Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• Treating the Unvaccinated - In Utah, and across the U.S., doctors are facing a wave of preventable COVID deaths—and trying to convince the hesitant that “it doesn’t have to be this way.” - link

• The Assassination of Haiti’s President - Jovenel Moïse’s family deserves justice for his horrific killing. So do all of the Haitian families who suffered during his rule. - link

• “You’re Gonna Have a Fucking War”: Mark Milley’s Fight to Stop Trump from Striking Iran - Inside the extraordinary final-days conflict between the former President and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs. - link

• What the “Creator Economy” Promises—and What It Actually Does - A lattice of new platforms and tools purports to empower online creators. In reality, it’s turning digital content into gig work. - link

• Vienna Is the New Havana Syndrome Hot Spot - Roughly two dozen possible new cases have been reported by U.S. spies and diplomats in the Austrian capital, more than in any other city except Havana itself. - link

From Vox

• A federal judge just declared DACA unlawful. Here’s what that means. -

  

  The decision halts DHS’s ability to accept new DACA applicants.

  On Friday, a federal judge in Texas blocked an Obama-era program protecting undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children from deportation, halting the program’s ability to accept new applicants and once again throwing the lives of more than 600,000 people into tumult.

  In his 77-page opinion, district court Judge Andrew Hanen concluded that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, is unlawful because it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs federal rulemaking, by evading the normal “notice and comment” process in adopting new rules.

  Hanen’s decision doesn’t immediately affect the 616,030 people, often known as DREAMers, who are currently protected under DACA — but it does mean that the Department of Homeland Security can no longer approve new DACA applications or grant applicants the protections DACA provides.

Hanen also emphasized Friday that “neither this order nor the accompanying injunction requires DHS or the Department of Justice to take any immigration, deportation, or criminal action against any DACA recipient, applicant, or any other individual that it would not otherwise take.”

DACA not only protects undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, but allows them to work in the US. DACA protections are renewable and valid for two years at a time.

A coalition of nine states, led by Texas, filed the lawsuit challenging DACA’s legality in 2018, according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF.

Currently, some 81,000 first-time DACA applications are pending with US Citizenship and Immigration Services as of the end of June, according to CBS News. All of those applicants, however, are now in limbo following Hanen’s decision and pending appeals.

As Vox’s Ian Millhiser explained in December, the Trump administration previously curtailed DACA in an earlier, failed attempt to end it outright, and new applications surged after it was fully reinstated in December — though USCIS has been slow to process the new influx of applicants, resulting in the current backlog.

The Texas ruling has already been met with condemnations from the White House, immigrants’ rights groups, and Democrats in Congress.

In a statement Friday, the Home Is Here Coalition, which includes immigrant advocacy groups like United We Dream, described Hanen’s decision as “cruel and malicious.”

“This decision is a reminder that DACA has never been enough to protect immigrant communities who continue to be at risk of deportation,” the group said.

The Biden administration has already promised to appeal Friday’s decision and reiterated that DHS “plans to issue a proposed rule concerning DACA in the near future.”

President Joe Biden also called for a “permanent solution” for DREAMers in a statement released by the White House on Saturday.

“I have repeatedly called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, and I now renew that call with the greatest urgency,” Biden said. “It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear.”

If signed into law, the American Dream and Promise Act, which passed the House earlier this year, would provide “conditional permanent resident status” for several categories of immigrants, including DREAMers and Temporary Protected Status beneficiaries, putting them on the path to citizenship.

DACA’s existence has always been tenuous

For many, Friday’s DACA ruling doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Hanen, a George W. Bush appointee who has been described as possibly “the most anti-immigrant judge in the United States,” has made his feelings on DACA clear well before Friday’s ruling. In 2018, he opined that, “if the nation truly wants a DACA program, it is up to Congress to say so” — and even aside from Hanen’s particular feelings, DACA has been under attack virtually since its inception in 2012.

As former Vox senior correspondent Dara Lind has explained, DACA has its origins during Congress’ failure in 2010 to pass the DREAM Act, which would have created a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who entered the US illegally as children.

