Items of Interest - Doug Pierre

This move comes a month after the company  announced  its racial equality initiative. Google chief Sundar Pichai revealed back then that Google will contribute $175 million toward creating economic opportunities for Black businesses and workers. As part of that initiative, Google for Startups has also unveiled its inaugural Accelerator for Black Founders class. Twelve black founders will train under Google and other industry experts on technical challenges, business growth and outside investment opportunities to help them grow their organizations.   https://www.engadget.com/google-black-owned-attribute-businesses-133032879.html

No matter where you are, where you’ve been and where you’re going, it’s always good to see home.  And we all love seeing pictures of our home planet, as seen from space. The latest image of the Terran System comes from China’s Mars mission,  Tianwen-1,  which launched on July 23. It captured an image of the Earth and Moon, seen from about 1.2 million km from Earth, according to the  China National Space Administration (CNSA). It joins a great group of photos taken of our “pale blue dot” from missions like Voyager, Cassini, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and of course, the Apollo missions to the Moon.  You can see a gallery of Earth-Moon images as seen from other words here. https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/earthglobalsurveyor.jpg https://www.universetoday.com/147278/chinas-mars-mission-took-this-picture-of-the-earth-and-moon/

Kodak, once an iconic American brand  valued at $30 billion , has been in dire straits for more than a decade. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and emerged in 2013. But Kodak, which built its business selling film, never successfully transitioned to digital.  After bankruptcy, Kodak's old stock was worthless, but the newly issued shares peaked at over $36 in early 2014. But since then, it has rapidly declined, with the price mired well below $3 since March. In recent years Kodak has been  selling its patents, buildings, and other assets  for cash. In 2018, the company attempted a pivot to cryptocurrency.  Then, late Tuesday afternoon, everything changed. President Trump  announced  that he was "using the Defense Production Act to provide a $765 million loan to support the launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals." Kodak would now "produce generic active pharmaceutical ingredients," reducing the country's reliance on China. Trump described it as "one of the most i

Whether you are for or against the U.S. keeping troops in Germany, you should be concerned about the reason the President is reducing troop presence in that country. The Pentagon has started to execute President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw one-third of the U.S. troops in Germany—reducing their numbers from 36,000 to 24,000. Three things about this move are already clear. First, far from being “a major strategic and positive shift,” as Secretary of Defense Mark Esper characterized it at a news conference Wednesday, it is purely an outburst of Trump’s angst and revenge, aimed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for various slights against him. Second, the strategic shift it bodes would not be at all positive for the NATO alliance—and, contrary to Trump’s intentions, it would cost the United States more money. Finally, in part for those reasons, defense officials are slow-rolling the pullout, to the point where only a small fraction of the troops will have left Germany by this fall’s

Sweden’s approach to tackling the coronavirus was strikingly different than the rest of the world’s. Rather than shutting down schools, restaurants, and gyms to curb community spread of the deadly virus, Sweden decided to leave its doors open, instead of enforcing most forms of social distancing. Only gatherings of over 50 people are  still banned . Schools have remained open for students under the age of 16. In short, Sweden let its citizens use their own common sense, issuing guidelines rather than orders. But the approach isn’t paying off. Sweden’s mortality rate is substantially higher than for its neighbors Denmark and Norway, at  442 deaths per million  compared to just 100 and 44 respectively. Per capita, Sweden’s death rate is even  higher  than the United States, which stands at 321 deaths per million. Herd immunity — letting the virus spread to enough of the population that protective antibodies would keep it from spreading further — is still a distant dream. Only 7.3 percent

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1288804582143987712?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=2a2293db4f-briefing-dy-20200730&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-2a2293db4f-45561338

Research suggests one of the closest known ancestors of the virus that causes Covid-19 emerged in bats between 40 and 70 years ago. It has been poised for human crossover for some time, the scientists said. And this casts further doubt on conspiracy theories that the virus causing Covid-19 was bioengineered or escaped from a laboratory, they added. Prof David Robertson, of the University of Glasgow, worked on the study, published in the journal Nature Microbiology. He said that while Sars-CoV-2 (the pandemic coronavirus) is genetically very close to the nearest known bat viruses, they are separated in time by several decades. "That suggests that these viruses with potential to emerge in humans have been around for some time," he told BBC News. "We really do need to understand where or how the virus has crossed into the human population. If we now believe there's this generalist virus circulating in bats we need to get better at monitoring that." The work points

