Wednesbury: Two women hit by car in 'deliberate attack' - BBC News

1. Wednesbury: Two women hit by car in 'deliberate attack'  BBC News
2. Women mown down by car in 'deliberate' hit and run in Wednesbury  expressandstar.com
3. Armed police in Bilston after man stabbed in street brawl  Birmingham Live
4. Updates - Wednesbury road sealed off as two women knocked down in deliberate hit-and-run  Birmingham Live
5. Two women mown down in deliberate hit and run in Wednesbury  Birmingham Live
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Love Island’s Faye Winter reveals she can’t recite the alphabet in unseen clip - The Independent

1. Love Island’s Faye Winter reveals she can’t recite the alphabet in unseen clip  The Independent
2. Love Island viewers baffled over Hugo Hammond's secret tattoo - and its location  Daily Star
3. Love Island 2021: Teddy attempts to stir things up on speed dates  Metro.co.uk
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Zuma jailed: Arrests as protests spread in South Africa - BBC News

Zuma jailed: Arrests as protests spread in South Africa  BBC NewsView Full coverage on Google News

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Musk under fire again: CEO to testify over Tesla acquisition

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2021 broke the Florida record for manatee deaths in a year in just 6 months, state says

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Fauci: Lack of full FDA approval for COVID-19 vaccines merely a 'technical issue'

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Motorcycle rider killed, another hurt in Richland County crash with truck, cops say

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A man who sued Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and 4 other airlines over the face mask mandate has taken his case to the Supreme Court

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'I didn't come here to kiss your f---ing ring': Sidney Powell ripped into Rudy Giuliani after clash over election theories, book says

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UK foreign aid cuts: Growing calls for govt policy reversal as philanthropists step in to replace shortfall - Sky News

1. UK foreign aid cuts: Growing calls for govt policy reversal as philanthropists step in to replace shortfall  Sky News
2. Global philanthropists pledge £94m to cover UK foreign aid cuts  The Guardian
3. Boris Johnson faces fresh backlash over foreign aid cut  Daily Mail
4. Philanthropists including Bill and Melinda Gates pledge £100m to cover part of UK foreign aid cut  The Independent
5. Archbishop of Canterbury criticises foreign aid cuts as philanthropists step in  ITV News
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UK food worker shortages push prices up and risk Christmas turkey supplies - The Guardian

UK food worker shortages push prices up and risk Christmas turkey supplies  The Guardian

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Oman's sultan arrives in Saudi Arabia on first foreign trip

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Duchess of Cambridge takes special guest to Wimbledon for men’s final - Evening Standard

1. Duchess of Cambridge takes special guest to Wimbledon for men’s final  Evening Standard
2. Kate Middleton and Prince William forced to delete tweet after Wimbledon women's final  HELLO!
3. Kate Middleton looks chic in a £695 crepe pink midi dress as she arrives at the All England Club  Daily Mail
4. Kate Middleton's Sporty Weekend! Royal Returns to Wimbledon for the Men's Final  Yahoo News UK
5. Kate watches women's final at Wimbledon after period of self-isolation  Sky News
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Eerie photos show the undersea wreck of a Boeing cargo plane that crashed off the coast of Hawaii

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UCLA booster Alan Robbins defends his conduct questioned in spirit squad lawsuit

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To Kill a Swan? Dispute Over a Bird’s Fate Ends With a Twist.

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Talking Point: Should We Be Worried About Screen Burn-In With Switch OLED? - Nintendo Life

Talking Point: Should We Be Worried About Screen Burn-In With Switch OLED?  Nintendo LifeView Full coverage on Google News

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Robert E. Lee Statue Removed in Charlottesville

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A Confederate monument that helped spark a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been hoisted off its stone pedestal.

Work to remove the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee began early Saturday morning. Crews were also expected to take down a second Confederate monument.

Spectators by the dozens lined the blocks surrounding the park, and a cheer went up as the statue lifted off the pedestal. There was a visible police presence, with streets blocked off to vehicular traffic by fencing and heavy trucks.

Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker gave a speech in front of reporters and observers as the crane neared the monument.
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“Taking down this statue is one small step closer to the goal of helping Charlottesville, Virginia, and America, grapple with the sin of being willing to destroy Black people for economic gain,” Walker said.

The removal of the statue follows years of contention, community anguish and litigation. A long, winding legal fight coupled with changes in a state law that protected war memorials had held up the removal for years.

Saturday’s removal of a statue of Lee and another of Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson will come nearly four years after violence erupted at the infamous “Unite the Right” rally. Heather Heyer, a peaceful counterprotester, died in the violence, which sparked a national debate over racial equity, further inflamed by former President Donald Trump’s insistence tha t there was “blame on both sides.”

