We’re ending our live coverage for the day, thanks for following along. A summary of some key events: Trump campaign reportedly ordered removal of social distancing stickers at Tulsa rally. Washington Post publishes video, which appears to show Trump campaign workers methodically removing stickers from seats Mike Pence postpones Florida campaign tour as coronavirus cases surge. State sees new record rise in daily cases as push to reopen across US halts or reverses Outrage mounts over report Russia offered bounties to Afghanistan militants for killing US soldiers. Fierce response from top Democrats after US intelligence finding was reportedly briefed to Trump in March, but the White House has yet to act Princeton to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from school over racist history. University president cites ‘thorough, deliberative’ process to reach decision amid nationwide movement The FBI has launched an investigation after a noose was found inside a black firefighter’s locker at a fire station in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington earlier this month. “Acts like this that embody hate, intimidation, and aggression will not be tolerated,” Bloomington’s fire chief, Ulie Seal, said in a statement. “The firefighter who brought this to our attention has demonstrated extreme strength and bravery and has done the right thing.” Bloomington’s mayor, Tim Busse, said he was “disgusted, angry, and embarrassed by this cowardly act. To be clear, this incident is very serious and is being dealt with aggressively.” George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers in May sparked a wave of anti-racism protests across the country. While there has been understandable attention in the US on the rise in Covid-19 cases in states across the country, outbreaks in countries where the virus had appeared to be under control have sparked concern the world is starting to enter a second wave (if the first wave ever ended). Emma Graham-Harrison has more: A meat-processing plant in Germany. A church in Seoul. A squat and a hospital in Italy. A wholesale market in Beijing. All of them have experienced clusters of infections after national authorities declared the disease suppressed in their country and launched a slow return towards normal life. Months into the pandemic, fear of a second wave of infections now hangs over countries that have managed to stamp out the disease, mostly through economically and socially painful lockdowns. An incubation period of up to two weeks, the fact that some infected people can spread the disease before symptoms show and others remain asymptomatic … all this helps the virus to spread undetected before an outbreak flares. South Korea grabbed international attention last week when its disease control authorities were the first in the world to announce that the country had entered a second wave, focused around the capital and apparently triggered by gatherings over a May holiday. The term “second wave” has no agreed-upon scientific definition. It can mean anything from localised spikes in infection to a full-blown national crisis, and some experts avoid it for this reason. The World Health Organization avoided using it to describe South Korea’s status when asked in a news conference. There is more consensus on both prevention and how to handle new outbreaks using approaches honed rapidly over the past few months to find people who are infected, and prevent them spreading the disease. You can read the full article below: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States rose to more than 2.5 million on Saturday, according to a Reuters tally. More than 125,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, the highest known death toll from the disease in the world. Cases are rising across the country, and some states are reversing or pausing reopening. Video appears to confirm Trump campaign ordered removal of social-distancing stickers The Washington Post has obtained video and photos that appear to confirm reports the Trump campaign ordered stickers detailing social distancing guidelines to be removed from the site of the president’s rally in Tulsa last week. Here’s more from the Post’s report, which you can read in full here: “The removal contradicted instructions from the management of the BOK Center, the 19,000-seat arena in downtown Tulsa where Trump held his rally on June 20. At the time, coronavirus cases were rising sharply in Tulsa County, and Trump faced intense criticism for convening a large crowd for an indoor political rally, his first such event since the start of the pandemic.” Washington state will pause its plan to complete a full reopening. Covid-19 cases in the state have been on the rise recently, and Washington governor said in a statement on Saturday that the situation is “evolving”. “Phase four would mean a return to normal activity and we can’t do that now due to the continued rise in cases across the state,” Inslee said. “We all want to get back to doing all the things we love in Washington during the summer, and fully open our economy, but we aren’t there yet. This is an evolving situation and we will continue to make decisions based on the data.” Pence calls off Florida tour as cases surge in state My colleague Edward Helmore has news from the Vice-President’s camp: As reopening plans went into a dramatic reverse or stalled across the US in the face of a resurgent virus, Mike Pence called off a planned campaign bus tour in Florida amid a surge in confirmed coronavirus cases. The vice-president had been set to appear in Lake Wales at an event next week organized by pro-Trump group America First Policies billed as the “Great American Comeback tour.” The group announced: “Out of an abundance of caution at this time, we are postponing the Great American Comeback tour stop in Florida. We look forward to rescheduling soon.” Pence was still traveling to the state, the White House confirmed, saying he would meet with Governor Ron DeSantis and his healthcare teams. Florida is seen as a key battleground state in the 2020 election and has been controversially picked as the site of a Trump rally in late August to celebrate his nomination for a second term. The news of the cancellation came as Miami became the latest local authority to act in the wake of the virus’s rise by announcing it was closing its beaches and planning a crackdown on coronavirus rules. Florida also reported yet another record rise in daily cases. The Florida department of health reported 9,585 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, shattering the previous daily high for positive Covid-19 infections which it notched up on Friday. Florida has now had 132,545 positive cases to date. “If people are not going to be responsible and protect themselves and others from this pandemic, then the government is forced to step in and restore common sense to save lives,” Gimenez said. Mississippi starts process to change state flag The Mississippi state government has started a process that will see the Confederate battle emblem removed from the state’s