“JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police firing tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site on Monday, the latest in a series of confrontations that threatened to push the contested city toward wider conflict.
More than a dozen tear gas canisters and stun grenades landed in the Al-Aqsa mosque, located in a compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, said an Associated Press photographer at the scene. Smoke rose in front of the mosque and the iconic golden-domed shrine on the site, and rocks littered the surrounding plaza. Inside one area of the compound, shoes and debris lay scattered over ornate carpets.
More than 305 Palestinians were hurt, including 228 who went to hospitals and clinics for treatment, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Seven of the injured were in serious condition. Police said 21 officers were hurt, including three who were hospitalized.
Monday’s confrontation was the latest after weeks of mounting tensions between Palestinians and Israeli troops in the Old City of Jerusalem, the emotional center of their conflict. The clashes have come during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, already a time of heightened religious sensitivities.
Most recently, the tensions have been fueled by an eviction plan in an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem where Israeli settlers have waged a lengthy legal battle to take over properties.
Hundreds of Palestinians and about two dozen police officers have been hurt over the past few days in clashes at the sacred compound, which is known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The compound, which, has been the trigger for rounds of Israel-Palestinian violence in the past, is Islam’s third-holiest site and considered Judaism’s holiest.” Read more at AP
“COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A gunman opened fire at a birthday party in Colorado, slaying six adults before killing himself Sunday, police said.
The shooting happened just after midnight in a mobile home park on the east side of Colorado Springs, police said.
Officers arrived at a trailer to find six dead adults and a man with serious injuries who died later at a hospital, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported.
The suspected shooter was the boyfriend of a female victim at the party attended by friends, family and children. He walked inside and opened fire before shooting himself, police said.
The birthday party was for one of the people killed, police said.
Neighbor Yenifer Reyes told The Denver Post she woke to the sound of many gunshots.
‘I thought it was a thunderstorm,’ Reyes said. ‘Then I started hearing sirens.’
Police brought children out of the trailer and put them into at least one patrol car, she said, adding that the children were ‘crying hysterically.’
Authorities say the children, who weren’t hurt in the attack, have been placed with relatives.” Read more at AP
“LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Medina Spirit’s victory in the Kentucky Derby is in serious jeopardy because of a failed postrace drug test, one that led Churchill Downs to suspend Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert on Sunday in the latest scandal to plague the sport.
Baffert denied all wrongdoing and promised to be fully transparent with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission during its investigation. Baffert’s barn received word Saturday that Medina Spirit had tested positive for an excessive amount of the steroid betamethasone, which is sometimes used to treat pain and inflammation in horses.
Medina Spirit’s win over Mandaloun in the Derby stands — for now.” Read more at AP
“Melinda Gates reportedly began exploring options for divorce from Bill Gates almost two years ago, around the time the world’s fourth-richest man was revealed to have met many times with Jeffrey Epstein, the philanthropist and sex offender who killed himself in jail in 2019.
The Microsoft founder and his wife, two of the world’s most powerful and influential philanthropists, announced their divorce last week. They have not said why.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal cited ‘people familiar with the matter’ and a former employee of the Gates Foundation who said Bill Gates’s dealings with Epstein were ‘one source of concern’ for his wife.
In October 2019, the New York Times reported that Epstein cultivated the acquaintance of rich and powerful men including the former president Bill Clinton.” Read more at The Guardian
“The Biden administration said Monday it would provide protections against discrimination in health care based on gender identity and sexual orientation, reversing a policy of its predecessors that had been a priority for social conservatives and had infuriated civil liberties advocates.
The reversal is a victory for transgender people and undoes what had been a significant setback in the movement for LGBTQ rights.
The shift pertains to health-care providers and other organizations that receive funding from the Department of Health and Human Services. Civil rights groups had said the Trump policy would allow health-care workers and institutions, as well as insurers, to deny services to transgender individuals.
