 | With growing calls for major police reforms and the arrest of a New York City police officer, momentum continues to build in nationwide protests. But the COVID-19 pandemic is also surging in many places in the U.S., though it’s too soon to know if the spike can be directly tied to the protests. |
|  | | | 1 Resting Place George Floyd, whose death catalyzed global demonstrations against racism and police brutality, is being laid to rest in Houston today, next to his mother. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden met with the Floyd family Monday, and said this morning: “I think what’s happened is one of those great inflection points in American history.”
| 2 Book Him A New York City police officer who was captured on video shoving a woman to the ground and cursing at her has been charged with assault. Vincent D’Andraia is the first New York City officer to face charges from clashes between police and protesters that began two weeks ago.
| 3 Uneven Spike As states have loosened stay-at-home orders and protesters have gathered en masse, coronavirus cases are spiking in some places. Since the start of June, 14 states and Puerto Rico have seen their highest-ever seven-day average of new cases, according to the Washington Post. These are mostly places not hit hard early in the pandemic, as the virus starts to show more force outside of major metropolitan areas. Around the globe, South Asia is becoming the new virus epicenter, while in Brazil the government faces accusations of withholding COVID-19 data.
| 4 Netflix 1, Trump 0 China and Russia aren’t the only rivals challenging America’s plans for a Space Force. Netflix, which launched its Steve Carell-led show called Space Force last month, is outflanking the U.S. government in the battle to secure trademark rights for the name in Europe, Mexico and Australia. |
|
|  | | | 5 DIY Offensive A pediatric surgeon in Philadelphia who wanted to fight the spread of COVID-19 in her community, Dr. Ala Stanford reached out to her city and her state. The response? “Nothing,” she says, so she took matters into her own hands, contacting her fellow Black doctors across the United States. The call to action was twofold: Did they have testing kits they could spare, and would they appear with her on Instagram Live to debunk misinformation about the virus? Read more on OZY. | 6 Anti-Virus Militias “Hamas” is Arabic for “Islamic Resistance Movement” against Israel. But it took the militant group only a day to ban Friday prayers and other public gatherings after the first coronavirus case in Gaza was detected in March. Hamas deployed its military wing to sanitize the streets, and the group has since built two quarantine facilities. They might seem like unlikely public health warriors. But a growing number of Islamist militias and political groups — many of them banned as terrorist organizations in the West — are publicly fighting the pandemic from South Asia to North Africa. Read more on OZY.
| 7 WHO Said What? World Health Organization leaders are scrambling to clarify comments about how asymptomatic people spread the coronavirus. Leaders drew a distinction between individuals who are “asymptomatic” (someone who never develops symptoms) and those who are “presymptomatic” (someone who will develop symptoms in the future). They said they believe it is “very rare” for an asymptomatic person to spread the virus, but conceded there remains a ton of uncertainty about how the infection travels. Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergency program, said today that “maybe we didn’t use the most elegant words” at Monday’s press conference.
|
|
|  | | | 8 Fair-Use Tussle With kids stuck at home during the pandemic, celebrities and authors are flooding social media with videos of them reading treasured children’s books aloud. The problem? These public initiatives might inspire schoolteachers and others to dive into read-aloud projects. And without the express approval of the copyright holder, such activities could be illegal. Read more on OZY.
| 9 Selfless Sikhs Seva, or service, is a core tenet of Sikhism, and over the past two months, the Sikh community across America has fed hundreds of thousands of meals to people in economic strife because of the pandemic. More recently, they’ve been visiting Black Lives Matter protests, handing out water and food.
| 10 Fine Dining … in Space Imagine a seven-course meal that comes as an interactive experience that makes you feel like you’re in outer space. From Tokyo to Phoenix and Mumbai to Copenhagen, entrepreneurs, chefs, artists and tech whizzes are coming together to change the way you eat. Multisensory experiences, where several senses are stimulated during the course of a meal, are emerging as the future of the fine dining industry — with exclusive events that can cater to a socially distant world. Read more on OZY.
| 11 What the Doctor Ordered Make the choice to stop doomscrolling for a couple of hours and just … laugh? What’s Up, Doc? is a mostly forgotten screwball comedy starring Barbra Streisand that just happens to contain the best chase scene ever filmed (not an exaggeration). |
|
|  | | | 12 Strong Words OZY’s riveting town hall show The Time Is Now: Race and Resolution is now available to stream on the A&E, HISTORY and Lifetime websites and apps. Here are some highlights from our celebrity panelists: | 13 Amanda Seales, activist, comedian and actress — “Being Black in America is a very stressful job. And it’s one we don’t even get paid to do! We didn’t even sign up for it.” | 14 Alzo Slade, reporter at VICE — “From liberals, there’s a strong false sense of intellectual and moral superiority that leads them to believe that they can’t be racist. That leads to a benign racism that expresses itself through microaggressions that are just as dangerous as the hooded white man walking toward me with a tiki torch.” | 15 Jemele Hill, contributing writer at The Atlantic — “Until [protesting quarterback] Colin Kaepernick has a job, I don’t want to hear any apologies from [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell.” |
|
| | | | |
|
