“Canceled: TC Energy, the sponsor of the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, said it's pulling the plug on the contentious project after Canadian officials failed to persuade Biden to reverse his cancellation of its permit.” Read more at USA Today
President Joe Biden.NEIL HALL/BLOOMBERG
“On his first stop before heading to the G-7 summit , President Joe Biden will meet with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Thursday in Cornwall, western England. Both sides have stressed, publicly, the meeting would be about reaffirming ties between longtime allies. But tensions may simmer beneath the surface as Biden staunchly opposed the Brexit movement – the British exodus from the European Union that Johnson championed – and Biden once called the British leader a ‘physical and emotional clone’ of Trump. One issue they are expected to agree on is the opening of travel between the two nations ‘as soon as possible’ through a new Atlantic Charter.” Read more at USA Today
“President Biden has promised the world that ‘America is back.’
As he takes his first trip abroad as president, a Pew Research Center global survey released Thursday shows that many in advanced economies believe it.
Trust in the U.S. president fell to historic lows in most countries surveyed during Trump’s presidency, according to Pew.
Under Biden, it has soared. In the 12 countries surveyed both this year and last, a median of 75 percent of respondents expressed confidence in Biden to ‘do the right thing regarding world affairs,’ Pew found, compared with 17 percent for Trump last year. Sixty-two percent of respondents now have a favorable view of the United States vs. 34 percent at the end of Trump’s presidency.
‘The election of Joe Biden as president has led to a dramatic shift in America’s international image,’ the Pew report reads.” Read more at Washington Post
“In remarks at the G-7 summit in Britain on Thursday, Biden will announce that the U.S. will purchase and donate 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low and lower middle-income countries and the African Union. The shots will be distributed through the global vaccine alliance known as COVAX, with 200 million to be shared this year and the remaining 300 million to be donated through the first half of 2022. ‘We have to end COVID-19 not just at home — which we’re doing — but everywhere,’ Biden told the U.S. military at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in England on Wednesday.” Read more at USA Today
“U.S. consumer prices continued to rise rapidly in May as the economic recovery picked up, reflecting a surge in demand along with shortages of labor and materials.
The consumer-price index surged 5% from a year ago, the highest annual inflation rate in nearly 13 years.
The index measures what consumers pay for goods and services, including clothes, groceries, restaurant meals, recreational activities and vehicles.
The annual inflation measurements are being boosted by comparisons with figures from last year during Covid-19 lockdowns, when prices plummeted because of collapsing demand for many goods and services. This so-called base effect is expected to push up inflation readings significantly in May and June, dwindling into the fall.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Criminals stole as much as half of the unemployment benefits the U.S. pumped out over the past year, Axios' Felix Salmon reports.
Why it matters: Unemployment fraud during the pandemic could easily reach $400 billion, according to some estimates. The bulk of the money likely ended in the hands of foreign crime syndicates — making this not just theft, but a matter of national security.
What's happening: When the pandemic hit, states weren't prepared for the unprecedented wave of unemployment claims.
They all knew fraud was inevitable, but decided getting the money out to people who desperately needed it was more important than laboriously making sure all of them were genuine.
Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me, which tries to prevent this kind of fraud, tells Axios that America has lost more than $400 billion to fraudulent claims. As much as 50% of all unemployment money is suspected stolen, he says.
Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, estimates that at least 70% of the money stolen by impostors ultimately left the country, much of it ending up in the hands of criminal syndicates in China, Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere.
‘These groups are definitely backed by the state,’ Talcove tells Axios.
Much of the rest of the money was stolen by street gangs domestically, who have made up a greater share of the fraudsters in recent months.
The Treasury Department declined to comment on these estimates.
How it works: Scammers often steal personal information and use it to impersonate claimants. Other groups trick individuals into voluntarily handing over their personal information.
‘Mules’ — low-level criminals — are given debit cards and asked to withdraw money from ATMs. That money then gets transferred abroad, often via bitcoin.
The backstory: Before the pandemic, unemployment claims were relatively rare, and generally lasted for such short amounts of time that international criminal syndicates didn't view them as a lucrative target.
But that changed after unemployment insurance became the primary vehicle for the U.S. government to keep the economy afloat.
Unemployment became where the big money was — and the system was being run by bureaucrats who weren't as quick to crack down on criminals as private companies normally are.
Unemployment fraud is now offered on the dark web on a software-as-a-service basis, much like ransomware.” Read more at Axios
“U.S. Park Police didn't clear racial-injustice protesters from outside the White House so then-President Trump could pose in front of St. John's Church, Axios' Shawna Chen writes from an inspector general's report.
The move was planned several hours before Park Police knew of Trump's visit. But widespread failure to coordinate across seven law enforcement agencies contributed to ‘confusion’ and the unauthorized use of chemical irritants on Black Lives Matter protesters, the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General found.
The report found that Park Police moved to clear the park last summer to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing.
