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Amy Coney Barrett: 5 things to know about the Supreme Court nominee

President Trump announced Saturday that he is nominating Amy Coney Barrett, a respected jurist and conservative darling, to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

Lawyer says officer thought Blake was trying to kidnap child

The Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times last month told investigators he thought Blake was trying to abduct one of his own children and that he opened fire because Blake started turning toward the officer while holding a knife, the officer’s lawyer contends. Sheskey saw Blake put a child in the SUV as he arrived, but he didn’t know that two other children were also in the back seat, Matthews said.

Lindsey Graham Hints There is ‘More Damning’ Information about the Russia Investigation to be Released

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) on Sunday said to “stay tuned” for more “damning” information after he released records showing the main source for the Steele dossier had previously been the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation for his connections with Russian intelligence."There’s a day of reckoning coming just stay tuned, and there’s more coming, there’s something else coming, more damning than this believe it or not," said the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in an appearance on Fox News.As part of the Senate panel’s probe into the Russia investigation, Graham released declassified documents that showed the FBI had investigated Igor Danchenko, British former intelligence officer Christopher Steele's main source for his dossier, as a possible “threat to national security” a decade ago as a result of his connections with Russian intelligence.The declassified information was revealed to Graham in a letter last week sent by attorney general William Barr, in which the AG referenced what Graham may be hinting at. “I have also alerted the Director of National Intelligence to certain classified information in the possession of the intelligence community, also brought to my attention by [U.S. Attorney John] Durham, which bear upon the FBI’s knowledge concerning the reliability of the dossier,” Barr said in his letter. “Mr. Durham confirms that the disclosure of that information would not interfere with his investigation, and the Department otherwise defers to the DNI concerning the handling of this information.”Durham is leading an investigation into the Russia investigation on behalf of the Justice Department.On Sunday Graham spoke about alleged wrongdoing in the Russia investigation saying there was “three buckets,” including whether there was “any legitimate reason” for special counsel Robert Mueller to be investigating Trump’s campaign for a crime involving Russia."In 2017, there was no evidence that anybody on the Trump campaign was working with the Russians," Graham said.The other two areas of concern are how the FBI may have misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to obtain warrants to wiretap a member of President Trump’s team and the case against Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Sir David Attenborough warns world leaders over extinction crisis

The naturalist uses a UN event to call on world leaders to do more to protect nature.

100 Arrested During Unauthorized and 'Unruly' Car Rally in Maryland

People at the event shared videos of confrontations that erupted between police officers and rally attendees

Social media reacts to 13,000-gallon red wine spill: 'Thanks, 2020'

Many compared the blood-red spill to the iconic elevator scene in "The Shining," where a torrent of blood rushes into the hallway.

Army Leaders Want to Keep Pace with Diversity in Changing US Population

The plan promotes diversity through 2025 in an attempt to adapt to the country's shifting demographics.

Kyle Rittenhouse's mom reportedly received a 'standing ovation' from the crowd at a Republican event in Wisconsin

Kyle Rittenhouse faces multiple felony charges, including homicide, after shooting three people at a Jacob Blake demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Trump and team belatedly reversed course on the debate expectations game

Despite late efforts to recast Joe Biden as a champion debater, the president and his campaign have set the bar exceptionally low for him in the minds of many voters.

Los Angeles officer 'will be ok' after being injured during shooting inside police station, authorities say

The shooting comes after 2 Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were shot in an apparent ambush this month while sitting in a patrol car in Compton.

Explainer: Who's fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, and why does it matter?

WHERE AND WHAT IS NAGORNO-KARABAKH? It's a mountainous, forested patch of land that sits inside the territory of ex-Soviet Azerbaijan and is recognised under international law as part of that country. Nagorno-Karabakh survives almost totally on budget support from Armenia and donations from the worldwide Armenian diaspora.

New York City authorities worry over neighborhood coronavirus hotbeds

Coronavirus infection rates have increased at "an alarming rate" in several New York neighborhoods, particularly among the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, city health authorities warned Sunday, threatening to sanction certain schools if they fail to comply with anti-virus regulations.

Wine country wildfire forces hundreds of evacuations

A wind-driven wildfire erupted on Sunday in the heart of Northern California's Napa Valley wine country and spread across nearly 2,000 acres, forcing the evacuation of a hospital and hundreds of homes, authorities said.

British Museum 'won't remove controversial objects' from display

Cultural institutions received a letter from the government warning them not to remove artefacts.

