“Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, including current and former government workers, whose accounts of unwanted touching and inappropriate comments were corroborated in a damning report released Tuesday by New York state Attorney General Letitia James.
The 165-page report prompted multiple calls for Cuomo to resign, including from President Joe Biden, a longtime ally of the governor, and it cast doubt on Cuomo’s political future. The Democratic speaker of the state Assembly said Tuesday that he intended to quicken the pace of a separate impeachment inquiry, adding that Cuomo ‘can no longer remain in office.’
The report, the culmination of a five-month investigation, included at least three previously unreported allegations of sexual harassment from women who accused Cuomo of improperly touching them, including a state trooper assigned to the governor’s security detail. It also highlighted far-reaching efforts by the governor, his staff and close associates to disparage and retaliate against one woman who made her allegations public.” Read more at Boston Globe
“WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday imposed a new, 60-day federal moratorium on evictions in areas of the country ravaged by the Delta variant, a move aimed at protecting hundreds of thousands of renters at risk of being kicked out of their homes during a pandemic.
The action was also intended to quell a rebellion among angry Democrats who blamed the White House for allowing a previous eviction ban to expire on Saturday — after the Democratic-controlled House was unable to muster enough votes to extend that moratorium.” Read more at New York Times
“Former president Donald Trump said this week that he will not move to stop former Justice Department officials from testifying before two committees that are investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to subvert the results of the presidential election, according to letters from his lawyer obtained by The New York Times.
Trump said that he would not sue to keep six former Justice Department officials from testifying, according to letters sent to them Monday by Douglas A. Collins, who was known as one of Trump’s staunchest supporters when he served in Congress and who is now one of the former president’s lawyers.” Read more at Boston Globe
“New York City will become the first U.S. city to require proof of vaccination for a variety of activities for workers and customers — indoor dining, gyms and movie theaters — a move intended to put pressure on people to get vaccinated, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday.
The restrictions, similar to mandates issued in France and Italy last month, represent the most aggressive response to lagging vaccination rates in the United States, and they come as the number of virus cases surge across the country. Mr. de Blasio said he hoped that other cities would implement similar measures.” Read more at New York Times
“President Biden on Tuesday denounced Republican officials who have blocked efforts to mandate vaccines, as he encouraged cities and states to require that individuals show proof of vaccination to visit restaurants and other public spaces.
In a notable toughening of his message, the president called out Republican governors who have banned businesses and universities from requiring vaccines or defied masking guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
‘I say to these governors: Please help. But if you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way,’ Biden said. ‘The people are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.’
When asked specifically about Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas, Biden said that ‘their decisions are not good for their constituents.’ DeSantis signed an executive order last week that prohibits schools from requiring masks, and Abbott signed an order that bans local governments and state agencies from mandating vaccines.” Read more at Washington Post
“LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In March, with the number of new coronavirus cases plummeting in Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson let expire the statewide mask mandate that some of his fellow Republicans had opposed from the beginning.
Soon thereafter, Mr. Hutchinson went a step further, signing legislation that blocked most government entities in the state from instituting any future mask mandates.
The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Trent Garner, would later write on Twitter that it was ‘one of the most important laws we passed.’
‘The left wants more control over YOU and your children’s lives,’ he continued. ‘Masking is now about power, not public safety.’
Mr. Hutchinson, a relatively moderate Republican, did not see much harm in it at the time. ‘Our cases were at a very low point,’ he recalled in a news conference on Tuesday. However, he added, ‘In hindsight, I wish that it had not become law.’
In recent days, as coronavirus cases fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant have skyrocketed in Arkansas, Mr. Hutchinson has backtracked, and is now urging state legislators to undo part of the law so school districts may adopt mask mandates before students return to their classrooms en masse.
In so doing, he has incensed the most conservative members of his base, underscoring a broader dilemma facing Republican governors across the South, where new coronavirus infections are once again spiking, but where hard-line conservatives remain adamant that many regulations seeking to contain the spread of the virus are a threat to personal freedom.
In South Carolina, which has banned school mask mandates, Gov. Henry McMaster said students ‘can’t learn’ while wearing face coverings. In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves has said he will not issue a mask mandate for schools. In Florida on Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis also renewed a vow not to impose a mask mandate or business restrictions, despite worrying caseloads. ‘We are not shutting down,’ he said at a news conference. ‘We are going to have schools open. We are protecting every Floridian’s job in this state.’
In Arkansas, the drama in the seat of government unfolded as Tyson Foods, the meat processing giant and one of Arkansas’s signature employers, said on Tuesday that it would require vaccines for its U.S. workers. About half of Tyson’s U.S. employees remain unvaccinated, and the company is offering $200 payments to frontline workers who can show proof of vaccination….
