- PoliticsYahoo News
White House defends Trump's claim that 99 percent of COVID-19 cases are 'harmless' with chart showing 5 percent are fatal
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany came to her press briefing on Monday prepared to defend President Trump's claim over the weekend that “99 percent” of U.S. coronavirus cases are “totally harmless” with two charts illustrating the country's COVID-19 death rate. But McEnany's slides showed a case fatality rate — the percentage of confirmed cases that result in death — of 4.6 percent, not the 1 percent implied by Trump. During a July 4 “Salute to America” speech on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump boasted that the administration has conducted more than 40 million coronavirus tests.
- U.S.Yahoo News
Video shows Black man pinned to tree in what he calls 'attempted lynching' at Indiana lake
Indiana authorities are investigating a report by a Black man who said he was pinned to a tree by a group of white men, an attack he likened to an “attempted lynching.” Parts of the incident were captured on video by one of the man's friends. In a post to Facebook, Vauhxx Booker wrote, “I don't want to recount this, but I was almost the victim of an attempted lynching.”
- U.S.The Daily Beast
Texas Governor Is ‘Putting Lives at Risk,’ Local Officials Say
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo believes she knows what her county needs to fight back against COVID-19. “I'm at the mercy of what powers he positively gives us,” Hidalgo told The Daily Beast. As Texas faces a resurgent coronavirus and some officials have emphasized concerns about hospitals in the state becoming potentially overrun or overwhelmed, Hidalgo can find plenty of reasons to worry.
- U.S.LA Times
Mississippi students voted to move a Civil War statue. Now they fear a Confederate shrine
When Joshua Mannery voted last year to remove a statue of a Confederate soldier that has towered over the heart of the University of Mississippi for more than a century, he understood that change takes place slowly on this historic Southern campus. Now that construction crews have arrived on campus to move the white marble figure, student leaders are demanding that the project be halted after learning that university administrators plan to spend more than $1.1 million in private funds to renovate the cemetery and erect headstones for the Confederate dead, install security cameras and shine new lighting on the memorial. “It just doesn't seem normal that we have to protest the creation of a Confederate shrine — and yet here we are,” said Mannery, a fourth-year political science and English double major.
WorldAFPAustralia warns of 'arbitrary detention' in China
Australia warned its citizens Tuesday they could face "arbitrary detention" if they travel to China, the latest sign of growing tensions between the two nations. The foreign ministry issued the warning in updated travel advice, which also noted that Chinese authorities had detained foreigners for allegedly "endangering national security". Australia has already told its citizens to avoid all international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the updated advice did not raise the overall level of the warning against travel to China.
- U.S.Yahoo News
Exonerated Central Park Five members speak out: ‘Not too many things have changed since 30 years ago’
In 1989, five Black and Hispanic teens were falsely accused of raping and nearly killing Trisha Meili, a white woman jogging in Central Park. Known collectively as the Central Park Five, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise were convicted in two trials despite a lack of eyewitness testimony or DNA evidence and spent between six and 13 years in prison. Exonerated in 2002 after an investigation confirmed that a convicted murderer and rapist had committed the crime, the Central Park Five sued the city and state of New York, settling for millions.
- PoliticsNBC News
McConnell opens door to more coronavirus stimulus checks for low-income Americans
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday that the next round of coronavirus legislation could include an additional round of stimulus checks aimed at helping low-income Americans. Asked at one of three public events in Kentucky whether the relief bill would include more direct payments, McConnell said it "could well." Many of them work in the hospitality industry.
- ScienceBusiness Insider
NASA's powerful Hubble space telescope has beamed back a striking photo of a 'fluffy' galaxy with a ghostly, empty center
By contrast, other spiral galaxies — including the Milky Way — have more distinct arms where stars and gas are compressed. Hubble is NASA's strongest telescope — but not for long NASA launched Hubble into Earth's orbit in April 1990. Since then, the telescope has discovered new planets, revealed strange galaxies, and provided new insights into the nature of black holes.
