations of remdesivir in hospitalized patients.

'I would be very careful in the middle of the street': Drivers have hit protesters 66 times since May 27

There have been at least 66 incidents of cars driving into protesters from May 27 to July 6, according to Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher.

Maxine Waters Foe Omar Navarro Gets Out of Jail And Attempts to Destroy Fellow Republican

Pro-Trump internet personality Omar Navarro emerged from a six-month stint in jail on a stalking charge last month, and immediately registered to run for Congress. Navarro, a perennial challenger to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), has registered to run for her seat again in 2022—assuming, perhaps logically, that Waters will once again prevail in her re-election request this November. But Navarro, who had nearly $50,000 in his campaign bank account as of March 31 even while he served his jail term, is not going to wait for those results before getting involved. He told The Daily Beast that he’s going to send out mailers this election cycle denouncing Joe Collins, the Republican nominee currently running against Waters.“Hey, I don’t agree with him,” Navarro told The Daily Beast. “I believe Maxine Waters is better than him.”Asked for comment on Navarro’s sour-grapes scheme to ruin Collins’s already slim chances of winning this fall, Collins responded  by accusing Navarro of having “daddy issues” without elaborating. "Omar Navarro is a joke,” Collins told The Daily Beast. “He has the mentality of a four year old child throwing a temper tantrum and the testicular fortitude of a mouse.” A Perennial Congressional Candidate Beloved by Trump World Was Just Arrested on Stalking ChargesThe scrapping between Collins and Navarro for the chance to lose to Waters highlights the odd incentives facing Republican challengers taking on famous incumbents in heavily Democratic districts. Running against Waters as a Republican would be a poor choice for anyone who actually wants to win. Indeed, Navarro has tried twice already, losing by more than 50 percentage points in 2016 and 2018. But for a GOPer interested in raising millions off of Waters’s notoriety as a devoted Trump foe, and increasing his profile in the pro-Trump mediasphere, it works out great. Navarro raked in donations from low-dollar contributors and saw his stature on the online Trump right explode thanks to his quixotic earlier campaigns. Even the candidates themselves acknowledge the money that’s at stake for whoever wins the right to face off against Waters. “The main reason Navarro is upset is because he's used to living off of his campaign donations and now he's facing the realization that, after being beaten by a real candidate with a shot at winning, he has to find a real job,” Collins said in his email. For Navarro, that time in the bright lights of online Trumpy fame came to a halt when he was arrested in December in San Francisco after stalking ex-girlfriend and fellow Republican personality DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, who herself was running a doomed campaign against Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Navarro eventually pleaded guilty to a stalking charge, and was sentenced to six months in San Francisco’s jail, where he claims to have lost 30 pounds. Even while imprisoned in San Francisco, Navarro kept up his political profile. And he stayed on the ballot, losing the March Republican primary to Collins by a mere 250 votes—a 0.3 percent difference in the vote total. Undeterred by that loss, Navarro has tried to recast himself since being released from jail as the latest victim of deep-state prosecutors. While other Trump supporters who faced criminal charges were involved in international intrigue, however, Navarro has been faced with claiming that he was arrested on a local stalking charge because of some secret government scheme. “Full disclosure with you guys: in the past six months, yes, I have been in a county jail,” Navarro told his more than 250,000 Twitter followers after being released from jail. Despite overwhelming evidence that Navarro violated Tesoriero’s restraining order against him, including the fact that Navarro bashed Tesoriero to The Daily Beast in apparent violation of the order, Navarro claims that he only pleaded guilty because he would have become a “political prisoner” if he hadn’t.“I wouldn’t have been judged by a jury of my peers, I would’ve been judged by a bunch of liberals, and they would have kept me locked up in there as a political prisoner,” Navarro said in his Twitter video. “And that’s not OK.” While it might seem strange for the recently imprisoned Navarro to be confident he can win the 2022 primary to challenge Waters, he is aided by the fact that Collins has a bizarre history of his own.A Navy veteran, Collins has continuously switched parties since 2016, cycling between being a Democrat, a Republican, a member of the Green Party, and a member of the “Millennial Political Party.” Collins has also filed a lawsuit over child support payments that is riddled with language echoing the nonsense legal language used by members of the far-right sovereign citizen movement. At one point in his lawsuit, in an apparent attempt to deploy a fringe legal theory, Collins claimed that his bodily fluids were worth $15 million—a bizarre detail Navarro has seized on in his campaign to bring down his rival.   “You’re the guy that’s gonna take down Maxine Waters?” Navarro said in a video taunting Collins that he released in late June. “I’m sorry, but you’re not gonna do that. And by the way, your bodily fluids are not worth $15 million.” 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.

