An impassioned obituary for a 79-year-old coronavirus victim blames Trump for his death, then calls out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and people who refused to wear masks

"Dave did everything he was supposed to do, but you did not," David W. Nagy's widow wrote in her husband's obituary.

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Colorado police apologise for detaining mother and children

A black mother and four children - aged six to 17 - were mistakenly detained over a stolen vehicle.

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'They're dying … it is what it is': key takeaways from Trump's shocking interview

President floundered in conversation with Axios, claiming Covid-19 was ‘under control’ and attacking mail-in votingDonald Trump stumbled through his second damaging interview in as many weeks, floundering in a conversation with the news website Axios over key issues he is tasked with responding to as president.It’s been just over two weeks since the president made a series of shocking statements in a one-on-one interview with Fox News, but he packed another host of extraordinary claims into a 37-minute interview released on Monday night by Axios.Here are the eight most glaring things Trump said to reporter Jonathan Swan. ‘It is what it is’In a lengthy discussion about the US’s poor response to coronavirus, Trump described the pandemic as “under control”.Swan responded: “How? A thousand Americans are dying a day.”“They are dying. That’s true. And you – it is what it is,” Trump said. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.” ‘You can’t do that’The president then appeared unable to distinguish between different measurements of coronavirus deaths.Trump brandished several pieces of paper with graphs and charts.“United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. Lower than Europe.”“In what?” Swan asked. As it becomes apparent that Trump is talking about the number of deaths as a proportion of confirmed Covid-19 cases, Swan said: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea.”Trump responded: “You can’t do that.” ‘He didn’t come to my inauguration’Trump downplayed the work of the congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, whose funeral was held last week in Atlanta, Georgia. Instead of Lewis’s legacy, Trump focused on Lewis in relation to himself.“I never met John Lewis, actually,” Trump said. “He didn’t come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches, and that’s OK. That’s his right.”Lewis’s fight for racial equality includes having his skull broken by state troopers during the 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Alabama. As a congressman he worked across the aisle. ‘I did more for the black community than anybody’Swan pressed for an analysis of systemic racism. Trump said: “I have seen where there is a difference and I don’t want there to be a difference.”When asked why black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police, the president spoke about how many white people are killed by the police.Then said: “I did more for the black community than anybody with a possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether you like it or not.”When asked whether he did more than Lyndon B Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights Act in 1964 (and the Voting Rights Act in 1965), Trump didn’t really answer the question. ‘I do wish her well’Trump stood by a 21 July comment where he said “I wish her well” of Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who faces federal charges for allegedly enabling the disgraced financier’s sex trafficking of minor girls.Asked for his thoughts on Maxwell, Trump said, “Yeah, I wish her well. I’d wish you well. I wish a lot of people well.” Promotes Epstein conspiracy theoryHe also promoted the conspiracy theory that Epstein was murdered when he died in a New York jail last August. This has been disputed by the attorney general, William Barr.“Her boyfriend died in jail and people are still trying to figure out how did it happen, was it suicide, was he killed?” Trump said. “I do wish her well. I’m not looking for anything bad for her.” ‘Lots of things can happen’Trump again attacked mail-in voting, which is expected to occur at higher rates in the November election because of the pandemic.“It could be decided many months later,” Trump said. “Do you know why? Because lots of things will happen during that period of time. Especially when you have tight margins, lots of things can happen. There’s never been anything like this … Now, of course, right now we have to live with it, but we’re challenging it.” ‘I have heard that, but it has never reached my desk’Trump said reports that Russia had been offering bounties to the Taliban for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan were “fake news”. When Swan asked whether Trump had ever discussed the bounties with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump said he had not.When Swan asked Trump about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, the president asserted: “I have heard that, but it has never reached my desk.”

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'Hot objects' from vehicle tailpipe caused 26,850-acre Apple Fire in California, authorities say

Only 7% of the perimeter was contained in the massive California blaze. Witnesses who saw the vehicle blamed for the fire are being sought.

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A woman allegedly smashed a police officer's head into concrete after being told to wear a mask

A woman in Australia allegedly smashed a police officer's head into concrete after being told to wear a mask. The officer was left concussed.