Ralph Dixon, a 59-year-old Black man born and raised in Charlottesville, was documenting the removal work Saturday morning, a camera around his neck.

Dixon said he was brought to the park where the Lee statue stood as a school-aged child.

“All the teachers, my teachers anyway, were always talking about what a great person this was,” he said.

He said his understanding of Lee’s legacy and the statue’s message evolved as he became an adult. He said it was important to consider the context of the Jim Crow era during which the statue was erected and said especially after Heyer’s death there was no reason the statue should stay.

“It needed to be done,” he said.

Only the statues, not their stone pedestals, will be removed Saturday. They will be taken down and stored in a secure location until the City Council makes a final decision about what should be done with them. Under state law, the city was required to solicit parties interested in taking the statues during an offer period that ended Thursday. It received 10 responses to its solicitation.

A coalition of activists commended the city for moving quickly to take the statues down after the offer period ended. As long as the statues “remain standing in our downtown public spaces, they signal that our community tolerated white supremacy and the Lost Cause these generals fought for,” the coalition called Take ’Em Down Cville said.

Jim Henson, who lives in nearby Barboursville, said Saturday he came to witness a “historic” event. He said he didn’t have a strong personal opinion on the issue of Confederate monuments but he thought Charlottesville was happy to see the saga come to a conclusion.

“Good atmosphere, good vibes, good energy,” he said.

The most recent removal push focused on the Lee monument began in 2016, thanks in part to a petition started by a Black high school student, Zyahna Bryant.

“This is well overdue,” said Bryant, who’s now a student at the University of Virginia.

“No platform for white supremacy. No platform for racism. No platform for hate.”

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Death toll reaches 86 in Surfside collapse. Site to be cleared ‘sooner than expected’

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Photos show adventure at Disney's updated Jungle Cruise ride

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Unopened Legend of Zelda game from 1987 sells for $870,000

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Trump warns Senate Republicans that they're 'being played' over 'fake infrastructure proposals'

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Pope health latest: Vatican explains Pope Francis’s serious state with new update - Daily Express

1. Pope health latest: Vatican explains Pope Francis’s serious state with new update  Daily Express
2. Quiet day for Pope Francis who gradually begins activities again  Vatican News
3. Pope Francis will lead Angelus from hospital  The Tablet
4. Pope Francis experienced a temporary 'fever episode' three days after intestinal surgery  Euronews
5. Pope recovering normally; Sunday 'Angelus' from hospital  Vatican News
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‘People are so afraid to discuss it’: Has COVID-19 affected women’s menstrual cycles?

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Bodies of Paraguayan mom, dad, 3-year-old son and nanny found in Surfside collapse

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Ashleigh Barty vs Karolina Pliskova, Wimbledon 2021 women's final: live score and latest updates - The Telegraph

1. Ashleigh Barty vs Karolina Pliskova, Wimbledon 2021 women's final: live score and latest updates  The Telegraph
2. Wimbledon 2021: Ashleigh Barty faces Karolina Pliskova in women's final  BBC Sport
3. Wimbledon 2021 women’s singles final: Ashleigh Barty v Karolina Pliskova – live!  The Guardian
4. Ash Barty's mindset coach Ben Crowe on Wimbledon - and some secrets of her success | The Drum  ABC News In-depth
5. Live Tennis Coverage  Sky Sports
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TB Joshua: Nigerian televangelist buried in Lagos

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Can California dramatically cut water use again? The brown lawn debate is back

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Kids are susceptible to delta variant. What should we do?

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Labour demands resignation of No 10 ally accused of trying to block BBC appointment - The Guardian

1. Labour demands resignation of No 10 ally accused of trying to block BBC appointment  The Guardian
2. BBC director sought to block senior editorial appointment  Financial Times
3. Political row over move to appoint ex-Huffington Post editor to BBC  Daily Mail
4. No 10 ally on BBC board accused of trying to block senior editorial role  The Guardian
5. Labour calls for sacking of BBC director over ‘Conservative cronyism’ claims  Evening Standard
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State-owned power company fined for air pollution at three South Carolina plants

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'Dangerous' to return to life as normal on July 19, expert warns - ITV News

'Dangerous' to return to life as normal on July 19, expert warns  ITV NewsView Full coverage on Google News

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Grizzly bear shot dead after dragging woman from tent and killing her - The Independent

1. Grizzly bear shot dead after dragging woman from tent and killing her  The Independent
2. Bear attack: rangers shoot killer grizzly in night vision ambush  The Guardian
3. Grizzly bear shot dead after dragging California woman from her tent and killing her in Montana  Sky News
4. Grizzly Bear Kills Bikepacker While She Sleeps in Small-Town Montana  Pinkbike.com
5. Killer grizzly bear shot dead after rangers set night-vision trap  ITV News
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Tour de France stage 14 - Live coverage | Cyclingnews - Cyclingnews.com

