Good morning.
The former police captain Eric Adams has been declared the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. If he wins the general election in November – which, as the overwhelming favourite against the Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, he is expected to do – he will become the city’s second Black mayor.
As of Tuesday evening he had a one-point lead over his closest rival, Kathryn Garcia, and was declared the winner by the Associated Press soon after a new round of results was released.
He said in a statement:
I grew up poor in Brooklyn & Queens. I wore a bulletproof vest to keep my neighbors safe. I served my community as a State Senator & Brooklyn Borough President. And I'm honored to be the Democratic nominee to be the Mayor of the city I've always called home.
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) July 7, 2021
Thank you, New York! pic.twitter.com/YU2DBIFU5D
Adams fought off competition from Garcia, the former city sanitation commissioner, and Maya Wiley, a former city hall legal adviser who had the support of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang was an early favourite but dropped out of the race last month.
Who is Eric Adams? The 22-year police veteran and Brooklyn borough president was beaten by police officers aged 15. He decided to run for police officer and rose to the rank of captain before leaving to run for state senate, write Adam Gabbatt and Maanvi Singh.
This election marked New York’s first time using ranked-choice voting in a major election and has been criticised over delays after mistakenly counting “test ballots”, which made it look as if Garcia had significantly narrowed the gap with Adams. Adams, Garcia and Wiley all filed lawsuits last week.
Donald Trump allegedly told his chief of staff that Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’
A new book claims that Donald Trump told his chief of staff John Kelly during a visit to Europe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”
The former president’s remark during the 2018 trip reportedly “stunned” Kelly, a retired US Marine Corps general, according a new book by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal to be published next week.
In the book, Bender, who is among the authors to have interviewed Trump since leaving office in January, claims that Trump made the comment during a conversation in which Kelly “reminded the president which countries were on which side during the conflict” and “connected the dots from the first world war to the second world wall and all of Hitler’s atrocities”. Bender reports that Trump denied making the remark.
Meanwhile, the US justice department has been urged to investigate deceptive Facebook ads tied to a rightwing group after the Guardian revealed that “Green party” ads were placed by a conservative marketing firm.
Biden has announced Covid ‘surge response teams’ amid fears over the rapid spread of the Delta variant
President Joe Biden has warned that the Delta variant now represents half of coronavirus cases in many parts of the US as he announced federal “surge response teams” to fight the spread.
He made the announcement on Tuesday after narrowly missing his target of 70% of US adults getting at least one vaccine shot by 4 July.
Coronavirus cases and deaths are down 90% since January, he said, but he warned: “Our fight against this virus is not over.” Encouraging the millions of Americans who are still unvaccinated to get it, he said: “Their people they care about are at risk.”
Public health authorities across the US west warned that the Delta variant was rapidly gaining ground, including in California, and now accounts for about 25% of new US infections.
Meanwhile, the organisers of Miss Mexico 2021 are pressing ahead with the pageant, despite a Covid outbreak that infected almost half of the contestants.
And in England, where lockdown restrictions are being lifted despite rapidly rising cases, clinical epidemiologist Dr Deepti Gurdasani warns it is a dangerous experiment.
Progressive groups are urging US media to ‘prioritize accuracy’ in culture war topics
A coalition of progressive advocacy organizations are urging US journalists to challenge charged rhetoric with a document of “guiding principles” to report on issues relating to the so-called culture war.
The immigration, gun reform, LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights groups say it is often difficult to counter misleading statements individually, reports Jessica Glenza.
How did the group come about? It was formed after a report released by Naral Pro-Choice found that only 11% of news reports about abortion included a “real woman’s story”.
As the supreme court prepares to hear a direct challenge to the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade, Kristin Ford, a Naral Pro-Choice spokesperson, said: “We must ensure that the media has the tools necessary to accurately cover this case, and the issue of reproductive freedom more broadly”.
In other news …
Florida officials say they have “significant concerns” about the structural integrity of a condominium near Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Miami, where at least 36 people were killed when it collapsed nearly two week ago. Surfside mayor Charles Burkett said that a review was under way into Champlain Towers North, the sister complex of the fallen 12-story tower.
Britney Spears’s court-appointed lawyer has asked to resign from her conservatorship. Samuel D Ingham’s decision comes after her manager resigned and a wealth management firm withdrew from her conservatorship, after the singer’s emotional testimony about the legal arrangement that has controlled her life for 13 years.
Banned sprinter Sha‘Carri Richardson has been left off the US Olympic relay team after she tested positive for marijuana, meaning she will not compete in the Tokyo Games. Her 30-day suspension will end before the start of the relays on 5 August, which left a hope that she may have still been able to win a medal as part of the 4x100m relay team, but she was not on USA Track and Field’s Olympic roster released on Tuesday.
Stat of the day: Last month was North America’s hottest June on record, as data shows that temperature peaks are lasting longer and rising higher
The heat dome above western Canada and north-west US led to record-breaking temperatures across British Columbia, Washington and Portland. And new data shows it was part of a broader trend that is caused by human-driven climate disruption, writes Jonathan Watts. European Union figures also revealed that temperatures in June were 1.2C higher than the average from 1991 to 2020. It marks the 12th year in a row of above-average June temperatures in the region.
Don’t miss this: 77 people have vanished during Colombia’s protests
Dozens of people have disappeared since the start of the unrest in late April. Some who have disappeared were protesters, others were not linked to the demonstrations. Joe Parkin Daniels reports from Bogotá.
Last Thing: The history of Olympic torch protests
Lit in Olympia several months before the Games and kept in a special cauldron at night, the Olympic flame supposedly remains lit until the closing ceremony. But as it passed through Mito on its way to Tokyo on Sunday, Kayoko Takahashi, 53, reportedly voiced her opposition to the Olympics being held in the middle of a pandemic by attempting to extinguish the flame by shooting at it with a squirt gun. From Tokyo to Rio de Janeiro, London and Juneau, Alaska, Harron Walker tracks the history of Olympic torch protests.
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