Saturday, July 18, 2020

In the news, Wednesday, July 8, 2020


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JUL 07      INDEX      JUL 09
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from CBS News (& affiliates)

United Airlines warns of 36,000 layoffs, nearly half its U.S. staff
The outlook for a recovery in air travel has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the U.S. and some states imposed new quarantine requirements. United officials said Wednesday they still hope to limit the number of layoffs by offering early retirement packages, and that the 36,000 number is a worst-case scenario. The notices being sent to employees this month are meant to comply with 60-day warning requirements at large companies ahead of mass job cuts.

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from City Journal
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute

Last month, the City of Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights sent an email inviting “white City employees” to attend a training session on “Interrupting Internalized Racial Superiority and Whiteness,” a program designed to help white workers examine their “complicity in the system of white supremacy” and “interrupt racism in ways that are accountable to Black, Indigenous and People of Color.” Hoping to learn more, I submitted a public records request for all documentation related to the training. The results are disturbing. At the beginning of the session, the trainers explain that white people have internalized a sense of racial superiority, which has made them unable to access their “humanity” and caused “harm and violence” to people of color. The trainers claim that “individualism,” “perfectionism,” “intellectualization,” and “objectivity” are all vestiges of this internalized racial oppression and must be abandoned in favor of social-justice principles. In conceptual terms, the city frames the discussion around the idea that black Americans are reducible to the essential quality of “blackness” and white Americans are reducible to the essential quality of “whiteness”—that is, the new metaphysics of good and evil.

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from CNBC
TV Network in Englewood Cliffs, NJ

32% of U.S. households missed their July housing payments
As the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic continues, almost one-third of U.S. households, 32%, have not made their full housing payments for July yet, according to a survey by Apartment List, an online rental platform. About 19% of Americans made no housing payment at all during the first week of the month, and 13% paid only a portion of their rent or mortgage. That’s the fourth month in a row that a “historically high” number of households were unable to pay their housing bill on time and in full, up from 30% in June and 31% in May. Renters, low-income and younger households were most likely to miss their payments.

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from The Federalist
RIGHT BIAS, HIGH, online magazine

America Needs To Stop Reacting To Coronavirus Like A Bunch Of Hysterics
Global pandemics aren’t new, but the way many Americans are responding to this one is. Americans have been blessed to experience few pandemics in recent decades. The swine flu of 2009 was no fun ... but it resulted in only 273,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in the United States. The Wuhan virus hospitalizations and deaths have eclipsed those numbers many times over. But from 1918 to 1968, pandemics, deadly flus, and horrific childhood diseases were much more common. When the Asian flu hit the United States in 1957, during the Eisenhower administration, it was just the latest contagion college students had faced in a lifetime of contagious diseases. The 1957 Asian flu killed 116,000 Americans at a time the U.S. population was 172 million, just more than half the current population. That would be the equivalent of 222,000 Americans today. By comparison, the coronavirus has killed 133,000 Americans thus far. By the time the Asian flu came along in 1957, many college students had already battled measles, mumps, chicken pox, German measles, and polio. For many years, there were no vaccines for these things. The parents of these college students had battled diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and the Spanish flu that killed 675,000 Americans and more than 50 million across the world. In today’s terms, that would be the equivalent of more than 1.6 million Americans dying from coronavirus. ... The 1968 Hong Kong flu was also bad, killing about 100,000 Americans when the population was just 60 percent of what it is now.

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from The Guardian (UK)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, British daily newspaper published in London UK

Indigenous Americans had contact with Polynesians 800 years ago, DNA reveals
Indigenous Americans and Polynesians bridged vast expanses of open ocean around the year 1200 and mingled, leaving incontrovertible proof of their encounter in the DNA of present-day populations, new studies have revealed. Whether peoples from what is today Colombia or Ecuador drifted thousands of kilometres to tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific, or whether seafaring Polynesians sailed upwind to South America and then back again, is still unknown. But what is certain, according to a study in Nature, is that it took place hundreds of years before Europeans set foot in either region, and left individuals scattered across what became French Polynesia with signature traces of the New World in their DNA.

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from KHQ Local News (NBC Spokane)

Spokane County health officials address concerns about mask mandate
With more than 1,800 positive COVID-19 cases in Spokane County, health officials are encouraging people to wear masks, keep their distance, wash their hands and to participate in contact tracing efforts if asked. Spokane County health officials on Wednesday said they're looking at contracting outside contact tracers. The epidemiology department would still lead contact tracing efforts, but those contracted would be responsible for following up with people. These contracts would be paid for by the COVID-19 relief fund, according to health officials.