1. Tour de France stage 14 - Live coverage | Cyclingnews  Cyclingnews.com
2. Mark Cavendish equals Eddy Merckx's Tour de France stage win record of 34  BBC Sport
3. Opinion: How Deceuninck-QuickStep's huge team effort allowed Mark Cavendish to make Tour de France history  Eurosport COM
4. Stage 14 Preview: The Tour Enters The Pyrenees  FloBikes
5. Gallery: Mark Cavendish's 34 Tour de France wins across 14 years  CyclingTips
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An American Airlines flight to the Bahamas had to be canceled after a group of unruly teenagers refused to wear masks

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People told not to leave Oxford as city becomes Covid hotspot - Oxford Mail

1. People told not to leave Oxford as city becomes Covid hotspot  Oxford Mail
2. Oxford told to reduce travel with mass testing for under 30s to slow Covid surge  The Mirror
3. Extra testing to slow Oxford's Covid-19 spread  BBC News
4. Government steps in as Covid cases reach 'unprecedented' levels in Oxford  ITV News
5. What's being planned in Oxford? Latest planning applications  Oxford Mail
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Covid ‘to get worse before it gets better,’ doctors warn as cases rise ‘dramatically’ - The Independent

1. Covid ‘to get worse before it gets better,’ doctors warn as cases rise ‘dramatically’  The Independent
2. Covid to get worse before it gets better, doctors warn  BBC News
3. Britain should NOT return to normal on July 19 and Covid 'pandemic far from over' says medical chief  Daily Mail
4. Covid news – live: Doctors ‘profoundly concerned’ about 19 July amid ‘dramatic’ rise in cases  The Independent
5. Coronavirus latest news: 'Dangerous' to return to life as normal on July 19, doctors warn  Telegraph.co.uk
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Mum killed sleeping husband with boiling water after daughter said he had abused her - Mirror.co.uk

1. Mum killed sleeping husband with boiling water after daughter said he had abused her  Mirror.co.uk
2. Chester: Wife who poured boiling syrup over husband jailed for life  Metro.co.uk
3. Mum killed husband with boiling water after being told he had abused their children  Daily Record
4. Murdering wife who poured boiling sugar water over her sleeping elderly husband jailed  Daily Star
5. Wife, 59, killed husband, 80, with boiling water as he slept after hearing sex abuse claims...  The Sun
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Colchester parents 'ecstatic' after baby approved for £1.7m drug - BBC News

Colchester parents 'ecstatic' after baby approved for £1.7m drug  BBC News

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'How did we miss this?': The day Mark Zuckerberg learned of Russian interference

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Holiday firms launch legal action over travel lists

Group including Ryanair and BA wants more government transparency over Covid travel rules.

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Knifeman stabs two TV paramedics in video of terrifying attack - Daily Mail

1. Knifeman stabs two TV paramedics in video of terrifying attack  Daily Mail
2. 'Wild' knifeman who stabbed two paramedics at his home jailed for nine years  expressandstar.com
3. Man jailed for stabbing paramedics at his Wolverhampton home  BBC News
4. Man jailed for stabbing two paramedics at Wolverhampton home  Birmingham Live
5. Watch: Knifeman lunges at paramedics - leaving one pleading: 'Don't let me die'  Birmingham Live
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Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom sees complaints in 'unprecedented' numbers - BBC News

Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom sees complaints in 'unprecedented' numbers  BBC NewsView Full coverage on Google News

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Southern Water fined record £90m for dumping raw sewage - BBC News

1. Southern Water fined record £90m for dumping raw sewage  BBC News
2. Southern Water fined record £90m for deliberately pouring sewage into sea  The Guardian
3. Southern Water fined £90 million over sewage spills  ITV News
4. Southern Water Fined Record £90m Over Solent Sewage Discharge  Isle of Wight Radio
5. England’s water system: the last of the privatised monopolies – for now  The Guardian
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Countdown's Rachel Riley left wide-eyed as two very rude words are spelled out - The Mirror

1. Countdown's Rachel Riley left wide-eyed as two very rude words are spelled out  The Mirror
2. Countdown's Susie Dent, 56, splits from her husband of almost 20 years  Daily Mail
3. Countdown star Susie Dent splits from husband of almost 20 years...  The Sun
4. Countdown's Susie Dent 'splitting from husband after 20-year marriage'  The Mirror
5. Countdown's Susie Dent splits from husband - report  Yahoo Lifestyle UK
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Santa Claus, Ice Cream, Gender-Reveal Parties: a Wrongful Death Suit Filed by Families of Sandy Hook Victims Has Taken a Strange Turn

For years, families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have been counting on their landmark lawsuit against the gunmaker Remington to make some sense of their grief.

