🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️NewsHero | Zero NYC virus deaths; Trump wears mask; 'Redskins' no more; Mueller slams Stone in op-ed; Employees fight to wear BLM masks at work; 600K pro-democracy voters in Hong Kong
July 13, 2020 - Issue 137
Welcome to this edition of NewsHero for July 13, 2020.
Dear Heroes,
It is with a heavy heart that I write to let you know that this will be our last week of delivering NewsHero to your inboxes. It has been an honor and a privilege to bring this to you over these last 130+ issues, and we had high hopes of continuing to serve you in this way, however, we have not been able to bring enough subscribers into the fold to emerge from beta and to scale up our team or our product.
For those of you who have subscribed monthly, you will no longer be charged, and for those of you who have subscribed yearly and would like a refund, we will gladly provide you with one. Please just let us know in reply to this email. Any subscriber money that is not refunded and that is not needed in the cost of closing will be donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists (https://cpj.org/) to help support their vital and ongoing work.
I want to thank you for reading and for sharing. I’m sorry that those of you who took the challenge and made NewsHero your only daily read will have to go back to the way things were. I wish there were better options out there but I have yet to find one.
I want to thank all of the NewsHero team who put their hearts and souls into getting us out and into the world and I want to thank our investors and backers for giving us this chance.
I want to thank all of you, our readers, for your generous feedback and for coming along for the ride.
Wishing all the best to you and yours.
Benji, Co-founder NewsHero
Now, on with this issue, which also includes: Facebook may block political ads ahead of November election; The U.S. Navy has welcomed its first Black female Tactical Aircraft pilot; “How can airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors be minimized?”; 17 states sue Trump over international student rule; Democrats want access to Trump’s daily briefings to find out what was known about Russian bounties on U.S. Troops.
NYC Reports Zero COVID-19 Deaths For First Time Since March 11
For the first time, Trump is seen wearing a face mask in public
Engineering level controls to reduce the environmental risks for airborne transmission. ScienceDirect
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Gov. Andrew Cuomo re: New York’s pandemic response
🦸♀️ - Donald Trump, for FINALLY wearing a mask
🦸♀️ - HHS testing chief Brett Giroir for promoting masks
🦸♀️ - Betsy DeVos, for at least considering safety guidelines as ‘common sense’
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - California Teachers Association
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Researches continuing to study how COVID-19 spreads
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday that New York had its lowest three-day average coronavirus death toll since March 16 and that hospitalizations have dropped below 800 for the first time since March 18, CBS News reports.
“Throughout this pandemic, we've made progress by recognizing that state and local governments can't fight the virus on their own—the efforts of everyday New Yorkers to socially distance, wear masks and wash their hands are central to our ability to slow the spread and save lives,” Governor Cuomo said.
And on Sunday, New York City health officials reported zero deaths related to the coronavirus since the state’s first official death was recorded on March 11, NBC News said.
Meanwhile, Florida set a new national record for the largest daily increase in coronavirus cases in the U.S. on Sunday, reports Fox News. According to Department of Health statistics, the state added at least 15,299 positive COVID-19 cases, for a total of 269,811, and recorded 45 more deaths.
Where, also, despite help from New York, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis publicly downplayed the Empire State’s role in providing his state with shipments of Remdesivir, says CNN.
Donald Trump wore a mask during a visit to a military hospital on Saturday, the first time he’s been seen in public with a face mask, which are recommended by health officials as an effective measure against spreading (or contracting) the coronavirus, The Associated Press reports.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) testing chief Brett Giroir implored Americans to wear masks in public Sunday and said “everything should be on the table” when asked if tighter lockdowns are needed in southern states where cases are surging, Politico reports.
“For this to work, we have to have like 90 percent of people wearing a mask in public in the hot spot areas,” Giroir told ABC News. “If we don't have that, we will not get control of the virus.”
Sounding more like his Trump-appointed self, Giroir also said on “Meet the Press” that Dr. Anthony Fauci “is not 100% right” and that he doesn’t necessarily “have the whole national interest in mind,” Forbes reports.
