Reading archive 2024-08-01

Video of fatal SWAT shooting: ‘Listen to mommy ... they’re going to kill you.’: A SWAT officer’s video indicates the man he shot was holding a gun in their Montgomery County encounter. But what exactly prompted officers to go in when they did is unclear.

A long shot for vice president, Pete Buttigieg is suddenly everywhere: In a reshaped race, the transportation secretary has dialed up his role as a key political messenger for the Democratic Party.

Opinion ‘Weird’ does not begin to describe the Trump threat: Sure, there are upsides to this strategy. But Vice President Harris’s team needs to use it with caution. - "As journalist Joe Conason put it, 1930s-era dictators 'were mocked as buffoons in their day, but when they suddenly came to power the joke was no longer quite so funny.' In some sense, Trump’s misplaced vanity, narcissism and ignorance are laughable. But we should never forget that those very qualities make him impervious to shame and contemptuous of social norms and legal restraints."

Gen X and millennials at higher cancer risk than older generations: Cancer rates for 17 of the 34 most common cancers are increasing in progressively younger generations, a large new study shows.

High levels of ultra-processed foods linked with early death, brain issues: Such foods encompass a broad category, including cookies, doughnuts, potato chips, hot dogs, white bread and frozen meals

A list of people freed in prisoner swap deal with Russia: Journalists, including Evan Gershkovich, and political activists were released by Russia for spies and a convicted assassin.

How false claims about a mass stabbing led to a riot in the U.K. The riot in Southport, England, followed false claims that an immigrant was responsible for the attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class that killed three girls. - "Because of the suspect’s age, his name has not been released by authorities. But he was born in Britain — in Cardiff, Wales — police stressed, and had been living in the nearby community of Banks. The BBC and Financial Times reported that his parents were originally from Rwanda."

Opinion  At NABJ, Trump was both a missile and a mirror: At the convention, Donald Trump was given a forum to attack and degrade us while we listened politely.

Opinion  Harris is playing Trump’s game: Her response to Donald Trump’s bigotry was a missed opportunity to deliver her own message. - "Trump intends to run the only campaign he has ever been capable of running — an attack on multiculturalism and changing demographics. Trump’s argument, reduced to its core, is that the America of his youth is being ruined by immigrants and coddled minorities, and Democrats are too controlled by the cult of diversity to do anything about it.

...

"Whereas it’s actually Trump who is endlessly obsessed with identity — that’s the point. And so a more disciplined response from Harris would have sounded something like: 'I don’t know why he’s talking about me being Black again, or where I grew up, or whatever. It’s kind of strange, this fixation with who belongs and who doesn’t. The vast majority of Americans don’t really define each other by skin color or where their parents came from anymore, but I guess Donald missed all that.'"

Biden, Trump exchange jabs as Russia prisoner swap turns political: The intricate, seven-country prisoner exchange — coming just 96 days before Election Day — was quickly thrust into the nation’s fraught political landscape.

School taught JD Vance to see a divided nation — and to use that division: From fitting in at Ohio State University to feeling like an outsider at Yale Law School, Vance learned how to move between worlds, supporters say. Opponents say he learned to be an exploitative chameleon. - "Nelson also recalled Vance waxing 'vicious' in his critique of Yale’s “elite” culture, but noted he wasted no time in figuring out how to plumb the school’s vast resources, especially its well-connected professors who could provide entree to prestigious summer jobs."

Paul Whelan, a former Marine, showed defiance throughout his detention: He was serving a 16-year sentence after an espionage conviction that the U.S. government called a farce. [ed. note: dude is a POS]