In Remington’s internal emails, social media analytics, advertising plans and more, they hoped to find answers to whether marketing strategies by the nation’s oldest gun manufacturer influenced Adam Lanza to use a Bushmaster rifle to kill 20 children and six faculty members at the school in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, 2012.

Instead, as the historic jury trial’s slated September start date approaches, Remington has turned over tens of thousands of “random pictures” and cartoons—including images of Santa Claus and a bowl of ice cream—in what lawyers for the families say is an affront to the discovery process and legal system.
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“It’s so depressing that this is what it’s come to,” says Josh Koskoff, the attorney representing nine families of victims in a long-running wrongful death suit against Remington over its marketing practices.

Connecticut Superior CourtSome of the more than 18,000 images included in material provided by gunmaker Remington to plaintiffs’ lawyers in a wrongful death suit arising from the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

<strong>“It’s so depressing that this is what it’s come to.”</strong>In addition to more than 18,000 cartoons, Remington also included more than 15,000 other pictures and videos, including advertisements for its branded coffee mugs, hundreds of photos of animals being killed, and footage of people go-karting and reveling at gender-reveal parties. The files lacked proper context or additional information, the lawyers say, so it was impossible to decipher whether the images and videos were relevant to the case.

Koskoff says the document dump is Remington’s most recent delay tactic—the company filed for bankruptcy protection last year, stalling the case—and a sign that it is not taking the discovery process seriously.

“If everybody in every case just sends a bunch of Santa Clauses to serious requests for information,” he says, “the whole system would collapse.”

A legal source familiar with the case, who was not authorized to speak about the pending litigation, tells TIME the cartoons and images were not an attempt to insult the plaintiffs or obstruct the discovery process. The plaintiffs asked Remington to produce all content on the company’s social media pages, including embedded images and videos they could not initially view, according to the source. Those tens of thousands of images and videos were downloaded by Remington’s defense team and provided upon that request, the source says, adding that they were posted by third-parties on the social media pages.

Connecticut Superior CourtSome examples of the included 1,521 video files of gender reveal parties and ice bucket challenges.

Even so, critics of the gun industry and scholars who have been closely eyeing the case say Remington would have a good reason to want to stall. The trove of requested documents could give the public a rare glimpse into how a major gunmaker, which is usually shielded from lawsuits by federal law, markets its products.

“There’s certainly a fair likelihood that it could indeed be damaging politically and perhaps even to the legal case they’re trying to make,” says Robert Spitzer, a gun policy expert and chairman of the political science department at the State University of New York at Cortland.

Regardless of whether the families prevail in court, Spitzer says the process could force Remington to provide documents that could yield incriminating internal memos—similar to the way a major civil settlement in 1998 forced the tobacco industry to disclose millions of pages of internal communications that revealed deceptive marketing practices.

Spitzer says it’s entirely possible that a defendant could “throw in everything, plus the kitchen sink,” during the discovery process, just to burden those tasked with scouring through the tens of thousands of documents. “They want to make life as miserable as they can,” Spitzer says.

Jessica Hill/APFirearms Training Unit Detective Barbara J. Mattson of the Connecticut State Police holds up a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, the make and model of gun used in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, for a demonstration during a hearing of a legislative subcommittee reviewing gun laws, in Hartford, Conn., on Jan. 28, 2013.

On July 2, Koskoff filed a motion urging the Connecticut Supreme Court to intervene. Cartoons aside, he says the documents more importantly show what Remington still has not handed over. In the last seven years of litigation, the attorney says Remington has produced some 46,000 documents—of which there are only 2,350 email communications.

“I know that Remington’s goal here is to delay things as long as possible,” Koskoff says. “Our goal is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

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France to pull more than 2,000 troops from Africa's Sahel

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Biden's administration just canceled $55.6 million in student debt for people who went to 3 for-profit colleges

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Broken machine leads SC man to use cash — and the change buys him lucky lottery ticket

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Centuries-old Hawaii petroglyphs damaged by vandals firing paintballs at cliff

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The Latest: Judge: attackers say planned to arrest Moïse

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A historic canoe was discovered on a wild SC river. How did it get there?

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Taliban say they now control 85% of Afghanistan's territory

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Suspect arrested in deadly shooting of 3 men found at Georgia golf course, authorities say

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Marked increase in Covid infections across UK - BBC News

1. Marked increase in Covid infections across UK  BBC News
2. England's R number increases as Covid infections climb rapidly  ITV News
3. Coronavirus R rate rises to as high as 1.5 in England as cases continue to surge  The Mirror
4. Covid infections soar as 1 in 160 people in England now testing positive  Herts Live
5. England's Covid R rate may now be 1.5 - the highest since October  Daily Mail
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Psychiatry Is Still Stuck in Freud’s Era. Big Data Can Revolutionize How We Care for Patients

I have a problem. I am a psychiatrist in the 21^st century and yet I still evaluate patients the way Freud did a century ago: I sit with a patient and, by carefully observing how and what they say, I expect them to tell me what’s wrong.