Lawmakers had accused police of clearing the crowd to enable Trump's photo-op.” Read more at Axios
“For the first time in the more than 100 years that the National Geographic Society has mapped the world’s oceans, it will recognize five of them. The organization announced this week that it will recognize the Southern Ocean, a body of water that encircles Antarctica, as the world’s fifth.
‘Scientists have long known there’s a distinct ecological region around Antarctica,’ National Geographic Society geographer Alex Tait said in an interview. But at least in the international scientific community, there hasn’t been agreement on the name and boundary of this body of water.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials said the federal agency recognized the body as the fifth ocean in 1999, when the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the name ‘Southern Ocean.’
When the boundaries of the ocean were proposed in 2000 to the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), which tracks and charts the world’s seas and oceans, not all IHO member countries were in agreement, according to NOAA.” Read more at Washington Post
“WASHINGTON — Two members of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel resigned this week after the agency’s contentious decision to approve an Alzheimer’s drug over the objections of its outside advisers.
David Knopman, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic, said Wednesday in an e-mail to The Washington Post that he did not ‘wish to be part of a sham process’ that ultimately resulted in the agency’s approval Monday of Biogen’s Aduhelm, also known as aducanumab.
He also shared the e-mail he sent to FDA officials saying that he was resigning immediately. He told the officials: ‘The whole saga of the approval of aducanumab . . . made a mockery of the [advisory] committee’s consultative process. While I realize that the committee is advisory, the approval of aducanumab appears [to] have been foreordained.’
Earlier this week, Joel Perlmutter, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis, resigned from the committee, according to the trade publications Stat News and the Pink Sheet. Perlmutter told Stat in an e-mail that he quit ‘due to this ruling by the FDA without further discussion with our advisory committee.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“The Biden administration has told federal agencies that they generally should not require their employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus to work on-site in federal buildings or to disclose whether they are vaccinated.
Employees who disclose they are unvaccinated or refuse to answer a voluntary question about vaccination status should be subject to safety requirements such as mask-wearing and social distancing, new guidance says.” Read more at Washington Post
“Setting the record straight: Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan issued a rare statement insisting – contrary to a BBC report – they did discuss their second child's name with Queen Elizabeth II before the name was announced.” Read more at USA Today
“Deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been formally charged with corruption by Myanmar's military government. A commission found her guilty of ‘committing corruption using her rank,’ accusing her of illegally accepting cash and gold in bribes and of misusing her authority when she rented out a property to open her foundation's headquarters. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate once seen as a global icon of democracy, was overthrown from her position as the country's de facto leader after the military seized power in a coup on February 1. She's since been detained and charged with a series of crimes that her supporters and lawyers consider to be politically motivated.” Read more at CNN
“A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday blocked Missouri from enforcing a sweeping state abortion law that bans the procedures at or after eight weeks of pregnancy.
A three-judge panel of the Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis heard arguments in September in the legal battle over the 2019 law. The measure also would prohibit a woman from having an abortion because the fetus has Down syndrome.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Biden revokes Trump actions on TikTok, WeChat. The president replaced his predecessor's executive orders with one that mandates a broad review of apps controlled by foreign adversaries to determine whether they pose a security threat. The new order creates the potential for an even more wide-reaching crackdown on Chinese-owned apps.” Read at Wall Street Journal
“A major meat processor paid $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to the hackers who forced it to close its beef plants last week.” Read more at New York Times
“Researchers in Tulsa, Okla., found evidence of at least 27 coffins that may contain victims of the racist 1921 massacre there.” Read more at New York Times
“Police chiefs in cities across the nation are confronting a surge in gun violence and murder -- even before the usual spike of crime seen in the summer. After major cities saw a 33% increase in homicides in 2020, law enforcement officials and experts say they're alarmed by the numbers seen so far this year. They attribute the rise in gun violence to a number of factors, among them the economic collapse, de-policing in major cities after last year's protests and shifts in law enforcement resources to downtown areas because of those protests. Separately, the American Academy of Neurology said law enforcement's use of neck restraints such as chokeholds and strangleholds should be prohibited -- something some localities did last year.” Read more at CNN
“Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, is expected to plead guilty Thursday after she was charged in the U.S. with helping her husband run his multibillion-dollar criminal empire. Coronel is due in court in Washington for a plea agreement hearing, according to court records. Coronel, 31, was arrested at a suburban Washington, D.C. airport on Feb. 22 for her alleged role in the distribution of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana. Prosecutors have alleged Coronel, a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen, ‘worked closely with the command-and-control structure’ of the Sinaloa cartel.” Read more at USA Today
“On Thursday, Matt Schembechler, son of legendary Michigan head football coach Bo Schembechler, and two former Michigan football players will hold a news conference to detail their allegations of sexual abuse against Dr. Robert Anderson, who was involved in various aspects of the athletic department for years.