Six U.S. states see record surges in COVID-19 cases, Florida becomes epicenter

Chechen leader blames foreign spies for slaying his critics

The regional strongman leader of Russia's province of Chechnya on Thursday blamed unidentified foreign spy agencies for the recent killing in Austria of a Chechen man who criticized him. Ramzan Kadyrov claimed on his blog that the ethnic Chechen who was shot dead in a Vienna suburb over the weekend fell victim to “special services working against Russia and myself.” The 43-year-old Chechen leader rejected allegations of his involvement in the slaying, saying that the killing in Vienna and earlier slayings of ethnic Chechens in Europe were performed by foreign spies to compromise him and tarnish Russia's image.

1986 cold case on ‘Dateline’ now has arrest in teen’s disappearance, Indiana cops say

The missing teen mystery was featured by “Dateline” in March.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused of echoing white supremacist slogan on air

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been accused of echoing a 14-word white supremacist phrase during one of his on-air segments.During a segment on his Monday evening show, Mr Carlson showed side-by-side images of Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Tammy Duckworth, both of whom are Democrats on Capitol Hill and were born overseas.

Trump admin plans to block asylum seekers from U.S. by citing risk of COVID-19

Citing "potential international threats" from pandemics, the Trump admin announced plans to make public health risk a reason to deny asylum to migrants.

Virginia eliminates huge backlog of untested rape kits

Nile dam dispute spills onto social media

As Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan struggle to resolve a long-running dispute over Addis Ababa's mega-dam project on the Nile, some of their citizens are sparring online over their rights to the mighty waterway. For nearly a decade, multiple rounds of talks between Cairo, Addis Ababa and Khartoum have failed to produce a deal over the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Anxiety has mounted in downstream Sudan and Egypt, which fear for their vital water supplies after upstream Ethiopia declared plans to start filling Africa's largest dam reservoir in July.

Trump flag angered man so he dumped trash on resident’s lawn for months, NJ cops say

“Some people are very passionate about their opinions.”

Study shows ancient contact between Polynesian and South American peoples

New genetic research shows that there was mingling between ancient native peoples from Polynesia and South America, revealing a single episode of interbreeding roughly 800 years ago after an epic transoceanic journey. The question of such contact - long hypothesized in part based on the enduring presence in Polynesia of a staple food in the form of the sweet potato that originated in South and Central America - had been keenly debated among scientists. Scientists said on Wednesday an examination of DNA from 807 people - from 14 Polynesian islands and Pacific coastal Native American populations from Mexico to Chile - definitively resolved the matter.

Ohio sheriff refuses to enforce governor's mask order: 'I'm not going to be the mask police'

An Ohio sheriff said he won't enforce Governor Mike DeWine's order making face masks mandatory in states with high rates of Covid-19 infections.Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones appeared on CNN Wednesday and told anchor Brianna Keilar that while he wears a mask and is "good with that," he has no plans on enforcing the governor's mask order.

Army Reviewing 'Confederate Memorial' Featuring Slaves at Arlington National Cemetery

The presence of a huge memorial to the Confederacy at Arlington National Cemetery is under review.

United Airlines warns 36,000 workers they could be laid off

United Airlines is warning 36,000 employees — nearly half its U.S. staff — they could be furloughed in October, the clearest signal yet of how deeply the virus pandemic is hurting the airline industry. The outlook for a recovery in the airline industry has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the U.S. and some states impose new quarantine requirements on travelers. Airlines say they must shrink to match falling travel demand.