Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Wake-Up Call: Biden Headed To Europe for First Foreign Trip

President Biden is leaving for Europe this morning on his first foreign trip since taking office, which will include taking part in the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Cornwall in Britain. During the eight-day trip, Biden will also meet with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and visit Queen Elizabeth in the U.K., then go to Brussels, where he will join leaders of other NATO leaders in talks and also meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Finally, Biden will go to Geneva, where he'll have a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, "The trip, at its core, will advance the fundamental thrust of Joe Biden’s foreign policy, to rally the world’s democracies to tackle the great challenges of our time."

➤BIDEN-CAPITO INFRASTRUCTURE TALKS COLLAPSE, BUT REACHES OUT TO OTHER SENATORS: Weeks-long talks on infrastructure between President Biden and Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the Republicans' lead negotiator on the issue, collapsed yesterday as Biden walked away as they weren't able to reach agreement on a package that could get bipartisan support. But the president began reaching out to other senators from both parties in a new effort to reach an infrastructure deal. Even as that hope of bipartisan agreement remains, Democrats are also laying the groundwork to pass some or all of Biden's sweeping proposal on their own through the budget resolution process. The White House said Biden conferred yesterday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer about that avenue.

 
➤SENATE REPORT LAYS OUT FAILURES SURROUNDING JANUARY 6TH CAPITOL ATTACK: A Senate report released yesterday on the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol laid out failures surrounding the event, including an intelligence breakdown across multiple agencies, and widespread law enforcement and military failures. The bipartisan probe, carried out by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Senate Rules Committees found there were clear warnings that supporters of then-President Donald Trump, including extremist groups on the right, were planning to "storm" the Capitol, but the intelligence never was seen by top leadership. The report details the injuries suffered by police trying to fight off the rioters, with officers having told the investigators there was no leadership or direction when command systems broke down. However, the bipartisan report doesn't go into the root causes of the attack. The report recommends giving the Capitol Police chief more authority, providing better planning and equipment for law enforcement, and streamlining intelligence gathering among federal agencies.

Not everyone happy for the visit
➤HARRIS IN MEXICO IN SECOND AND FINAL STOP OF TRIP: Vice President Kamala Harris was in Mexico yesterday on the second and final stop of her first foreign trip since taking office, in which she also went to Guatemala, with addressing the surge in migrants from Central America traveling north to try to cross the U.S. border the central focus. Harris met with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the Biden administration announced agreements between the U.S. and Mexico, including a $130 million commitment from the U.S. to support labor reforms in Mexico and loans to help southern Mexico’s economy. As in Guatemala, Harris' message was about assuring people who might consider trying to cross into the U.S. over the Mexican border that they can have better lives at home. She said in a news conference yesterday, "It must be priority for us to understand why people leave. I cannot say it enough. Most people don’t want to leave home." Asked about criticism for not having not gone to the border yet, Harris brushed off the question, saying she was focused on results, quote, "as opposed to grand gestures," and that the problems wouldn't be fixed with a border visit.

➤OHIO A-G WANTS GOOGLE DECLARED A PUBLIC UTILITY:  Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit Tuesday (June 8th) asking a court to declare Google a public utility and require that it be regulated by the government as one. The Republican AG contends that Google abuses its power as the company that runs the internet's dominant search engine in a discriminatory and anti-competitive way, for example, by steering people to Google's own products when they search for items. Yost said in a statement, "When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access." Google argued the changes sought by the lawsuit would reduce the quality of its searches and hurt small business that consumers might not otherwise find, stating, "Ohioans simply don’t want the government to run Google like a gas or electric company."

CHIPOTLE PRICES RISING AS THEY HIKE WAGES TO ATTRACT WORKERS:  Some companies are having a hard time filling job openings as the U.S. emerges from the pandemic, and the restaurant and hospitality industries are among those having the most difficulty. So restaurant chains have been boosting the hourly pay they're offering to try to draw workers, and for Chipotle Mexican Grill, that has meant it's also raised prices by about four percent to cover that cost. Chipotle announced last month that it would raise hourly wages to reach an average of $15 an hour by the end of June. This move comes as the restaurant industry is also facing rising prices for food, as suppliers try to deal with the return of demand.

