US News Roundup: Joe Biden to accept Democratic presidential nomination; California's notorious 'Golden State Killer' faces sentencing and more

After decades in politics, Joe Biden to accept Democratic presidential nomination In the biggest speech of his nearly 50 years in public life, Joe Biden will spell out his vision for the presidency on Thursday when he accepts the Democratic nomination to challenge Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 U.S. election.

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

In historic speech, Kamala Harris expected to train fire on Trump

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris gives the most important speech of her political career on Wednesday when she addresses the Democratic National Convention as presidential nominee Joe Biden's running mate. The former prosecutor from California, who made history as the first Black woman and Asian-American on a major presidential ticket, is expected to aggressively press the case against Republican President Donald Trump's reelection on Nov. 3.

As U.S. schools reopen, concerns grow that kids spread coronavirus

U.S. students are returning to school in person and online in the middle of a pandemic, and the stakes for educators and families are rising in the face of emerging research that shows children could be a risk for spreading the new coronavirus. Several large studies have shown that the vast majority of children who contract COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, have milder illness than adults. And early reports did not find strong evidence of children as major contributors to the deadly virus that has killed more than 780,000 people globally.

After decades in politics, Joe Biden to accept Democratic presidential nomination

In the biggest speech of his nearly 50 years in public life, Joe Biden will spell out his vision for the presidency on Thursday when he accepts the Democratic nomination to challenge Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 U.S. election. Biden's speech on the fourth and last night of the Democratic National Convention will be a crowning moment in a long political career for the former U.S. senator and vice president, who fared poorly in two previous runs for the White House in 1988 and 2008.

Trump heads to Biden's birthplace to blast his record ahead of nomination speech

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday will travel to the area in the swing state of Pennsylvania where Democratic rival Joe Biden was born to slam his decades of government service, hours before the former vice president accepts his party's nomination. The speech, which the campaign has said will highlight a "half century of Joe Biden failing America", will seek to shore up the Republican's support in the state, which may prove key to winning re-election in November.

Ballot drop boxes are latest battleground in U.S. election fight

Welcome to the latest partisan flash point in the U.S. presidential election: the ballot drop box. As U.S. election officials gird for a dramatic expansion of mail voting in the Nov. 3 election, Democrats across the country are promoting drop boxes as a convenient and reliable option for voters who don't want to entrust their ballots to the U.S. Postal Service.

Portland police use tear gas after declaring riot for second night

Police in the city of Portland said they fired crowd control munitions and tear gas on Wednesday night to break up a gathering of about 200 people who threw rocks, lit fires and vandalized a U.S. immigration agency building. Law enforcement officials had declared a riot for a second successive night, calling a protest near the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office an "unlawful assembly".

Obama slams Trump as unfit, says U.S. democracy is at risk

Former U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday assailed his successor, Donald Trump, as deeply unfit for the office he occupies and argued that voting for his former No. 2, Joe Biden, was necessary to ensure the survival of American democracy. "He's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves," Obama said of Trump during the third night of the Democratic National Convention.

Lightning-sparked fires rage across California, tens of thousands flee

A firefighting helicopter pilot was killed in a crash, and scores of homes burned in California on Wednesday as hundreds of lightning-sparked blazes forced tens of thousands of people to flee their dwellings. Nearly 11,000 lightning strikes were documented during a 72-hour stretch this week in the heaviest spate of thunderstorms to hit California in more than a decade, igniting 367 individual fires. Almost two dozen of them have grown into major conflagrations, authorities said.

Iran announces locally made ballistic and cruise missiles amid U.S. tensions

Iran displayed a surface-to-surface ballistic missile on Thursday that Defence Minister Amir Hatami said had a range of 1,400 kilometres and a new cruise missile, ignoring U.S. demands that Tehran halt its missile programme. "The surface-to-surface missile, called martyr Qassem Soleimani, has a range of 1,400 km and the cruise missile, called martyr Abu Mahdi, has a range of over 1,000 km," Hatami said in a televised speech.

California's notorious 'Golden State Killer' faces sentencing

A former California police officer dubbed the "Golden State Killer" who confessed to 13 murders and dozens of rapes during the 1970s and '80s faces a life prison term when he is sentenced in Sacramento on Friday. Joseph James DeAngelo, 74, will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole following three days of emotional hearings in which victims or their family members confronted him in open court.