The reversal is the latest step Biden officials are taking to reorient the federal government’s posture on health care, the environment and other policy areas away from the conservative cast of the Trump era, replacing it with a more progressive stance.” Read more at Washington Post
“The US is finally turning the corner on the pandemic, experts say. And if more Americans get vaccinated, we could see a big drop in coronavirus cases and deaths this summer. In India, health workers are racing to administer vaccinesas hundreds of thousands of new cases continue to be reported every day. Only about 2.75% of India’s 1.3 billion-strong population is fully vaccinated. And remember, the Tokyo Olympics are still supposed to go on this summer. Japan’s vaccine rollout is not going as quickly as the country anticipated, and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga says it is up to the International Olympic Committee to decide whether the Games will go ahead.” Read more at CNN
“President Biden will go on a big push this week to secure bipartisan support for his domestic infrastructure package. Lawmakers are returning to the Hill after a recess, and Biden on Wednesday is due to host his first meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders from the House and Senate since taking office. There’s a new complicating factor in these talks: the latest US jobs report, which was underwhelming. Only 266,000 new positions were added in April, a quarter of the number analysts had expected. While we shouldn’t make sweeping assumptions based on one report, the results will likely divide Democrats and Republicans more. They also put the onus on Biden to make sure the economy bounces definitively back after the pandemic.” Read more at CNN
“Pressure from within the Republican party on Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., to step down from her House leadership role continues to grow. On Sunday, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP caucus in Congress, said he opposes Cheney holding the position of GOP conference chair. Since the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, Cheney has been a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, who continues to hold massive sway within the party.” Read more at USA Today
“President Joe Biden has made bolstering U.S. infrastructure a top priority. Now his administration is dealing with an unwelcome illustration of just how vulnerable key supply lines can be.
A cyberattack on the nation’s biggest fuel pipeline system threatens to disrupt the supply of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel from Atlanta to New York. The target, Colonial Pipeline, halted all operations late Friday and is still working to restore them, while presumably considering how to respond to any demands.
Biden invoked emergency powers in an attempt to keep supplies flowing, and the White House established a task force to tackle disruptions.
Still, fuel suppliers are growing increasingly nervous about the possibility of shortages across the eastern U.S., with the threat of gasoline about $3 a gallon further stoking inflation fears.
A ransomware group called DarkSide, which first surfaced in August 2020, appeared to be behind the attack, Andrew Martin and Alyza Sebenius report. It uses a double extortion method, encrypting a victim’s data so that it can’t be accessed while threatening to make it public, according to cybersecurity firm Cybereason.
Some evidence has emerged linking DarkSide to Russia or elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
The incident has the potential to influence debate over Biden’s $4 trillion economic plan, much of which is focused on infrastructure. The president meets face-to-face this week for the first time with the top two congressional Republicans to try and win backing for his proposals.
The pipeline breach demonstrates the importance of protecting critical infrastructure. The question is whether the attack will serve to unite or further divide Washington over the president’s plans.” Read more at Bloomberg
“PHOENIX (AP) — Joshua Matthew Black said in a YouTube video that he was protecting the officer at the U.S. Capitol who had been pepper sprayed and fallen to the ground as the crowd rushed the building entrance on Jan. 6.
“Let him out, he’s done,” Black claimed to have told rioters.
But federal prosecutors say surveillance footage doesn’t back up Black’s account. They said he acknowledged that he wanted to get the officer out of the way — because the cop was blocking his path inside.
At least a dozen of the 400 people charged so far in the Jan. 6 insurrection have made dubious claims about their encounters with officers at the Capitol. The most frequent argument is that they can’t be guilty of anything, because police stood by and welcomed them inside, even though the mob pushed past police barriers, sprayed chemical irritants and smashed windows as chaos enveloped the government complex.” Read more at AP
“Pentagon officials are considering pulling the plug on the JEDI cloud-computing project. The $10 billion program—which serves most of the Defense Department’s branches and departments—has been mired in litigation from Amazonand faces continuing criticism from lawmakers.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Trump's election lawsuits prompt bids to punish lawyers. Courts are weighing whether some of the failed legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election were frivolous or improper and warrant punishment for the lawyers who filed them.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Boris Johnson is under investigation over who paid for his Caribbean holiday with Carrie Symonds during Christmas 2019.
The parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, confirmed on Monday morning that she was investigating a possible breach of the MPs’ code of conduct.
It is the latest allegation of impropriety faced by the prime minister, as the Electoral Commission continues its inquiry into the Conservative party over claims that a loan to cover works to Johnson and Symonds’ Downing Street flat were not properly declared.
The ‘sleaze’ attacks deployed against the prime minister in the run-up to last week’s local elections seem not to have substantially damaged his reputation among voters, given the gains made by the Tories in the Hartlepool byelection and councils across England.” Read more at The Guardian
“Scotland’s independence push. Parties in favor of holding a second independence referendum won a majority in Scottish parliament, official results show. Although Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party fell one seat short of an outright majority, the pro-independence Green party picked up eight seats. Sturgeon has suggested that any referendum on independence would take place in 2023, a vote the U.K. government in Westminster is likely to challenge in the courts.