Internal documents from the CDC warned that fully reopening schools would be the “highest risk” for spreading the coronavirus, according to a New York Times report, as the Trump administration continues to push for teachers and students getting back in classrooms, reports CNN.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Sunday managed to refer to federal guidelines for reopening schools as “common sense,” emphasizing though that the CDC’s recommendations were merely guidance, as she insisted that children needed to return to school this fall, reports Politico.
As CNN put it, DeVos has essentially made it clear that the administration’s position is: “school districts are basically on their own and that students should return to classes in person, regardless of the risks.”
The California Teachers Association, one of the largest and most powerful unions in the country, says it’s still worried about going back into schools. reports Politico. Gov. Gavin Newsom says schools need to attempt to open this fall, but the union is insisting on prolonging distance learning over forcing its more than 300,000 educators back into schools.
The WHO last week acknowledged that airborne transmission of “micro-droplets” could be causing coronavirus infections, but as CBS News reports, many researchers in Japan have long considered tiny, “aerosolized” as rapid-spreaders of COVID-19. The answer, scientists say, lies in ventilation.
A report on this topic from ScienceDirect asks: “How can airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors be minimized?”
Europe Plans To Use Climate Goals To Help Virus-Battered Economies
Facebook may block political ads ahead of November election
A Voice of America studio in Washington, D.C. Last week, the Trump administration began refusing to renew visas for Voice of America employees. (Jason Andrew for The New York Times)
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - The EU, for battling climate change and aiding economies
🦸♀️ - Facebook, if it blocks political ads prior to the election
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - environmental advocates
Europe is aiming to use its climate change goals to help revive economies hit by the coronavirus pandemic, Axios says. In “How Europe’s green pandemic recovery will push the rest of the world,” Amy Harder writes that the “European Union is the world’s third-largest emitting region after the U.S. and China,” and that its plans will potentially “push global corporate behavior and prod other governments by creating either templates to follow or protectionist battles (or both).” Many of these proposals come from the region’s Green Deal plan that it unveiled late last year, Harder says.
In the midst of being boycotted by hundreds of corporate advertisers over its inability to effectively control hate speech, Facebook is considering entirely blocking political candidates and groups from buying ads ahead of the November election, reports Bloomberg News.
Ad blackouts before elections are common in other parts of the world, including the U.K., where Facebook’s global head of policy, Nick Clegg, was once deputy prime minister, Bloomberg writes. A Facebook spokesperson reportedly declined to comment.
This is encouraging:
Beautiful News writes: We're changing the way the world is powered. Forever. The last decade saw 3x more investment in renewables than the previous one. Solar, wind and hydro are becoming the cheapest option for new generation. Billions of tons of emissions will be avoided, helping to fight the climate crisis.
Madeline Swegle, Navy’s first Black female Tactical Aircraft pilot
Washington NFL team agrees to change its offensive name
Savannah Kinzer reads a statement after leading a group of fellow employees in a walkout at Whole Foods in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Image)
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Madeline Swegle
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Those seeking the truth of 1921 Tulsa
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Black Lives Matter supporters
🦸♀️ - The Washington NFL team for FINALLY changing its offensive name
In response to a post that Lt. j.g. Madeline Swegle had completed naval flight school and would later this month receive the flight officer insignia known as the “Wings of Gold,” the U.S. Navy tweeted Thursday, “MAKING HISTORY!” The Navy has welcomed its first Black female Tactical Aircraft pilot, AP News reports. The Naval Air Training Command also tweeted that Swegle is the Navy’s “first known Black female TACAIR pilot.”
A test excavation for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre investigation for mass graves will resume next week, reports CNN. The excavation was announced in a release from the Tulsa Mayor’s office on Monday. “As a city, we are committed to exploring what happened in 1921 through a collective and transparent process—filling gaps in our city’s history and providing healing and justice to our community. In the past 99 years, no other agency or government entity has moved this far into an investigation that will seek truth into what happened in Tulsa in 1921,” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said in the release.