'Cake Boss' gets emotional recounting son’s heroics during gruesome bowling machine accident

Buddy Valastro wiped away tears as he talked about his son's role in rescuing him after his hand was impaled by a machine in the family's in-home bowling alley.

The coronavirus may have 'one big trick.' Scientists are learning how to stop it.

The coronavirus appears to have "one big trick," Shane Crotty, a professor in the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told Bloomberg.That trick — avoiding the human body's "initial innate immune response for a significant period of time," and, particularly, the response of a substance called interferon that typically helps orchestrate the defense against viral pathogens — is linked to more severe cases. Indeed, new studies published last week in Science found that an insufficient amount of interferon, the production of which may sometimes be inhibited in people with previously "silent" gene mutations, could signal a more dangerous infection because the lack of interferon can overstimulate the rest of the immune system.The good news is that, because scientists are catching on to the virus' strategy, they have a better idea of how to prevent it from causing severe infections. Writes Bloomberg, the work highlights the potential for interferon-based therapies, which are typically used in in the early stages of a viral infection when it's easier to avoid life-threatening respiratory failure. Now, dozens of studies focusing on interferon treatments are recruiting COVID-19 patients. Read more at Bloomberg.More stories from theweek.com Trump literally can't afford to lose the election Most of Trump's charitable tax write-offs are reportedly for not developing property he owns 5 outrageously funny cartoons about Trump's election scheming

Mexico official: definitive COVID-19 toll will take 2 years

Mexico’s top coronavirus official said Sunday that definitive data on the country's death toll from COVID-19 won’t be available for “a couple of years.” The statement by Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell is likely to revive debate about Mexico’s death toll, currently at 76,430, the fourth-highest in the world. Mexico does very little testing, and many people die without a test.

Biden pleads with Republicans to wait until 2021 to confirm Supreme Court nominee

Democratic presidential nominee opposes Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Texas man charged with capital murder in deaths of Houston friends missing since 2016

Harvey Lester Cyphers, 53, of Austin, Texas, was arrested and charged with capital murder in the 2016 deaths of friends Sidney Taylor and Krislyn Gibson, both 35, who were visiting Houston for the 2016 Urban Music Festival. They were last seen alive on April 2, 2016. Cyphers was taken to the Travis County Jail where his bond was set at $1.5 million. The U.S. Marshals Lone Star Fugitive Task Force and the Austin Police Department are investigating.

Trump’s 2016 Campaign Listed Millions of Black Voters It Wanted to Stop From Voting, Leak Reveals

LONDON—Over three million Black voters in key states were identified by President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign as people they had to persuade to stay at home on Election Day to help him reach the White House.The revelation comes from an enormous data leak obtained by the British news network Channel 4. It shows that, four years ago, the Trump campaign prepared files on almost 200 million American voters and separated some out into eight different categories. One such category, assigned to 3.5 million Black voters, was titled: “Deterrence.”The leaked database was reportedly used by Trump’s digital campaign team, which was critical to Trump’s narrow victory. Channel 4 News has a track record of exposing the unethical practices of Cambridge Analytica—the now-defunct British digital black-ops firm that harvested the Facebook data of tens of millions of voters for the use of Team Trump.The leaked files show that Black Americans were disproportionately marked ‘Deterrence’ by the 2016 campaign, making up far more of the category when compared to general population stats. For example, in Georgia, Black people make up around a third of the population, but 61 percent of the Trump campaign’s ‘Deterrence’ category there. The same pattern can be seen in data for North Carolina and Wisconsin.Cambridge Analytica’s Real Role in Trump’s Dark Facebook CampaignOverall, people of colour—labelled by the campaign as Black, Hispanic, Asian and ‘Other’ groups—made up 54 percent of the people in the ‘Deterrence’ category, according to Channel 4 News. In contrast, the lists of voters that the campaign wanted to encourage to head out to vote were mostly white. It’s impossible to say how effective the tactics were, but research shows that, in 2016, Black turnout fell by eight points.The data does not offer a complete picture of exactly how the ‘Deterrence’ list was exploited, though it’s likely that it was used to help the campaign micro-target people on Facebook in the months leading up to Election Day in 2016. The Daily Beast revealed two years ago that Team Trump used audience lists created by Cambridge Analytica to target “dark ads” on Facebook in the final months of the 2016 campaign.There’s no public record of those “dark ads,” which disappeared when the campaign stopped paying for them, and there’s no public information on the lists that were used to target voters. However, Channel 4 does report that it found some evidence that Team Trump pushed ads at Black voters designed to damage opinions of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton.One video ad showed Clinton talking about “super-predators” in 1996—a comment she apologized for in 2016 after the clip spread online. Channel 4 reports that Cambridge Analytica privately admitted that the campaign did target “AA,” or African Americans, with what it called the “Predators video,” though it’s not known if the ‘Deterrence’ list was used.Trump Data Guru Officially Disqualified Over ‘Shady’ Campaign TacticsPresented with Channel 4’s findings, Jamal Watkins, Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said: “We use data... but it’s to motivate, persuade and encourage folks to participate. We don't use the data to say who can we deter and keep at home. That just seems, fundamentally, it’s a shift from the notion of democracy.”Watkins added: “It's not ‘may the best candidate win’ at that point it’s ‘may the best well-funded machine suppress voters and keep them at home thereby rigging the election so that someone can win’.”An unnamed Facebook spokesperson said: “Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook—what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn’t happen today.” The company cited its new rules prohibiting voter suppression, and its searchable political ads library which means that ads don’t just disappear from the network as they did in 2016.The Trump campaign didn’t provide any comment.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.

