Despite another COVID surge, deaths stay near lows
For two years, the coronavirus killed Americans on a brutal, predictable schedule: A few weeks after infections climbed, so did deaths, cutting an unforgiving path across the country. But that pattern appears to have changed. Nearly three months since an ultra-contagious set of new omicron variants launched a springtime resurgence of cases, people are nonetheless dying from COVID at a rate close to the lowest of the pandemic. Because so many Americans have now been vaccinated or infected or both, scientists said, the number of people whose immune systems are entirely unprepared for the virus has significantly dwindled.
Pence navigates a possible White House run, and a fraught political moment
Former Vice President Mike Pence has emerged from the Jan. 6 hearings in a peculiar position. To some Democrats in Congress, he has become something of a hero for resisting Donald Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election. To Trump and his base, Pence gave away the presidency. And to a swath of anti-Trump voters, he is merely someone who finally did the right thing by standing up to his former boss. The whipsaw of images creates an uncertain foundation for a potential presidential campaign. Yet Pence is continuing with his travels around the country in advance of the 2024 primaries, as he navigates his fraught positioning.
Parts of Yellowstone will reopen this week after damaging floods
Parts of Yellowstone National Park will reopen to a limited number of visitors Wednesday, and the National Park Service will spend $50 million to fast-track repair work to restore access to about 80% of the park within two weeks, officials said Sunday. The park service made the announcements a week after historic flooding prompted the closure of Yellowstone and the evacuation of thousands of visitors at the start of the busy summer tourist season. On Saturday, the park service announced that it would reopen the eastern, southern and western entrances to the park Wednesday.
Jan. 6 hearing will highlight Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday plans to detail President Donald Trump’s personal involvement in a pressure campaign on state officials to subvert the will of the voters as well as an audacious scheme to put forward false slates of electors in seven states to keep him in power. At its fourth hearing this month, scheduled for 1 p.m. ET, the committee will seek to demonstrate that Trump knew — or should have known — that his lies about a stolen election, and the plans he pursued to stay in office, were wrong, but that he pushed ahead with them anyway.
Russia’s blockade of Ukraine is a ‘war crime,’ top EU official says
The Russian blockade that has stopped Ukraine from exporting its vast storehouses of grain and other goods, threatening starvation in distant corners of the globe, is a “war crime,” the European Union’s top foreign policy official declared Monday. The remarks by the official, Josep Borrell Fontelles, were among the strongest language from a Western leader in describing the Kremlin’s tactics to subjugate Ukraine nearly four months after it invaded, and with no end in sight. The Black Sea blockade — along with Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian farmland and its destruction of infrastructure — has brought exports to a near standstill.
Nobel sold for Ukrainian kids shatters record at $103.5M
Nobel Peace laureate Dmitry Muratov says he was not expecting the medal he was auctioning off to help Ukrainian child refugees sell for the record amount of $103.5 million. Bidding in the auction ended in New York on Monday, which is World Refugee Day. The sale shatters the old $4.76 million record for a Nobel. The identity of the buyer isn’t immediately known. Muratov was awarded the medal in October 2021. He helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was the publication’s editor-in-chief when it shut down in March amid a Kremlin clampdown after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Facebook removes GOP Senate candidate’s ‘RINO hunting’ video
Facebook has removed a campaign video by Republican Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens that shows him brandishing a shotgun and declaring that he’s hunting RINOs, or Republicans In Name Only. In the video, Greitens urges viewers to “get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.” Facebook says the ad violates “policies prohibiting violence and incitement.” Twitter blocked the video from being shared. The video comes at a time of renewed focus on violence in politics. Greitens resigned in disgrace as Missouri governor in 2018, and his ex-wife has alleged he physically abused her and their child.
Israel’s government collapses, setting up 5th election in 3 years
Israel’s governing coalition will dissolve parliament before the end of the month, bringing down the government and sending the country to a fifth election in three years, the prime minister said Monday. The decision plunged Israel back into paralysis and threw a political lifeline to Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister who left office just one year ago upon the formation of the current government. Netanyahu is standing trial on corruption charges but has refused to leave politics. Expected to be held in the fall, the snap election will be Israel’s fifth since April 2019.
Flooding in India and Bangladesh kills at least 116
Heavy monsoon rains in India and Bangladesh have flooded an airport and knocked down cellphone towers, bridges and power lines, cutting off communications for millions and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands. At least 116 people have been killed in the flooding and lightning strikes, as well as in landslides, which have made rescue operations even more difficult, according to officials. This latest catastrophic flooding comes less than a month after extreme rainfall submerged towns. On Monday, officials in Assam, a state in northeastern India bordering Bangladesh, said all the state’s 33 districts were affected by the floods.
Ethiopians flee massacre that killed hundreds
For decades, the village had been a sanctuary. But Monday, two days after gunmen set upon the ethnic Amhara residents of Tole village in the Oromia region of Ethiopia — killing perhaps hundreds, injuring many others and laying waste to property — any sense of sanctuary had vanished. “We are not safe,” said Fikadu, a resident of the village who only gave his first name over fears for his safety. The rampage on Saturday shook Africa’s second-most-populous nation, where a surge of interethnic violence and a grueling civil war has left millions dead, displaced or in desperate need of assistance.
By wire sources