Despite failing in the Senate, the DREAM Act gave a name to those immigrants — DREAMers — and after its 2010 defeat, President Barack Obama attempted to address their plight via executive authority.

According to Lind,

Obama claimed that the immigrants who would be eligible for legalization under it weren’t being deported anyway, since his administration was targeting “high-priority” immigrants (like those with criminal records) rather than “low-priority” immigrants who’d lived quietly in the US for years. But federal immigration agents were still deporting “low-priority” immigrants, including DREAMers.

So in summer 2012, rather than relying on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to protect immigrants by declining to deport them, the administration decided to allow DREAMers to apply for protection from deportation themselves.

In June 2012, President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It allowed young unauthorized immigrants who meet certain criteria to apply for a commitment from the federal government for “deferred action” — that is, a commitment not to initiate deportation proceedings — for two years. Successful applicants also received a work permit.

Subsequent attempts to expand the program during the Obama administration were blocked, however, and President Donald Trump launched a renewed assault on DACA upon taking office.

The Trump administration moved to end DACA outright in September 2017, but ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act — the same statute Hanen ruled DACA itself to be in violation of on Friday.

In a June 2020 decision, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, the Supreme Court concluded that the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA failed to consider the interests of the more than 600,000 people affected by the change and thus was “arbitrary and capricious” and a violation of the APA. Still, the Court left the door open for subsequent attempts to end the program.

Following that decision, the Trump administration also moved to stop accepting new DACA applicants and to impose other limits on the program, though those measures were reversed by a federal judge in New York last year.

As a result of the back-and-forth between the courts and the Trump administration, DACA recipients, who have lived their entire adult lives in the US, have long been stuck in an uncertain position — something which many lawmakers were quick to point out after Friday’s decision.

“Not a surprise, just a painful reminder that we need to stop relying on temporary immigration fixes,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said in a tweet Friday. “Congress must seize the moment and any and all opportunities to finally provide a pathway to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants.”

Congress has tried and failed to find a solution for DREAMers

Menendez is right: Though DACA itself has been subject to years of controversy as a matter of executive authority, it would be relatively straightforward for Congress to provide a permanent legislative fix for the more than 600,000 Dreamers who are currently part of the DACA program (according to the Migration Policy Institute, there are more than 1.3 million people in the US who are potentially eligible for DACA, as of 2020).

However, previous bills to do so have failed to clear the Senate, despite the overwhelming popularity of providing a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers.

According to Pew Research Center polling from June 2020, 74 percent of US adults — including a majority of Republicans and those who lean Republican — support “granting permanent legal status to immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally when they were children.”

Still, the DREAM Act failed in 2010 thanks to the filibuster, despite passing the House and winning majority support in the Senate. And in 2018, four possible DACA fixes all died in the Senate, though three of the four also won at least 50 votes.

Most recently, the American Dream and Promise Act has now passed in the House in two different sessions — first in 2019 and more recently in March this year — but has yet to come to a vote in the Senate, and all but certainly would not survive the filibuster as a standalone bill.

A permanent fix for DREAMers could come in the next reconciliation package

For now, an appeal of Hanen’s Friday decision looks to be the next front in the struggle over DACA. The Biden administration has already pledged to do so, which means the case will likely end up before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Groups involved in the case, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, have expressed optimism about future appeals.

“The decision was plainly determined by the judge’s views of many years ago,” MALDEF president and general counsel Thomas A. Saenz said in a statement Friday, “and the decision fails to reconcile important recent developments in the law of standing and of presidential authority; it therefore presents numerous grounds for potentially successful appeal.”

However, it’s by no means a sure thing that DACA will fare any better on appeal. As CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Tierney Sneed point out, the 5th Circuit is famously “an extremely conservative appeals court,” while the current US Supreme Court features a 6-3 conservative majority, including “three justices who called the program unlawful in a dissent in a previous case.”

Still, there are other possibilities: In response to a day-one Biden memo, Biden’s DHS has said for months that it is working to shore up DACA with a new rule to “preserve and fortify” the program, which could put it on more solid legal footing going forward.

DHS reiterated that commitment on Friday in a statement on the Hanen decision: “DHS remains focused on safeguarding DACA, and we will engage the public in a rulemaking process to preserve and fortify DACA,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.

