Bubba Wallace: Nascar driver's defiant tweet over Trump's 'hate'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53315148

African-American Nascar driver Bubba Wallace has sent out a tweet condemning words of "hate from the president of the United States".

Wallace is the sole full-time black driver in the US racing organisation and was instrumental in it banning the Confederate flag from races.

A noose was later found in his garage but an FBI inquiry determined "no federal crime was committed".

President Trump called the story a hoax and suggested Wallace should apologise.

Wallace has been a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has come to the fore since the death in police custody of African American George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.

 

More than 1,000 new coronavirus cases on Monday as spike continues

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-israel-passes-30000-cases-634021

 

Parts of the country will once again be shut down or restricted after the government announced a new set of directives on Monday. They are the first such restrictions since two months ago, when Israel thought it had defeated the virus.

Event halls, clubs, bars, gyms, public pools and cultural performances will be closed. Restaurants will be limited to seating 20 patrons inside and 30 outside. Synagogues must have no more than 19 prayer attendees.

Mary Trump's book to be published early amid 'extraordinary interest'

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/06/mary-trump-book-release-date-early-donald-trump

A tell-all book by Donald Trump’s niece will be published two weeks ahead of schedule and will argue that the president suffered “child abuse” in the early years of his life.

 

Trump criticizes NASCAR ban on Confederate flags, attacks Black driver

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/06/trump-nascar-bubba-wallace-confederate-flag-349730

Donald Trump's campaign spent the weekend fending off criticism of a pair of presidential speeches panned as racially divisive and inflammatory.

On Monday, the president undercut his own team's efforts at damage control with a single tweet — criticizing NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate flag from its races and demanding the sport’s top Black driver apologize for an incident that, by all accounts, was not his fault.

 

Fox News edits Trump out of photo with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — but not Melania

https://www.salon.com/2020/07/06/fox-news-edits-trump-out-of-photo-with-jeffrey-epstein-and-ghislaine-maxwell--but-not-melania/

 

Fox News came under fire after it bizarrely cropped President Donald Trump out of a photo of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and indicted alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell but left fir

Epstein and Maxwell frequently socialized with prominent figures in New York and elsewhere, including Trump.

"I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy," Trump told New York Magazine in 2002. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Epstein has been linked to a number of other wealthy and prominent people, including former President Bill Clinton.

st lady Melania Trump in the image.

McEnany pressed on Trump's claim that 99% of COVID cases are harmless, says it was 'factual'

https://www.foxnews.com/media/kayleigh-mcenany-trump-covid-cases-harmless

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday defended President Trump’s claim that "99%" of coronavirus cases are harmless.

Fox News anchor Sandra Smith asked whether it was "helpful" for the president to characterize the virus in that way, pointing out that FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn did not back up the statement in a subsequent interview.

“The president was making a factual point that most people will recover from coronavirus who get it, that there are a very small fraction of people who fall victim to coronavirus in a fatal way,” McEnany told “America’s Newsroom.”

Fox News says it 'mistakenly' cropped Trump out of photo featuring Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/06/media/fox-news-trump-crop-epstein-maxwell/index.html

Fox News said on Monday that it "mistakenly" cropped President Trump out of a photograph that featured the accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

"On Sunday, July 5, a report on Ghislaine Maxwell during Fox News Channel's 'America's News HQ' mistakenly eliminated President Donald Trump from a photo alongside then Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell," a spokesperson for the network said. 

The Fox News spokesperson added, "We regret the error."

Maxwell was charged by federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday for her alleged role in recruiting and sexually abusing underage girls as part of a years-long criminal enterprise.

 

Trump "Testing is OVERRATED and not needed!" Trump Impersonator John Di Domenico

Trump Tweets: Watch Newsmax, OANN – Not Fox!

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/trump-newsmax/2020/07/05/id/975809/

President Donald Trump sent out a tweet Sunday slamming Fox News as he urged his followers to watch Newsmax TV and OANN instead.

