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US VP Pence warns voters: You won’t be safe under Biden

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US Vice-President talks law and order as two are killed in Wisconsin unrest

BALTIMORE: US Vice-President Mike Pence took centre stage at the Republican convention Wednesday to warn voters they "won't be safe in Joe Biden's America" - casting Mr Donald Trump as their protector against the "radical" left.

"Law and order is on the ballot," Mr Pence stressed on the third night of a convention overshadowed by violent unrest in Wisconsin.

Mr Pence made the case for Mr Trump getting a second term instead of allowing the nation to be "fundamentally transformed" by a Biden administration he warned would take an uncharted path towards socialism and mob rule.

"The hard truth is, you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America," said the 61-year-old Pence.

Mr Pence's address came amid a new flare-up of racial tensions in the US, with protests spreading over the latest police shooting of an African-American man, Mr Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Mr Trump announced he would be sending in additional federal forces to quell unrest in the Midwestern city, where two people were shot dead during anti-police protests on Tuesday.

Addressing the latest unrest, Mr Pence struck a tough tone.

"Let me be clear. The violence must stop whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha," he said.

"We will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American."

SHOOTING

Meanwhile, the first official details of Sunday's police shooting were released by the Wisconsin Justice Department, which is probing the incident.

Attorney General Josh Kaul said a knife was recovered from the driver-side front floorboard of the car Mr Blake was leaning into when he was shot in the back.

Mr Kaul said police had earlier confronted Mr Blake when they were called to the home of a woman who reported that her boyfriend was present without her permission. Mr Blake had told police he was in possession of a knife.

During the incident, Mr Kaul said, police tried to arrest Mr Blake, failing in an attempt to subdue him using a Taser.

Mr Blake, according to the attorney general, then walked around his vehicle, opened the driver's side door and leaned forward, as officer Rusten Shesky, clutching onto Mr Blake's shirt, fired his weapon seven times at Mr Blake's back.

Two days later, a teenager was arrested and charged with shooting three people, two of whom died, during Tuesday night's protests in Kenosha.

Video footage from that incident showed a white gunman, armed with an assault-style rifle, firing at protesters who tried to subdue him, and then calmly walking away from the scene, hands in the air - his rifle hanging in front of him - as several police vehicles drive by without stopping him.

Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes said on MSNBC the suspect, later identified as Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, of Antioch, Illinois, was apparently a militia group member who "decided to be a vigilante and take the law into his own hands and mow down innocent protesters".

He has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the shootings. - AFP, REUTERS

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