First Thing: ‘America is ready for a better story,’ says Barack Obama

Ex-president praises Kamala Harris as a champion of the people. Plus, US woman breaks record for widest tongue

Good morning.

Barack Obama returned to the scene of past triumphs yesterday to pass the mantle of political history to Kamala Harris amid chants of “Yes, she can!”. The former US president gave the closing speech on night two of the Democratic national convention (DNC) in his home city of Chicago, delivering a withering critique of Donald Trump.

“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos,” he told delegates. “We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”

It was another night crackling with energy in the packed arena as America’s first Black president made the case for the nation to elect the first woman and first woman of colour to the Oval Office.

• What was Obama’s best line? “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible” – a nod to his 2004 convention speech as a relatively lowly Illinois state senator that shot him to fame.

• What did Bernie Sanders focus on? In his speech, Sanders detailed an extensive progressive agenda that he said Democrats must enact if Harris is elected as president, stressing the need to expand healthcare access, reduce the cost of higher education and raise the minimum wage.

Trump attacks Kamala Harris and ‘Marxist left’ in speech to police

Donald Trump pledged to shield police officers from legal accountability if he is re-elected as president after falsely claiming that the US is in the grip of a wave of violent crime that he blamed on the Black Lives Matter movement and people crossing the Mexican border.

Speaking to police officers in Michigan yesterday, the former president sought to pin responsibility for the imagined crisis on his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, whom he characterised as among “Marxist district attorneys” with a record of being anti-police and pro-criminal during her term as the district attorney in San Francisco in the 2000s.

• What is Trump saying privately? According to Stephanie Grisham, the ex-president’s former press secretary who has since said she abhors Trump and spoke at the DNC to excoriate him, Trump has called his supporters “basement dwellers”.

Biden approves nuclear strategy refocusing on China threat – report

Joe Biden has approved a US nuclear strategy to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea, according to the New York Times. The White House said the plan was approved by the US president earlier this year and was not a response to a single country or threat.

The national security council spokesperson Sean Savett said that while “the specific text of the guidance is classified, its existence is in no way secret. The guidance issued earlier this year is not a response to any single entity, country, nor threat.”

• Then, why? The deterrent policy reportedly takes into account a rapid buildup of China’s nuclear arsenal, which will rival the size and diversity of the US and Russian stockpiles over the next decade, and comes as Russia’s Vladimir Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

In other news …

• An American lawyer, Brittany Lacayo, has overcome self-consciousness about her unusually wide tongue to clinch a Guinness World Records award for woman with the widest tongue, after hers came in wider than a hockey puck and about the same width as a credit card.

• Fierce fighting has continued inside Russia as Ukrainian troops tried to seize more territory and used kamikaze drones to blow up a Russian pontoon bridge across a strategic river crossing. Ukrainian forces are trying to expand their bridgehead in the Kursk region after a surprise incursion two weeks ago.

• Canada’s Conservative party has deleted a social media campaign video with a heavily nationalist message after much of the video featured scenes from other countries, including Ukrainian farmers, Slovenian homes, London’s Richmond Park and a pair of Russian fighter jets.

• Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have filed for divorce after just over two years of marriage. The pair married in Las Vegas in July 2022 after resparking their relationship from two decades prior.

Stat of the day: Two slices of ham a day can raise type 2 diabetes risk by 15%, research suggests

Eating processed or red meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, with just two slices of ham a day raising the danger by 15%, the largest study of its kind suggests. Research led by the University of Cambridge and involving 2 million people worldwide provides the most comprehensive evidence yet of a link between meat and the disease that presents one of the most pressing dangers to global health.

Don’t miss this: The young men recruiting each other to fight for abortion rights

Two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions, most men in the United States support abortion rights. Within months of the decision, 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said they supported abortion being legal in all or most cases. But Men4Choice calls these young men “passively pro-choice”.

… or this: When a couple doesn’t want more kids (or any), who should get snipped?

When couples decide they don’t want any more biological children – or any children at all – the topic of contraceptive surgery tends to come up, especially for heterosexual couples. But the decision can be weighty. Is it the best option? Is a permanent solution really what they want? And which person should undergo the surgery?

Climate check: How one couple cooled their home naturally

As soon as John Boland moved into his house in inner-city Adelaide, he got rid of the concrete and sheds and planted fruit trees. In the 30 years since, those trees have provided him with a third of his food and cooled his home so well that he doesn’t need air conditioning.

Last Thing: I had a drunken idea to start a music festival – so I sold my house

Back at home in East Sussex, it felt like a drunken idea but I couldn’t shake it, writes Simon Taffe. For the next couple of years, every time I went to a smaller festival, I thought: “I could do this.” Eventually, after visiting another one in 2004, I went home and spent two weeks doing research, calling security firms and portable toilet companies. It felt like it could become a reality.

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