- WorldReuters
FBI chief says China threatens families to coerce overseas critics to return to China
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday urged China-born people in the United States to contact the FBI if Chinese officials try to force them to return to China under a program of coercion that he said is led by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Wray issued the unusual appeal in an address to the Hudson Institute think tank in which he reiterated U.S. charges that China is using espionage, cyber theft, blackmail and other means as part of a strategy to replace the United States as the world's dominant economic and technological power.
- U.S.Yahoo News
Don't count on ever seeing Trump's 'Garden of American Heroes'
Call me cynical, but I have a feeling the National Garden of American Heroes announced by President Trump on Friday will never get off — or into — the ground, even if he doesn't put his son-in-law in charge of it. That is partly, of course, a recognition of the incompetence of Trump's administration, which has presided over an epic public health disaster and whose signature border wall initiative, guided by Jared Kushner, is proceeding at the rate of approximately 1 mile per year of new construction, not counting upgrades to existing barriers.
- U.S.Yahoo News
DeSantis cuts $28 million from disease treatment at Florida prisons as pandemic's toll worsens
Nevertheless, Gov. Ron DeSantis used his veto powers last month to excise from the state budget a $28 million initiative to treat prisoners for hepatitis C and the coronavirus. The veto was one of many DeSantis made in the proposed $93.2 billion state budget. Among the dozens of other rejected funding items were a $530,000 security grant for a synagogue in Tallahassee and $500,000 to support babies born with visual impairments, not to mention a host of remote-learning and physical infrastructure programs.
- U.S.The Daily Beast
Mary Kay Letourneau, Teacher Who Abused and Then Married Student, Dies of Cancer
Mary Kay Letourneau—who gained tabloid infamy for raping her 12-year-old former student, having children with him, and later marrying him—has died of cancer, her attorneys said. “Expected but sad anyway,” her attorney David Gehrke, told TV station KOMO. Letourneau was a married mom of four working as a sixth-grade teacher in Washington state in 1997 when she was arrested for sexual contact with Fualaau.
- PoliticsThe Independent
Trump administration refusing to let Dr Fauci appear on CBS show, host says
CBS News host Margaret Brennan has claimed that the Trump administration has prevented Dr Anthony Fauci from appearing on her show for three months. The moderator of CBS' Face the Nation, claimed on the show on Sunday that the administration had not approved an interview with Dr Fauci since 5 April. Dr Fauci, one of the country's top infectious disease experts and part of the US government's coronavirus task force, has appeared on various other networks over the last few months to discuss the coronavirus crisis, according to Newsweek.
- U.S.Miami Herald
PGA pro and kids among victims in Idaho plane crash, cops say. Here’s what we know
A PGA golf professional and two of his children were among the eight killed when two airplanes collided over a lake in northern Idaho on Sunday, officials said Tuesday. At least eight people, including three children, were killed in the crash in Coeur d'Alene, the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office said. Six of the bodies have been recovered, officials said Tuesday.
- U.S.Associated Press
Black Lives Matter protesters face rare leak charge in Iowa
Prosecutors in Iowa have filed a rarely used leak charge against Black Lives Matter protesters accused of stealing a confidential police document and displaying it during a television news broadcast. Two protesters are charged with unauthorized dissemination of intelligence data, a felony that carries up to five years in prison. The Iowa Judicial Branch says it's only the second time that the charge has been filed since 2010.
PoliticsYahoo News VideoThe Lincoln Project continues anti-Trump ad campaign
On Tuesday, the Lincoln Project, a conservative political action committee formed in late 2019, released an ad titled “Whispers,” which suggests those in President Trump's inner circle are secretly mocking him. This is the latest in a series of attack ads produced and distributed by the committee, whose members include George Conway, Steve Schmidt and other prominent Republicans who oppose Trump. Yahoo News has assembled a compilation of some of the Lincoln Project's most controversial advertisements.