flag. The state’s House of Representatives voted on Saturday to redesign the flag, and the motion will now go to the state senate. The Confederate symbol, which features on the state current flag, is widely seen as an icon of the slave-owning south during the Civil War. The new design “would not include the Confederate battle flag but shall include the words ‘In God We Trust.’” Voters will decide which of the designs will be displayed on the new flag. The state’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, has already said he supports a change to the flag. “The argument over the 1894 flag has become as divisive as the flag itself and it’s time to end it. If they send me a bill this weekend, I will sign it,” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday. The Winston-Salem Journal reports on a disturbing development in the Bubba Wallace story. Wallace, Nascar’s only black driver, led a successful campaign to rid the stock-car racing series of the Confederate flag. Last week, a noose was found in his team’s garage although a subsequent investigation found the rope had been there since last fall, and Wallace was not the subject of a hate crime. Here’s what the Associated Press has to say on the latest development: A North Carolina racetrack has lost some partnerships after its owner advertised “Bubba Rope” for sale online days after Nascar said a noose had been found in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace, the top series’ only Black driver. A concrete company and a driver series ended their partnerships Friday with the half-mile, dirt track 311 Speedway in Stokes County, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. The racetrack owner’s “Bubba Rope” post on Facebook Marketplace earlier this week sparked a backlash on social media and a condemnation from a spokesman for Gov. Roy Cooper. “Buy your Bubba Rope today for only $9.99 each, they come with a lifetime warranty and work great,” the post said. The Carolina Sprint Tour posted on its Facebook page that it would not race at the speedway for the remainder of its season, according to the newspaper. “We do not condone nor support the comments and posts that have been made the past week,” the series said in a post online. A concrete company also said it was cutting all ties with the speedway. Megan Rapinoe has praised her fellow soccer players after they kneeled before the opening game of the National Women’s Soccer League’s summer tournament. The NWSL’s Challenge Cup is the first major team sports tournament to resume in the US since the Covid-19 shutdown. Every member of the North Carolina Courage and Portland Thorns knelt during the national anthem, while players and coaches wore Black Lives Matter shirts before kickoff. “You love to see it,” wrote Rapinoe on Twitter. “You love to see these women using their voice, demanding better for America, and for black people and people of color.” In a joint statement before the match, which was shown on network television, the Thorns and Courage said they “took a knee today to protest racial injustice, police brutality, and systemic racism against black people and people of color in the United States”. Dr Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, says he is skeptical that US schools will return to normal in the near future. “I’m hearing a lot of parents say, ‘let’s scrap the fall and we’ll maybe start in the spring,’” Jha told CNN on Saturday. “January and February aren’t going to be better. They’re going to be the deep winter months and March will be pretty tough. I don’t expect a widespread vaccine will be available, and widespread and readily available, by January or February.” Jha believes schools won’t return to normal until May or June 2021. He said that it was not the actions and precautions taken by individual schools that will determine when kids can return to classrooms full-time, but how Covid-19 is handled in communities as a whole. “If we don’t get our act together and get the virus under control we’re going to have a whole year of online education for all of our children. It is going to have a lot of effects on kids and parents,” he said. The North American Aerospace Defense Command says US F-22 jets intercepted Russian reconnaissance aircraft near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on Saturday. Norad, a combined American-Canadian force, said the Russia craft entered the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and remained there for eight hours. The Russian jets were in international airspace for the entire time and did not violate American or Canadian territory. It is the fourth time this month US fighters have intercepted Russian planes near Alaska in the last month. “This year alone, Norad forces have identified and intercepted Russian military aircraft including bombers, fighters, and maritime patrol aircraft on ten separate occasions when they have flown into the ADIZ,” said Norad commander General Terrence J O’Shaughnessy. Russian-American author Masha Gessen has released a new book, Surviving Autocracy (you can read an extract here). Gessen has written books dealing with both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and has lived in both of their countries. In an interview with the Observer, Gessen says that in some ways, Trump is worse than his Russian counterpart. Here’s what Gessen told the Observer’s Lisa O’Kelly: “In a way, I think Trump is worse. I never thought I would hear myself say that. They share a lot of characteristics although they are temperamentally extremely different men. They both have this contempt for excellence, they both have a hatred of government, and they both have this way of campaigning against government as such, even as presidents of their respective countries. I think in the end, Putin is somewhat less cynical. He has an idea – it is self-aggrandising and absurd on the face of it – that if he stepped away Russia would fall apart and so he has to carry this burden. And for his labours he deserves to have the yachts and the palaces and all that. But he is doing it for his country. Trump doesn’t even have that delusion.” Princeton University says it is removing Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges after trustees concluded that the 28th US president’s “racist thinking and policies” made him “an inappropriate namesake”. The Ivy League school’s trustees made the decision Friday, according to a statement released on Saturday. The policy school will now be known as “The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs”. Wilson served as president of the New Jersey school from 1902 to 1910, shortly before serving as US president from 1913 to 1921, was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910. “Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential, even by the standards of his own time,” Princeton president Christopher L Eisgruber said in a statement. “He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice. He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in this country, a practice that continues to do harm today.”