The most promising avenue for DACA advocates, though, could prove to be Congress, despite the continued existence of filibuster. With the Senate gearing up to push for a sprawling second reconciliation package, many Democrats have suggested that immigration reform — including a path to citizenship for DREAMers, among other potential provisions — could make the cut.

In his statement Saturday, Biden gave the idea a nod, noting that “it is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all DREAMers, who have lived too long in fear.”

Under reconciliation, legislation in the form of a budget reconciliation bill can pass the Senate with just 50 votes and no fear of the filibuster — but there are restrictions. As Vox’s Dylan Scott explained in January, “a lot of things” are could potentially be included, but they all must affect federal spending and revenue in some (occasionally tenuous) capacity.

Senate Democrats — whose 50-seat majority, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote, gives them exactly enough votes to pass a reconciliation bill along party lines — have already used the reconciliation process once this year, to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Another, even larger package — focused on a laundry list of priorities dropped from the still-in-the- works bipartisan infrastructure bill — looks to be on the way.

Significantly, the inclusion of a path to citizenship seems to have the support of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a frequent holdout in the Senate Democratic caucus. However, a permanent fix for DREAMers still needs to survive the Senate parliamentarian to make it into any upcoming reconciliation package, and that appears to be an open question.

The parliamentarian’s role in the reconciliation process, according to Scott, is to determine whether or not the budgetary impact of reconciliation measures, such as a potential path to citizenship, are “incidental” or not — and current rules require that incidental provisions be dropped from the bill.

Despite that fact, some senators — such as California Democrat Alex Padilla — are optimistic, and at least one member of the House, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), has said that immigration provisions are a must- pass in the next reconciliation package.

“A robust and equitable budget reconciliation deal must include a pathway to citizenship for immigrants,” García said in a statement this month. “We must seize this historic opportunity to bring compassion and dignity to our immigration system and provide the certainty that comes with having the legal status that millions of immigrants and their families deserve.”

• The next voting rights battleground is Michigan -

  

  The Michigan GOP has an aggressive plan to suppress the vote — and to bypass the governor’s veto.

  Michigan Republicans want to pass a blitz of legislation that restricts the right to vote in the key battleground state — and they have an audacious plan to get their ideas enacted, even though they have to contend with a Democratic governor who could ordinarily veto their bills.

  State lawmakers proposed 39 different bills targeting elections, including ones that restrict absentee voting, a bill that could prevent the state from certifying elections, and a pair of bills that would give ordinary poll workers a simply extraordinary amount of power to restrict voting.

  Until recently, Michigan seemed safe from the kind of anti-voting legislation that has proliferated in GOP-controlled states like Georgia and Texas. The state has a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who could veto bills that seek to skew future elections toward the Republican Party, and the GOP’s majorities in the state legislature are too small to override a veto.

  But, early this month, the state’s Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R) announced that Republicans plan to invoke a process that could allow them to bypass the governor’s veto and pass a package of “half a dozen” election-related bills. Under the state constitution, a relatively small group of voters can propose legislation through a petition and then this legislation can be enacted by the state legislature. Using this process, the GOP-controlled legislature could enact this package by a simple majority vote in both houses, and Whitmer would be powerless to veto it — although Democrats could potentially force a voter referendum on the GOP package.

  Moreover, while it is not yet clear which proposals will be included in Shirkey’s half-dozen bills, some of the dozens of proposals from GOP lawmakers appear to serve no purpose other than to make voting onerous enough that it disenfranchises voters. A pair of bills that passed the state House, for example, could force at least some voters to show ID twice on two separate occasions — once at their polling place and again to a county clerk located at a central government office — or else their ballot will be tossed out.

  The stakes in this fight are quite high, not just for Michiganders and their state politics but for national politics as well. Michigan had one of the closest US Senate races in the country in 2020 — a race that would have thrown control of the Senate to the GOP if Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) had performed slightly worse. It’s also a key battleground state that former President Donald Trump won in 2016, and President Joe Biden won in 2020. If Biden does not win Michigan in 2024, his path to reelection looks grim.

