In November 2019, President Macron described Nato as "brain dead" because of a waning commitment to the alliance by the US. Mr Trump hit back by saying the French leader had been "nasty" and "very disrespectful".

He also called Mr Macron "foolish" when France moved to introduce a tax on US technology companies and threatened to add a tax on French wine as retaliation, tweeting: "I've always said American wine is better than French wine!" Mr Macron put the new tax on hold.

President Trump has repeatedly taken issue with Germany failing to spend the Nato target of 2% on defence, accusing the country of being "delinquent" in its payments to the alliance.

He has also accused Germany of being "totally controlled by Russia" because it imports "so much of its energy" from the country and has a new pipeline planned. Mrs Merkel responded by saying Germany "can make our own policies and make our own decisions".

But it has not been empty rhetoric from President Trump. In July this year, the US announced it was withdrawing about 12,000 of its troops from Germany in what officials described as a "strategic" repositioning of its forces in Europe.

Mr Trump's explanation was a little more direct, telling reporters: "We don't want to be the suckers anymore. We're reducing the force because they're not paying their bills; it's very simple."

A group of young men and women sit together in a courtyard, eating plates of food, when one by one, they break into dance to the tune of Jerusalema, the 2019 hit by South African artists Master KG and Nomcebo Zikode. That video, which was filmed in Angola at the outset of 2020, has been viewed more than 13m times and sparked a global dance challenge even as countries closed their borders due to the pandemic.

Healthcare workers in South Africa and Kenya have taken part in the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge, along with a Catholic diocese in Montreal, a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer and Romanian firefighters, among many others.

Mitchell’s fans have long taken a different position. For years, pieces of this rich trove of unreleased material have circulated in sketchy bootleg form. Most of these early demos, work tapes, and performances have remained unheard. Mitchell’s manager, Elliot Roberts, had long been championing the idea of an archival collection. When Roberts passed away last year, the project was temporarily derailed. But the gathering of these recordings continued.

Some of the tapes are new discoveries, others had been meticulously collected and catalogued years earlier by “court archivist” Joel Bernstein. When Mitchell recently cranked up her living room stereo and listened to all the material for the first time, the project came to glorious fruition. Neil Young even gave some counsel, suggesting the songs be presented in chronological order. Mitchell, who has usually taken a more thematic approach to collections of her music, agreed.

Finally these rare compositions are all gathered in one place, presented with all the warmth of Mitchell’s twentysomething self. From her first recordings made during off-hours at a Saskatoon radio station, to a birthday tape made for her mother, to club dates in Philadelphia, Toronto, and New York, it’s a most personal document. Often armed only with her songs and her tunings, Mitchell begins her transcendent creative journey here.

“I would not miss any opportunity, on behalf of my colleagues, to make sure that there’s clarity on where we’re coming from on some of these issues,” she said.

She plans to run again for speaker, if Democrats keep control of the House: “Definitely.”

With control of the House hardly contested, Pelosi is working to fortify Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and win extra House seats in case Congress is called on to resolve any electoral college dispute with President Trump.

Pelosi said she feels so confident Democrats will keep the House this election, she’s already preparing to win the next one in 2022.

When President Trump held a mass campaign rally in Newport News, where I now work, at the end of September, he did so against the explicit warning of local public health officials. He was entering this community — our house — not for the good of the sick but to promote himself. The gathering may have brought sickness to the community. As a new physician, I find that deeply disturbing.

As the death toll of Covid-19 heads toward 220,000 in the United States alone, more deaths than in any other country in the world, the president, who is currently convalescing from Covid-19 himself, has spent the past several months crisscrossing a pandemic-ravaged country in his bid for reelection. The crowds he draws are fertile breeding grounds for transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, followed by community outbreaks.

The president has repeatedly held these gatherings not only in defiance of public health guidelines, but seemingly to spite them: downplaying the threat of the virus, eschewing basic public health principles such as wearing face coverings and packing his supporters shoulder to shoulder for political optics. Several early campaign events were indoors, such as in Tulsa, where there was a reported surge in cases afterwards. Former presidential candidate Herman Cain, who was co-chair of Black Voices for Trump and who attended the Tulsa rally without wearing a mask, tested positive for Covid-19 two days after the rally and died less than two weeks later.
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Concerned about the impact of Trump’s campaign rallies, Majumdar and I compiled county-based data of new coronavirus cases from each of his general election campaign rallies between Tulsa in late June and Newport News in late September. We looked at case numbers for the 14 days before and after each event to see if any patterns of community outbreaks emerged. We chose 14 days to consider the longest incubation periods, given the median onset from exposure to time of symptoms for Covid-19 is about three to five days.