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IMPORTANT
| | | | | Casting Its Webb | Biden Gives Sneak Preview of New Telescope’s Power, More Pics Due Today Approval ratings were sky-high at the White House Monday evening as President Joe Biden revealed the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The picture, the deepest and most detailed infrared view yet of the universe, shows light from distant galaxies that’s been traveling for over 13 billion years — since a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang. And the telescope’s images are only going to get older and more incredible. “We can see possibilities no one has ever seen before,” Biden said. The event was a preview of today’s reveal of further images at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. (Sources: NYT, BBC) |
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| | | Oh No, Joe | Biden’s Approval Ratings Plumb New Depths Closer to home, the president is having a much harder time. A New York Times/Siena College poll shows 64% of Democratic voters would prefer a new candidate in 2024, and his overall job approval rating is just 33%. Digging into the poll’s details, a whopping 94% of Democrats under 30 say Biden shouldn’t run again, with most crediting his poor performance or their preference for a more progressive candidate. Older Democrats, meanwhile, see Biden’s age — he turns 82 in 2024 — as a major stumbling block. He’ll be hoping Democrats rally around him if Donald Trump nabs the GOP nomination. (Sources: NYT, WaPo) |
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| | | Under Pressure | Ukraine Braces for Fresh Bombardment, West for Deeper Energy Crisis After the death toll from the Russian attack on an apartment building in Chasiv Yar rose to 34, Ukrainian officials said they were expecting more of the same as Russia pushes to seize Donetsk. Moscow already controls Luhansk, the other half of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland. Elsewhere, fault lines started to show in Western interpretations of sanctions on Russian fossil fuels. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Canada’s decision to return a repaired gas turbine to Germany was tantamount to a weakening of sanctions. And the U.S. warned global oil prices will skyrocket if a proposed price cap on Russian oil isn’t adopted. (Sources: CTV News, Bloomberg, WaPo) |
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| | | Weak End for Bernie | Disgraced Former F1 Boss Faces Massive Tax Fraud Trial Bernie Ecclestone’s judgment has been found wanting. Again. The ex-Formula One boss — who famously said he’d “take a bullet” for “first-class person” Vladimir Putin — faces a criminal trial on charges of fraud and false representation. British tax authorities said Ecclestone, who ran the racing league for almost 40 years, didn’t declare overseas assets to the tune of $475 million. The taxman “is on the side of honest taxpayers and we will take tough action wherever we suspect tax fraud,” said fraud investigator Simon York. “Our message is clear — no one is beyond our reach.” Ecclestone’s first hearing is scheduled for Aug. 22. (Source: The Guardian) |
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| | | Briefly | Here are some things you should know about today: Final farewell. Four days after his assassination, family and close friends attended the private funeral of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. Large crowds lined the streets of Tokyo to watch the hearse’s passage. (Source: CNN) Going nowhere. Sri Lankan immigration officials announced Tuesday that they’d stopped the president’s brother, former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, from leaving the island nation. (Source: Reuters) Fireworks expected. The Jan. 6 inquest will convene Tuesday evening to highlight the way violent right-wing extremists heeded former President Donald Trump’s “siren call” to come to Washington to overturn the election. (Source: AP) |
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INTRIGUING
| | | Tough One | Roe v. Wade Forces Some Students to Reconsider College Choices Nina Huang plays flute and hopes to become a doctor or lawyer, so Ohio’s Oberlin College seemed the perfect fit. But the 16-year-old California native just scratched it from her list, saying, “I don’t want to go to school in a state where there is an abortion ban.” It’s unclear whether access to abortion will significantly impact college applications — but on an individual level it’s already happening. “Some of our students have explicitly stated that they will not apply to colleges and universities in states which may infringe on their access to reproductive rights,” said Daniel Santos of college counseling firm Prepory. (Source: Reuters) |
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| | | Second Thoughts | Meet the Whistleblower Behind the Massive ‘Uber Files’ Leak Hours after the leak of 124,000 documents detailing how Uber used underhanded tactics to break into tightly regulated markets, the man behind the leak went public. Among whistleblowers, Mark MacGann cuts a curious figure. Not only was he a very senior executive at Uber between 2014 and 2016, but he also actively participated in many of the shenanigans he’s exposing. It took him a while to realize the firm had “sold a lie” and a couple more years to work out how best to expose it. But he said, “There’s no statute of limitations on doing the right thing.” (Source: The Guardian) |
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| | | | | Manhattanhenge | New Yorkers, Tonight’s Your Last Chance to Catch the Phenomenon Four times a year the setting sun aligns perfectly with the Manhattan street grid, suffusing the urban canyons with a peachy glow before slipping perpendicularly beyond the horizon. And today at 8:21 p.m. is the last time it’ll happen this year. Unlike at Stonehenge in England, the phenomenon doesn’t occur on the summer solstice, and it’s entirely accidental — but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth checking out. Manhattanhenge, a name coined by NYC native Neil deGrasse Tyson, is best viewed from broad east-west thoroughfares — and the farther east, the better. Let’s just hope it’s not cloudy this evening. (Source: AP) |
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| | | Into the Abyss | US Tourist Falls Into Mount Vesuvius While Trying to Retrieve Phone Who gave this family passports? The unnamed 23-year-old and his relatives didn’t buy tickets to see the Italian volcano responsible for destroying the Roman city of Pompeii, and they took a path that was clearly marked as off-limits and extremely dangerous. Once at the 4,202-foot summit, our young hero tried to snap a selfie at the crater’s edge but ended up dropping his phone. Instead of quitting while he was marginally behind, he tried to fetch the device and fell into the crater, sustaining minor injuries. Local guides abseiled to his rescue — and the whole family now faces trespassing charges. (Source: The Guardian) |
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| | | Just Not Cricket | Indian Police Bust Fake Cricket League Aimed at Russian Gamblers Four people have been arrested for orchestrating a low-budget imitation of the lucrative Indian Premier League that saw rank amateurs stage matches on a dusty wasteland in Gujarat. A gang headed by a “Russia-based mastermind” paid laborers $5 per game to don replica uniforms and play cricket to their tune. After luring Russians into betting on the matches, the gang used walkie-talkies to tell the fake umpire to “signal the bowler and batsman to hit a six, four or get out,” said Inspector Bhavesh Rathod. The “tournament” had reached the “quarterfinals” and netted $3,800 in bets when the arrests were made. (Sources: BBC, The Guardian) |
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