  While ballots were still being counted in the 2020 election, hundreds of Trump supporters — some of them carrying firearms — protested the count in the Democratic stronghold of Detroit. Republican officials in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, briefly tried to block certification of the vote tallies in that county, although they eventually backed down. After Aaron Van Langevelde, a state-level official on Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers, voted to certify Biden’s victory in the state as a whole, Republicans removed him from the board.

  According to the Associated Press, Trump personally lobbied Republican officials in Michigan in an attempt to block Biden’s victory, even summoning members of the state legislature to the White House.

  The new round of election legislation, in other words, might only disenfranchise small numbers of people, depending on which bills make it into law and how they’re applied. But they appear to be part of a broader effort to discredit elections won by Democrats, to place a thumb on the electoral scales in favor of Republicans, and to vindicate Trump’s lie that he, not Biden, won the 2020 election. And, in this closely divided state, even a small number of disenfranchised voters could swing an election.

  So what is in the Michigan GOP’s package of bills?

  It’s not yet clear which of the 39 bills proposed by state lawmakers Republicans plan to push. These bills include a wide range of proposals to make it harder to vote, including limiting the use of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots, imposing stricter ID requirements on voters, empowering partisan election observers, and requiring a supermajority on county election boards to agree to certify election results.

  In a July 1 interview, however, Shirkey signaled that a voter ID requirement is likely to be part of the package, describing an ID requirement as “rock solid.” Voter ID laws require voters to show identification in order to vote. Republicans often defend these laws as necessary to prevent voter impersonation at the polls, but numerous studies and investigations show that such fraud is virtually nonexistent.

  Still, generally they’re popular proposals, across the political spectrum — one recent poll shows 80 percent of American registered voters support voter ID.

  The Michigan GOP’s leading voter ID proposal, however, goes far beyond simply requiring voters to show ID at the polls. Two bills, labeled SB 303 and SB 304, have already passed the state House, and they would effectively require an unknown number of voters to show ID twice, at two separate locations, in order to vote.

  Under current law, Michigan voters who do not have identification may still vote if they sign an affidavit testifying that they lack such ID. SB 303 eliminates voters’ ability to sign such an affidavit, effectively requiring all voters to show ID. That’s fairly in line with other voter ID laws already adopted or under consideration in other states.

  But SB 303 also requires every voter to sign a form before they can vote. The signature on this form must be examined by a poll worker and compared to “the elector’s digitized signature contained in the electronic poll book.” If, in the poll worker’s subjective determination, the signatures do not match, then the voter will be given a provisional ballot.

  SB 304, meanwhile, lays out what happens to these provisional ballots. Essentially, a voter given such a ballot has six days to prove their identity and residency to the county or township clerk — something that they can do by showing many of the same forms of ID that they are already required to show at the polls.

  Read together, the two bills create an absurd situation where some voters could be disenfranchised unless they make a special trip to the clerk’s office to show the same ID card that they already provided to the poll worker. Imagine, for example, that a voter shows their valid driver’s license at the polls, but a poll worker, for whatever reason, declares that the voter’s signature does not match. The voter then has less than a week to make a special trip to the clerk’s office to show the clerk the exact same driver’s license.

  It’s not hard to see how such a system could be abused. A Republican poll worker might randomly force voters in a Democratic-leaning area to make the special trip to the clerk’s office. Or this poll worker might use race as a proxy to identify voters who are likely to be Democrats — perhaps only giving provisional ballots to Black voters.

  Meanwhile, a third bill (this third bill has not passed either house), requires local election officials to appoint one Republican poll worker for every two Democrats in these roles. That could mean that, in a Democratic stronghold like Detroit, up to one-third of all voters could be subjected to an arbitrary signature-matching test administered by a GOP partisan.

  Most of the voting restrictions circulating in the state legislature are more modest than SB 303 and 304. Many of them make relatively marginal incursions on voting, such as requiring ballot drop boxes to have video surveillance or prohibiting the secretary of state from sending unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters. Other proposals are potentially more troubling, such as a bill that would give partisan poll watchers greater authority to challenge whether an individual voter is allowed to cast a ballot.