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from NBC News (& affiliates)
LEFT-CENTER BIAS

What now for Prince Andrew? Royal faces scrutiny after Ghislaine Maxwell's arrest
As the lurid headlines swirl in the wake of the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein's longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, questions again are surging over what comes next for Britain's Prince Andrew, who is caught up in the high-profile affair. Maxwell, a British socialite, is behind bars at a detention center in Brooklyn, New York, and is expected to appear in court in New York next Tuesday, having been arrested in New Hampshire last week. She will face charges on four counts in connection with the trafficking of a minor for criminal sexual activity and two counts of perjury. ... Meanwhile, the scandal that has for years dogged Andrew, 60, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, does not appear to be going away. "It's a bit of a nightmare at the moment," British public relations agent Mark Borkowski told NBC News. "He's inextricably linked with this story, there is no exit strategy."

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Shawn Vestal: White-grievance backlash is wrong answer to moment’s demands
My fellow white people: We have a terrible hearing problem. As millions of Black Americans raise their voices about their reality in this country, too many of us simply don’t hear.We have a terrible vision problem. Too many of us take but a glimpse of George Floyd’s death under the knee of a dead-eyed cop, brushing past the truths it tells, while gobbling up wall-to-wall “news” coverage of the CHOP. Images of peaceful protesters flash past our eyes, unseen, while a picture of one burning Burger King imprints itself on our vision forever. We have a terrible speaking problem. Called upon by events to examine ourselves and our institutions, and to speak up for our brothers and sisters of color, too many of us ask: What about me, though?

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from Sputnik
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED, Broadcasting & Media Production Company out of Moscow, Russia

TikTok Tiff: Trump Confirms US May Ban Popular Video-Sharing Service to Punish China for Covid-19
On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated that Washington has already issued restrictions against Chinese tech giants including Huawei and ZTE, and would be making similar steps “with respect to Chinese apps on people’s cellphones.” US President Donald Trump has confirmed that the US was considering banning TikTok, saying the measure could be one of the ways Washington can respond to China for the coronavirus outbreak. ... The US-China tech-related spat has been exacerbated in recent months, with the Federal Communications Commission moving to designate Huawei and ZTE as threats to US national security last week. On Tuesday, FBI director Christopher Wray accused China of spying on millions of Americans and attempting to steal US technology and research through hacking, economic espionage and digital influence campaigns.

'MAGA' Rapper Kanye West Disavows Trump as He Doubles Down on 2020 White House Bid
Kanye West announced his presidential bid via a Fourth of July tweet. The billionaire rapper has long been known to be a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, but now says he is breaking ranks with the president. Kanye West, the new surprise White House contender, has revealed the details of his presidential bid, including his running mate, and withdrew support for President Trump. In an interview with Forbes published on Wednesday, the 43-year-old sneaker mogul said he is running under the banner of the Birthday Party because “when we win, it’s everybody’s birthday”. His running mate will be Michelle Tydball, a relatively unknown preacher from Wyoming, and his campaign slogan will be ”YES!”

China to Impose Visa Restrictions on US Citizens Over Tibet
Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States would restrict visas for some Chinese officials because Beijing obstructs travel to Tibet by US diplomats, journalists and tourists. China plans to slap reciprocal visa restrictions on individuals from the United States after Washington introduced sanctions against Chinese officials over Beijing's policies regarding access to foreigners seeking to visit Tibet, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian said during a daily press briefing on Wednesday.

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from Western Journal
 RIGHT BIAS, MIXED, Media/News Company in Phoenix, Arizona

Immigrant Who Fled Starvation, Became US Rep, & Makes $174,000 Says 'System of Oppression' Has To Go
Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar should be an object lesson in the inherent promise of America. In 1990s, the now-Rep. Omar’s family left war-torn Somalia for the United States, finally settling in the Minneapolis area in 1995 when Omar was 12, according to The Washington Post. Omar went to North Dakota State University, a state school funded by taxpayer money. She now makes $174,000 a year as a representative and is one of the most powerful women in America, influencing the agenda in America’s ascendant progressive movement. In any ordinary sense, she should be a success story — a sign our nation still functions as a beacon for legal immigrants around the world, including refugees. She’s proof the American system works. And she wants to tear it all down. On Tuesday, Omar was part of a news conference by the Minnesota Legislature’s People of Color and Indigenous Caucus, a group she helped found when she was in the state legislature.

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