You swine! German nudist chases wild boar that stole laptop Guardian (resilc)
Genomic Study Reveals New Zealand’s Tuatara Is Like No Other Animal on The Planet ScienceAlert (Kevin W)
Canada’s Last Fully Intact Arctic Ice Shelf Collapses HuffPost (Bob H)
#COVID-19
Coronavirus wasn’t bad enough, so now there’s a new virus outbreak in China BGR (David L)
Gates Foundation Teams Up With Vaccine Maker To Produce $3 Covid-19 Shots Wall Street Journal
Science/Medicine
Corona: Cutting Corners in the Race for a Vaccine Der Spiegel (resilc)
Revealed: UK’s rapid Covid test not yet approved by regulators Guardian (resilc)
COVID-19 Is Raging. How Safe Is Your Backyard Party? Quanta (David L)
Wildlife deaths from coronavirus disinfectant use alarm scientists National Geographic (David L)
US
That Georgia Teen Who Outed Her Mask-Less Classmates Just Got Her Suspension Revoked Vice
‘It’s just madness’: bikers throng South Dakota town despite Covid threat Guardian (Kevin W)
New York schools get the greenlight to reopen Financial Times
‘It’s okay when it comes out of Chuck Schumer’s mouth?’ Democrat senator says schools must reopen or economy suffers RT (Kevin W). America is exceptional again! We expect to get results different from every other country in the world. Even most school districts in retrograde Alabama will be online only for what is hoped to be only an initial period. New York will prove to be a test as to how low infections have to be before school openings don’t wind up making matters worse.
Europe
Australia
Security guards hired for hotel quarantine in an attempt at social inclusion Sydney Morning Herald (DH)
Political Responses
Coronavirus talks collapse as negotiators fail to reach deal The Hill. This is beyond terrible.
NEW: White House looking at using leftover/unspent FEMA funds to pay unemployment benefits unilaterally, 2 ppl familiar say
No final decision made/things are in flux
Experts question how WH can legally pay UI benefits w/o Congress@ericawerner @karoun https://t.co/q341avJbu4
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) August 7, 2020
China?
Trump escalates anti-China campaign with Hong Kong sanctions Financial Times
Trump Blew Up More Than Just TikTok and WeChat Bloomberg
Banning TikTok: Are We Reproducing the Chinese Internet in America? Matt Stoller (Chuck L)
Trump advisers urge delisting of U.S.-listed Chinese firms that fail to meet audit standards Reuters (resilc)
Old Blighty
Clive Ponting, Hero Craig Murray (Chuck L)
Lebanon: a nation brought to its knees Financial Times
Was there a conspiracy by the Swiss courts and Attorney General`s office? Lucy Komisar. Switzerland has laws that make even saying bad things about banks a crime. A friend who is a famous international tax expert will not go to Switzerland about of concern about facing arrest for having lecture about Swiss bank secrecy.
New Cold War
#US Secretary of Defense Mark #Esper slips up, says #NATO should share burden to ‘deter #Russia and avoid peace in #Europe‘ pic.twitter.com/mMwqQmDo3x
— Ruptly (@Ruptly) July 30, 2020
State Department: We’re responsible for Russian, Iranian text message campaign Reuters (Bill B)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
U.S. Government Contractor Embedded Software in Apps to Track Phones Wall Street Journal (David L)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Could a World War II Shipwreck Cause the Next Beirut-Like Explosion? Popular Mechanics (resilc)
Government’s PACER Fees Are Too High, Federal Circuit Says Bloomberg. About time.
2020
Half of voters in a recent WSJ/NBC News poll say there is no chance they will support President Trump, and 37% say they would never back Joe Biden.
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) July 31, 2020
How South Korea Conducted Its Elections During the Pandemic: A Comparative Case Study Lawfare (David L)
If Biden Picks Rice as VP, It Strengthens His Worst Instincts Paul Jay
Susan Rice’s Considerable Past Fossil Fuel Investments Too Much Information
Turnout for Michigan’s August primary shatters records. What does that mean for November? Michigan Live
https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2020/08/07/dan-gilberts-fortune-explodes-to-34-billion-impoverished-region-still-paying-for-arena-upgrades
Police State Watch
George Floyd: US protesters charged as ‘gang’ face life sentence BBC (David L)
Coronavirus Clobbers Uber, Leading To $1.8 Billion Quarterly Loss ars technica
To Head Off Regulators, Google Makes Certain Words Taboo The Markup (DK)
Facebook Removes QAnon Conspiracy Group With 200,000 Members BBC
Private Equity Firm Bought Ancestry, and Its Trove of DNA, for $4.7B CNN. Blackstone.
Toshiba Formally and Finally Exits Laptop Business The Register. My first laptop was a Toshiba and it was a great machine by the standards of that day.
Guillotine Watch
Dan Gilbert’s Fortune Explodes to $34 Billion, Impoverished Region Still Paying for Arena Upgrades Cleveland Scene (Carla R)
After Elon Musk criticised Bernie Sanders’ brand of socialism, Sanders took him to task for taking billions of dollars in government support Business Insider (Kevin W)
‘Billionaire Wilderness’ author on inequality in Teton County, Wyoming Business Insider (resilc)
Class Warfare
America Is About To Feel Like A 3rd World Nation Ian Welsh (Bob K)
‘Stakeholder’ Capitalism Seems Mostly for Show Wall Street Journal (David L). Duh, but from an interesting source.
Antidote du jour (CV):
And a bonus (guurst):
This is one of my favourite fish and I was rather fortunate to get a pic of them mating; you can see some of the eggs being transferred. This was in the Philippines. pic.twitter.com/7QFpDjdVHo
— Dave Harasti (@daveharasti) August 2, 2020
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
