"Gravitational wave detectors have spotted a cosmic collision in which a giant black hole swallowed up a mystery object seemingly too heavy to be a neutron star, but too light to be a black hole. Weighing in at 2.6 times the mass of the Sun, the object falls into a hypothetical 'mass gap,' a desert between the heaviest neutron star and the lightest black hole that some theories predict—suggesting the gap doesn’t exist and that those theories need to be amended."
"The launch of NASA's next Mars rover has been delayed to no earlier than July 22 due to a contamination issue with ground support equipment, the space agency said today (June 24)."
"The three most populous states set records for new coronavirus cases daily and there are fears of 'apocalyptic' surges in major Texas cities if the trend continues." Checks watch, yep, right on time.
"As the number of new coronavirus cases surges each day in many parts of the country, some states are hitting pause on their plans to reopen." Waits for the blowback.
"In the wake of the massive turnout at anti-racism demonstrations around the country, public health officials are encouraging protesters to get tested for the coronavirus. As purely precautionary testing has become more common, some insurance companies are arguing they can't just pay for everyone who's concerned about their risk to get tested."
"The federal government is ending its support for 13 drive-thru coronavirus testing sites on June 30, urging states to take over their operations — even as cases spike in several parts of the country."
"The state of New York announced Wednesday it will begin requiring travelers from eight states where the number of coronavirus cases is surging to quarantine for 14 days. The new measure singles out visitors and New York residents arriving from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. Neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut are suggesting a quarantine for people who are arriving from the hard-hit states, but acknowledged they do not have an enforcement mechanism to compel compliance. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo says a failure to quarantine is punishable by fines that could run into the thousands of dollars."
"As the U.S. begins to open back up, coronavirus clusters — where multiple people contract COVID-19 at the same event or location — are popping up all over the country. And despite drawing massive crowds, protests against police violence and racial injustice in Washington state weren't among those clusters."
"Disneyland will not reopen as scheduled on July 17, Disney announced Wednesday, citing a lack of guidance from California officials. The announcement comes as the company moves forward with plans to reopen the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida — despite local concern that it could exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus."
"The de facto leader of the autonomous protest zone in Seattle said Wednesday 'a lot of people have already' left the area, days after the mayor said she was going to persuade people to leave."
Okay, it's the NY Post, but… "The three cops at the center of the NYPD milkshake 'poisoning' scandal never even got sick, and there wasn’t the slightest whiff of criminality from the get-go — but that didn’t stop gung-ho brass from rolling out the crime scene tape and unions from dishing out empty conspiracy theories, The Post has learned." How the union created the scandal to perpetuate their "cops under fire" narrative.
"The Columbus Police Department responded late Monday night to the incident, saying the protester with prosthetic legs had just moments earlier thrown large plywood signs at officers. Sgt. James Fuqua defended the response of his officers to The Columbus Dispatch: 'It blew up into this thing with little or no context. We're just getting annihilated publicly because they really think what they saw actually happened.'" They say they didn't know he had prosthetic legs, but then took them from him and left him on the ground. Sgt Fuqua (seriously, that name) should have all his reports scrutinized for fabrications.
"The police hadn’t done anything wrong, Baker said. I don’t know what your wife saw, he explained, but a police car did not hit a kid… As his statement put it: 'One unknown male fled the scene and ran across the hood of a stationary police car.'"
"30 years ago, Romania deprived thousands of babies of human contact… Here’s what’s become of them." It's a long read mostly following one boy. "He’s working with a screenwriter on a miniseries about his life, believing that if people could be made to understand what it’s like to live behind fences, inside cages, they’d stop putting children there. He’s keenly aware that up to 8 million children around the world are institutionalized, including those at America’s southern border."
"The economy, which contracted 5% in the January-March quarter, is widely expected to shrink at a roughly 30% annual rate in the current April-June quarter. That would be the worst quarterly contraction, by far, since record-keeping began in 1948." Ouch.
"First-time claims for unemployment benefits have fallen in every report for the past 12 weeks. Still, the American jobs crisis is far from over: Another 1.5 million Americans filed initial jobless claims last week." I'm old enough to remember when 200,000+ new unemployment claims were cause for worry.
"Jobless claims totaled 1.48 million last week as unemployment related to the coronavirus pandemic remained stubbornly high, though those receiving benefits fell below 20 million for the first time in two months, the government reported Thursday."
"Macy's Inc. M, -3.54% said Thursday that it will cut 3,900 workers across corporate and management roles, as well as store staff, supply chain employees and the customer service network due to the impact of COVID-19. The restructuring is a cost-cutting effort as the department store retailer recovers from the pandemic."
"Bayer will pay more than $10 billion to resolve thousands of lawsuits regarding claims that its herbicide Roundup causes cancer, the company announced Wednesday… The settlement, however, does not contain any admission of wrongdoing or liability." Of course it doesn't.
"The Trump administration is preparing a major effort to protect national monuments that President Donald Trump has described as part of the country's heritage, including assigning US Marshals to oversee them and signing an executive order meant to protect them, people familiar with the plan say."
"President Donald Trump's plans to kick off Independence Day with a showy display at Mount Rushmore are drawing sharp criticism from Native Americans who view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to native people."
"President Trump on Wednesday said he would remove some U.S. troops from Germany and relocate them to Poland and other European and U.S. locations, a reaction to his long-standing complaint that Germany falls short on defense spending obligations to NATO."
"Jamaal Bowman isn't claiming victory just yet in his high-profile challenge of Congressman Eliot Engel, a 31-year-incumbent and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but Bowman has a strong early lead." This is in a fairly safe Democratic district, but it's another sign of the frustration that the part has moved too far to the center. Also it's another warning story to never consider your seat safe. You should always be proving to your voters you have their interests at heart.
"As protests stemming from George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police spread across the country, Black progressives appear to have had a good night in Democratic primaries Tuesday, while some Republicans endorsed by President Trump did not fare as well on the GOP side."
"The debacle that unfolded in Oklahoma, where sparse crowds forced Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to cancel pre-rally appearances and ignited an unpleasant news cycle for Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, has raised the stakes for the Jacksonville convention, where hundreds of Republican delegates, party leaders and MAGA devotees will send Trump off to battle against his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden."
"Section 230, the law that is often credited as the reason why the internet as we know it exists, could be facing its greatest threat yet. A seemingly coordinated attack on the law is unfolding this week from the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress. It follows complaints that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube unfairly censor conservative speech. Though some are framing the efforts as a way to promote free speech, others say the result will be exactly the opposite." The way I look at this, they realize how they came to power using social media, and now they want to make sure no one else can use that ladder.
"Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten. This election year, amid a harrowing global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, we know it’s never been more critical to note these horrors, to remember them, and to do all in our power to reverse them. This list will be updated between now and the November 2020 Presidential election."
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