The problem isn’t that I speak with and listen to my patients. Every doctor of every speciality does that. Rather, my problem is that I never measure the data I think are most important to my treatment of psychiatric diseases.

Consider how I evaluate a patient for psychosis in the emergency room. When I speak with them, I want to know what their life is like—what’s their day like? What’s on their mind? How social are they? How’s their sleep? These data depend on my patient’s ability to remember, accurately report, make sense of, and tell me about their experience—and further, my treatments depend on my own ability to listen to and make sense of what I’m hearing.
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While we speak, I look for things like rapid or disorganized speech, somewhat incongruent facial expressions, or even recurrent ideas that might help me guage their mind’s function. I ask a series of finely-honed questions to poke and prod at their mind, creating a trove of essential clinical data. But my problem is that the only tool I use to gather and understand these data is my own brain. In other words, I leave the vast majority of that data unrecorded, unanalyzed and untapped. This is a problem. Consider what I’d do if this patient has chest pain.

Chest pain is a vague symptom that can be present in anything from heartburn to a panic attack to a heart attack. I would of course, ask them about their chest pain—when did it start? have they had it before? But I would dig deeper than conversation.

Heart rate is important in chest pain. I could put my fingers on their wrist and count out their heartbeats per minute, but I wouldn’t do that—I’d use a calibrated machine. I might carefully ascultate the lub-dub of their heart valves closing, but I would without question measure the flow of electricity through their heart each millisecond with an electrocardiogram. If I wasn’t reassured by these measurements, I’d probably draw some blood to check for protein SOS signals from their heart and call cardiology. Because I take chest pain seriously, in a few short minutes, I’d gather a host of measurements and would know whether their chest pain was caused by a heart attack.

Before decades of public-private partnerships developed the tools I use to evaluate chest pain, clinicians accepted that some data—in this case the essential data that defines the clinical problem of a heart attack—are invisible without technology and essential to provide good clinical care. Yet as a psychiatrist, I continue to ask questions without measuring the data I think are important to define my clinical problems like psychosis, even though the technology exists.

You probably have the most sophisticated behavioral measurement device ever created in your hand. The smartphone boasts a suite of technologies that might dramatically advance my ability to assess and treat my patients. Right now, our smartphones collect data that measure things I already believe are clinically important: what’s on our mind, how social we are, even how we sleep.

In addition to asking “what’s on your mind?” I might—with my patient’s consent and support, of course—analyze their online search history or social media profile, looking for subtle changes in the way they express themselves, changes that, studies have shown, might define an opportunity for us to work more closely together to improve their mental health. I could ask, but also measure.

Right now, I don’t use technology because, frankly, it’s not necessary. I diagnose and bill based on conversations, not measurements. Psychiatric diagnoses—organized before the advent of technology—are without exception based on patterns of symptoms and signs, or what a patient tells me and what I observe. Though psychiatry has tried to better define the diagnosis of, say, schizophrenia, this has backfired. The more we fiddle with our existing framework, the more muddled it becomes: I recently calculated that the latest diagnostic criteria (DSM-5) for schizophrenia describes ~7.6 trillion different patterns of symptoms and signs.

Notwithstanding these barriers, psychiatry has never been working more quickly or more effectively towards the goal of better defining the clinical problems we treat. The National Institute of Mental Health recently announced the Accelerating Medicines Partnership for Schizophrenia (AMP SCZ), an investment of over $82.5 million over five years and one of the largest private-public partnerships in the organization’s history.

For one of the first times at this scale, a band of psychiatrists and researchers from academic hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and tech companies will combine traditional clinical conversation with measures of brain function, cutting-edge data from smartphones, personal measurement devices and audio-visual recordings.

For example, recording and analyzing a conversation might help clinicians detect subtle changes in the way people string ideas together or refer to themselves. Without technology, these changes would remain invisible even to a skilled clinician, yet studies have shown that they predict the onset of a psychosis episode in at risk patients. Such patients—previously in a grey zone—might have access to more and better treatments, thereby leading to better outcomes.

Of course, none of these technologies will replace the empathic charm and human touch of a skilled clinician. Some clinical data are necessarily bespoke, artfully gathered by a skilled clinician; but not all data are like this. Modern medicine has brought chest pain from heart attacks from routinely fatal to often survivable and even preventable. Progress in evaluating chest pain required decades of fastigious measurement and, crucially, novel treatments to pair with those measurements.

Though technology isn’t a magic bullet, history has shown that the more we harness technology, the better we can define our clinical problems and treat our patients.

