With just two weeks remaining before the US 2024 presidential election, the main players were out campaigning in key battleground states to sway the vote in their party’s favour.
Kamala Harris said her team is prepared to challenge Donald Trump if he tried to prematurely declare victory in the race.
In an interview with Sky News’ partner network NBC News she said America is ready for a female president of colour.
Meanwhile Mr Trump called Ms Harris “lazy as hell” at an event in Miami aimed at wooing Latino voters.
At a rally later in the day in Greensboro, North Carolina, he called Ms Harris a “stupid person” and asked: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”
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Obama raps Eminem at Detroit rally
While Ms Harris did not appear on the campaign trail on Tuesday, it was the first day in more than two weeks she had no public events scheduled and came a day after she visited three swing states.
Instead, her campaign sent out several key representatives, including Barack Obama, who was introduced on stage by Eminem in the rapper’s hometown of Detroit, Michigan.
The former president joked he had “noticed my palms are sweaty” before rapping several lines from the Grammy award-winning artist’s hit song Lose Yourself.
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“Love me some Eminem,” he added.
Eminem told the crowd Ms Harris “supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.”
Earlier in the day Mr Obama told voters in Wisconsin the election was “going to be tight” in the state and “all across the country… because a lot of Americans are still struggling” after the events of recent years, including the pandemic.
“I understand why folks are looking to shake things up,” the former president said.
“What I cannot understand is why anybody would think Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that’s good for you.”
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Trump: Obama’s a ‘jerk’
Trump calls Obama ‘a real jerk’
Mr Trump attacked Mr Obama as “a real jerk” at a rally in North Carolina, describing him as “a divider” and saying “he was terrible”.
“He’s trying to campaign because [Harris is] incapable of campaigning, so they sent him in to try. He’s not going to do it,” Mr Trump said.
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President Joe Biden took aim at his Republican predecessor during an appearance in New Hampshire, saying: “He has no concept of anything. No plan.”
He added: “This guy is a danger to the republic.”
And Ms Harris’s running mate Mr Walz poked fun at Mr Trump for his recent visit to McDonald’s, quipping: “That five minutes he stood next to the deep fryer are the hardest he’s worked in his life.”
The Democrat also joked McDonald’s clown Ronald McDonald wears less make-up than Mr Trump.
Bodycam footage showing prison officers fatally beating an inmate has been released by New York’s attorney general.
Prison officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in New York punched and kicked 43-year-old Robert Brooks repeatedly while he was handcuffed on an infirmary bed.
He died in hospital on 10 December, a day after the attack.
The incident has drawn outrage from political leaders and was condemned by the prison officers’ union as “incomprehensible”, according to Sky News’ partner newsroom NBC.
It is now being investigated by state attorney general Letitia James, who called the videos “shocking and disturbing” at a virtual news conference.
In the video, Mr Brooks is in handcuffs as he is carried into the infirmary by several prison guards.
They put him on the bed and begin repeatedly punching and kicking him.
He is pulled upright, where his bloodied face is visible on camera, and then yanked from the bed by his shirt collar and pushed up against a window.
One of the fourteen workers involved in the incident has resigned and the rest have been suspended without pay until the process to fire them is complete. The workers include correctional officers, sergeants and a prison nurse.
The officers had not activated their body cameras but they were still on and recorded in standby mode, without audio, during the attack.
As a result of the incident, all officers will now need to have their cameras activated any time they are engaging directly with prisoners.
Mr Brooks’ family thanked officials for taking action “to hold officers accountable” in a statement this week.
“We cannot understand how this could have happened in the first place,” the family said. “No one should have to lose a family member this way.”
The attack happened before 9.30pm on 9 December in a medical exam room after Mr Brooks had been transferred from the Mohawk Correctional Facility to Marcy Correctional Facility.
An autopsy found “preliminary findings show concern for asphyxia due to compression of the neck as the cause of death, as well as the death being due to actions of another,” according to a state corrections office investigative report obtained by an affiliate of Sky News’ partner newsroom WKTV in Utica.
Mr Brooks had been behind bars since 2017 on a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault involving a longtime girlfriend.
Officials declined to say why he had been transferred to the Marcy Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison.
Last year, an independent prison oversight group called The Correctional Association of New York released a report on the Marcy Correctional Facility.
It noted complaints of “rampant” physical abuse by staff members, with 80% of incarcerated people reporting having witnessed or experienced abuse and nearly 70% reporting racial discrimination or bias.
In response to the video, the union that represents workers at the prison said: “What we witnessed is incomprehensible to say the least and is certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day.”
It adding what transpired is the “opposite of everything [the union] and its membership stand for.”
The world’s best golfer has suffered a freak injury while cooking Christmas dinner, forcing him to undergo surgery.
Scottie Scheffler sustained a puncture wound after cutting the palm of his right hand on broken glass.
The world number one required surgery as small glass fragments remained in the palm after the accident.
The injury has forced him out of the first tournament of the season, next week’s The Sentry in Hawaii.
But the 28-year-old has been told he will recover in three to four weeks, and he hopes to be back in action at The American Express tournament in California on 16 January.
Scheffler won an Olympic gold and seven PGA Tour titles in the last year and was recently named PGA Tour’s Player of the Year for a third season in a row.
In May, he was arrested by police during the US PGA Championship after he was accused of trying to drive around a traffic jam caused by a fatal accident.
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Just hours later, he was released and allowed to return to Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky to play his second round of the tournament.
Criminal charges against Scheffler were later dismissed due to a lack of evidence and a police officer who arrested him was disciplined for not having his bodycam on at the time of the incident.
The man accused of burning a woman to death on a New York subway train has been indicted on murder and arson charges.
Sebastian Zapeta is accused of setting a sleeping woman on fire and then fanning the flames with a shirt, which caused her to be engulfed by the blaze.
He allegedly sat on a platform at Brooklyn’s Coney Island station, opposite the stopped train, and watched as she burned to death.
Authorities are still working to identify the victim.
Zapeta, 33, has been charged with one count of first degree murder, two counts of second degree murder and one count of arson in the first degree.
After a brief hearing in which the indictment was announced, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said: “This was a malicious deed. A sleeping, vulnerable woman on our subway system.”
Mr Gonzalez said police and medical examiners are using fingerprints and advanced DNA techniques to identify the victim, while also retracing her steps before the murder.
“Our hearts go out not only to this victim, but we know that there’s a family,” he said. “Just because someone appears to have been living in the situation of homelessness does not mean that there’s not going to be family devastated by the tragic way she lost her life.”
Such filings are often a first step in the criminal process because all felony cases in New York require a grand jury indictment to proceed to trial, unless a defendant waives that requirement.
Zapeta was not present at the hearing. The most serious charge he is facing carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole and the indictment will be unsealed on 7 January.
Zapeta is a Guatemalan who entered the US illegally having already been deported in 2018, officials say.
He was taken into custody last Sunday, after three children called 911 when they recognised him from an image shared by police.
During questioning, prosecutors say he claimed not to know what happened, and noted he consumes alcohol – but did identify himself in photos and videos showing the fire being lit.