Man convicted of collecting urine from boys now faces child porn charges, Ohio cops say

Officials say the man liked to drink the urine he collected.

Australia begins disposal of over 350 dead whales after mass stranding

Officials were able to rescue 108 whales from the nation's largest-ever mass beaching.

'You're not wanted': Trump's proposed college student visa changes worry international students – again

International college students say they feel unwanted after yet another Trump administration proposal to restrict U.S. student visa rules.

Iranian dissident caught between rock and hard place in Cyprus limbo

An Iranian dissident who fled his country fearing arrest has fallen foul of politics and COVID-19 restrictions in ethnically split Cyprus. Since mid-September, Omid Tootian has been living in a small tent in Cyprus's buffer zone, a United Nations-controlled slice of territory carved out after a war split Cyprus in 1974. A musician critical of Teheran, Tootian left Iran for Turkey four years ago.

Going it alone on Covid-19 brings 'greater disaster': China foreign minister

The coronavirus is a wake-up call for the world, and trading blame "will only bring greater disaster", China's foreign minister said Monday.

Carrie Lam: The controversial leader of Hong Kong

A leader handpicked by Beijing has been a divisive figure in a city rocked by political unrest.

Federal judge blocks Texas’ elimination of straight-ticket voting

Democrats sued the state in March to overturn the Texas Legislature’s removal of straight-ticket voting.

California law requires prisons to house transgender inmates by gender identity

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Saturday that requires California to house transgender inmates in prisons based on their gender identity, only if the state does not have “management or security concerns.”

NYPD officers charge at group of protesters and diners, arresting people on sidewalk

Police say they "responded to a large disorderly group obstructing vehicular traffic," but video of the incident appeared to show a different scene.

Greece hunts for culprits behind daubing of flag with red paint on flashpoint island

Greek police are searching for whoever was responsible for daubing red paint on a giant Greek flag on Kastellorizo, the tiny Aegean island that is at the centre of the crisis between Athens and Ankara. The paint – the colour of the Turkish flag – was splashed all over the blue and white flag, which is etched into a hillside on the island, facing the Turkish coast. A drone that was launched around the same time as the attack took aerial photos of the desecrated flag and there were reports that it played the Turkish national anthem through a loudspeaker. Athens has demanded that Turkey also investigate the incident, saying it was an insult to Greek national honour. “The police and the army are investigating and we are waiting for them to tell us what they have found out,” Michael Amygdalos, the deputy mayor of Kastellorizo, told The Telegraph on Monday. There were earlier reports that the paint had been dropped by the drone, but that was incorrect, he said.

Transcript: Don McGahn on "Face the Nation"

The following is a transcript of an interview with former White House Counsel Don McGahn that aired Sunday, September 27, 2020, on "Face the Nation."

Merkel says German coronavirus infections could hit 19,200 a day: source

Chancellor Angela Merkel told leaders of her Christian Democrats (CDU) on Monday that coronavirus infection rate could hit 19,200 per day in Germany if the current trend continues but stressed that the economy must be kept running, a party source said. Infections have been rising in Germany for weeks. Data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 1,192 on Monday.

The Houses of Parliament's bars will no longer be exempt from the UK's 10pm coronavirus drinking curfew following public outcry

Members of the UK Parliament will be able to continue drinking after all other bars in the country close, under a special exemption.