"Fox News weekend afternoons is the worst! Getting into CNN and MSDNC territory," the president wrote on Twitter.

"Watch @OANN and @Newsmax instead. Much better!"

Trump added in another tweet on Sunday that Fox News "gladly puts up the phony suppression polls as soon as they come out. We are leading in the REAL polls because people are sick & tired of watching the Democrat run cities, in all cases, falling apart. Also, now 96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Another 2016!”

 

Haredi rabbi warns: 'Yeshiva students may be on the streets'

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283070

Rabbi Yitzhak Koldetzki, the son-in-law of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, called for a gathering of supplications and prayer in order to prevent the further deterioration of those who spend their days in yeshivas, Kikar Hashabbat reported.

Due to closures caused by the coronavirus outbreak, yeshiva students - like other students - have spent only minimal time in their yeshiva settings over the past few months. As a result, parents and educators are struggling in the face of a reality in which the spiritual level of their students has radically declined, in some cases to a "critical level."

Kikar Hashabbat quoted Rabbi Koldetzki as telling a small number of people that "the situation in general is much lighter, and there are less seriously ill [people]."

He added that "unfortunately there are certain young men who do not live in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, who have not come to yeshiva. We are concerned that young men, a very large number of them, have not returned and have fallen into the streets. This is a life-threatening situation, when they do not come to the yeshivas."

"What the Zionists have not managed to do in 70 years, in these trials we have lost young men. We must pray that they are all healthy," he mourned, calling for special prayers until the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul.

Drain the swamp! Lobbyists connected to Trump reap windfall in coronavirus aid money

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-07-06/lobbyists-connected-trump-reap-windfall-coronavirus-aid-money

Forty lobbyists with ties to President Trump helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal coronavirus aid, among them five former administration officials whose work potentially violates Trump’s own ethics policy, according to a report.

 The lobbyists identified Monday by the watchdog group Public Citizen either worked in the Trump executive branch, served on his campaign, were part of the committee that raised money for inaugural festivities or were part of his presidential transition. Many are donors to Trump’s campaigns, and some are prolific fundraisers for his reelection.

Phoenix mayor says the federal government is 'declaring victory while we're still in crisis mode' as Arizona sees the highest per-capita infection rate in the US

https://www.businessinsider.com/phoenix-mayor-victory-while-state-in-crisis-mode-2020-7

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said Sunday that the state of Arizona opened up too quickly and criticized the federal government's response as Arizona battles the current highest infection rate per capita in the US.

Gallego said the state was struggling to administer COVID-19 tests, and said some people in the state had waited up to eight hours to get tested for the virus. She called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist the state in its testing efforts.

"We were told they're moving away from that, which feels like they're declaring victory while we're still in crisis mode," she said.

 

Trump’s ’99 percent’ coronavirus comment finds little support

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/05/hahn-coronavirus-trump-infection-348954

The president may have been referring to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistic this week that the hospitalization rate is 102.5 per 100,000. But the long-term health ramifications of the coronavirus remain unknown, and mortality rates continue to vary greatly for reasons that are not immediately clear. There are now more than 2.8 million diagnosed cases in the United States and more than 129,000 deaths.

Trump Falsely Claims ‘99 Percent’ of Virus Cases Are ‘Totally Harmless’

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-factcheck.html

 

False. No matter how you define harmless, most public health experts and respected coronavirus disease models would flatly contradict Mr. Trump’s assessment.

Experts say the president appears to have seized only on a death rate estimate of 1 percent or less that does not capture the entire impact of the disease, and excludes a multitude of thousands who have spent weeks in the hospital or weeks at home with mild to moderate symptoms that still caused debilitating health problems.

Patients fortunate enough to survive a lengthy hospitalization and weeks in an intensive care unit or on a ventilator face a long road to recovery. Many will suffer debilitating long-term effects, including impaired lung function, neurological problems and cognitive deficits, and some may require lifelong care and not regain full independence.