Baton Rouge gunman named
The killer of three Louisiana police officers was named on Sunday as Gavin Long, a former marine who served in Iraq and who used an online alias, “Cosmo Setepenra”, to rail against perceived injustices against black people. “You gotta fight back,” Long, 29, urged viewers in a video recorded a week ago. He described the shooting dead of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, on 7 July as “justice”.
Baton Rouge shootings: suspect Gavin Long was marine with online alias
Racial tensions on the rise
The Baton Rouge shooting is raising fears the country is experiencing a new level of racial tension. Days ago, in Dallas, Barack Obama called on the nation to “reject such despair”. But such attempts to soothe appear to have been scorned by the gunman in the latest attack who appeared to reject efforts toward racial harmony.
Fears in Baton Rouge underscore growing racial tension across US
Republican convention opens in Cleveland
As convention season opens, the Republican and Democratic parties sit either side of an ideological gulf, security ramps up in Cleveland, and a question arises for the candidates: is the instability of the world just how we live now? Here, we offer a preview of the Republicans’ gathering in Cleveland.
Republican convention Q&A: who’s coming – and can Trump be stopped?
Awkward: Trump and Pence in first joint interview
Ahead of the GOP convention, a joint interview with Donald Trump and his VP pick, Mike Pence, by CBS’s 60 Minutes displayed plenty of personal and political differences. Pence was frequently interrupted by Trump, who even seemed to suggest that he “didn’t need” Pence to win over evangelical voters and dismissed Pence’s vote in support of the Iraq war, saying that was “a long time ago”. He did not give Hillary Clinton the same pass.
Trump and Pence’s first joint interview puts uneasy union on display
Erdoğan mourns casualties – and rounds up 6,000
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid tearful respect to supporters who died in a coup attempt over the weekend, and vowed to “cleanse” the Turkish state of dissidents. “We march in our funeral shrouds and we will deal with these assassins, this cult, these followers of Fethullah,” Erdoğan said, referring to Fethullah Gülen, the Pennsylvania-based cleric he blames for the coup, who in turn told the Guardian it may have been staged by Erdoğan. The coup attempt highlighted widening faultlines in the Turkish alliance with the US and growing concern for more than 50 US nuclear warheads stored at Incirlik air base.
Turkey: Erdoğan mourns casualties – and vows retribution
Nice attack texts revealed
Investigators are trying to identify the recipients of messages sent by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel before he launched his brutal attack in Nice last week, killing 84. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, wrote of his “satisfaction at having obtained a 7.65mm pistol” and sent selfies from the wheel of the truck. The French interior minister said he had been “radicalised very quickly”. Meanwhile, France mourns in a state of stupefaction and surreality. But there is still no evidence linking the truck driver to Islamic State.
Nice attacker sent text message about weapons supply – police
Brexit buffoonery goes on tour with Boris
Last week’s announcement that European Union exit campaign leader Boris Johnson would become Britain’s foreign secretary was greeted in global capitals as a joke or a twisted insult. Such is the depth and duration of Johnson’s columnist-clever insults, international reaction to his appointment has been overwhelmingly negative. Johnson is widely viewed as inherently untrustworthy, a buffoon bizarrely elevated to become Britain’s premier representative abroad.
The Boris Johnson question: how the UK’s foreign secretary is viewed abroad
Ebola crisis could have been avoided, says World Bank
World Bank president Jim Yong Kim says quicker access to emergency funds would have brought the Ebola outbreak in west Africa under control sooner. Instead, the number of cases increased tenfold in three months and by the end of October 2014 there had been more than 13,500 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths. The world body now plans a “cash window” of $100m in emergency funds, in the event of certain types of disease outbreak.
Escalation of Ebola crisis ‘could have been avoided’
Nasa warns of Amazon fires
The space agency is warning that the Amazon basin is the driest it has been since 2002 – and is heading for a bad wildfire season. Nasa’s forecast model, developed by scientists at the University of California, Irvine (UC-Irvine) in 2011, focuses on the link between sea surface temperatures and fire activity. “Severe drought conditions at the start of the dry season have set the stage for extreme fire risk in 2016 across the southern Amazon,” said Doug Morton, an Earth scientist with the US agency and a co-creator of the Amazon fire forecast.
Amazon could face intense wildfire season this year, Nasa warns
The great refugee gap
The world’s six wealthiest countries – the US, China, Japan, Germany, France and the UK – host less than 9%, or 2.1 million, of the world’s refugees, according to an Oxfam report. More than half of the world’s refugees – almost 12 million people – live in Jordan, Turkey, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon and South Africa, places that make up less than 2% of the world’s economy.
Six wealthiest countries host less than 9% of world’s refugees
Another week, another Taylor Swift dispute
The pop star has accused Kim Kardashian of “character assassination” after she released a recording of West and Swift discussing his controversial song Famous in which Swift appears to approve a lyric suggesting she and West might have sex – a line she later complained about. “Go with whatever line you think is better,” Swift answers. Bridie Jabour wonders if Swift’s pedestal is beginning to crumble.
Swift condemns Kardashian’s release of Kanye phone call
In case you missed it …
James Corden: unlikely TV superstar
Eighteen months ago, The Late Late Show’s James Corden drove the streets of LA, knocking on publicists’ doors to introduce himself. Now he’s got a global hit on his hands – the excellent Carpool Karaoke. Last month he recorded an instalment with Michelle Obama, driving round the White House gardens in a golf cart. “My major ambition is just to stay relevant,” he says, “to be in the conversation.”
James Corden: ‘My major ambition is just to stay relevant, to be in the conversation’