Census head not told about Trump order By Mike Schneider ASSOCIATED PRESS U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham testified Wednesday that he wasn’t informed ahead of time about President Donald Trump’s order seeking to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the process of redrawing congressional districts. Dillingham testified during an emergency congressional hearing that he was unaware of anyone from the Census Bureau playing a role in the order that civil rights groups have called unconstitutional. The bureau is collecting the head count data that will be used to redraw the districts. The Democratic-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Reform held the hearing after Trump issued a memorandum last week seeking to exclude people in the country illegally from being included during the district redrawing process. Civil rights group have filed multiple lawsuits challenging the memorandum as unconstitutional and an attempt to limit the power of Latinos and immigrants of co

The killer of one of Uganda's best known mountain gorillas, Rafiki, has been jailed for 11 years. Felix Byamukama pleaded guilty to illegally entering a protected area and killing a gorilla. Byamukama had said the gorilla attacked him and he killed Rafiki in self defence, according to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). Mountain gorillas are endangered with just over 1,000 in existence and the UWA said "Rafiki has received justice".   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53592216#

Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins is seeking permission from Commissioners Court to use NRG Arena as a headquarters for the fall presidential election, converting the expansive space for voting, ballot counting and a call center. The proposal would use $5.1 million of the  $12 million  former county clerk Diane Trautman secured to run elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.     http://www.offthekuff.com/wp/?p=96633

Seven babies were stillborn at Harare Central Hospital in Zimbabwe on Monday night after urgent treatment was delayed because of staffing issues, two doctors have confirmed to the BBC. Nurses are on strike nationwide because of a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other concerns, and the maternity wards were overwhelmed. One doctor said Monday's deaths were "the tip of the iceberg". The health sector has recently been hit by a Covid-19 procurement scandal.

Facebook and Twitter have taken down the viral video in which she appears, saying it violates their policies about misinformation - but not before it was retweeted by Donald Trump and one of his sons. The US president defended himself, saying he found Dr Immanuel, who was born in Cameroon and is based in the Texan city of Houston, "very impressive". "She said that she had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients, I thought her voice was an important voice but I know nothing about her," he said on Tuesday. Dr Immanuel, who is also a Christian pastor, gave a speech on the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington, captured in a video first published by right-wing website Breitbart on Monday. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53579773

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a long record of invading countries, funding proxy wars, crushing dissent, and violating human rights. When the United States denounces these crimes, Putin, like his Soviet predecessors, accuses us of hypocrisy. But in this propaganda war, Putin has an ally his forebears never enjoyed: the president of the United States. Donald Trump, elected in 2016  with Russia’s help , consistently defends Russia’s atrocities by arguing that we’re no better. Trump has known for  at least a month —and was briefed in writing  long before then —about U.S. intelligence that Russia paid bounties to Afghan militants to kill our troops. But in an  HBO interview  with Jonathan Swan of Axios, Trump admits that when he spoke to Putin last Thursday, he didn’t ask about the bounties. Trump says he didn’t bring them up because he didn’t believe the intelligence. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/trumps-dismissal-russian-bounties-treachery.html?via=rss

"I get along with him very well and I agree with a lot of what he's said," Trump insisted. "It's interesting: he's got a very good approval rating. And I like that, it's good," he went on. "Because remember: he's working for this administration. He's working with us. We could have gotten other people. We could have gotten somebody else. It didn't have to be Dr. Fauci. He's working with our administration. And for the most part we've done what he and others -- and Dr. Birx and others -- have recommended." Trump continued: "And he's got this high approval rating. So why don't I have a high approval rating with respect -- and the administration -- with respect to the virus? We should have it very high." "So it sort of is curious," Trump said, "a man works for us, with us, very closely, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx also, very highly thought of -- and yet, they're highly thought of, but nobody l

The Trump administration  announced  on Tuesday that it will continue to defy a federal court order compelling the full restoration of DACA, the Obama-era program that allows 700,000 immigrants to live and work in the United States legally. By doing so, the administration has chosen to flout a decision by the Supreme Court, effectively rejecting the judiciary’s authority to say what the law is.   https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/daca-donald-trump-supreme-court.html?via=rss

A former leader of the department says Trump is politicizing the agency and putting the nation at risk. By  Michael Chertoff Mr. Chertoff served as the secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/opinion/homeland-security-portland-trump.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

What You Need To Know About The Battle of Portland   https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/07/20/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-battle-of-portland/

Lawmakers Honor an Icon