Good morning. More than 8m coronavirus infections were recorded worldwide in July, almost as many as in the first six months of the global pandemic put together. The World Health Organization says the number of cases is doubling every six weeks. In the US, which reported a record 1.87m cases last month, the overall total is now approaching 5m.
Over the weekend, as Donald Trump made the 283rd golfing trip of his presidential term – to his own course in Virginia – his coronavirus task force coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, said the current surge “is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. It’s into the rural as equal urban areas.”
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In her appearance on CNN, Birx defended the administration’s handling of the pandemic, even as the Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went public with her criticism of Trump’s top White House scientist in an interview on ABC’s This Week:
I think the president has been spreading disinformation about the virus and [Birx] is his appointee, so I don’t have confidence there.
Two cruise ships have suffered Covid-19 outbreaks, just weeks after the industry returned to open water, with the virus detected on the MS Roald Amundsen in the Arctic, and the Paul Gauguin, which is docked in Tahiti.
Microsoft is trying to buy TikTok, with Trump’s approval
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, has reportedly told Trump his company will move fast on its acquisition talks with TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, after the president said he would only approve such a deal – under which Microsoft would take control of the video sharing app’s US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations – if it could be done in the next 45 days.
On Sunday, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said Trump was planning to take unspecified actions against Chinese software companies, which Pompeo claimed were “feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist party, their national security apparatus”.
Republicans banned the media from their convention
For the first time in modern US history, the press will not be invited to witness the formal nomination of a major party’s presidential candidate, after a Republican spokesperson told the Associated Press that media would be banned from the GOP convention in Charlotte later this month because of coronavirus concerns.
Before the pandemic, 15,000 journalists were expected to attend Trump’s renomination in North Carolina. Under the state’s lockdown restrictions, there is an official limit of 10 people at indoor gatherings and 25 people outdoors. The Republican national committee has said 336 officials will attend the convention.
With the election in its final stretch, we will nonetheless be covering it extensively. The Guardian’s team breaks down the key areas of our election reporting, from Joe Biden’s VP pick to Trump’s voter suppression efforts.
Climate countdown: 93 days to save the Earth
Of the heat generated by climate change, 93% has been absorbed into the world’s oceans, raising sea levels and ravaging marine life. There are now 93 days until the US is due to withdraw from the Paris climate accords. Today in our climate countdown series, Lauren Aratani looks at how young activists are changing their tactics around the US election, now that there are no mass rallies to attend – and finds that staying home does not mean staying silent.
In other news …
Thousands have been ordered to evacuate after a wildfire in the mountains east of Los Angeles exploded in size on Sunday. Firefighters, who have nicknamed it the Apple Fire, are battling the Southern California blaze in triple-digit heat.
US anti-abortion centres may have received more than $10m in forgivable federal loans from the government’s coronavirus bailout, including one center that already received millions in federal grants, and whose director espoused theories promoted by white supremacists.
Campaigners in St Louis are celebrating the closure of the Workhouse, a medium-security prison notorious as a debtors’ jail and infested with rats, roaches and mould. The city’s Board of Aldermen has voted to close the facility the end of 2020.
A statue of a woman holding a hatchet and a fistful of scalps is causing controversy in New Hampshire. The likeness of Hannah Dunston, who was implicated in the killing of 10 Native Americans in the late 17th century, was the earliest publicly funded monument to a woman in the US.
Great reads
Europe’s Dreamers: stories of the young and undocumented
In the US, undocumented minors are known as Dreamers, and their plight’s high-profile has brought them broad public and political support. But Europe has its own, lesser-known generation of paperless young people. Charlotte Alfred hears some of their stories.
Why ‘clean wine’ is a scam
Cameron Diaz and her business partner Katherine Power say they’re on a mission to make a chemical-free wine and “bring transparency to the wine industry”. They’re not alone. But experts say so-called “clean wines” are really little more than a marketing exercise, as Felicity Carter reports.
Lili Taylor: ‘there’s not a lot of movies about female friendship’
The star of Mystic Pizza and Say Anything is held in enormous affection by women in their 40s, for those films’ depiction of female friendship, writes Hadley Freeman, who talked to Taylor about acting, alcoholism and why Harvey Weinstein hated her.
Opinion: it’s time to take Beyoncé’s film-making seriously
Beyoncé just released her latest visual album, Black is King. One of the biggest and most admired pop stars on the planet is now also one of its most significant film-makers, argues Steve Rose.
Beyoncé is not trying to capture the state of the [African] continent; more to give black identity some utopian, universal form of visual expression. In the current moment, that’s a valuable undertaking.
Last Thing: Elon Musk’s SpaceX took men into orbit, and back
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Crew Dragon craft has passed the final test of whether it can transport people to and from orbit – a feat no private company has previously accomplished. Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley splashed down in the craft’s capsule in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, at the end of a two-month space voyage.
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