PoliticsYahoo News 360Pot legalization in the U.S. seems both inevitable and impossible
He said during the 2020 campaign that he supports decriminalizing pot — a change that would remove criminal penalties for possession while keeping the federal ban in place — but opposes outright legalization. When asked this month whether the president would back Schumer's proposal, press secretary Jen Psaki said that “nothing has changed” about Biden's views on marijuana. Why there's debate The disconnect in the pace of change for marijuana laws, with legalization spreading at breakneck speed in the states and all but stalled at the federal level, has raised debate over when — if ever — marijuana might become legal nationwide.
PoliticsReutersExclusive-Democrats may scrap matching funds from infrastructure bill over wage issue
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democrats are threatening to scrap plans to create an infrastructure bank in the $1.2 trillion bipartisan spending bill after Republicans opposed a provision intended to lift workers' wages, according to three people familiar with the discussions. A decision to remove funding for the bank would be aimed at resolving a logjam over U.S. President Joe Biden's top legislative initiative, as lawmakers scramble to finalize key details of the plan ahead of the Senate's typical August recess. The group of bipartisan lawmakers seeking to hammer out Biden's infrastructure bill want to include $20 billion for a newly created infrastructure bank that would attract investment through private-public partnerships.
U.S.Fort Worth Star-TelegramHusky seen running after car when he’s abandoned is saved – and Texas man is arrested
A husky abandoned along a road in a viral video has found a new family — and now there's been an arrest. The heartbreaking video posted this week captures a Jeep passenger leaving the husky by the side of road in Horizon City, Texas, and riding away as the animal chases after the vehicle. It's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media as law enforcement searched for the suspects.
WorldAssociated PressVietnam locks down capital Hanoi for 15 days as cases rise
Vietnam announced a 15-day lockdown in the capital Hanoi starting Saturday as a coronavirus surge spread from the southern Mekong Delta region. Earlier in the week, the city had suspended all outdoor activities and ordered non-essential businesses to close following an increase in cases. On Friday, Hanoi reported 70 confirmed infections, the city's highest, part of a record 7,295 cases in the country in the last 24 hours.
PoliticsMiami HeraldEthics panel rejects penalty for sham no-party candidate as not tough enough
A state ethics panel on Friday rejected a $6,500 fine against a sham no-party candidate who ran in a 2020 Miami-Dade legislative race, a rare move that was triggered by calls for stiffer penalties in a case one commissioner called one of the “most egregious” in Florida. The Florida Commission on Ethics also found probable cause that Alexis Pedro Rodriguez filed inaccurate campaign documents with the state and accepted money from former Republican Sen. Frank Artiles with the understanding that he would change his party affiliation from Republican to no party to qualify to run in the Senate District 37 election. Rodriguez — who is concurrently facing criminal charges in a Miami court, along with Artiles — now has the option to have a full evidentiary hearing on the ethics case or can try to renegotiate a settlement agreement with an ethics commission advocate.
WorldThe TelegraphBoris Johnson talked out of triggering 'nuclear option' over Northern Ireland Brexit stalemate
Boris Johnson was ready to overhaul the Northern Ireland Protocol this week but was talked down by his Brexit minister Lord Frost, The Telegraph has learnt. With the UK now demanding a formal renegotiation of the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, The Telegraph has been told Mr Johnson is now convinced of the need to use the so-called “nuclear option” if Brussels refuses. It is understood that the warning was issued to Dublin this week, with UK officials making clear that it is Mr Johnson, rather than Lord Frost, who is most in favour of triggering Article 16 should the EU fail to change course.
WorldAssociated PressChina, Afghanistan top Blinken agenda on India, Kuwait trip
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to India and Kuwait next week for talks on China, the coronavirus and Afghanistan, the State Department said Friday. The trip comes as the Biden administration seeks to shore up U.S. leadership in vaccinating the world against COVID-19, tries to blunt increasing Chinese assertiveness, and moves to evacuate vulnerable people from Afghanistan before the U.S. military withdrawal is complete. The State Department said Blinken will meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Wednesday before traveling to Kuwait City the next day.