The stakes in Arkansas are high. About 58 percent of Arkansas adults have had at least one vaccine shot, the 11th-lowest rate in the nation, while the rate of new cases in the past seven days is 63 per 100,000 residents, the third-highest in the United States, behind Louisiana and Florida, according to data from The New York Times. Three other Southern states — Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina — are also in the top 10 for per capita new cases.” Read more at New York Times
“A report found that the NCAA undervalued its women's basketball tournament by millions of dollars.
After a social-media storm in March—following a post from a University of Oregon player showing one single weight rack at the women's tournament, compared with a sprawling setup for the men's event—the National Collegiate Athletic Association commissioned a report to study gender inequities in its championships. The report by law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink found that the organization undervalued the women's basketball tournament by tens of millions of dollars and should revamp how it operates and sells broadcast rights to the event. It also found that the NCAA’s structuring of the events, from revenue distribution to corporate sponsorships, ‘all prioritize Division I men’s basketball over everything else in ways that create, normalize, and perpetuate gender inequities.’ The women's tournament could be worth up to $100 million in broadcast rights, the report said. The NCAA, which didn't have a competitive bidding process for the rights, bundled the women's tournament with 28 other sports and sold the entire package for $34 million a year. Among the changes suggested: Host the men's and women's Final Four in the same city and on the same weekend to maximize its value in future negotiations. The report also suggested the NCAA use the ‘March Madness’ branding for both the men's and women's Division I tournaments, after withholding use of the branding term from the women's tournament for years.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“WASHINGTON — Congress moved on Tuesday to honor police officers who responded to the Capitol attack, clearing a bill to give them the Congressional Gold Medal just days after word emerged that two more officers who were there on Jan. 6 had taken their own lives.
The unanimous vote of the Senate, which cleared the bill for President Biden, came after back-to-back announcements from District of Columbia police officials this week about the suicides of two of the force’s officers who were at the Capitol on the day of the riot, bringing to four the known number of officers who have killed themselves in its aftermath.” Read more at New York Times
“The battle over the once-a-decade realignment of legislative and congressional districts is underway across the country even before new maps have been drawn, with lawsuits filed in nearly a dozen states, signaling how intense the fight for partisan power in the states and Congress will be in the coming year.
Many of the early moves have been made by Democrats, who are scrambling to make up a historic deficit when it comes to the bare-knuckle redistricting process that Republicans used in 2011 to cement their dominance at the state and national level.
At stake is how voters will be divided into individual districts for the next decade, and which party will emerge with the greatest advantage. Fierce fighting over the maps could delay that process in many states — potentially upending 2022 campaigns midstream.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Shontel Brown, a Democratic county councilor, dealt a devastating blow to the party’s liberal wing Tuesday night, prevailing over Nina Turner, a former co-chair for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, in the Ohio primary for a safe Democratic seat.
In the 15th Congressional District, a safely Republican seat around Columbus, energy industry lobbyist Mike Carey prevailed over a crowded field, boosted by former president Donald Trump’s endorsement.
Laverne Gore, a Republican, won the GOP nomination for the 11th District open seat and will face Brown. Allison Russo, a Democrat, won in the 15th and will challenge Carey in the November general election.
In the 11th Congressional District, which stretches from Cleveland to Akron, Turner, a former state senator, and Brown, a Cuyahoga County councilor and chair of the local Democratic Party, were locked in a bitter fight. Turner entered the race as the best-known candidate and an ally of the left-wing ‘squad’ of House Democrats.” Read more at Washington Post
“Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Tuesday announced pardons for Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis homeowners who pointed guns at protesters near their home last summer.
The couple, who pleaded guilty in June to misdemeanor charges stemming from the incident, were among the 12 pardons that Parson granted last week, the governor's office said in a statement.
The McCloskeys drew national attention in June 2020 after they were seen on video brandishing guns outside their mansion and pointing them at protesters, who were walking on a private street toward the home of the St. Louis mayor.
In videos posted to social media, Mark McCloskey is seen holding a long rifle and Patricia McCloskey a handgun as demonstrators -- who were protesting then-Mayor Lyda Krewson's decision to publish the names and addresses of people in favor of police reform -- walked past their home.” Read more at CNN
“$163,000 — The median amount in federal student-loan debt that recent graduates of the University of Miami School of Law took out to complete their degrees, assuming they would graduate into high-paying jobs. Instead, half were earning $59,000 or less two years after graduating, suggesting that expensive law programs at well-regarded but non-elite law schools fail to pay off.
$1,244 — The median rent in the U.S., up more than 10% over the past year. Apartment rents are rising fast, as young professionals move back to cities and would-be homebuyers opt to rent because record-high housing prices have pushed them out of the market.