➤STARBUCKS IS EXPERIENCING AN INGREDIENT SHORTAGE THAT AFFECTS 25 MENU ITEMS: Starbucks has some customers complaining on social media due to a supply shortage. Insider reports that an internal company update says Starbucks is putting orders for at least 25 items on “temporary hold” as of June 4th due to supply chain issues. Insider confirmed the list with three Starbucks employees, who said the shortage affects “popular items like hazelnut syrup, toffee nut syrup, chai tea bags, green iced tea, and other products.” A TikTok video shows a sandwich board outside a Starbucks with a long list of ingredients the location is out of, including white mocha, dark roast, apple juice, cinnamon dolce, hazelnut and drink trays, to name just a few of the items. (Yahoo)

➤WALMART WILL BE CLOSED ON THANKSGIVING FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW: Walmart has already announced that it plans to keep all U.S. stores closed on Thanksgiving this year. This marks the second year in a row the company is doing this, and they say they’re doing so as a thank you to employees for their hard work over the last year. The tradition began last year after the turbulent first few months of the pandemic. But no worries, Black Friday (November 26th) will still be happening, and last year those sales kicked off at midnight online and at 5 a.m. in-stores. No word on what the official Black Friday hours will be this year. Best Buy and Target followed suit Tuesday and confirmed that its stores also would be closed Nov. 25.


➤TEXAS MOM IS ARRESTED FOR POSING AS HER 13-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AND ATTENDING CLASSES ALL DAY:  Some parents go to extremes for their kids. Casey Garcia, age 30, is facing the music after she filmed herself posing as her 13-year-old daughter to sneak into her middle school and attend classes for a day. In the video, she’s seen walking into the Garcia-Enriquez Middle School building in Texas and even appears to say hello to the school’s principal. She then walks around the school without teachers noticing. She also documents the rest of the day before she gets to the final period, where she says a teacher noticed that she was not who she said she was and confronted her. In her now viral YouTube video, she also explains, “We need better security at our schools, this is what I tried to prove, and I don’t mean to be curt but I kind of feel like I proved it.” She was arrested on charges of criminal trespassing, tampering with government records and an unrelated traffic violation.

➤DOZENS OF WEBSITES GO DOWN AFTER CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICE OUTAGE: Dozens of websites briefly went down globally yesterday after an outage at the cloud computing service Fastly just before 6 a.m. ET. It was fixed about an hour later, with the company saying it was a technical issue, not a cyberattack, and most of the sites came back online. Fastly is a content-delivery network (CDN), which provides "edge servers" to many popular websites, allowing users to access them more quickly and smoothly. Among the major sites affected by the outage were CNN, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Reddit, Twitch and The Guardian.

➤IRS PROBE LAUNCHED, DEMS CALL FOR TAXING ULTRA-RICH AFTER LEAKED DOCUMENTS SHOW HOW LITTLE THEY PAY: The IRS opened an investigation yesterday and the Democrats called for taxing the richest Americans after documents leaked to ProPublica show how little they pay in taxes. ProPublica's report yesterday showed that among those paying little or even no taxes are Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and business tycoon Warren Buffett, and that the 25 wealthiest U.S. taxpayers have paid little-to-no income taxes. The report was based on 15 years of confidential tax data. The IRS probe will look into whether the information was leaked by someone with access to IRS data. ProPublica said it doesn't know the identity of the source and didn't solicit the information.

➤NUN TO PLEAD GUILTY TO STEALING $800K FOR GAMBLING EXPENSES: A 79-year-old retired Los Angeles nun has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges for stealing more than $800,000 to pay her gambling expenses, prosecutors said Tuesday (June 8th). Mary Margaret Kreuper was charged yesterday with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, with the plea agreement saying she acknowledged embezzling some $835,000 in donations, tuition and fee money from St. James Catholic School in the L.A. suburb of Torrance over a decade ending in 2018. Kreuper had been the school's principal for 28 years.


➤'NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC' RECOGNIZES WORLD'S FIFTH OCEAN: National Geographic announced on World Ocean Day yesterday that it will recognize a fifth ocean on its maps and globes. The world's oceans are traditionally the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic, and now the Southern Ocean is being recognized. It's made up of the waters surrounding Antarctica that were previously known as the lowermost parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Scientists say the Southern Ocean is oceanographically and ecologically unique, separate from the other four. National Geographic’s leaders hope the designation will raise awareness of the need to conserve the region’s ecosystem, which faces threats from warming temperatures.