Employees at some of the largest chains in the U.S. are wearing Black Lives Matter face masks and shirts on the job, reports Business Insider. Employees at grocery stores including Publix and Whole Foods have spoken out after they were banned from wearing Black Lives Matter masks and anti-racism shirts.
“It is possible it's uncomfortable for people, but it's not political,” said Savannah Kinzer, who was sent home from work for wearing a BLM mask at a Whole Foods store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It's human rights. It is a simple, simple statement: Black lives matter, that's it. They matter.”
The Washington Redskins NFL team announced Monday it’s changing its name and dropping the Indian head logo, bowing to recent pressure from sponsors and decades of criticism that they are offensive to Native Americans, The Associated Press reports. Because they are indeed offensive.
Robert Mueller Pens Washington Post Op-Ed Slamming Stone’s Clemency
17 states sue Trump over international student rule
Robert Mueller (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
🦸♀️ - William Barr, for suggesting Trump not grant Stone clemency
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Robert Mueller
🦸♀️ - Lindsey Graham, for clearing the way for Mueller’s testimony
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Adam Schiff, critics of Trump getting Stone out of his prison time
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - States suing Trump over student visa restrictions
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Voter rights advocates, mail-in ballot supporters
An administration official told NBC News that Attorney General William Barr recommended against granting Stone clemency, and the Justice Department had nothing to do with Trump’s decision to commute his sentence.
Just more from the “it wasn’t me” branch of the government.
Robert Mueller wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post, in which he says, Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so. “The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands,” Mueller writes.
Following the op-ed in the Post, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Sunday that he will grant a request by Democrats to have former special counsel Robert Mueller testify about his investigation before the committee, reports CNN.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff became the latest lawmaker to criticize Donald Trump for commuting Roger Stone’s prison sentence, Fox News reports. “I think anyone who cares about the rule of law in this country is nauseated by the fact that the president has commuted the sentence of someone who willfully lied to Congress, covered up for the president, intimidated witnesses, obstructed the investigation,” Schiff said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “It shouldn't matter whether you’re Democrat or Republican. This should be offensive to you if you care about the rule of law.”
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia on Monday sued to block the Trump administration from stripping foreign students of visas if their schools move to online classes during the pandemic, reports The Hill.
“The Trump Administration didn’t even attempt to explain the basis for this senseless rule, which forces schools to choose between keeping their international students enrolled and protecting the health and safety of their campuses,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, whose office is leading the coalition of states suing the federal government.
An NPR analysis has found that in the primary elections held so far this year, at least 65,000 absentee or mail-in ballots have been rejected because they arrived past the deadline, often through no fault of the voter.
Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies election administration, points out that those using mail-in voting for the first time—especially young, Black and Latino voters—are more likely to have their ballots rejected because of errors. “That’s the sort of thing that makes me wary about what’s going to happen in November when we get an even larger influx of people who haven’t voted, or haven’t voted by mail in the past,” he says.
Hong Kong Voters Turn Out For Pro-Democracy Candidates
Democrats want access to ‘Presidential Daily Brief’ regarding Russian bounties
Joshua Wong (R) and fellow pro-democracy activists campaign during the primary which was held despite a warning that it could be in breach of a tough new security law imposed by Beijing (Isaac Lawrence/AFP)
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong + voter + protesters
🦸♀️ - Rubio, Cruz and others sanctioned for criticizing China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - Democrats seeking access to ‘Daily Briefings’
Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents lined up to cast ballots over the weekend in an unofficial poll to select the strongest pro-democracy candidates who will aim to seize control from pro-Beijing rivals for the first time, reports Guardian News. The vote might fall foul of the new national security law imposed by Beijing, According to senior Hong Kong officials, the vote might be squashed by Beijing’s new national security law, but residents visited 250 polling stations in a symbolic protest vote.
“Despite the threat of the national security law, there are still nearly 600,000 people coming out to vote," Au Nok-hin, one of the organizers of the primaries, said, reports The Hill. “We can see Hong Kongers are really brave.”
