If you’ve been tested for COVID-19 then you’ve probably experienced the unpleasantness of a nasal swab. Someone takes a long-handled cotton swab and sticks it up your nose — way up your nose — until it reaches the back of the mucus-cave that is your nasal cavity. Upon arrival they give the swab a good twirl to collect your secretions and beat a merciful retreat. I can say from personal experience that it’s a uniquely unpleasant sensation. It’s something that just feels wrong, like the opposite of scratching an itch. That’s perhaps why I was so unsettled by the sight of this autonomous nasal swab robot developed by Taiwanese medtech startup Brain Navi. Of all the entities I don’t want sticking cotton swabs up my nose, an industrial robot arm is pretty high on the list, right between an excitable toddler and a trained mountain gorilla. A nasal swab requires trust.

Steve Bannon may be facing years behind bars but at least he can do his next court appearance in his swim trunks. The right-wing flame-thrower got permission to appear via video next Monday for a Manhattan hearing on charges that he scammed donors who gave millions to a charity claiming to build a stretch of a wall along the border with Mexico. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres cited the coronavirus pandemic in a ruling permitting President Trump’s fired top political adviser and three co-defendants to skip the in-person appearance. Bannon, 66, was busted last week on a multi-million dollar yacht owned by a Chinese billionaire where he has lived for the last few months.

On the first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention, Mark and Patty McCloskey—a St. Louis, Missouri couple who became well-known after brandishing firearms at racial justice protesters—championed President Donald Trump as a defender of "law and order" while labeling the Democrats as a lawless radical mob. "Whether it's defunding the police, ending cash bail so criminals can be released back out on the streets the same day to riot again, or encouraging anarchy on our streets," Mark McCloskey said, "it seems as if Democrats no longer view the government's job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens." He added that "radicals" who marched outside of his home also want to "walk the halls of Congress," stating, "This is Joe Biden's party. These are the people who will be in charge."

But several park rangers, who asked not to be named, said behind the scenes they were unprepared for hostilities they faced from some attendees, who were largely not wearing face masks. “I did not realize that this event was happening until basically the park was full of people flying Trump flags,” one ranger said. “There was no preparation for it, and then we basically got left out to fend for ourselves.” One attendee — who carried a handgun on his waist, in violation of state park rules — allegedly accosted another guest for wearing a mask. Another park-goer, who had a rainbow pride pin on their bag, was called a homophobic slur. Some attendees also threatened to tip over a park ranger’s truck.

WASHINGTON – In a claim likely to intensify the controversy surrounding one of the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader. Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on. Granda showed Reuters emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple, who have been married since 1987. “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Granda said in an interview. Now 29, he described the liaisons as frequent – “multiple times per year” – and said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia. His friendship with the Falwells eventually soured, Granda told Reuters, in part because he wanted to dissolve his ties with the couple and fell into a business dispute with them.

Flattery in Trumpworld is a two-way street, and Gaetz, 37, has earned a reputation for becoming one of the party’s highest-profile members by cheerleading for the president and emulating his public bullying and trolling. Gaetz seems to spend more time on Fox News than in congressional committee rooms, and when he does legislate, it’s sometimes for show. After Trump mocked the House Intelligence Committee chair, one of his chief antagonists, as “little pencil-­neck Adam Schiff,” Gaetz went on Tucker Carlson’s show to announce a resolution to boot the California Democrat off the committee. Gaetz called it the Preventing Extreme Negli­gence with Classified Information Licenses Act, or PENCIL Act. The suck-up beat comes with risks for Gaetz: covering for Trump’s lies, contradicting himself, looking bad in history books, getting ratioed on Twitter. In June, a constituent pelted him with an unidentified red beverage. But there are upsides: free rides on Air Force One. Compliments from Melania. Invaluable campaign endorsements in Florida’s most Republican district. And, most important, TV appearances. “Matt Gaetz is living proof that Veep was less parody and more prophecy,” says Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican political strategist and a Trump critic. “To some degree, he’s a character in the grandest reality show of all. He exists at the hinge of reality and alternate reality.”

