Good morning. Donald Trump’s “failures in leadership” have left America “confused”, said Joe Biden’s new running mate, Kamala Harris, during their first joint appearance on the Democratic presidential card in Delaware on Wednesday night. Together, Biden and Harris said they US would lead its faces through the three major national crises in 2020: the Covid-19 pandemic, the wrestling of the economy and an account of systemic racism.
Trump, for his part, uttered a familiar insult to Harris at a White House press release, describing her as “disgusting” for the way she grilled Brett Kavanaugh during his hearing on the Supreme Court nomination. Poppy Noor runs some of the senator’s best cross-examinations in California of powerful men – including Biden.
Bob Woodward received personal letters from Trump and Kim
White House veteran reporter Bob Woodward has received 25 personal letters exchanged by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and plans to reveal their details in Rage, his new book on the subject. Trump administration. In one of the letters, according to Woodward’s publishers Simon & Schuster, “Kim describes the bond between the two leaders as from a ‘fantasy film’, because the two leaders are participating in an extraordinary diplomatic minute”.
Foreign monitors come to observe the US election
Since the controversial U.S. presidential vote in 2000, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has sent foreign election observers to monitor America’s elections. In its most recent assessment, the OSCE warns of threats to the “integrity of election day procedures”, describing the 2020 poll as “the most challenging in recent decades” – not least because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The organization has recommended that its member states send 500 observers to check the November vote, saying most of the recommendations they made after the 2016 election – including the restoration of a key board of the Voting Rights Act – have not been implemented.
U.S. hospitals pressure staff to work despite Covid symptoms
Despite mixed government reports during the coronavirus crisis, one piece of public health guidance has remained consistent: if you suffer from Covid-19 symptoms, stay home. However, as the Guardian and Kaiser Health News have learned, many U.S. hospitals, clinics, and other health care facilities are fleeing that guidance, pressuring workers infected with the virus to return faster than public health standards suggest is safe.
More than 900 U.S. health workers died during the pandemic. Ron Klain, who was the Obama administration’s Ebola tsar and now advises the Biden campaign, says many of those deaths could – and should – be prevented:
We did not give them the equipment they needed, nor did we do everything we could to reduce the risks they faced: that may not make their heroism greater, but it does make it our duty to remember them. , and to change direction in the nation from our lack of response to Covid, somewhat more urgently.
As the worldwide death toll from coronavirus approaches 750,000, India has recorded a daily rise in new cases – nearly 67,000 – while New Zealand’s successful Covid-19 elimination strategy has backfired, with an outbreak in its largest city suggesting that the virus may have been circulating for weeks not discovered in the community. Some other countries are struggling, and macabre solutions have emerged for the ongoing crisis:
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South Korea has provided bus shelters in the capital Seoul, with anti-Covid technology including temperature-controlling doors and ultraviolet disinfection lamps.
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Bolivian engineers have created a mobile crematorium in response to Bolivia’s increasing mortality rates, providing a cheap option for families who cannot afford a proper funeral.
In other news …
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The Amazon has suffered its worst start to a fire season in a decade, with more than 10,000 blows detected in the Brazilian rainforest in the first 10 days of August, 17% more than the same period last year.
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Americans are facing a wave of suicides, drug overdoses and despair as the U.S. government improves federal unemployment benefits and moratoriums on eviction over the course of the coronavirus crisis, mental health experts have warned.
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The world’s largest international maritime military exercise begins new week in Hawaii. The Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) war games were delayed from April; critics say they should be canceled amid a rise in Covid-19 cases in the state.
Climate Count: 83 days to save the Earth
The world of freshwater animals has declined by 83% since 1970, due to the climate crisis. And there are now 83 days until the US withdraws from the Paris climate agreements. Today in our climate countdown series, Oliver Milman warns that the last decade was the hottest on the planet on record – a sure sign that the crisis is accelerating.
Great read
How the largest buildings in Europe were stolen from the east
When expert Diana Darke looks at Notre Dame or St Mark’s in Venice in the Middle East, she does not see European architectural achievements, but designs plundered from the Islamic world. “Against the backdrop of emerging Islamophobia,” she tells Oliver Wainwright, “I thought it was time for someone to tell the story.”
The model to share with Warhol and take over Vogue
In the late 1960s, Pat Cleveland was one of New York’s top models. She was photographed by Richard Avedon, partied with Warhol, dated Muhammad Ali. But in 1971, she went to France, and did not return until a black model appeared on the cover of American Vogue. “I’m just cowardly,” she tells Ellen E Jones.
Advice: Pop culture is thanks to a bill on colorism
The eyes of many people are now open to systemic racism, but there is a related form of discrimination that still has to do with a cultural account, writes Priya Elan: colourism, as discrimination based on skin tone.
A preference for lighter skin tones, even among people of color, is one of the obvious legacy of Eurocentric beauty standards. Yet hiding colourism in plain sight. Is it so deceptive that we can not call it or talk about it?
Last thing: Nick Cave about canceling culture
Nick Cave, the Australian musician and writer, has on his popular personal blog waited on canceling culture, calling it “bad religion run amuck,” and warning that political correctness has begun to have a “validating effect on the creative soul of a society”.
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