  And it’s worth repeating that two bills that would give extraordinarily open-ended authority to poll workers acting in bad faith have already passed one house of the Michigan legislature. Should SB 303 and 304 become law in their current forms, they would immediately rank among the most troubling election laws in the country — potentially rivaled only by a Georgia law that allows the state GOP to effectively takeover local election boards that have the power to shut down polling places and disqualify voters.

  Again, it’s still unclear what, exactly, will be in the GOP’s final package of changes to the state’s election law. In his July 1 interview, Shirkey said that “we could have used a few handwriting experts in this last election” to screen voters and that he does not oppose the House’s proposal “in principle.” But he also said that he is “not sure” if the signature requirement will be included in the GOP’s final package, and Republicans will have to “do what is possible.”

  At the very least, however, much of the Michigan GOP appears to be setting its sights high as they pull this package together.

  So why can’t the governor veto all of this?

  The most significant announcement Shirkey made in his interview early this month was that voters should “keep their eyes and ears open for the potential for a citizen initiative” that will be “driven by” the state Republican Party. That opens the door to a Rube Goldberg-like process that Republicans may use to bypass Gov. Whitmer’s veto.

  It works like this: Under Michigan’s constitution, a small minority of the electorate may propose laws, and these proposals will ordinarily be placed before voters as a ballot initiative. Other states, like California, also allow ballot initiatives. In Michigan, however, the state legislature may intervene midway through the process to turn a proposed ballot initiative into law. A small percentage of voters can propose something, and just over half of the statehouse can make it law. Moreover, the state constitution also provides that “no law initiated or adopted by the people shall be subject to the veto power of the governor.”

  To begin this process, Republicans have to collect a number of signatures from Michigan voters totaling “not less than eight percent . . . of the total vote cast for all candidates for governor at the last preceding general election at which a governor was elected.” That works out to about 333,000 signatures in 2021. Once the petition process is complete, the state legislature has 40 session days to approve the law proposed by a petition drive, and the governor cannot veto.

  Democrats can deploy a countermeasure against this maneuver. The state constitution also allows voters to implement a “referendum” against most laws passed by the legislature, including one that was originally proposed through the initiative process. To trigger a referendum, Democrats would have to collect signatures totaling 5 percent of the total votes cast in the last governor’s race — or a little more than 200,000 signatures.

  Significantly, if Democrats trigger a referendum, the law is suspended until the entire electorate has an opportunity to weigh in on it during an election, and if a majority of the electorate rejects the law, it will never take effect.

  Republicans, in other words, won’t be able to do whatever they want. But Democrats also cannot rest assured that Whitmer’s veto will prevent anti-democratic bills from becoming law. At the very least, it seems likely that fate of future elections in a crucial battleground state will rest on the outcome of a referendum.

  And the outcome of that referendum could hinge on whether voters understand what exactly is in the GOP’s package of new election laws. If Michigan voters think this fight is primarily a referendum on voter ID, Republicans have a good chance of prevailing — a recent Monmouth University poll found that 80 percent of registered voters in the United States support requiring photo identification to vote.

  If, on the other hand, voters believe that they are voting on a highly partisan set of proposals that could allow random poll workers to disenfranchise voters, then Republicans are probably less likely to succeed.

• Most Americans like remote work — but Democrats like it more -

  

Republicans are less likely to say remote workers labor just as hard as or harder than non-remote workers.

Most Americans approve of letting people work from home. But like many things in the US, that perception depends on one’s politics.

While Republicans are overall positive about remote work, they were less likely to approve of it compared with Democrats (81 percent versus 89 percent), according to a new poll by Vox and Data for Progress.

Additionally, Republicans were less likely to say remote workers labored just as hard or harder than non-remote workers (50 percent versus 75 percent).

Republicans were also less likely than Democrats to say remote workers were equally or more productive than non-remote workers (57 percent versus 71 percent).

The survey of more than 1,000 people was conducted online earlier this month and is weighted to be representative of the US adult population.

Despite the difference between Republicans and Democrats, the high approval rate overall is a good sign for those who would like to continue working from home after the pandemic. Positive perceptions about remote work could help ensure its continuance — especially since workers and their employers have some disagreements about the future of remote work.

