Nice attack leaves at least 84 dead, dozens injured
At least 84 people were killed and dozens more injured, some critically, in France, after a 31-year-old French-Tunisian man drove for more than a mile at high speed through Bastille Day celebrations on the seafront promenade in Nice, firing at revelers who had gathered to watch the fireworks.
Officials said the driver wove along the seafront, knocking people down “like skittles at a bowling alley”. Two Americans are reportedly among the dead. Video footage showed the 19-ton white truck speeding up as it drove into screaming crowds on the city’s Promenade des Anglais while several people tried to chase it on foot.
Parents threw their children aside to safety as it bore down on them. “Everyone was completely shocked, I saw that suddenly people were fleeing and shouting,” Maryam Violet, a journalist on holiday in the Mediterranean city, told the Guardian. “I was walking for nearly a mile and there were dead bodies all over the place.”
Dawn revealed pools of dried blood, smashed children’s strollers, an uneaten baguette and other debris strewn about. The children’s hospital in Nice said it had treated some 50 children and adolescents. Some were still in critical condition on Friday.
The French president, François Hollande, said the killings appeared to be a terrorist attack. He called it – the third major attack in two years – a “crisis for the presidency”, as three days of national mourning were declared. No terrorist group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
A local government official said weapons and grenades were found inside the truck along with an ID near the body of the driver, who was shot by police. The driver was known to the police for petty crime but not to the French intelligence services.
Nice truck attack: France mourns again after 84 killed in Bastille day atrocity – live
Trump delays VP announcement
Donald Trump has delayed the scheduled announcement of his vice-presidential pick after the Nice attack. Trump was expected to announce Indiana governor Mike Pence this morning in New York. Meanwhile, the Never Trump movement has been defeated in a last ditch effort to prevent the presumptive Republican from becoming the official nominee next week in Cleveland. VP contender and former House speaker Newt Gingrich responded to Thursday night’s attack in France by arguing for the expulsion from the US of any Muslim who believes in Sharia law.
Meanwhile, a new AP-GfK poll finds that more than half of Americans think the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton broke the law by using a private email account and server at the state department and nearly four in 10 people think she did so intentionally.
Trump postpones expected unveiling of Mike Pence as VP after attack in Nice
Obama addresses police, racial violence
Barack Obama told a town hall meeting he believes issues of race and violence in the US are better than they have been, but can improve more with dialogue and empathy. “Because of the history of this country and the legacy of race, and all the complications that are involved with that, working through these issues so that things can continue to get better will take some time,” the president said. Recent polls suggest Obama’s views are not shared by many Americans, while Cornel West believes Obama has failed victims of racism and police brutality.
Barack Obama supports both protesters and police in questions about shootings
Georgia executes man as state accelerates death schedule
John Wayne Conner, who was held on death row for 30 years, was put to death using an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital early this morning. Conner, 60, was convicted of beating a friend to death during an argument in January 1982. The execution was the sixth in Georgia this year and the most in a calendar year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Conner’s attorneys had argued he was ineligible for execution because he was intellectually disabled but Georgia’s pardons board declined to grant him clemency.
Georgia executes man held on death row for more than 30 years after challenge fails
Spain’s answer to food waste crisis
Spain’s “gleaning” movement – the harvesting of imperfect fruit and vegetables – has grown rapidly through the country’s economic crisis. Europe wastes some 88m tons of food each year and advocates of gleaning say that the movement could reduce pressure on land use, improve diets, feed the hungry and provide work for the socially excluded.
Food waste: harvesting Spain’s unwanted crops to feed the hungry
Daddy Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone Mick Jagger is to become a father for the eighth time. Representatives for the veteran rocker, who turns 73 on July 26, confirmed that Jagger’s girlfriend, Melanie Hamrick, 29, is pregnant. The singer has seven children who range in age from 45 to 17. He is a grandfather of two, and a great-grandfather of one. Hamrick is a ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre.
Mick Jagger to become father for the eighth time, at the age of 72
Taylor Swift-Tom Hiddleston revisited
Mary Valle considers the pair’s romantic conundrum. “It seems that much of what Taylor does is a game taking place in real life, or real life taking place in the form of a game. Perhaps, since everything is possible for her, everything is boring except bending reality just to see if it breaks, and employing human beings as actors, and actors as human beings.”
Dating Taylor Swift: a nightmare dressed like a daydream?
In case you missed it …
A new app is re-inventing the way technology can manipulate images. Rather than overlaying a filter, Prisma relies on a “combination of neural networks and artificial intelligence” to let users instantly transform mundane images into, say, Picasso’s cubist period paintings. “We do the image fresh,” says Prisma’s Alexey Moiseenkov. “It’s not similar to the Instagram filter where you just layer over … We draw something like a real artist would.”
Why everyone is crazy for Prisma, the app that turns photos into works of art
