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According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the US confirmed 77,300 new Covid-19 cases in 24 hours on Thursday, another world record. With infections rising in 41 of the nations 50 states, the Republican National Committee has announced plans to scale back its convention in Florida next month while elected Democrats have been urged to skip their partys rival shindig in Milwaukee after advice from health officials.

In Georgia, the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, is suing Atlantas local leaders to block the city from enforcing a mandate to wear masks in public, arguing that its Democratic mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms who tested positive for the coronavirus herself this month had overstepped her authority.

As the G20s finance ministers prepare to meet online this weekend, the UN has warned that western nations must step up to help the worlds poor tackle the coronavirus crisis, or risk creating a generations worth of tragic and exportable problems. On top of those killed directly by Covid-19, economists fear the crisis could lead to as many as 1.7m preventable deaths in poorer countries, from HIV, TB and malaria.

One leading anti-poverty campaign group says the International Monetary Fund has already allowed hard-pressed countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America to use $11.3bn in Covid-19 bailout cash to service their debts to private sector lenders, in breach of the IMFs own rules.

Kremlin-backed hackers targeted Covid-19 vaccine researchers in the US, UK and Canada, British security officials have said, while stressing that no research was compromised as a result.

The Trump administration kept up its diplomatic and rhetorical offensive against Beijing this week with a verbal assault on the US film industry, which William Barr accused of kowtowing to the Chinese Communist party (CPC). In a speech in Michigan, the US attorney general pointed to several instances when the Disney movie studio tailored its content in an apparent attempt to appease China, claiming such acts represented a threat to the classical liberal order.

The US secretary of state has launched a draft report suggesting the proliferation of human rights being asserted by US and international institutions has diluted those he views as paramount: the rights to private property and to religious freedom, as laid down by the countrys founding fathers. Speaking in Philadelphia on Thursday, Mike Pompeo said the report by his commission on unalienable rights had concluded that many are worth defending in light of our founding; others arent.

The US has opposed references to reproductive and gender rights in UN and other multilateral documents, though on Thursday Pompeo did not specify which human rights he considered superfluous or secondary.

He was the star of If and A Clockwork Orange, but the insolent prince of early 1970s cinema is now an elder statesman and a jobbing Hollywood actor specialising in baddies. You cant keep playing the rebel for ever, Malcolm McDowell tells Xan Brooks.

The comedian Ziwe Fumudoh has a new Instagram Live show, which involves her interrogating guests for 30 minutes each on topics such as race and sexism. If it makes you incredibly uncomfortable, well thats sort of the point, she tells Poppy Noor.

If you were among the millions who took part in recent Black Lives Matter protests, your photo could end up in the sort of facial recognition database used by one in four US law enforcement agencies. The implications are troubling, say Evan Selinger and Albert Fox Cahn.

Aside from the ethics of diminishing peoples obscurity when they are in public and stripping away their right to do lawful things like protest anonymously, there is a real risk of misidentification through this technology.

Virginia-born Morgan Bullock is one of the worlds top 50 Irish dancers. During lockdown she has become a TikTok star by setting her footwork to hip-hop favourites like Savage, a song by Megan Thee Stallion and Beyonc whose mother reposted the clip.

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First Thing: Georgia's Republican governor sues to stop mask order - The Guardian