Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s headlines. If you’d like to receive this briefing by email, sign up here.
Top story: Trump insists Kavanaugh’s name is cleared
Brett Kavanaugh has been “proven innocent” of sexual assault, Donald Trump claimed – baselessly – during Kavanaugh’s supreme court swearing-in ceremony at the White House on Monday. Trump apologised to Kavanaugh and his family “on behalf of [the] nation”, for their “pain and suffering”. Kavanuagh, who denies the allegations that arose during his confirmation process, thanked Trump for his “deep appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary”.
- Death threats. Christine Blasey Ford, the professor in California who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, remains unable to return home because of “unending” death threats, her lawyer has said.
- Court packing. Kavanaugh’s confirmation cements the right’s dominance of the supreme court. But there is a solution for liberals, says Ian Samuel: expand its size and add some more justices.
Jerry Falwell praises ‘good, moral’ Trump before midterms
Jerry Falwell Jr, a prominent Christian evangelical, has hailed Trump as a “good, moral person”, throwing his considerable spiritual influence back behind the president in the run-up to the midterms. Speaking to the Guardian, Falwell, the president of Liberty University in Virginia, described Trump as “Reagan on steroids” and the Democrats as “fascists”.
- Swift condemnation. After Taylor Swift announced her support for two Democratic midterm candidates on Sunday, Trump told reporters he liked the singer’s music “about 25% less now”. Meanwhile, there has been a rise in voter registrations.
Climate report omitted key ‘tipping points’, scientists say
Scientists have said the alarming report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the dangers of 1.5C global warming in fact leaves out several key “tipping points” that threaten to send the planet into a spiral of runaway climate change. Big climatic shifts such as the melting of polar ice or the migration of tropical clouds towards the poles could lead to a cascade of effects that would dramatically accelerate existing warming trends.
- Practical steps. Climate change may seem an overwhelming challenge that only governments can address, but there are ways to make an individual contribution, Matthew Taylor and Adam Vaughan explain.
Jamal Khashoggi: investigators hunt Saudi ‘hit squad’ van
Turkish authorities are sifting traffic camera footage in search of a black van they believe carried the body of Jamal Khashoggi from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul after his suspected murder. Khashoggi, a journalist and prominent critic of the Saudi regime, vanished last week and is alleged to have been abducted and killed by a Saudi hit squad.
- US concerns. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, issued a statement on Monday saying US diplomats had spoken to their Saudi counterparts about Khashoggi’s case and urged them to be “transparent”.
Crib sheet
- America’s first autonomous robot farm was launched last week in California by the agricultural startup Iron Ox, which claims it can grow 30 times more produce than a traditional farm.
- The Indonesian government has ordered foreign aid workers who arrived to help after the recent devastating earthquake and tsunami to leave the country immediately.
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX has successfully launched and landed its reusable Falcon 9 booster rocket in California for the first time.
- A rare white tiger mauled a zookeeper to death at the Hirakawa zoological park in Kagoshima, Japan.
Must-reads
The Birmingham project: Dawoud Bey’s haunting portraits
It was one of the darkest days of the civil rights era: four girls killed by a Ku Klux Klan bomb at a church in Birmingham, Alabama, in September 1963. The photographer Dawoud Bey has commemorated the attack with his powerful portrait series, The Birmingham Project.
Finding a solution to the suicide epidemic
Each year approximately 800,000 people worldwide take their own lives. Tedros Adhanom and Lady Gaga call for greater international investment to tackle what they believe is a global mental health crisis.
How 20 years of stop and search deepened the racial divide
What began as a strategy to seize guns from cars became a pretext for arresting disproportionate numbers of black people on minor charges, James Forman Jr reports. Meanwhile, Charles Bramesco looks at police brutality on screen in recent films such as The Hate U Give and Monsters and Men.
The rural New York town fighting to keep Amazon out
Many residents of Schodack, New York, were not happy when they heard Amazon was planning to build a 1m sq ft fulfilment centre in their rural community. Michael Sainato visits the small town that is taking on an internet giant.
Opinion
The Brazilian presidential election and the US midterms leave democracy in the Americas at a crossroads, argues Jeffrey W Rubin.
The current electoral campaign in Brazil has deepened the similarities between Brazilian and US politics. Brazil’s leading presidential candidate, [Jair] Bolsonaro speaks in fiercely derogatory ways about women, racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people.
Sport
Drew Brees has surpassed Peyton Manning’s record to become the NFL’s all-time leader in yards passing, with a 62-yard touchdown pass that carried the Saints to victory against Washington on Monday.
For a few weeks in 2012, Jeremy Lin was one of the world’s greatest basketball players. But that brief moment served only to highlight the absence of other Asian American stars in pro sports, writes Souichi Terada.
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