Yahoo News First Thing: Trump pleads the fifth in New York business investigation
Good morning.
Donald Trump declined to answer questions under oath yesterday in New York state’s civil investigation into his business dealings, pleading the fifth two days after the FBI raided his Florida home in a separate criminal case, seeking classified documents taken from the White House.
The former US president’s decision to exercise his fifth amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination was delivered during a closed-door deposition in Manhattan, where the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, is examining the Trump family real estate empire.
“I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States constitution,” Trump said in a statement released after the questioning began.
The deposition, which took place in lower Manhattan, appears to have lasted roughly four hours. The former president departed 28 Liberty Street at 3.20pm in a black Secret Service SUV and peered out the rear window as his motorcade crawled out of an underground garage and past onlookers.
Did Trump say anything about the case? According to the New York Times, Trump accused the attorney general of having “openly campaigned on a policy of destroying me”. Beyond that, from 9.30am to about 3pm, the former president had repeated the words “same answer” to every question about “valuations and golf clubs and all that stuff”, his lawyer said.
After the fall of Roe, Republican pursuit of abortion bans appears to falter
In the lead-up to the US supreme court overturning Roe v Wade and thus scrapping federal abortion protection, Republican lawmakers across the country maintained an uncompromising rallying cry against abortions, vowing to implement a sweeping wave of restrictions in their states.
However, since the highest court in the US overturned the ruling, many Republican leaders and officials have become more hesitant – or have even gone silent – over the exact type of bans they promised to enact.
As Republicans move towards an election season rife with internal disagreements within their own party and mixed public opinions on exceptions in abortion bans such as instances of rape and incest, many rightwing lawmakers are finding it increasingly difficult to implement cohesive abortion policies.
The phenomenon has been starkly illustrated by Kansas’s referendum last week, where the usually reliably Republican state voted to keep abortion protections in its state constitution, providing an unexpected boost from red state America to the abortion rights movement.
What do most Americans think about abortion rights? According to a survey conducted between 27 June and 4 July by the Pew Research center, a majority of the public disapproves of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe: 57% of adults disapprove of the court’s decision.
China overtakes the US in scientific research output
China has overtaken the US as the world leader in scientific research output and “high impact” studies, according to a report published by Japan’s science and technology ministry.
The report, published by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTP) on Tuesday, has found that China now publishes the highest number of scientific research papers yearly, followed by the US and Germany.
The figures were based on yearly averages between 2018 and 2020, and drawn from data compiled by the analytics firm Clarivate.
The Japanese NISTP report also found that Chinese research comprised 27.2% of the world’s top 1% most frequently cited papers. The number of citations a research paper receives is a commonly used metric in academia. The more times a study is cited in subsequent papers by other researchers, the greater its “citation impact”.
The US accounted for 24.9% of the top 1% most highly cited research studies, while UK research was third at 5.5%.
What is the US going to do to improve? The report was published on the day US president, Joe Biden, signed the Chips and Science Act, legislation that would authorize $200bn in research funding over 10 years to make US scientific research more competitive with China’s.
In other news …
North Korea has declared a “shining victory” in its battle with Covid-19, amid suggestions from Kim Jong-un’s sister that the country’s leader had at one point been “seriously ill” with the virus. His influential sister Kim Yo-jong said he had been among the tens of millions of North Koreans to have come down with a “fever”.
A 23-year-old man has been charged and remanded in custody after an American tourist was raped in a public toilet in the centre of Paris, in a case that has caused shock in the busy riverside area that was considered safe. The woman, 27, was found by her partner and immediately taken to a Paris hospital.
Joe Biden has said that the US knows “with certainty” that the Syrian government is holding Austin Tice – an American journalist who has been missing for a decade – and called on Damascus to release him. Biden said he is “calling on Syria to end this and help us bring him home”.
Kobe Bryant’s widow is seeking compensation for snapshots taken of the NBA star’s body after a crash that also killed her daughter. A law prompted by the crash makes it a crime for first responders to take unauthorized photos of deceased people at the scene of an accident or crime.
Stat of the day: Record Death Valley flooding ‘a once-in-1,000-year event’
Recent severe rains in California’s Death Valley that flushed debris across roads, damaged infrastructure and carried away cars are being described by meteorologists and park officials as a once-in 1,000-year event. The arid area was pelted with roughly an inch and a half of rain on Friday, near the park’s rainfall record for a single day. The storm poured a volume of water equal to roughly 75% of the average annual total in just three hours, according to experts at Nasa’s Earth Observatory.
‘Getting harder and hotter’: Phoenix fire crews race to save lives in America’s hottest city.
Don’t miss this: how the culture wars hijacked Drag Queen Story Hour
Shows featuring drag queens reading to young children have proven increasingly popular in the UK – but, as in the US, they are also attracting angry protests. How have we reached a place where these joyful events are seen as a threat to infants? Seb Samuel AKA Ada H Dee – the first drag queen in the UK to read stories to children in libraries – believes it is a knock-on effect of the normalisation of anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes in the wider world.
Climate check: climate crisis fueling barrage, scientists say
“Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of flooding and it will likely get worse with further warming,” Andreas Prein, an expert in climate extremes at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said. “We are also seeing these repeated storms hit the same area, like Kentucky, again and again in a short period of time, which isn’t well understood. But we know the hot temperatures, like the eastern US has just had, has helped build the water in the atmosphere.”
Last Thing: Domino’s retreats from Italy having failed to conquer the home of pizza
Domino’s Pizza has pulled out of the Italian market after failing in its mission to conquer the home of pizza. The company set out with ambitious plans of opening 880 outlets across the country by 2030, hopeful that it could win over Italian customers with pizza topped with pineapple. It got as far as opening 29 branches, all of which have now been closed. Domino’s first foray into Italy was in Milan in 2015, before venturing to other cities. It did not, however, make it to Naples, the southern city where pizza margherita was created.
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