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Meet Eric Adams: The rat-hating, gun-toting former Republican in line to be New York City’s next mayor

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Ricky Gervais suggests The Office would not get made now due to cancel culture and political correctness - Sky News

1. Ricky Gervais suggests The Office would not get made now due to cancel culture and political correctness  Sky News
2. Ricky Gervais: 'The Office would be cancelled now'  BBC News
3. The Office at 20: Here's why David Brent will never be cancelled  Metro.co.uk
4. "Ah F***. We're in Real Trouble": An Oral History of 'The Office', 20 Years On  esquire.com
5. The Office at 20: How my life became one long David Brent impression  iNews
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White man sentenced in attack on Black teen at Michigan park

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Eddy Merckx: I won't lose any sleep if Cavendish beats my Tour de France record - Cyclingnews.com

1. Eddy Merckx: I won't lose any sleep if Cavendish beats my Tour de France record  Cyclingnews.com
2. Tour de France 2021: Mark Cavendish wins stage 13 to tie Merckx’s record – live!  The Guardian
3. Tour de France 2021 Stage 12 Highlights | Mark Cavendish Vs The Breakaway  GCN Racing
4. Simon Yates abandons Tour de France after crash on stage 13 descent  Cyclingnews.com
5. Nils Politt pushes hard to take first Grand Tour stage win in Nîmes  The Guardian
6. View Full coverage on Google News

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Coronavirus infection rates, cases and deaths for all parts of Wales on Friday, July 9 - Wales Online

1. Coronavirus infection rates, cases and deaths for all parts of Wales on Friday, July 9  Wales Online
2. Wales' Covid case rate as details on lifting remaining rules expected next week  ITV News
3. Virus cases continue to climb across North Wales – with first death reported nationally in three days  LeaderLive
4. North Wales Covid latest as one new death confirmed and cases rise in every area  North Wales Live
5. Thousands of Flintshire & Wrexham adults are fully vaccinated against COVID, figures show  LeaderLive
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Family of teen rescued alive from Surfside condo collapse sues. His mom died in tragedy

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Intense heat wave arrives: Expect dangerous temperatures for days

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Congressional Democrats’ Ex-Staffers Are Lobbying Against Biden’s Tax Hikes on Corporations and the Rich

Inside Congress, Democratic lawmakers are working to make sure President Joe Biden’s proposed tax hikes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans are codified into law.

Outside Congress, some of the most powerful lawmakers’ former staff members are working to make sure they aren’t.

Former staffers to nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers in Congress—including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—are now working as lobbyists for some of the most prominent groups opposing Democrats’ proposed tax increases on corporations and wealthy Americans, according to an analysis of federal disclosure documents.
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This is how Washington works. After stints on Capitol Hill, congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle frequently leverage their contacts and experience into lucrative lobbying jobs. But the dynamic underscores the uphill battle Democrats face in tackling one of the party’s core policy proposals—altering a tax code that benefits the rich—even as they control the White House and Congress and the tax hikes remain popular with their constituents, according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll from April.

Democrats have already compromised, leaving the tax increases out of the bipartisan infrastructure agreement in an effort to gain Republican support for the deal. Now Biden and Democratic leaders say they will instead include some form of the tax hikes in a subsequent reconciliation bill, which they can pass along party lines. But their razor-thin majority in Congress means every Democratic vote counts. If these lobbyists manage to convince even one of their former bosses not to vote for the increases, Biden’s policy is doomed.

“If you are a corporation and you are trying to stop these tax hikes, you know all you have to do is pick off a couple of Democrats in the Senate and stop them to put the brakes on it,” says Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and the author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions.

One Republican lobbyist familiar with these strategies, requesting anonymity to speak candidly, said Democrats unified control of government has presented these former staffers with a lucrative opportunity, even if it requires them to buck their party’s policies. “Being a recent former Democratic staffer at any level is a really valuable commodity right now,” says the lobbyist. “If you want to see any piece of these tax hikes go down, you’re only aiming at Democrats. How do you get at those marginal Democrats? You need people with ties to those guys.”

Biden has proposed two types of tax hikes to help offset the cost of his policy proposals: increased rates for corporations, and increased rates for the wealthiest Americans. Former Democratic Hill staffers are lobbying against both.

Business Roundtable, a nonprofit that represents over 230 CEOs of the country’s largest companies, including Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, has said Biden’s proposed corporate tax increases would “make the United States uncompetitive as a place to do business and make U.S. companies uncompetitive globally.” The group spent nearly $4.3 million on lobbying in the first four months of 2021, including $3.8 million on direct lobbying and over $450,000 paid to nearly a dozen outside lobbying firms. The lobbying was for a range of issues, from education and immigration policy to infrastructure and tax reform.

