Portland protests: US federal agents 'will not retreat', Chad Wolf says

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53489995

 Speaking during a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Wolf said federal law enforcement officers in Portland were only targeting and arresting demonstrators who had been identified as being involved in "criminal activity".

U.S. Homeland Security confirms three units sent paramilitary officers to Portland

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-protests-agents/us-homeland-security-confirms-three-units-sent-paramilitary-officers-to-portland-idUSKCN24M2RL

  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection arm confirmed on Tuesday it has deployed officers from three paramilitary-style units to join a federal crackdown on protests against police violence in Portland, Oregon.

Trump blasts Beijing in public, but privately Trump org imports tons of Chinese goods

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/21/politics/trump-org-china-imports/index.html

 President Donald Trump has cast himself as tough on China and promised that his trade negotiations with Beijing would economically benefit everyday Americans, even as Trump-owned properties have continued to contribute to the trade deficit with the country he rails about.

Since September of last year, Trump properties in the US have imported more than eight tons of goods from China, CNN has learned by reviewing US customs data compiled by ImportGenius, which tracks information companies are legally bound to provide to US customs when they import goods to the US. The imports have arrived to decorate his properties while the President has sought to dress down China.

More than six tons of tables were delivered to Trump International Hotel in New York last fall. On the same day, Trump tweeted, "We are doing very well in our negotiations with China."

 

Coronavirus vaccine: When will we have one?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51665497

 When will we have a coronavirus vaccine?

A vaccine would normally take years, if not decades, to develop. Researchers hope to achieve the same amount of work in only a few months.

Most experts think a vaccine is likely to become widely available by mid-2021, about 12-18 months after the new virus, known officially as Sars-CoV-2, first emerged.

That would be a huge scientific feat and there are no guarantees it will work.

Four coronaviruses already circulate in human beings. They cause common cold symptoms and we don't have vaccines for any of them.

 

John Bolton says there's 'disagreement' between Israel and US on sovereignty plan

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283919

In an interview with Galei Tzahal’s Efi Triger which was released Tuesday morning, Bolton said that Kushner opposes unilateral actions by Israel, including the application of sovereignty in parts of Judea and Samaria.

“I think there’s obviously a disagreement. Jared is still trying to sustain his peace plan and he’s worried about unilateral action or American recognition of unilateral action. Personally, I would go ahead and do it.”

Bolton added that he will not be backing either Trump or Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election, and said that the election season is an “optimal time” for Israel to move forward with its “own national security interest”.

“I’m not advocating the election of Joe Biden. For me, in November, I’m going to write-in the name of a third person. It’s not a happy election for me.”

“I think the next few months are an optimal time for Israel to act in its own national security interests.”

 

Federal agents, local streets: A ‘red flag’ in Oregon

 https://apnews.com/85977b54231de6264f6c8b00c735f52c

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Federal law enforcement officers’ actions at protests in Oregon’s largest city, done without local authorities’ consent, are raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis — one that could escalate as weeks of demonstrations find renewed focus in clashes with camouflaged, unidentified agents outside Portland’s U.S. courthouse.

Inside the Hill takes Trump Cognitive Test

Cognitive test elephant calls out President Trump

Trumpfeld

Trump says the US has 'the best mortality rate' in the world. That's not true

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/20/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-mortality-rate-intl/index.html

During a meandering and occasionally hostile interview with Fox News on Sunday, President Donald Trump made a very bold claim: that the United States has the lowest mortality rate from Covid-19 anywhere in the world.

"I heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest, mortality rate anywhere in the world," Trump told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace. "Do you have the numbers please? I heard we had the best mortality rate," he added to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was off-camera.

When McEnany returned with a piece of paper, Trump turned on Wallace. "Number one low mortality rate," he said, attacking Wallace for reporting "fake news" in the process. "You said we had the worst mortality rate in the world, and we have the best."

But the President's claim is not true. And it's not even close.

The US in fact has one of the highest death rates from the coronavirus of any country, and is worse than several badly-hit countries like Brazil, Mexico and Russia, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University

According to Wallace, Trump also waved a graph showing a slightly different metric to tout his claim -- the case-fatality rate.

This is simply a country's number of confirmed deaths divided by its number of confirmed cases. It's a more problematic measure because it depends heavily on how much testing a country is or is not doing. A country that has consistently tested its general population will have a very low case-fatality rate, while a country that tests only sick people in hospitals will have a very high one.

Nonetheless, the US still ranks in the top 60 countries worldwide by this measure, according to JHU, around the same as Brazil and Peru and worse than dozens of other nations.

In other words, there is no measure by which Trump's claim that the US has "the best" mortality rate is true.

I took a closer look at the cognitive test Trump claims to have aced

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/21/donald-trump-cognitive-test-closer-look

The test is called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and was created by the neurologist Dr Ziad Nasreddine in 1996. Talking to MarketWatch on Monday, Nasreddine stressed that the test “is supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment”, stressing that “this is not an IQ test or the level of how a person is extremely skilled or not. The test is supposed to help physicians detect early signs of Alzheimer’s.”

Trump falsely touts US Covid-19 death rate

Fact check: Trump's dishonest '911' ad fear-mongers about Biden

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/21/politics/fact-check-trump-ad-biden-police-911/index.html

 President Donald Trump's campaign has released another TV ad that dishonestly tries to raise fears about former Vice President Joe Biden's views on policing.

The ad released Monday, the latest in a series of similarly fear-mongering ads from the Trump campaign, suggests that a Biden presidency would result in 911 calls from senior citizens going unanswered.

That is just nonsense.

 Biden has not proposed anything that could result in 911 calls no longer being answered. He has repeatedly and explicitly opposed the idea of "defunding the police," and he has proposed a $300 million increase in federal funding for community policing. Biden has not specifically weighed in on a proposal for a 50% cut to Seattle's police budget, which the ad insinuates he supports.

The ad relies on a single Biden comment to a progressive activist during a video chat earlier this month, in which Biden suggested he was "yes, absolutely" open to redirecting some police funding toward social services, mental health counseling and affordable housing.

We'll lay out the context for that comment below. But even if you interpret Biden's "yes, absolutely" in a way that is charitable to the Trump campaign, nothing Biden has said comes close to justifying the Trump campaign's terrifying vision of a Biden presidency.
 

But, again, there was no call from Biden to slash police budgets to the extent that there would be nobody working at a 911 dispatch center.

Rand Paul: 'No place' for feds 'rounding people up at will' in Portland

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/508158-rand-paul-no-place-for-feds-rounding-people-up-at-will-in-portland

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Monday spoke out against federal officers “rounding people up at will” in Portland, Ore., saying the handling of unrest there should be left to local law enforcement.
 “We cannot give up liberty for security. Local law enforcement can and should be handling these situations in our cities but there is no place for federal troops or unidentified federal agents rounding people up at will,” Paul tweeted Monday.