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Report: 'QAnon Shaman' in plea negotiations after mental illness diagnosis
The participant in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots nicknamed the "QAnon Shaman" is negotiating a possible plea deal with prosecutors, after prison psychologists found he has a variety of mental illnesses, his attorney said.
U.S.Fort Worth Star-TelegramBody of Arlington firefighter was found in bathroom window, Mexican authorities say
An investigation is underway into how Arlington firefighter Elijah Snow died Monday while vacationing in Cancun, according to Mexican authorities. On Twitter, Mexican authorities said an “investigation folder” has been started in the death of a man from Texas in the municipality of Benito Juárez in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. “The circumstances in which the events occurred are being investigated,” according to the social media post from Fiscalía General Quintana Roo, which is the State Attorney General's Office for Quintana Roo.
- HealthThe Week
What does the Delta variant mean for the fully vaccinated?
What is the Delta variant? The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — was first identified in India in December 2020. After ravaging India and sweeping through Great Britain, the Delta variant is now the dominant strain in the U.S., accounting for more than 83 percent of COVID-19 infections.
WorldBBCAustralia Covid: Arrests at anti-lockdown protests
Demonstrations have taken place in Australian cities against tight restrictions imposed to tackle a rise in Covid cases. People chanted "freedom" as they marched through the centre of Sydney. Australian governments have re-imposed lockdowns across the country amid a surge in new infections.
WorldThe TelegraphTokyo 2020 'axed opening ceremony musician for being black'
A musician claims he was cut from the Olympic opening ceremony because he was black, as organisers face a third staffing row in a week. Latyr Sy, a Senagalese percussionist based in Japan for 20 years, accused organisers of racism after he was booked and then cancelled for inclusion at the curtain-raiser. Tokyo 2020 failed to respond to requests for comment from the Telegraph on the allegations on Friday.
PoliticsMiami HeraldRecords show web of payments involving players in probe into sham Senate candidate
A young Republican political operative who is also the subject of a public corruption investigation into former Republican state Sen. Frank Artiles made an offer to a recent college graduate last September: He would pay her $1,500 to chair a political committee and in exchange, she would have to do nothing. At the time, 25-year-old Hailey DeFilippis, of Palm Harbor, had just found out she was pregnant and was “freaking out about money.”
U.S.Fort Worth Star-TelegramThis Fort Worth man stood against the civil rights for which Opal Lee fought. He lost.
Fort Worth's Opal Lee was in the news in June when Congress finally made Juneteenth a national holiday and more recently when she was recognized by the state Senate. The 94-year-old civil rights icon's story includes how as a 12-year-old girl in 1939 her parents' home was targeted by white segregationists opposed to African American people moving into their neighborhood. Opal Flake Lee grew up to become a voice for change in Fort Worth and beyond.
PoliticsBusiness Insider6 million renters face eviction in 8 days when a Trump-era ban expires. Biden is poised to let it happen.
Both a federal eviction ban and a moratorium on foreclosures expire in eight days. The Biden administration is poised to allow both relief programs to expire on July 31. On July 31, a set of pandemic-relief measures for renters and homeowners enacted under President Trump will end - and the Biden administration doesn't appear interested in renewing them.
ScienceBBCJeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson not yet astronauts, US says
New Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules say astronaut hopefuls must be part of the flight crew and make contributions to space flight safety. The Commercial Astronaut Wings programme updates were announced on Tuesday - the same day that Amazon's Mr Bezos flew aboard a Blue Origin rocket to the edge of space. To qualify as commercial astronauts, space-goers must travel 50 miles (80km) above the Earth's surface, which both Mr Bezos and Mr Branson accomplished.