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From Manhattan to Hiroshima: the race for the atom bomb

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki capped six years of top-secret work by scientists from Europe and North America. In 1939, Albert Einstein signs a letter warning US president Franklin D. Roosevelt of the destructive potential of nuclear fission, which was discovered by the German chemist Otto Hahn. Roosevelt creates the Advisory Body on Uranium.

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Governor Cuomo begs wealthy New Yorkers to come home to save ailing city

The governor of New York has begged the city’s wealthy, who fled the coronavirus outbreak, to return and help it recover. Andrew Cuomo said he was extremely worried about New York City weathering the Covid-19 aftermath if too many of the well-heeled taxpayers who fled to second homes decide there is no need to move back. “They are in their Hamptons homes, or Hudson Valley or Connecticut. I talk to them literally every day. I say. ‘When are you coming back? I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll cook,’ “ Mr Cuomo told MSNBC, naming popular getaways for the rich. “They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking, if I stay there, they pay a lower income tax because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge. So, that would be a bad place if we had to go there.” Lawmakers have proposed a wealth tax targeting the city's 100 billionaires to help fill a $30 billion (£23bn) budget shortfall created by the Covid-19 crisis.

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I Was Bloodied and Dazed. Beiruti Strangers Treated Me Like a Friend.

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Mapping the Damage From the Beirut Explosions

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Republicans Aid Kanye West’s Bid to Get on the 2020 Ballot

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Trading Concessions on Recovery Plan, Negotiators Set Week’s End Deadline for a Deal

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How QAnon Creates a Dangerous Alternate Reality

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Bodies Strewn on the Ground After Apocalyptic Blast in Beirut

A huge explosion rocked Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday destroying entire blocks of high-rise buildings and leaving at least 73 people confirmed dead, more than 3,700 wounded, and scores more feared buried under rubble and ash. The country’s interior minister said early indications were that highly explosive materials, seized and stored at Beirut’s port, had detonated. Footage of the blast showed a large plume of dark red flames and smoke before a massive explosion threw up a mushroom cloud. Powerful shock waves shattered glass, collapsed ceilings and pulled down balconies—even residents on the island nation of Cyprus, 110 miles away, heard the blast.A witness on the ground who works for the United Nations, but does not speak on their behalf, was near the port when the explosion happened. She told The Daily Beast that bodies were scattered from the blast. “There was dark smoke from a fire and then a massive blast and everyone fell to the ground,” she said. “A lot of people didn’t get up.”Entire buildings collapsed, streets glistened under blankets of shattered glass, and injured residents wandered the city covered in blood. Lebanese media carried images of people trapped under rubble. Residents rushed the injured to hospital any way they could, carrying them on their shoulders, on the trunks of cars and on ash-covered pieces of debris.“What we are witnessing is a huge catastrophe,” George Kettani, head of Lebanon’s Red Cross, told local TV network Mayadeen. “There are victims and casualties everywhere.”Abbas Ibrahim, director of General Security, told Lebanese media at a press conference that Israel was not to blame for the explosion. He pointed the finger at a depot at the port where highly explosive materials were stored after being confiscated.Local media reports also indicated that the blast may have ripped through a fireworks warehouse. It was not yet clear what ignited a fire that could be seen shortly before the main explosion.CNN’s Ben Wedeman, who is based in Beirut, was in the bureau about a kilometer away before the blast. He reported on CNN that people were tweeting photos of a fire in the port about 15 minutes before a massive blast shook the building, destroying the bureau. He described a large red cloud hanging low over the city. “The city is in a state of panic,” he said on CNN. “The city is in a state of shock.”France 24 correspondent Leila Molana-Allen wrote on Twitter that her apartment was blown apart. “All the buildings in my block are destroyed. Huge explosion in Beirut. Everyone covered in glass and blood,” she wrote.Hours after the blast at 6 p.m. local time, fires were still burning in the port district. Hospitals, already buckling under the coronavirus pandemic, were overwhelmed with patients.The blast came as the city braces for the verdict in a long-awaited trial over the assassination of former Sunni prime minister Rafik al-Hariri who was killed in a truck bomb 15 years ago. The defendants, from the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, are being tried in absentia. That verdict is expected Friday. Beirut has been under siege by angry protesters demonstrating against economic strife and alleged corruption since the October Revolution kicked off in the fall of 2019. Daily demonstrations and widespread resignations have crippled the government. Before that, the city buckled under the a civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. Tuesday’s blast was by far the biggest explosion to hit the city since the 2006 war with Israel. 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.

