First Thing: Twitter has started fact-checking Trump’s tweets

Good morning.

Donald Trump raged against Twitter – on Twitter – on Tuesday, after the social media platform marked the president’s misleading posts with its new “get the facts” label for the first time since introducing the feature this month. Trump had made false statements about the threat of voter fraud posed by the expansion of mail-in voting in California.

Twitter, which has long faced criticism for failing to censor the head of state’s most egregious statements, added the new labels after deciding Trump’s tweets violated its new “civic integrity policy”, which bars users from “manipulating or interfering in elections”. Trump then repeated his false claims in a further series of tweets, accusing Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and “completely stifling FREE SPEECH”.

• A widower asked Twitter to delete Trump’s ‘horrifying’ smears about his late wife. But the firm has said it will not take down the tweets, in which the president alludes to debunked claims that Joe Scarborough was involved in the 2001 death of Scarborough’s then congressional aide, Lori Klausutis.

• Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly ducked questions about the controversy at a White House briefing on Tuesday. The president’s new press secretary is no different from her predecessors, writes David Smith:

McEnany has stunned viewers with her evangelical devotion to the US president, her straight-faced defence of his wildest conspiracy theories and her already-wearing-thin stunt of trying to turn the tables on reporters.

The Americas are the new epicentre of the pandemic

Latin America has surpassed the US and Europe as the continent with the highest daily coronavirus infection rate, which, according to Carissa Etienne, the World Health Organization’s director for the Americas, makes the region the latest “epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic”. A study by the University of Washington predicts the death toll in Brazil could reach 125,000 by early August, while WHO officials have also expressed concern about accelerating outbreaks in Peru, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

• Venezuela’s official count of just 10 deaths is ‘not credible’, say activists from Human Rights Watch, calling the statistics released by the Maduro regime “absolutely absurd”.

• In Brazil, 157 nurses have died as a result of Covid-19, more than any other country including the US, where at least 146 nurses are known to have died.

• A cardboard hospital bed that doubles as a coffin could come into use in Colombia, after a team of designers came up with the morbidly pragmatic solution to potential shortages of hospital beds and funerary caskets.

Protests followed a police killing in Minneapolis

The footage is distressing: a Minneapolis police officer kneels on the neck of 46-year-old George Floyd as he lies in the street, yelling that he cannot breathe. The shocking death of another unarmed black man at the hands of police officers led to clashes between protesters and police in the city on Tuesday, while the FBI and authorities in Minnesota have both launched investigations into the incident.

Four officers who were involved in the fatal arrest on Monday have already been fired, while the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, said on Tuesday that the white officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for five minutes had “failed in the most basic human sense”.

• A viral confrontation between a white dog-walker and a black birdwatcher in New York’s Central Park has ignited a fresh online debate over everyday racism, after the woman was caught on camera saying she would call police “to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life”.

Riot police flooded the streets of Hong Kong again

Armed police streamed into the streets of Hong Kong on Wednesday, to suppress widespread protests over a new law that criminalises any mockery of China’s national anthem. Pepper bullets were fired and at least 180 demonstrators arrested during the lunchtime rallies, amid continued anger at Beijing’s increasing interference in the semi-autonomous city’s affairs.

McEnany said at a press conference on Tuesday that Trump was “displeased” by the new national security law being imposed by Beijing, adding it was “hard to see how Hong Kong can remain a financial hub if China takes over”.

In other news…

• The New York stock exchange reopened on Tuesday for the first time since 23 March, with new Covid-19 safety protocols for the small number of traders permitted to return to work in person.

• The US is letting 10 firms delay paying environmental fines totalling $56m, after granting them a pause during the pandemic. At least two of the polluters in question told the Guardian they had made payments despite the extension.

• At least 11 local news stations aired segments scripted by Amazon, after the company’s PR team sent out a pre-edited package offering a “glimpse inside” its warehouses and the new safety measures it says it has put in place to protect staff.

• Yamaha has developed a ‘remote cheering’ app that will allow Japanese football fans to support their team by cheering into their smartphones, with their voices then reverberating around the empty stadiums in real time, via loudspeakers.

Great reads

A corner of Minnesota cut off by Canada

The Northwest Angle is the northernmost point of the continental US, a tiny, idyllic wedge of Minnesota only accessible via boat – or via Canada. Porter Fox takes a fishing trip, and explains the quirk of history that created this isolated corner of the US.

Will the Biden archive be made public?

The University of Delaware is home to 1,875 boxes of “photographs, documents, videotapes and files” and 415 gigabytes of electronic records that comprise Joe Biden’s archive, spanning his 36 years in the US Senate. Republicans sense rich pickings, but will the collection be made public before the election? David Smith reports.

Opinion: It’s not inspiring to see billionaires in space

On Wednesday, Elon Musk is helping send Americans back to space on one of his SpaceX rockets. With the world being ravaged by a pandemic, Arwa Mahdawi struggles to find much hope or inspiration in the idea of privatised spaceflight.

Seriously, if you think that billionaires are exploring space for the good of humankind then I have a bridge on Mars I can sell you. They are doing it for their ego and the commercial opportunity.

Last Thing: What pandemic personality are you?

Have you discovered a new you under lockdown? Or has the coronavirus crisis exposed your true character for the first time? Max Benwell breaks down the “pandemic personalities” that have emerged in this unprecedented moment, from smug introverts to radically progressive traditional housewives, or “radwives” for short.

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