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Rep. Chris Smith and Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback are the targets of sanctions imposed by China. The four have been critical of the ruling Communist Party’s policies toward minority groups and people of faith. The sanctions are in response to similar actions taken by the U.S. last week against Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses against Muslims in the Xinjiang region, says The Associated Press.
Senate Democrats are demanding that Donald Trump hand over any daily intelligence briefings that addressed evidence that Russia paid Taliban-linked militants to assassinate U.S. troops, reports Politico.
In a letter to Trump on Friday, led by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the Democrats say access to the Presidential Daily Brief would shed light on his administration’s decision not to make any diplomatic or military response.
UN renews Syria aid via Turkey but one of two access points shut - Al Jazeera
“The worst is yet to come” - Corona Daily
The Tricky Math of Herd Immunity for Covid-19 - Wired
'You can't do that': Fox News host Wallace confronts DeVos on threat to redirect funds from schools - USA Today
CDC Employees Call Out Agency's 'Toxic Culture Of Racial Aggressions' - NPR
Health workers fear PPE shortage again amid coronavirus surge - Axios
Trump on private border wall segment: ‘It was only done to make me look bad’ - Politico
Fox News Media condemns ‘racist, sexist and homophobic’ behavior after staffer resigns over offensive posts - Fox News
US to reject nearly all Chinese claims in South China Sea - AP News
Sources:
New York reports lowest 3-day average coronavirus death toll since March 16 - CBS News
NYC reports zero coronavirus deaths for first time since pandemic hit - Axios
New York City Without Coronavirus Deaths Four Months After First Report - NBC News
HHS testing chief: 'We do expect deaths to go up' - Politico
Schools reopening: Internal CDC documents warn full reopening of schools is 'highest risk,' New York Times reports - CNNPolitics
Trump wears mask in public for first time during pandemic - AP News
Not dangerous: DeVos defends schools reopening according to CDC guidelines - Politico
California teachers fight back against pressure to reopen schools - Politico
Florida shatters largest single-day record of coronavirus infections in US while world sees cases spike - Fox News
U.S. Testing Czar: Fauci Doesn’t ‘Have The Whole National Interest In Mind’ - Forbes
Always polarizing on schools, Betsy DeVos brushes off coronavirus risks - CNN
White House seeks to discredit Fauci as coronavirus surges - NBC News
DeSantis downplayed coronavirus help from New York after Florida health department praised it - CNN
Health workers fear PPE shortage again amid coronavirus surge - Axios
Japan has long accepted COVID's airborne spread, and scientists say ventilation is key - CBS News
How can airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors be minimized? - ScienceDirect
Global Investment in Renewable Energy Is Rising - Beautiful News
How Europe’s green pandemic recovery will push the rest of the world - Axios
Facebook Mulls Political-Ad Blackout Ahead of U.S. Election - Bloomberg News
Report: Facebook considering political ad blackout ahead of election - Axios
US Navy welcomes 1st Black female Tactical Aircraft pilot - AP News
Test excavation for a potential 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre grave site will begin next week - CNN
Workers speak out against Black Lives Matter face mask bans - Business Insider
Washington’s NFL team drops ‘Redskins’ name after 87 years - AP News
Attorney General Barr told Trump he shouldn't grant Roger Stone clemency - CNBC
Opinion | Robert Mueller: Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so - The Washington Post
Lindsey Graham says he will ask Mueller to testify before Senate Judiciary Committee - CNN
Democrats and Republicans criticize Trump for commuting Roger Stone's prison sentence - Fox News
Lindsey Graham vows Mueller will testify after op-ed on Trump's clemency for ally Roger Stone - Independent
California sues Trump administration over student visa policy - Axios
Thousands Of Mail-Voting Ballots Rejected For Arriving Late - NPR
17 states sue Trump administration over foreign students rule - The Hill
'My civil right': Hong Kong citizens vote in unofficial pro-democracy poll - Guardian News
Almost 600K vote in Hong Kong pro-democracy primaries in protest against new security law - The Hill
China sanctions Cruz, Rubio, Smith, Brownback for criticism - AP News
Senate Dems demand Trump's daily intelligence briefings on Russian bounties - Politico