PoliticsThe IndependentHouse Democrat arrested at Black Voters Matter demonstration
US Capitol police arrested US Rep Hank Johnson during a voting rights demonstration on 22 July, marking the second arrest of a member of Congress on Capitol grounds amid protests demanding federal action on voting rights protections. US Capitol Police said officers arrested 10 people for “unlawfully demonstrating outside of the Hart Senate Office Building” and charged them with “crowding, obstructing or incommoding”.
U.S.INSIDERAnti-fascist teens fooled a Kansas school board candidate into exposing his racist and white nationalist posts
A group of anti-fascist teens tricked a man running for a local school board in Kansas to share his racist and white-supremacist beliefs with them - and then later made them public, according to media reports. Teenage members of the Midwest Youth Liberation Front told the Kansas Reflector that they contacted Josh Wells, who's running for school board in Haven, Kansas, through Signal after seeing his posts in a White Lives Matter forum. The group later shared Wells' messages and posts publicly on Twitter.
U.S.Business InsiderSen. Tom Cotton said the US, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, has an 'under incarceration problem'
Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted Friday that the US has an "under incarceration problem." Sen. Tom Cotton said Friday that the country that incarcerates more people per capita than any other has an "under incarceration problem." Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, tweeted a clip of himself speaking on Fox News about the increase in crime currently happening in some US cities.
U.S.Business InsiderSen. Chuck Schumer is demanding accountability from UPS after more than 100 AP exams of high school students never made it to the College Board for grading
Sen. Chuck Schumer called on UPS to respond, saying it lost more than 100 AP exams. The College Board initially proposed offering a refund to students or allowing them to retake the exam. Starpoint High School students asked Schumer to request action from UPS or to reimburse them for the lost college credit.
CelebrityThe Daily BeastThe Tokyo Olympian Who Ran a Man Over and Left Him for Dead
While world-class Canadian weightlifter Boady Santavy basks in the glory of his first Olympic run in Tokyo, the man he ran over—left for dead and impaired for life—struggles to even get out of bed in the morning. At around 2 in the morning on March 18, 2018, 33-year-old Nicolas Emmerson Andali was struck by the star athlete's car in a hit-and-run in the small Canadian city of Sarnia. Among other injuries, Andali suffered “a broken shoulder blade, clavicle, lacerated spleen, and brain bleed” after the crash, according to a statement read by Andali's mother, Linda Hachey, in court.
PoliticsUSA TODAYA third of states have passed more restrictive voting laws. Here's what you should know
For some states considered battlegrounds during the 2020 presidential cycle, like Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas, voting rights advocates fear the impact of such laws could be seismic. "We view these laws as a very serious threat to American democracy," said Steven Lance, policy counsel at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Legal Defense Fund. They're really a threat that is specifically targeting, in many of these cases, a means of voting that proved to be lifelines for Black and Latino voters in the 2020 election and other provisions that were necessary during a global pandemic,” Lance said, citing NAACP Legal Defense Fund data.
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CDC says ‘superbug’ fungus has spread in Washington, D.C., and Dallas
U.S. health officials said Thursday they have evidence of an untreatable fungus spreading in two hospitals and a nursing home.
U.S.INSIDERVideo shows the site of the Surfside building collapse cleared of all debris as rescue crews conclude search efforts nearly a month after the tragedy
Rescue crews ended their search efforts at the site of the Surfside building collapse on Friday. New video from Miami Fire Rescue shows the site of the apartment building cleared of all debris. Miami-Dade County officials announced earlier this week that 97 victims had been identified.
HealthThe IndependentHillsong Church member, 34, dies of Covid after publicly speaking out against vaccine
A member of the Hillsong megachurch who poked fun at the Covid-19 vaccine on social media has passed away after contracting the virus. Stephen Harmon, 34, died at the Corona Regional Medical Center, Los Angeles, on Wednesday. His death was announced by Hillsong founder Brian Houston, who said he had just heard the “devastating news that our beloved friend, Stephen Harmon has passed away from Covid.