More than half of Americans worked from home earlier in the pandemic. And it went surprisingly well, with workers, their managers, and objective studies reporting that employees maintained or increased their levels of productivity.

So it makes sense that over the course of the pandemic, employees’ desire to continue working from home increased, and so did employers’ willingness to let them. But there’s still a gap between what employees want and what employers say they’re going to do, according to data from a study authored in part by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom. Employees would like to work from home about half the time, while employers plan to let them do so about one day a week.

As the more acute effects of the pandemic are subsiding and the number of people who work remotely is declining, numerous surveys of employers — as well as a giant increase in the number of remote job listings — suggest that many Americans will continue to work from home at least some of the time even when the pandemic ends. What’s less clear is how often that will be.

As for the difference between Republicans and Democrats, it’s possible the survey responses reflect the political makeup of remote workers. The survey sample size wasn’t large enough to accurately look at the political parties of those who worked remotely. However, the responses were equally positive among people who did and didn’t work remotely. That’s consistent with data from Boston Consulting Group that said the majority of people, regardless of whether it was feasible in their industry, wanted to work remotely.

But we also know that states whose voters lean Republican had a lower rate of working from home during the pandemic (30 percent) than Democratic states (35 percent), according to the Bloom study, which measured the overall work from home rate at 33 percent from May 2020 to March 2021. The desire to work from home after Covid-19 was only slightly higher for Democrats (46 percent versus 45 for Republicans).

“Trump aligned the Republican Party to being more working-class and less educated, and these jobs have a far lower ability to work from home,” Bloom told Recode in an email.

Overall, though, working from home is a valuable perk, with the average employee saying it’s worth about 7 percent of their salary, according to Bloom’s study. It’s not worth much more than that. Our survey, which asked whether people would prefer the ability to work from home or to receive a 10 percent pay raise, found that two-thirds of people would go for the raise.

In addition to the 25 percent of employed people whose jobs are currently fully remote, another 30 percent said some of their work could be done remotely. It’s likely more jobs will have remote possibilities as employers use it as a perk to attract workers in what’s a very tight job market.

How commonplace remote work ends up being remains to be seen, but proponents of the practice have public opinion on their side.

From The Hindu: Sports

• Sri Lanka win toss, opt to bat against India in 1st ODI - Sri Lanka skipper Dasun Shanaka won the toss and elected to bat against India in the first ODI of the three-match series here on Sunday. For India, I

• First batch of Indian contingent reaches Tokyo after rousing send-off - Indian contingent of 88 members comprised 54 athletes, besides support staff and IOA representatives

• COVID-19 scare at Olympics: Three athletes test positive for COVID-19, two staying at Olympic Village - It is the first instance of athletes staying at the Olympic Village catching the COVID-19 infection

• Japanese composer for Tokyo Olympics apologises for abuse - Oyamada, a well-known rock musician, had boasted about the abuse in detail in Japanese magazine interviews he gave in the 1990s.

• A comeback after 112 years - Rose took the men’s and Park the women’s gold in 2016

From The Hindu: National News

• CPI(M) condemns house arrest of student leaders - ‘Release a job calendar with 2.30 lakh posts’

• Supreme Court mulls role as policy watchdog amid pandemic - The recent Division Bench ruling to examine judiciary’s reach runs counter to earlier Bench judgment that courts cannot be silent spectators

• MEMU special trains between Vizag and Kakinada from July 19 - The railways have decided to run MEMU express special trains between Kakinada Port and Visakhapatnam.Train no. 07265 Kakinada Port-Visakhapatnam MEMU

• HC to commence hearing election petitions challenging victory of various MLAs - Justice V. Bharathidasan would be hearing the first three petitions.

• AIMIM Twitter targeted by hackers - This was followed by tweets about memes connected to cryptocurrency.

From BBC: Europe

• Europe floods: Victims face massive clean-up as waters recede - Residents of the worst-affected areas struggle to recover from the devastation as flood waters recede.

• Germany floods: Where are the worst-hit areas? - Maps, images and graphics showing the heavy rainfall and flooding that has caused widespread damage.