- WorldBusiness Insider
Coronavirus herd immunity may be 'unachievable' after study suggests antibodies disappear after weeks in some people
Fourteen percent of people who previously tested positive for antibodies tested negative just weeks later. The study suggests people who experience mild symptoms do not have long-lasting protection. "Immunity can be incomplete, it can be transitory, it can last for just a short time and then disappear," Raquel Yotti, the director of Spain's Carlos III Health Institute, said.
- EntertainmentArchitectural Digest
Olson Kundig’s Latest Design Embraces Its Hawaiian Habitat
On a stunning lava rock field site in Kona, this stunning home seems to hover over the landscape as a series of pavilions Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
WorldAFPChina detains professor who criticised Xi over coronavirus
Chinese authorities on Monday detained a law professor who published essays criticising President Xi Jinping over the coronavirus pandemic and accusing him of ruling "tyrannically", according to friends of the man. Xu Zhangrun, a rare outspoken critic of the government in China's heavily censored academia, was taken from his home in suburban Beijing by more than 20 people, one of his friends said on condition of anonymity. Xu published an essay in February blaming the culture of deception and censorship fostered by Xi for the spread of the coronavirus in China.
- PoliticsReuters
Democratic challengers in two tight U.S. Senate races step up fundraising
Democratic contenders for two Republican-held U.S. Senate seats on Monday said they accelerated fundraising in the second quarter, pointing to their momentum in what were already seen as competitive races. To win the Senate, Democrats need to pick up three seats if the party wins the White House and four if not.
- PoliticsThe Daily Beast
The Trump Family’s Civil War Could Blow Us All Up
Mary Trump's legal battles against her uncle might seem like a fun little political soap opera, but it's way more than that, Mary's lawyer Ted Boutrous explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. The attempt to stop her tell-all book before publication—“I think it's really an effort to intimidate people from speaking, to intimidate the press. But also it's a political tool.
- U.S.The Independent
New York mayor blames 'dislocation' caused by coronavirus for wave of shootings that left 10 dead and 54 injured over weekend
At least 10 people were killed among 64 shootings reported in New York City over the Fourth of July weekend, which saw a violent spree in several major cities still reeling from coronavirus infections and widespread protests against police violence. For the first time since 2016, the city surpassed 400 shootings by mid-year. The New York Police Department reported that the city saw 528 shootings by the end of June, one of the most violent halves of the year in more than 20 years.
- WorldThe National Interest
Could 'Baby' Aircraft Carriers Be the Next U.S. Navy Super Weapon?
The Navy can buy smaller, cheaper carriers rather than the $13 billion Ford-class behemoths it is currently constructing, according to a new study by RAND Corporation. The RAND study is a public version of a classified study conducted in 2016 at the behest of the U.S. Navy, which was ordered by Congress to examine cheaper options than the Ford-class carriers. It would be powered by forty-year nuclear reactors that couldn't be replaced, rather than the current twenty-five-year reactors on the Fords that can replaced to extend the life of the ship.
- U.S.Associated Press
Georgia Gov. authorizes Guard troops after 8-year-old killed
Georgia's governor on Monday declared a state of emergency and authorized the activation of up to 1,000 National Guard troops after a weekend of violence in Atlanta left five people dead, including an 8-year-old girl. A statement from Gov. Brian Kemp's office says troops will provide support at certain locations including the Capitol and governor's mansion, freeing up state law enforcement resources to patrol other areas. Saturday night's fatal shooting of Secoriea Turner, 8, prompted a $10,000 reward for information as authorities searched for at least two people who opened fire on the car she was riding in near a flashpoint of recent protests.
- U.S.USA TODAY
Michigan drivers met with startling billboard message: 'Driving while Black? Racial profiling just ahead'
Motorists in Michigan were met with a startling message Monday on an electronic billboard in Redford Township. The organizer behind the billboard lives in Livonia and said it is an effort to awaken the city to problems that continue to exist with profiling and other forms of racism. The mayor called the billboard counterproductive.