Lobbyists working for Business Roundtable specifically on tax related issues include a handful of former Democratic staffers, along with Republicans. Matthew Spikes, Business Roundtable’s Senior Director of Government Relations, is a former aide to Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, who chairs the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee. Arsha Siddiqui, one of three lobbyists at Akin Gump who lobbied on issues related to tax proposals in American Jobs Plan on behalf of Business Roundtable, was Pelosi’s senior policy adviser and counsel from 2003 to 2009. (The other two Akin Gump lobbyists working on this issue are former aides to Republicans: Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch). And one of the five lobbyists at PriceWaterHouse Coopers advocating for Business Roundtable on tax policy is Todd Metcalf, who was formerly Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden’s chief tax counsel. (Metcalf is working alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s former Deputy Chief of Staff.)

In May, Business Roundtable hired Resolution Public affairs, the government relations firm started by Heather McHugh, Schumer’s former legislative director and the former policy director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The firm was hired to lobby on infrastructure, including the corporate tax rate, and the two lobbyists listed by name on the disclosure form are McHugh and Lea Fisher Sulkala, who was formerly chief of staff for California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez.

Akin Gump and Resolution Public Affairs did not respond to requests for comment. PriceWaterHouseCoopers declined to comment on client-related work. A representative from Business Roundtable said they had retained several of these outside firms for many years, and their work centers on a wide range of issues.

Groups lobbying on behalf of industries like private equity and hedge funds, meanwhile, are taking aim at some of Biden’s proposals to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, including by closing the the carried interest loophole. This provision of the tax code allows executives in these fields to have their income from carried interests taxed at a capital gains rate of 20% instead of the income tax rate of 37%. Carmencita Whonder, a former Schumer staffer, is now a lobbyist at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. Federal disclosure documents show she has lobbied this year for “issues related to the taxation of private equity investments” on behalf of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm Brownstein has represented for decades. A representative from Brownstein did not respond to request for comment.

The American Investment Council (AIC), a trade group representing the private equity industry, spent more than $830,000 in the first three months of 2021 lobbying Congress and the White House, in part on this issue. The AIC’s in-house lobbyists working on tax policy include former aides to Reps. Karen Bass of California and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. In February, AIC hired Ogilvy Government Relations for lobbying on “legislation affecting the regulation of private equity including tax related issues,” according to federal disclosure documents. Those lobbyists include former aides to Pelosi and New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez. Other external lobbyists working on behalf of AIC include Democratic fundraiser Steve Elmendorf and a former aide to Delaware Sen. Tom Carper.

None of the external lobbyists responded to requests for comment. When asked about using Democratic lobbyists to advocate against Democratic tax proposals, an AIC spokesperson said, “We are working to ensure members of Congress on both sides of the aisle understand how new tax increases will discourage investment in small businesses, renewable energy, and other important priorities.”

As proposals and frameworks give way to legislative text this summer, it will become clear if these lobbying efforts have paid off. Right now, there is broad consensus within the Democratic Party that the corporate tax rate needs to increase—although there is disagreement about by how much—and that the carried interest loophole needs to be closed. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat who consequently holds outsized sway in the reconciliation process, was one of the co-sponsors of a bill introduced last spring to close it.

Still, the vast resources being put into opposing these policies has tax reform advocates on edge. “You’ve got corporate America against us,” says Frank Clemente, Executive Director of progressive group Americans for Tax Fairness. “This is a David versus Goliath fight.”

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Angelina Jolie: We Need to Understand the Human Cost of Burkina Faso’s Refugee Crisis

Burkina Faso is gripped by a war we seldom hear about, even though Western nations had a hand in its creation. Until the NATO bombing campaign in Libya in 2011, the West African nation had enjoyed decades of peace and, though it faced challenges including endemic poverty, was considered a beacon of stability in the Sahel region.

After the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s government, militants and weapons flooded southwest across the Sahara and into Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. By 2015, those guns had been turned by extremist groups upon villagers, cattle herders and children in rural Burkina Faso. More than 1.2 million Burkinabe people have fled their homes because of the intensifying violence. Camps for refugees from neighboring Mali have also been brutally attacked.

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In the days before I arrived, militants attacked a village in the north of Burkina Faso and executed at least 138 people. Separately, a convoy of the U.N. Refugee Agency and partners came under fire traveling to a refugee camp I was due to visit. It was my first experience with the insecurity experienced daily by the Burkinabe people. Most of the families I met had moved several times, with nowhere truly safe for them.

A striking number of the outwardly calm men I met told me that they lived in a constant state of terror. Many of the displaced had seen male relatives murdered for refusing to join the armed groups.