In England, the Labour party is reflecting on brutal losses in council elections, as the Conservative and Green parties made gains. Labour party leader Keir Starmer, facing calls from his left flank to resign, has conducted a reshuffle of his shadow cabinet.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Germany’s powerful Catholic progressives are openly defying a recent Holy See pronouncement that priests cannot bless same-sex unions by offering such blessings at services in about 100 different churches all over the country this week.
The blessings at open worship services are the latest pushback from German Catholics against a document released in March by the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which said Catholic clergy cannot bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin.”
The document pleased conservatives and disheartened advocates for LGBTQ Catholics around the globe. But the response has been particularly acute in Germany, where the German church has been at the forefront of opening discussion on hot-button issues such as the church’s teaching on homosexuality as part of a formal process of debate and reform.” Read more at AP
“Preventing girls from going to school was the likely goal of the terrorists behind explosions Saturday outside a school in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Kabul. Widening access to women’s education was one of the most tangible achievements of the 20-year U.S. presence in Afghanistan—progress that could be reversed once American forces leave the country later this year. Afghan authorities on Sunday raised the official death toll from the attack to 53.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Dartmouth’s medical school accused 17 students of cheating on remote tests.” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Pete du Pont had a law degree from Harvard and a bright future at his family’s chemical company. But politics beckoned, and he became a three-term congressman and the governor of Delaware. He died at 86.” Read more at New York Times
“House Democratic leaders are lining up behind a White House push to allocate $8 billion in taxpayer funding for the latest iteration of mail truck, paving the way for a fully electric fleet instead of the piecemeal strategy U.S. Postal Service leaders have been pursuing.
The agency, which is generally self-sustaining and does not draw public money, has drawn up a bootstrap plan for new vehicles — the vast majority of which would run on gas — as it wrestles with $188.4 billion in liabilities and faces years of projected losses. The lawmakers’ plan would relieve the agency of the truck expense while significantly advancing one of President Biden’s key sustainability objectives.
Last week, the chairs of the House committees on Oversight and Reform and on Transportation urged members of the Democratic caucus to support the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle program, which would allow the agency to purchase as many as 165,000 trucks in the next decade. But the support would come with certain clean energy stipulations.” Read more at Washington Post
“Odd couple | In polarized Washington, Senators Amy Klobuchar, a pro-choice Democratic proponent of big government, and conservative Republican Mike Lee shouldn’t be friends. But as Anna Edgerton explains, they’re working together out of mutual concern that mega-corporations, especially tech giants such as Apple and Amazon.com, wield too much power.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Young engineers and new college grads see Miami, Houston and Philly — not San Francisco, New York or Seattle — as the hot new places to launch a tech or creative-economy career, Axios national technology correspondent Kim Hart writes in the debut of her ‘Tech Agenda ‘column.
Why it matters: Sun Belt cities in Florida and Texas are attracting tech CEOs as places the new talent wants to go — with lower taxes, to boot.
In Lehi, Utah — a haven for tech startups between Salt Lake City and Provo — it's been easier than usual to lure early-career workers from places like California and New York, said Joseph Woodbury, CEO of Neighbor.com, a peer-to-peer self-storage company.
Of the employees the startup recruited during the past year, 30% came from another state, and many of them were on the younger side.
Memo to Marc Andreessen: While workers now have new options, the San Francisco Bay Area will always be a draw for people wanting to work in the epicenter of the tech industry.” Read more at Axios
Potential designs. Photos: U.S. Mint
“Poet Maya Angelou and astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, are the first women who'll appear on a series of quarters to be issued by the U.S. Mint beginning in January, the N.Y. Times reports.They'll appear on the "tails" side of the coins, as part of a four-year American Women Quarters Program. George Washington will remain on the front, the Mint says.” Read more at Axios
“$25,463 — The average price paid for a preowned vehicle in April, about $2,800 higher than in the same month last year, according to J.D. Power. It was a record and the first time ever that the average used-car price had exceeded $25,000.
9 — The number of athletes living outside Japan that were allowed into the country for a track and field competition Sunday at Tokyo's National Stadium. The event served as a rare on-site test for a pandemic-constrained Olympics.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Romania’s Bran Castle in Transylvania, said to be the inspiration for the home of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is swapping bites for jabs as it struggles to attract tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic. The castle is now providing walk-in vaccinations, with free entry to its torture implement exhibit as part of the deal. ‘The idea … was to show how people got jabbed 500-600 years ago in Europe,’ the castle’s marketing director, Alexandru Priscu, said.” Read more at Foreign Policy
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