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US president using office and intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in elections before midterms

Donald Trump used the imprimatur of the presidency and United States intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in American elections in a presidential address on Thursday that seemed bluntly aimed at laying the groundwork for further destabilizing the electoral system before November’s midterm elections.

In his address from the East Room at the White House, Trump attempted to give the impression that his administration had uncovered new bombshell findings about vulnerabilities in the US’s election system. China, he claimed, had illicitly acquired voter information on 220 million Americans (many states allow anyone to buy voter roll information; Trump did not say the means by which the nation acquired the data). He claimed that China interfered in other ways to undermine his 2020 campaign and that the information had been suppressed by intelligence officials.

Opponents say president’s address about 2020 election loss is attempt to sow confusion ahead of midterms that could deliver big losses for Republicans

Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms.

In a 25-minute speech on Thursday that had been hyped by Trump himself, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, and vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers.

NBC and CNN stayed away from White House speech, while Fox News, MS Now, CBS and some ABC affiliates aired it

The US’s largest television stations split on whether to air Donald Trump’s White House address live on Thursday night, which was heavy on unproven accusations about the integrity of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.

While CNN, ABC and NBC chose not to air the speech live, CBS, Fox News and MS Now (formerly MSNBC) aired at least large portions of the speech live. ABC did not air the speech as a must-run broadcast, but some station affiliates – including the Washington DC station owned by right-leaning broadcaster Sinclair – chose to air the speech.

The White House published a series of heavily redacted documents that echo debunked fraud claims about the 2020 election.

President Trump gave a primetime address Thursday night in which he spoke about the integrity of U.S. elections — a topic he has spread disinformation about for much of his political career.

The ousting of Ma Xingrui – the third Politburo member in recent years - suggests Xi’s tolerance of dissent is diminishing, say analysts

On Tuesday, China expelled Ma Xingrui, one of the ruling party’s most senior officials, making him the third politburo member to be purged since 2022 as Xi Jinping deepens his years-long anti-corruption campaign.

Ma, a former Communist party secretary for China’s north-western region of Xinjiang, was accused of corruption, abuse of power and trading political favours for sex. The announcement came after Ma was placed under investigation in April for suspected “serious violations of discipline and the law”.

Businesses and traffic in West Hollywood doused after century-old pipe bursts belowground

A century-old water pipe buried below a bustling boulevard in a Los Angeles county city burst early Thursday, sending a shock of water spewing into the streets and snarling traffic as several major roads shut down.

The 36in riveted steel pipe’s rupture left a protruding sinkhole and cracked pavement in West Hollywood. Images of the aftermath showed local metro buses partially submerged in murky brown water.

Appearing on a podcast with the far-right UK activist who goes by the name Tommy Robinson, Hanson makes evidence-free claims about migrants

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Pauline Hanson has used an interview with the far-right British activist Tommy Robinson to blame the end of the White Australia policy for creating what she sees as problems with migration and said her daughter, Lee Hanson, was the future of One Nation.

The One Nation leader, who is visiting the UK for a series of conference appearances and a holiday with her billionaire benefactor Gina Rinehart, appeared on an episode of Robinson’s podcast on Friday, repeating unsubstantiated claims about the spread of sharia law and accusing Muslim communities, without evidence, of rorting the national disability insurance scheme.

Vicki Brady told senators maintenance staff were unaware of mass outage risk as critical software failure ‘rippled slowly across the network’

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Telstra has blamed the lack of a software update on a key time-keeping system for an outage that caused nationwide chaos last week, with its maintenance teams also unaware of a design change that affected how it would reset.

Telstra’s chief executive, Vicki Brady, told a Senate inquiry into the mobile outage on Friday that 45% of all calls and data sessions last Wednesday were affected when the network went down shortly before 4.30am AEST.