45% — The approximate share of New York City residents who aren't yet fully vaccinated. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would require proof of vaccination for indoor activities such as dining, exercise and performances from Aug. 16, with enforcement starting Sept. 13.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“KABUL — A powerful explosion rocked an upscale neighborhood of Afghanistan’s capital Tuesday in an attack that apparently targeted the country’s acting defense minister. At least 10 people were wounded, a health official said.
Several smaller explosions could be heard as well as small arms fire. It was unclear if the wounded were hurt in the explosion or by gunfire.
No one immediately took responsibility for the attack but it came as Taliban insurgents have been pressing ahead with an offensive that is putting pressure on the provincial capitals in the south and west of the country.” Read more at Boston Globe
“KABUL — The Taliban pressed ahead with their advances in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, capturing nine out of 10 districts of the Helmand provincial capital, residents and officials said. Afghan government forces launched airstrikes, backed by the United States, in a desperate effort to defend the city of Lashkar Gah.
The fall of Lashkar Gah would be a major turning point in the offensive the Taliban have waged over the past months as US and NATO forces complete their pullout from the war-torn country. It would also be the first provincial capital captured by the Taliban in years.
Residents of the city, speaking to The Associated Press over the telephone, said the fighting has them trapped, hunkered down inside their homes and unable to step out for basic supplies. They said Taliban fighters were out openly in the streets, and that all but one Lashkar Gah district was under Taliban control.
Elite commando units were dispatched from Kabul to aid Afghan forces as the government held on to key government buildings, including the local police and army headquarters.” Read more at Boston Globe
“MOSCOW — A Belarusian antigovernment activist was found dead in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday, in what police described as a murder or a suicide, casting a renewed spotlight on the risks faced by opponents of the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko even outside their own country.
The activist, Vitaly Shishov, 26, went missing Monday after going out for a morning jog, said his colleagues, who accused Belarusian authorities of killing him. Kyiv police said that Shishov had been found hanged in a park near his home and that they were investigating the possibility that the death was a ‘murder masked as a suicide.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“ERBIL, Iraq — When the Iraqi prime minister’s plane touched down in Baghdad last week after an official visit to the United States, its cargo included 17,000 archaeological artifacts returned by a prominent museum and an Ivy League university in the largest-ever repatriation of looted Iraqi antiquities.
On Tuesday, plywood crates holding the thousands of clay tablets and seals — pieces from Mesopotamia, site of the world’s earliest civilizations — were stacked next to a table displaying a few of the artifacts as the Iraqi Culture Ministry took custody of the cultural treasures.
The repatriation of so many objects rounds out a remarkable chapter in the story of a country so ravaged by decades of conflict and war that its very history was pulled out of the ground by antiquities thieves and sold abroad, ending up on display in other countries’ museums. And it is a victory in a global effort by countries to press Western institutions to return culturally vital artifacts, like the push to repatriate the famed Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.
‘This is not just about thousands of tablets coming back to Iraq again — it is about the Iraqi people,’ Hassan Nadhem, the Iraqi minister of culture, tourism and antiquities, said in a telephone interview. ‘It restores not just the tablets, but the confidence of the Iraqi people by enhancing and supporting the Iraqi identity in these difficult times.’
The institution that held about 12,000 of the items was the Museum of the Bible, a four-year-old Washington museum founded and funded by the Christian evangelical family that owns the Hobby Lobby craft store chain. The addition of artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia was intended to provide context for Old Testament events.
Four years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice fined Hobby Lobby $3 million for failing to exercise due diligence in its acquisitions of more than 5,000 artifacts; some of those artifacts were among those returned last week to Iraq. Hobby Lobby agreed as part of the government lawsuit to tighten its acquisition procedures, and the museum found thousands more suspect artifacts after it later initiated a voluntary review of its collection.
More than 5,000 of the other pieces returned last week had been held by Cornell University. That collection from a previously unknown Sumarian city of Garsana was donated to the university in 2000 by an American collector. Partly because the city was unknown, it was widely suspected by archaeologists to have come from a looted archaeological site in the south of Iraq.
The holdings underline a thriving market in stolen antiquities and highlight the plight of countries like Iraq, which has been subjected to three decades of antiquities looting. When government forces lost control of parts of southern Iraq in 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, widespread looting occurred at unexcavated sites. And the industrial-scale thefts continued amid a security vacuum after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.” Read more at New York Times
“The Beirut blast, one year on. On Aug. 4, 2020, an explosion at Beirut’s port killed more than 200 people and left parts of the city in ruins. A year later, the country is still reeling from the effects of the blast, citizens continue their search for justice, and the country’s caretaker government has yet another prime minister-designate, after Saad Hariri stepped down in July.