➤MASSACHUSETTS MAN WINS SECOND $1 MILLION LOTTERY JACKPOT: A Massachusetts man collected a $1 million lottery jackpot about 21 years after he won the same amount from a different game. Michael Rocca scored a $1 million jackpot from the $4,000,000 Instant Jackpot instant ticket game after buying his ticket from Kirk's Variety and Hobby Store in Pittsfield. Rocca chose the lump sum option for his prize and received a one-time payment of $650,000. Rocca previously won a $1 million jackpot from the $1,000,000 Draw instant ticket game in May 2000. He chose to take the full prize amount in annual installments, receiving his final payment in May 2020 -- one year before winning his second jackpot. (UPI) 

🏑LIGHTNING WIN SECOND-ROUND PLAYOFFS OVER HURRICANES: The Tampa Bay Lightning blanked the Carolina Hurricanes 2-0 last night (June 8th) to win their second-round NHL playoff series 4 games to 1. Brayden Point and Ross Colton scored the game's only two goals for the reigning Stanley Cup champions. In the next round, Tampa Bay will play the winner of the New York Islanders-Boston Bruins series, which the Islanders are leading 3-2.

NHL PLAYOFFS: Results from second-round games yesterday:
  • Tampa Bay Lightning 2, Carolina Hurricanes 0 - Tampa Bay wins series 4 games to 1
  • Vegas Golden Knights 3, Colorado Avalanche 2 (OT) - Vegas leads series 3 games to 2
🏀NBA PLAYOFFS: Results from second-round games yesterday:
  • Philadelphia 76ers 118, Atlanta Hawks 102 - Series tied at 1-1
  • Utah Jazz 112, Los Angeles Clippers 109 - Utah leads series 1 game to 0
🏀NUGGETS' JOKIC NAMED NBA MVP: Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic was named yesterday as the winner of the NBA's Most Valuable Player award. Jokic had 91 of 101 first-place ballots in the voting. The Serbian native was taken with the 41st draft pick when he entered the NBA in 2014, making him the lowest draft pick ever to win the MVP. The Philadelphia 76ers Joel Embiid came in second. Jokic had a league-high 60 double-doubles and 16 triple-doubles, second only to Russell Westbrook. His scoring average increased to 26.4 points per game from 19.9 points last season, and he tied his career high with 10.8 rebounds per game.

🎾TSITSIPAS UPSETS MEDVEDEV IN FRENCH OPEN QUARTERFINALS: Fifth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece upset Number 2 Daniil Medvedev of Russia in their French Open quarterfinal yesterday, beating him in straight sets 6-3, 7-6 (3), 7-5. In the other men's quarterfinal, sixth-seeded Alexander Zverev beat 46th-ranked Alejandro Davidovich Fokina easily, 6-4, 6-1, 6-1. In the day's women's quarterfinals, Number 31 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova beat 21st-seeded Elena Rybakina and 85th-ranked Tamara Zidansek defeated Number 33 Paula Badosa, both making a major semifinal for the first time.


⚾PIRATES' HAYES LOSES HOME RUN AFTER MISSING FIRST BASE: Pittsburgh Pirates rookie third baseman Ke'Bryan Hayes lost his home run last night (June 8th) after he missed first base while circling the bases. The call was made after a replay review. Hayes had hit the homer in the first inning off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler. He was running hard and looking at the ball, which just narrowly cleared the right-field wall, when he missed the base.

➤BAFFERT, MEDINA SPIRIT OWNERS SUE KENTUCKY RACING OFFICIALS: Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert and the owners of Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit have filed a lawsuit against Kentucky racing officials in the wake of the horse's post-race urine twice testing positive for a banned steroid. The suit is seeking a temporary injunction they say to prevent violation of due process rights and for custody of "remnant" sample of the urine. Baffert was suspended by Churchill Downs last week for two years after the second test came back positive, and Medina Spirit’s Derby victory is at risk because of the results.
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