I was visiting Burkina Faso with the U.N. Refugee Agency, to mark June 20—World Refugee Day—with displaced people. I’ve taken a trip like this nearly every year for the past two decades, but this journey felt different. I had to keep moving, spending only a short while in each location, because of the high risk from terrorist groups. I traveled by road from the capital Ouagadougou to Kaya, a city that is home to some 110,000 displaced people. The next day we flew—the road judged unsafe because of roadside bombs—to Dori, and then made the 10-minute drive to Goudoubo refugee camp in the remote, isolated and arid north of the country, close to the border with Mali.

It is a measure of their grace that not a single person I met in Burkina Faso called out the role Western intervention in Libya played in fueling the instability that plagues their country. In Goudoubo camp, I met 16-year-old Ag Mossa, a poet and refugee from Mali. He asked me if my children were in school, and when I said yes, he congratulated them. Schools are a prime target of militants in the Sahel, and millions of children across the region are missing out on their education as a result. Ag Mossa gave me one of his poems. “These little verses are a cry from the heart,” he wrote. “Oh for a roof for a small child from the Sahel, and help for him not to suffer fear.”

Humanitarian aid is no substitute for a livelihood, and the funding trickling into the country doesn’t come close to matching the scale of the suffering. The U.N. appeal for Burkina Faso is less than a quarter funded. This means that UNHCR and partners have only been able to provide shelter—a basic plastic tent with a wood frame—to 1 in 10 displaced people in the country.

As my visit progressed, a feeling of dread took hold of me. It felt like I was glimpsing the future. I’ve made more than 60 visits to refugees globally in the past 20 years. I’ve watched as political solutions to conflicts have dried up for an ever growing population of forcibly displaced people and their children—born displaced or stateless, passing their entire childhoods in limbo.

Wars no longer seem to end; they simply shift, just as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have shifted their operations from Afghanistan and the Middle East to the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, the number of forcibly displaced people has doubled globally in a decade, to more than 80 million people. Looking back on those lost decades, it is as if everything was leading us to the kind of conflict now seen in Burkina Faso, combining the reality of a protracted war, fueled by terrorism.

These threats are made worse by the devastating effects of man-made climate change. African nations have generated only a tiny fraction of the emissions heating our planet. Yet in Burkina Faso, arable land and their natural water supplies are drying up at a terrifying rate, making it next to impossible for families that have farmed the earth for generations to feed their children. One Malian refugee, who had fled to Burkina Faso with his family and their livestock, described how their cows died one by one from the lack of grazing and water.

We had decades to try to prevent conflicts from breaking out or to find peace agreements to enable refugees to return to their home countries. We now face the prospect that climate-change effects will mean there is no home for displaced people to return to.

Governments in wealthy industrialized nations act as if refugees can be treated as someone else’s problem if they simply fortify their borders or pay developing nations to continue to host millions of displaced people. They make shiny new humanitarian announcements to distract voters, and themselves, from decades of unkept promises. The hypocrisy makes it harder to hold to account governments that commit mass atrocities against their own people, causing them to flee.

At which point will we be concerned enough to recognize that the model is broken as well as immoral? When 100 million people are displaced? Or 200 million, which we could reach within the next 20 years?

As citizens, we need to shift our thinking. We’re learning to understand the human cost of the minerals mined in conflict zones to meet our demand for smartphones and the environmental cost of manufacturing our clothes. Our foreign policies—the promises we break, the allies we indulge, the exceptions we make, and the atrocities we overlook—also carry a vast human cost. That price is being paid by millions of children like Ag Mossa.

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Lloyds fined for nine million misleading insurance letters

The bank claimed in the letters that insurance renewal quotes being offered were a "competitive price".

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Surfside death toll jumps to 60 one day after shift from search-and-rescue to recovery

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Tokyo Olympic Games: Spectators barred as state of emergency announced

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Fauci tells unvaccinated to ‘get over’ politics of COVID vaccines as variants spread

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Russia to launch new International Space Station module

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Surfside tower collapse: 'Zero' hope of finding survivors

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All the details on one of bourbon’s most anticipated annual releases

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Fast-food workers are leveraging the labor shortage to demand higher pay on the anniversary of the last federal minimum wage increase 12 years ago

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Jordan, Israel agree to water deal, more West Bank trade

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Kansas state trooper praises Broncos’ Drew Lock, whose windshield was shattered on I-70

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Missing 12-foot python found in crawl space of shopping mall

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Euro 2020 final: How can you get a ticket for Sunday's historic game at Wembley? - Sky News

1. Euro 2020 final: How can you get a ticket for Sunday's historic game at Wembley?  Sky News
2. Win or lose on Sunday, England have given us something to be proud of  The Guardian
3. England's Euro 2020 final against Italy on Sunday night will cause a massive spike in Covid  Daily Mail
4. Government 'considers' extra bank holiday if England win Euro 2020  Birmingham Live
5. Italy’s Marco Verratti feels Euro 2020 final will be won and lost in the mind  The Guardian
6. View Full coverage on Google News

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