Offers of help from French President Emmanuel Macron, critics say, have been ineffective thus far and potentially harmful. But France has continued to offer assistance to its former colony despite criticism. For the anniversary, France has planned an international aid conference with the U.N. ‘to respond to the needs of the Lebanese whose situation is deteriorating every day,’ according to the foreign ministry.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“What North Korea wants before resuming nuclear talks.
The U.S. and North Korea haven't held formal denuclearization talks since 2019, and Kim Jong Un's regime so far has given the cold shoulder to the Biden administration. But stalled communications between the Kim regime and South Korea have picked up again, and South Korea's spy agency has relayed to the U.S. what Pyongyang wants before talks can resume. With North Korea's economy decimated by sanctions and the pandemic, the Kim regime seeks sanctions relief to allow it to once again import more oil and raw minerals like coal and iron. Another precondition to restarting nuclear talks includes allowing Pyongyang elites to import Western-style luxuries, such as premium liquor and fine suits. The sanctions, imposed in response to the North's persistent nuclear testing, have crimped the country's ability to trade internationally. North Korean state media hasn’t commented on the briefing or a potential return to U.S. talks.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Reese Witherspoon, the Oscar-winning actor who became a force in Hollywood as a producer and an entrepreneur, reached an agreement on Monday to sell her entertainment studio, Hello Sunshine, to a newly created company backed by the investment firm Blackstone Group.
Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Three people with knowledge of the agreement, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the negotiations, said the deal valued Hello Sunshine at roughly $900 million.
Ms. Witherspoon started Hello Sunshine in 2016 with the idea of creating movies and shows centered on women. The company gained momentum on the strength of two of its Emmy-winning series, ‘The Morning Show’ for AppleTV+ and ‘Big Little Lies’ for HBO. With the nearly $1 billion agreement, Ms. Witherspoon is moving beyond the roles that made her famous — in films like ‘Legally Blonde,’ ‘Wild,’ ‘Walk the Line’ and ‘Election’ — and into the ranks of Hollywood’s power brokers.
Ms. Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine’s chief executive, Sarah Harden, will sit on the board of the Blackstone-backed company, which will be led by two former high-level Walt Disney Company executives, Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs. Ms. Witherspoon and Ms. Harden will have equity in the new company, which does not yet have a name, and will continue to run Hello Sunshine.” Read more at New York Times
“The Associated Press said on Tuesday that Daisy Veerasingham would become its new president and chief executive, the first woman and the first person of color to lead the 175-year-old news agency.
She will succeed Gary Pruitt, who is retiring at the end of the year after almost 10 years in the role. Her start date is Jan. 1….
Ms. Veerasingham, 51, joined The A.P. in 2004 as a sales director for its television news division in London. She was promoted to chief revenue officer in 2019 and became the company’s chief operating officer and executive vice president in February.” Read more at AP News
“TOKYO (AP) — Sydney McLaughlin broke the world record. Dalilah Muhammad broke it, too.
Only one of the world’s best hurdlers could win the Olympic gold medal — and McLaughlin came out ahead in the latest installment of the best rivalry in track.
The 21-year-old from New Jersey won the 400-meter hurdles title Wednesday, finishing in 51.46 seconds in yet another history-making day on the speedy Olympic oval.
‘Iron sharpening iron,’ McLaughlin called the latest in her series of showdowns with Muhammad, each one faster than the last. ‘Every time we step on the track, it’s always something fast.’
McLaughlin came from behind after the last hurdle to top the defending Olympic champion. Muhammad’s time of 51.58 also beat McLaughlin’s old record of 51.9, set at Olympic trials in June. But in this race, it was only good enough for the silver.
For McLaughlin, it was a muted celebration — in part, because traversing 400 meters while clearing 10 hurdles at 17 miles-per-hour is more exhausting than she makes it look.” Read more at AP News
“From Budapest, it’s ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’
The conservative pundit has taken his show overseas. Last night, Carlson hosted his Fox News show from the Hungarian capital, with the sights and sounds of the city behind him, as part of a week-long trip to the country that is part diplomacy mission, part political tourism and part evangelizing.
His presence in the country was not previously announced by Carlson or his employer, leading to some confusion on Monday when the country’s right-leaning, populist, anti-immigration prime minister — Viktor Orban — posted a photo on his Facebook page with a smiling, arms-crossed Carlson.
Carlson told his viewers on Monday night that he will be hosting the show from Hungary all week and made a pitch for why the Central European country should matter to them. ‘If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now,’ he said, before transitioning into one of his more typical attacks on the Biden administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.” Read more at Washington Post
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