Florida congressman Matt Gaetz used his speech at the Republican National Convention on Monday to paint a dystopian and largely false picture of the US under a potential Joe Biden presidency. "I'm speaking to you from an auditorium emptier than Joe Biden's daily schedule," Gaetz said in his opening. "We see the choice clearly: strength or weakness, energy or confusion, success or failure." "We must fight to save America now or we may lose her forever," he went on. "Joe Biden may not even notice. 'Settle for Biden,' that's the hashtag promoted by AOC and the socialists." He added that the "woketopians" will make Biden "an extra in a movie written, produced, and directed by others. It's a horror film, really."

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn came under fire after his agency on Sunday gave emergency authorisation to use convalescent plasma on Covid patients. Echoing President Donald Trump, Mr Hahn touted the treatment as life-saving. Scientists quickly questioned the data provided by Mr Hahn, who suggested plasma could reduce deaths by 35%. This claim exaggerated preliminary findings from a clinic at the Mayo Clinic.

The loneliness and sterility of children’s “educational” videos in the Trump era.

Republicans will vote for Trump no matter what. Democrats will vote for Biden no matter what. This column is for progressives weighing the pros and cons of succumbing to the two-party trap, and voting for Biden. Unless you’ve been sucking through a ventilator in a COVID-19 ward for the last few months, you know the […]

This is going to sound incredibly hyperbolic and hysterical but I think this person has possibly done more damage to the Scots language than anyone else in history. They engaged in cultural vandalism on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. Potentially tens of millions of people now think that Scots is a horribly mangled rendering of English rather than being a language or dialect of its own, all because they were exposed to a mangled rendering of English being called Scots by this person and by this person alone. They wrote such a massive volume of this pretend Scots that anyone writing in genuine Scots would have their work drowned out by rubbish. Or, even worse, edited to be more in line with said rubbish.

Following 46 cases of bleach ingestions in the North Texas Poison Center region since the start of August, experts are again warning people that drinking the chemical won’t prevent COVID-19. The organization pointed to “misleading and inaccurate information circulating online about how to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” for an uptick in poisonings.

Plus, KFC is no longer "finger-lickin’ good" in the time of coronavirus, and more news to start your day

The episode will include special guest appearances, including Michelle Obama, co-chair and founder of When We All Vote. What will these celebrity guests be doing? Why, , of course!

Now it appears that the Proud Boys enjoy not just a broader arsenal at their rallies, but a tacit promise from the city that they’ll face little to no police intervention.

The media shrugs, yet again, as Trump makes extremist comments. It’s just a “provocation”—until it isn’t.

Angry, maskless spectators forced themselves into the Idaho House special session on the coronavirus pandemic Monday, shattering a glass door, rushing into the gallery that had limited seating because of the virus and forcing lawmakers to ask for calm in a crowd that included a man carrying an assault-style weapon. Johns Hopkins University reports that Idaho has nearly 30,000 infections and 307 deaths due to the virus.

Joe Kennedy's campaign called on Ed Markey to denounce tweets made by his supporters in the Senate primary—including a 'Dinosaurs Saying Fuck' meme.

The Melbourne set of The Masked Singer has been shut down after several crew members tested positive for the coronavirus. “The entire production team, including the masked singers, the host and panellists are now in self-isolation,” the Network 10 program posted on Twitter late on Saturday night. “They are all being monitored closely and are in constant contact with medical authorities.”

The images were striking: two white homeowners, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, one in belted khakis and a pink polo, the other in capri pants, both clumsily brandishing lethal weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters marching by their palatial estate in St. Louis, Missouri. Although no shots were fired, the enduring visual represents a real form of violence, distinct from the homeowners’ guns but deployed with the same goals: hoarding white wealth from redistribution for democratic use. The scene unfolded on one of St. Louis’ private “lanes”—self-owned, mostly white enclaves set apart from the city by physical fencing and legal protections. This gated community, Portland Place, lies just eight miles from the intersection where Ferguson police killed Michael Brown six years ago. But the economic resources of this neighborhood and others like it are shielded from the mostly Black residents of Ferguson, with devastating consequences. Investigating Brown’s death, the U.S. Department of Justice documented the communitywide terror resulting from local officials’ efforts to generate revenue through over-policing: the administration of fines and fees on Ferguson’s poor, predominantly Black residents. The public high school from which Brown graduated draws about 40 percent of its funding from local sources. But its budget cannot access the property-tax revenue assessed from the gun-wielding McCloskeys’ estate, what St. Louis Magazine described as a “Midwestern palazzo,” just a few miles away.