Inside daily news briefs

Inside Daily Brief Newsletter

Over the weekend, Trump’s re-election campaign released a TV ad attacking the media and Democrats as the President’s enemies. The 30-second spot features photos of media personalities including MSNBC’s Brian Williams and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, as well as of Democrat Senators Charles Schumer and Elizabeth Warren. "The president's enemies don't want him to succeed, but Americans are saying, 'Let President Trump do his job,'" the ad’s narrator says. It will run on the internet and on cable TV. – WAPO

Hackers who have demanded $6 million from HBO in a ramson attack have leaked several episodes of the network’s shows. These include episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the latest episode of "Insecure," and some episodes of "Ballers." HBO offered to pay $250,000 to the hackers in late July as a "stall tactic," but it did not actually plan to wire the money, the media reported. The hackers may be in possession of some HBO internal documents, but there are reasons to believe that the security breach is not as bad as the one that affected Sony in 2014. – VARIETY

A man has killed his mother, his sister and his sister’s friend with a hammer in Long Island. A fourth female victim who was also attacked with a hammer is in a hospital in stable condition. A neighbor called 911 when the surviving victim jumped on the hood of his vehicle covered in blood and screaming. Bobby Vanderhall, 34, has been arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder. The suspect was found sleeping in a car about two miles from his mother's home. According to police, his mother evicted Vanderhall from her house after he allegedly slapped and harassed her. – PEOPLE

Usain Bolt bid farewell to athletics with a lap of honor at the end of the World Championships in London. During the ceremony, the Jamaican sprinter crouched by the starting mark for the 100m and 200m races. "These are my two events that I have dominated for years. I was saying goodbye to everything. I almost cried. It was close but it didn’t come," he said. Bolt came third in the 100m final and pulled a string running the 4x100m relay, but he said his performance at the championships will not tarnish his legacy. "After losing the 100m someone said to me: ‘Usain, don’t worry Muhammad Ali lost his last fight also, so don’t be stressed about that.’ I’ve proven myself year in year out, throughout my whole career," Bolt said. – GUARDIAN

The Portuguese government has asked the European Union for firefighters and firefighting airplanes to help extinguish more than 250 wildfires. The government of Prime Minister Antonio Costa fears that extreme heat and dryness forecast for the next few days will fuel the blazes. The request comes after a string of fires in June that killed 64 people. France and Montenegro have also asked for EU help to battle wildfires this summer. – INDEPENDENT

A SpaceX rocket is set to take off today with the most powerful computer ever sent to space. The Hewlett Packard machine is 30 to 100 times more powerful than a standard desktop computer and it could help scientists process image data of our planet for private companies that want to track developments such as crop growth and oil exploration. The supercomputer will allow NASA to analyze huge amounts of data in space instead of sending it to Earth. "If you can process the data on board [the space station], you then only need to send down a subset of the data that's actually needed," said Julie Robinson, the chief scientist for NASA's space station program. – CNN

A former teacher says that James Alex Fields, the man accused of driving a car into a crowd of people over the weekend, wounding 19 and killing one, held radical views. Derek Weimer, who teaches at the Ohio High school where Fields had studied, said that he "really bought into this white supremacist thing. He was very big into Nazism. He really had a fondness for Adolf Hitler." Fields, 20, graduated from the Randall K. Cooper high school in 2015 and later tried to join the Army but was turned down because he failed to meet training standards, said an Army spokeswoman. Fields, who is originally from Kentucky, is being held on suspicion of second-degree murder. – CNN

Islamic terrorists allegedly killed 18 people and wounded eight others in Burkina Faso when they opened fire at diners at a Turkish restaurant on Sunday. Three or four attackers arrived at the restaurant in the capital on motorcycles and then began shooting at people, police said. Two of the attackers were killed. The restaurant is popular with foreigners and several of the people killed were visiting from other countries. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but al-Qaida carried out a similar attack on a hotel that left 30 dead in 2016. – AP

Scientists have discovered 91 volcanoes under the Antarctic ice sheet. The volcanoes are covered in up to 4 km of ice and range in height from 100 to 3,850 meters. Scientists at Edinburgh University are scrambling to understand how a...