• Cannes Film Festival: Titane wins top Palme d’Or prize - The outlandish Titane wins after jury president Spike Lee reveals the award in a ceremony slip-up.

• ‘Havana syndrome’-like mystery illness affects Vienna US diplomats - The Biden administration is investigating cases of “Havana syndrome” among US officials.

• The migrants hunger-striking for legal status in Belgium - More than 400 go without food demanding a clear path to residency in Belgium.

From Ars Technica

• Twitch streamers rake in millions with a shady crypto gambling boom - Company “closely monitor[s] gambling content,” but experts say some promos may be illegal. - link

• The weekend’s best tech deals: Mass Effect, Jabra wireless earbuds, and more - Dealmaster also has deals on Xbox gamepads, Amazon tablets, and USB-C chargers. - link

• Gus Grissom taught NASA a hard lesson: “You can hurt yourself in the ocean” - From the archives: Grissom’s infamous (and impactful) ocean landing turns 60 this week. - link

• Slow train across Siberia offers glimpse of Russia’s rail ambitions - Redevelopment of a 4,300 km Soviet-era line aims to propel the network into this century. - link

• A troll, a pregnant man, and a low battery make the list of proposed new emoji - Some of the proposed new emoji are for climate change, some are gender-inclusive. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• Strippers don’t have any air conditioners in their homes -

  OnlyFans

  submitted by /u/Just_Got_Wrecked
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• A husband and wife are having issues in the bedroom. The wife can’t orgasm because it’s too damn hot. -

  They see a sex therapist, and he recommends that they have a constant supply of cool air in the bedroom, so the man asks his best friend to waft a towel while he and his wife make love. Begrudgingly, the friend submits and says yes.

  After 20 minutes of lovemaking, the woman is no closer to orgasm, so the friend wafting the towel recommends that they switch places. So the friend is now having sex with the woman while the husband wafts the towel.

  After two minutes, the woman starts to tremble and lets out an incredible cry as she reaches the most intense orgasm she has ever had.

  The husband looks at his friend, and proudly proclaims, “Now that, my friend, is how you waft a fucking towel.”

  submitted by /u/bad-dawg4004
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• I was banging this hot chick on her kitchen table when we heard the front door open. -

  She said “It’s my husband!. Quick, try the backdoor!” .

  Thinking back, I really should have run but you don’t get offers like that every day.

  submitted by /u/littleboy_xxxx
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• Mr. and Mrs. Johnson had been happily married for decades, but there was one thing that bothered Mr. Johnson. -

  They had five sons named Al, Ben, Carl, Dan, and Edgar. Now Al, Ben, Carl, and Dan were all tall, thin, and handsome, but Edgar was short, fat, and ugly. Throughout his life, Mr. Johnson wondered if Edgar was really his son, but he never built up the courage to ask his wife.

  Finally, the day came when Mr.  Johnson lay dying on a hospital bed. He realized that asking his wife about Edgar was now or never.

  “There is just one thing I want to know before I die,” said Mr. Johnson. “Is Edgar really my son?”

  “Yes, my darling husband,” replied Mrs. Johnson. “Yes, he is your son.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Johnson, and breathed his final breath, which was the most relieved breath he had ever taken.

  “Phew!” said Mrs. Johnson. “Thank goodness he didn’t ask about the other four…”

  submitted by /u/wimpykidfan37
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• God will protect me from COVID-19. -

  A good Christian man walked into Walmart and was offered a mask by the store greeter. The man politely declined saying God would protect him from Covid. Later the man went to his doctor for a routine check up. The doctor told him everything is fine and they also have all three different types of the Covid vaccine if he would like one. Again the man politely declined saying God would protect him from Covid. A few weeks later the man fell very ill. He went back to his doctor and to his disbelief was diagnosed with Covid and admitted to the hospital. After days of holding on he finally fell victim to his illness. When the man reached the gates of heaven God was there waiting for him. The man asked God why he didn’t protect him from Covid? God looked at him and said, I had people offer you free masks and three different vaccines to choose from you dummy. Also you’re going to have to quarantine in hell for a few weeks.

  submitted by /u/Souldier09
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