Good morning. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that most world leaders are capable of acting swiftly and decisively in response to a global crisis. So now a group of scientists and activists, including Greta Thunberg, has written to European heads of government demanding they take the same approach to the unfolding climate emergency.
Their letter, published ahead of a European council meeting starting on Friday, says the EU’s recent “Green New Deal” proposals, and its target of net zero emissions by 2050, are dangerously unambitious:
It is now clearer than ever that the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, neither from the politicians, media, business nor finance. And the longer we keep pretending that we are on a reliable path to lower emissions and that the actions required to avoid a climate disaster are available within today’s system … the more precious time we will lose.
This year’s record-breaking heatwave in the Siberian Arctic was made at least 600 times more likely by human-made climate change, according to a new study. The freak temperatures in the region have been linked to wildfires, a huge oil spill and a plague of tree-eating moths.
Dr Fauci pushed back against the White House ‘nonsense’
After a week in which his expertise was repeatedly called into question by Donald Trump’s aides and allies, the administration’s top infectious disease expert has called on Americans to “stop the nonsense” and focus on tackling the surge of coronavirus infections across the Sun Belt. As California reached a daily record of 11,000 new Covid-19 cases, Dr Anthony Fauci told a virtual forum at Georgetown University to “trust respected medical authorities”, adding: “I believe I’m one of them, so I think you can trust me.”
Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, has led one of the most aggressive reopening plans in the US, resisted any statewide mandate on masks and rarely worn a mask himself. On Wednesday, he became the first state governor in the US to test positive for the coronavirus. The American right is pushing a message of “freedom over fear”, argues Jan-Werner Müller:
Masks have been designated as inherently ‘illiberal’ or signs of enslavement to the government; evil foreigners are being blamed for the virus. Instead of mobilizing state resources to protect both businesses and workers in the way countries like Denmark have done, the pandemic is instrumentalized to push the all-out deregulation agenda Trump and his backers have pursued from day one of his presidency.
US biotechnology firm Moderna released promising news about its vaccine this week, but experts cautioned it was far too soon to celebrate. Danielle Renwick asks how soon we could see a vaccine roll-out, and whether it will really help us get back to normal.
Trump replaced his campaign chief as Biden’s lead widens
In an apparent acknowledgement that his re-election effort is not going as well as it might be, Trump has demoted his longstanding campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and replaced him with his former deputy. Parscale, who took charge of the campaign in February 2018, has been under pressure since promising a vast turnout for the president’s June rally in Tulsa, which was ultimately attended by a mere 6,200 supporters.
Less than four months from election day, Trump is lagging 15 points behind his rival Joe Biden in a new Quinnipiac national poll. But Democrats are still traumatised by the shock of 2016, writes Daniel Strauss, and remain only “nervously optimistic” about the prospect of a blue wave.
Kanye West will appear on the ballot in Oklahoma, despite reports the rapper had ended his brief campaign for president. Also running in the Sooner state are concert pianist Jade Simmons and Brock Pierce, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur.
Ivanka Trump violated ethics rules by declaring her love for Goya canned black beans in an Instagram post, say watchdogs. The brand’s CEO caused a consumer boycott after he praised the president at a Hispanic event at the White House.
Twitter’s biggest accounts got hacked by a bitcoin scam
Twitter briefly took the unprecedented step of stopping all verified accounts from tweeting on Wednesday, in response to a coordinated hack of several of its most prominent account holders, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Apple and Uber.
The compromised accounts, which collectively have tens of millions of followers, sent a series of tweets proposing a classic bitcoin scam: followers were told if they transferred cryptocurrency to a specific bitcoin wallet, they would receive double the money in return.
In other news …
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has left hospital after treatment for a possible infection. The liberal justice, who at 87 is the US supreme court’s oldest member, is “home and doing well”, a supreme court spokesperson said.
A record 71,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2019, a bleak trend driven by fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids, which experts believe will be accelerated further by the coronavirus crisis in 2020.
The US is considering a travel ban on millions of Chinese Communist party members, according to a report by the New York Times, which likened the proposal to the Trump administration’s 2017 Muslim travel ban.
Berkeley plans to replace police with unarmed civilians for traffic stops, in a first-of-its-kind proposal that officials in the California city believe could curb the problem of racial profiling.
Great reads
Idris Elba: ‘I’ve seen how uprising has come from pain’
With his sitcom In the Long Run, Idris Elba depicts a version of his own family life, growing up in 1980s London in a largely white community. “It felt important to show the younger generations especially where we came from so they can understand what has led to their realities today,” he tells Ammar Kalia.
How Covid-19 has affected women worldwide
Melinda Gates warned this week that the fallout from the pandemic would disproportionately affect women, setting back gender equality by several years and trillions of dollars. Seven women from around the world told the Guardian how Covid-19 has already impacted their lives.
Opinion: Trump accidentally argued for police abolition
Trump’s misleading assertion that US police kill more white people than black did not undermine Black Lives Matter arguments the way he thinks it did, says Malaika Jabali. If anything, it makes the case for them.
He did not actually dispute that police kill Black people. He essentially said: ‘Even more people are killed than we talk about! Gotcha!’ Thanks, Trump, that’s the point!
Last Thing: see the world through a stranger’s window
While they were housebound under lockdown, two Singaporeans started a new and transporting online project: Windowswap invites people to share a short video of the view from their window, anywhere in the world. “Until we can explore our planet responsibly again, I guess, this is a way to travel without moving.”
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