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Netanyahu warns Hezbollah after Israeli strike in Syria

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Florida man once bitten by alligator is chomped by 8-foot shark while on vacation

Justin Stuller is now sporting two dozen stitches and a small limp after tangling with an eight-foot lemon shark in the Florida Keys.

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‘You can’t do that’: Trump refuses to discuss coronavirus death rate and says US beating rest of world on cases

Donald Trump has maintained that the US is beating the rest of the world on the coronavirus death rate, even as thousands of Americans are still dying every week.Mr Trump’s analysis, which he advanced during a discussion with Axios interviewer Jonathan Swan, is based on deaths as a proportion of cases but ignores deaths per capita — a measure that puts the US among the worst countries in the world.

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US jails man who bought Lamborghini with government loan

Instead of speeding off in a $200,000 Lamborghini Urus, a Texas man got a slower ride to jail Tuesday after US authorities arrested him for using $1.6 million in government pandemic aid to go on a spending spree. Lee Price III, 29, was charged with fraud after he secured two government loans under the Paycheck Protection Program to pay employees he did not have, the Justice Department said in a statement. Price secured two loans: Price Enterprises Holdings allegedly received more than $900,000, while 713 Construction was approved for over $700,000, but neither has employees and "the individual listed as CEO on the 713 Construction loan application died in April 2020, a month before the application was submitted," according to the complaint.

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Dan Rodricks: Note to Republicans in Congress: 'It's an awesome blessing to provide for people in need'

If you're out of work and struggling, fearful that Congress won't come up with more help for you and millions of other Americans during the pandemic, then you're probably worried about where your next few meals will come from - not whether you can deduct the full cost of them from your income taxes. And yet, there it is: In the Republican version of the next big relief package, a proposal to ...

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California takes starring role in VP search as Karen Bass ascends and Kamala Harris comes under fire

Joe Biden's shortlist for vice president includes two prominent Californians — Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Karen Bass — and politicos in the Golden State are divided over the choice.

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Modi, Muslims to attend temple ceremony on contested India site

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and two prominent Muslims who lived through deadly riots following the razing of a mosque in 1992 plan to attend the foundation-laying ceremony for a Hindu temple on Wednesday on the same site. Modi, whose Hindu nationalist party had led demands for a temple there dedicated to the god-king Ram, will unveil a plaque, his office said in a statement. Construction of the temple was made possible by a verdict last year from the Supreme Court awarding the disputed site to the Hindus.

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Ari Fleischer on suggestions Biden skip Trump debates, controversy over mail-in voting

Former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer weighs in on 'Outnumbered Overtime.'

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Millions return to lockdown in Philippines as virus cases soar

More than 27 million people in the Philippines -- about a quarter of the population -- will go back into lockdown Tuesday after overwhelmed health workers warned the country was losing the battle against the coronavirus. Since the beginning of June, when much of the country emerged from one of the world's longest stay-at-home orders, confirmed infections in the archipelago have increased fivefold, surging past 100,000. The new restrictions announced by President Rodrigo Duterte late Sunday apply to the capital Manila and four surrounding provinces on the main island of Luzon.

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AP PHOTOS: Terror, death, devastation in Lebanon explosion

As they watched a huge mushroom cloud rise over the seaport capital, many who felt the massive explosion in Beirut on Tuesday thought it was a nuclear detonation. Others described the popping and bursting of fireworks and a raging fire that spread to another building, triggering the blast felt kilometers (miles) away. The explosion collapsed balconies, shattered windows and ripped bricks from buildings, killing more than 70 people and injuring more than 3,000.

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