Matt Schembechler said he told his father about the abuse in 1969 and nothing happened to Anderson. The doctor left the university in 2002 and died in 2008.” Read more at USA Today
“The travel plans of the White House press corps fell victim to cicadas—the flying insects that emerge 17 years of hibernation—as the journalists attempted to leave Washington on a chartered plane on Tuesday to follow Joe Biden on his European tour. According to a statement from Delta airlines, a group of cicadas rendered an auxiliary power unit on the chartered Airbus A330 ‘unworkable,’ leading to a replacement plane being dispatched.
The flight eventually left off on Wednesday morning, six and a half hours behind schedule. Delta blamed the incident on the ‘rarest of entomological delays.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Lives Lived: Stuart Silver helped reinvigorate the Met in the 1960s and ’70s, turning exhibitions into crowd-pleasing spectacles that became models for other museums. He died at 84.” Read more at New York Times
“82% — The median weekly pay of a woman working full-time last year was roughly this percentage of a comparable man's compensation, according to Department of Labor data. Republicans on Wednesday blocked a bill that Democrats said would narrow the gender wage gap by increasing penalties for violations of a federal law that already prohibits wage discrimination.
$1.7 million — The amount in revenue that 16-year-old Max Hayden made during the pandemic last year by reselling nonessential items such as Playstation 5s. The teenager profited $110,000 and said he expects to do even better this year.
25 — The number of U.S. states, as of Wednesday, that have stopped providing daily reports of Covid-19 data. Public-health experts say the lagging data could create blindspots if outbreaks occur, especially with emerging virus variants.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The Latin American nation's legislative body passed a law Wednesday that will make it the first country to accept the cryptocurrency as legal tender. The designation means businesses will be required to accept bitcoin as payment (unless they can't process such transactions) and citizens also will be able to use bitcoin to pay their taxes. The government hopes that adoption of the cryptocurrency can help drive financial inclusion in a country where most people don't have access to traditional banking. It isn't known, though, how feasible it will be for El Salvador, one of the region's poorest countries, to integrate crypto into its economy. Bitcoin's main selling point—that it can be used for transactions—has been undermined by high transaction costs and the volatility of the currency, which is down about 50% from its April peak.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The police in Nicaragua are detaining opposition leaders, leaving President Daniel Ortega running practically unopposed in November’s elections.” Read more at New York Times
“Turning the screw | Russia banned organizations set up by jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny as ‘extremist,’ the latest step in a widening crackdown that drew protests from the U.S. and Britain. A Moscow court ruling criminalized membership in the groups — a decision U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called ‘another Kafkaesque attack on those standing up against corruption and for open societies.’” Read more at Bloomberg
“Pink tide’ | The apparent electoral win of Marxist candidate Pedro Castillo in Peru signals a potential far-reaching shift in a region ravaged by Covid-19 and filled with fury at elites, Ethan Bronner writes. With leftists running Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia, more candidates are poised for victory in Chile, Colombia and Brazil in the next 16 months in what could resemble the ‘pink tide’ kicked off by Venezuela’s 1998 election of Hugo Chávez.
Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori reiterated her allegation of irregularities in Sunday’s election as she narrowly trails Castillo with the vote count nearing its end.” Read more at Bloomberg
“New ER policy called 'dangerous' by critics: Insurance giant UnitedHealthcare is cracking down on emergency room visits with a new policy that could see as many as 1 in 10 claims rejected.” Read more at USA Today
“‘I feel betrayed a little bit’: Close to 180 health care workers were suspended from Houston Methodist hospital system for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccination.” Read more at USA Today
June 9: Maria Sakkari reacts during her match against Iga Swiatek on Day 11 of the French Open.Susan Mullane, USA TODAY Sports
“Greece's Maria Sakkari, the No. 17 seed, defeated defending champion Iga Swiatek of Poland 6-4, 6-4 in the French Open quarterfinals Wednesday and the first-time semifinalist had no problem showing emotion during the match. Sakkari plays unseeded Barbora Krejcikova in the semifinals Thursday.” Read more at USA Today
“Maddie Groves has pulled out of the Australian Olympic swimming trials just days before the event begins in Adelaide, saying her last-minute withdrawal should be a lesson to ‘all misogynistic perverts in sport.’
Groves, who won two silver medals at the Rio Games five years ago, was aiming to reach her second Olympics at the national trials, which start this weekend and run for six days. But the 26-year-old butterfly specialist, also a two times Commonwealth Games gold medallist, announced her decision not to compete in a social media post on Wednesday night.” Read more at The Guardian
“‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ a reality TV mainstay that led to international superstardom, a family empire worth billions of dollars and 11 spin-offs, will end its 15-year and 20-season run on the E! network with its series finale Thursday night (8 p.m. ET). The series hit the ground running in its 2006 premiere when Kim Kardashian's sex tape with Brandy's brother, Ray J, was referenced. The show has followed the family's ups and downs since, including in last week's penultimate episode when Kim was seen breaking down over her crumbling marriage to Kanye West. The E! series may be ending, but the family will develop new shows for Hulu in the near future.” Read more at USA Today
No posts