Beijing passes law to protect medical whistleblowers

Beijing's city government will protect "non-malicious" medical whistleblowers under a new law, passed months after a Chinese doctor was punished for sounding the alarm at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Exclusive: As States Prepared Mail-in Ballots, Postal Service Failed to Update at Least 1.8 Million Addresses

As states prepared to send out tens of millions of ballots, the U.S. Postal Service inexplicably stopped fully updating its database, leading to a failure of registering at least 1.8 million addresses

Meng Wanzhou: The PowerPoint that sparked an international row

The top Huawei executive's closely watched extradition case returns to court on Monday.

Where can Americans vacation internationally right now?

Mexico and the Caribbean offer the most options for U.S. vacationers. Only a few European countries are open to Americans.

$20M settlement reached in police killing of handcuffed man

A Maryland county has agreed to a $20 million settlement with the family of a man who was handcuffed in a patrol car when a police officer shot and killed him, a county official said Monday. The Prince George's County police officer who killed William Green in January was arrested on charges including second-degree murder and has a trial scheduled for next year. Michael Owen Jr., who was a 10-year veteran of the police department, has been jailed since his arrest.

Frenchman says tattoos cost him kindergarten teaching job

A schoolteacher whose body, face and tongue are covered in tattoos and who has had the whites of his eyes surgically turned black said he was prevented from teaching at a French kindergarten after a parent complained he scared their child. But the teacher, Sylvain Helaine, 35, still teaches children from the age of six up, and said that, after an initial shock when they see him for the first time, his pupils see past his appearance. "All of my students and their parents were always cool with me because basically they knew me," said Mr Helaine, who estimated he has spent around 460 hours under the tattooists' needle. "It's only when people see me from far away that they can assume the worst." He said last year he was teaching kindergarten at the Docteur Morere Elementary School in Palaiseau, a suburb of Paris, when the parents of a three-year-old child complained to educational authorities. They said their son, who was not taught by Mr Helaine, had nightmares after seeing him.

First presidential debate: When and how to watch Trump vs Biden

All major networks will broadcast the debate, as well as a number of streaming services

Suspect in downing of flight MH17 denies any involvement

One of four suspects on trial for the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 has denied any involvement with firing or supplying the missile allegedly used in its destruction, a lawyer said in court on Monday. MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by a missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels during fighting in eastern Ukraine, international investigators say. One defendant, Oleg Pulatov, has instructed a lawyer to defend him.

Pelosi expresses hope that deal can be made with White House on COVID-19 relief

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday that she thinks an agreement can be reached with the White House on a coronavirus relief package and that talks were continuing.

Skytrax is rating global airports based on how they're handling the coronavirus pandemic – here's the full ranking

Airports are being judged on how they are combating the pandemic within their doors with ratings for social distancing enforcement, temperature checks, and cleanliness of public areas.

Exit polls see Romania's Social Democrats lose control of Bucharest

Romania's deeply-entrenched Social Democrats lost control of capital Bucharest in local elections Sunday, exit polls showed, as mask-clad voters chose mayors and local councillors nationwide in the first electoral test after years of political turbulence.

Brain-eating microbe: US city warned over water supply

People in Lake Jackson, Texas, are urged to take precautionary measures amid contamination concerns.

Oil washes up along five-mile stretch of Florida beach in wake of Hurricane Sally

It's unclear at this point if the submerged oil is from the 2010 oil spill that was stirred up from Hurricane Sally or if it is from another source.

Governor seeks review of police protest response in Oregon

Criticism of the law enforcement response to a protest in Portland, Oregon, late Saturday into early Sunday prompted Gov. Kate Brown to ask authorities to review “any alleged incidents” involving their officers. “Journalists and law enforcement officers have difficult jobs to do during these demonstrations, but I do still believe that we can protect free speech and keep the peace,” Brown tweeted.

Anti-English sentiment on rise in Scotland, Rennie tells Lib Dems

English people in Scotland are being made to feel like “strangers in their own homes” as a result of rising nationalist bigotry, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats has warned. Willie Rennie, in his speech to his party’s virtual conference on Sunday, said that the pandemic was being used by some to “spread hate” and said he felt “uncomfortable” with “the growing anti-English sentiment in Scotland”. He highlighted border protests in the summer in which masked demonstrators waved banners urging motorists crossing the border into Scotland to stay away.