McDonald’s CEO says workers can call police on anti-mask customers – Business Insider
McDonald’s employees may call the police on a customer who refuses to wear a mask, CEO Chris Kempczinski said in an interview Thursday on CBS This Morning.
“If someone is unwilling to wear a mask and comply with our rules, that might be where we might bring in law enforcement,” Kempczinski told Anthony Mason in the interview.
On July 24, McDonald’s announced it would require all customers to wear masks starting August 4, after weeks of reports concerning harassment and abuse directed at workers by angry customers. A survey of 4,187 McDonald’s workers by Service Employees International Union found that 44% of them had experienced some form of abuse from customers who refused to wear a mask.
Source: McDonald’s CEO says workers can call police on anti-mask customers – Business Insider
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert slept in Washington D.C. office after testing positive for COVID-19, Rep. Jackie Speier says – ABC7 San Francisco
“Congressman Gohmert’s behavior is not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous and reckless. He berated his staff for wearing masks and not wanting to be equally reckless. He tested positive the day after he sat in a committee hearing without wearing a mask, endangering others. Even worse, after he knew he had the virus, he called his staff and interns into the office to inform them, went to the member’s gym, and then proceeded to sleep in his office-his makeshift home in DC, before informing the public that he tested positive. Which begs the question, where is he going to quarantine? In the same office and building with members, staffers, and congressional employees and U.S. Capitol Police? It’s beyond comprehension that anyone would act in this way, let alone a member of Congress.”
House cancels August recess until coronavirus bill is passed – CBS News
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the House will meet throughout the month of August.
Source: House cancels August recess until coronavirus bill is passed – CBS News
Calls Grow For Michigan Mayor to Resign After Racist Comments
During a July 21 community meeting, Poynter shocked those in attendance when he said that recent events have made him understand how someone could become a white supremacist, the Free Press reports.
Source: Calls Grow For Michigan Mayor to Resign After Racist Comments
Millions lose everything as a quarter of Bangladesh is flooded

DHAKA/NEW YORK • Torrential downpours have submerged at least one-quarter of Bangladesh, washing away the few things that count as assets for some of the world’s poorest people – their goats and chickens, mud houses, sacks of rice stored for the lean season.
It is the latest calamity to strike the delta nation of 165 million people. Only two months ago, a cyclone pounded the country’s south-west.
Along the coast, a rising sea has swallowed villages. And while it is too soon to ascertain what role climate change has played in these latest floods, Bangladesh is already witnessing a pattern of more severe and more frequent river flooding than in the past along the mighty Brahmaputra River, scientists say, and that is projected to worsen in the years ahead as climate change intensifies the rains.
“The suffering will go up,” said Mr Sajedul Hasan, the humanitarian director of BRAC, an international development organisation based in Bangladesh that is distributing food, cash and liquid soap to displaced people.
This is one of the most striking inequities of the modern era. Those who are least responsible for polluting Earth’s atmosphere are among those most hurt by its consequences. The average American is responsible for 33 times more planet-warming carbon dioxide than the average Bangladeshi.
This chasm has bedevilled diplomacy for a generation, and it is once again in stark relief as the coronavirus pandemic upends the global economy and threatens to push the world’s most vulnerable people deeper into ruin.
An estimated 24 per cent to 37 per cent of the country’s landmass is submerged, according to government estimates and satellite data. By Tuesday, according to the most recent figures available, nearly 1 million homes were inundated, affecting 4.7 million people. At least 54 have died, most of them children.
The current floods, which are a result of intense rains upstream on the Brahmaputra, could last through the middle of this month. Until then, Mr Taijul Islam, a 30-year-old sharecropper whose house has washed away, will have to camp out in a makeshift bamboo shelter on slightly higher ground.
At least he was able to salvage the tin sheet that was once the roof of his house. Without it, he said, his extended family of nine would be exposed to the elements.
His predicament is shared by the millions among those on the front lines of climate change globally.
The inequity is striking. One recent analysis has found that the world’s richest 10 per cent are responsible for up to 40 per cent of global environmental damage, including climate change, while the poorest 10 per cent account for less than 5 per cent.
-
IMPACT OF FLOODS
-
1m
Number of homes inundated.
4.7m
Number of people affected.
54
Death toll.
Another estimated that warming had reduced incomes in the world’s poorest countries by between 17 per cent and 30 per cent.
In Bangladesh, the floods began in June. Those who live along the Brahmaputra are no strangers to flooding. When the river starts swelling, work stops, the land erodes, people move to higher ground and wait for the waters to recede. They rely on their savings or aid to feed themselves.
This year was different. By the time the river flooded, in June, people were already running out of food, said Mr Hasan of BRAC.
Because of the lockdown, the people with jobs had all but stopped working. Remittances from relatives abroad, many of them newly unemployed, had dried up. In the countryside, people had begun to sell their goats and cattle at bargain prices. They had no food to eat.
The Brahmaputra is a fearsome, shape-shifting 3,840km river that erupts from the Tibetan Himalayas and spills into north-eastern India before merging with the Ganges in Bangladesh and emptying into the Bay of Bengal. Climate change, too, is altering the river’s fate.
The rains have become more unpredictable and the river is rising above dangerous levels far more frequently than it did before, according to 35 years of flooding data analysed by Mr A.K.M. Saiful Islam, a water management expert at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka.
Meanwhile, more and worse floods loom and no matter what, Mr Islam said, the country will have to adapt. That requires money to dredge rivers, maintain embankments, improve drainage and offer aid to those who are repeatedly displaced and impoverished.
“People are losing whatever little they have,” said Ms Farah Kabir, the Bangladesh country director for ActionAid International, adding: “When and how are they going to be supported? When is the global community going to take responsibility?”
NYTIMES
Analysis: We all want this to end. And right now, the solution actually resides with us
Something about the social contract between authority and how we see ourselves as a community has broken down during the pandemic, writes Virginia Trioli.

Something about the social contract between authority and how we see ourselves as a community has broken down during the pandemic, writes Virginia Trioli.
The White House distributed contaminated coronavirus test kits, involving a secretive purchase
The White House distributed contaminated masks following a secretive purchase deal, reports Vanity Fair, exposing the role of son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Source: The White House distributed contaminated coronavirus test kits, involving a secretive purchase
COVID-19 Hospital Data Is a Hot Mess After Feds Take Control – Slashdot – (Hide/make it hard to find data that shames Trump was the objective – duh…)
As COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US approach the highest levels seen in the pandemic so far, national efforts to track patients and hospital resources remain in shambles after the federal government abruptly seized control of data collection earlier this month. Watchdogs and public health experts were immediately aghast by the switch to the HHS database, fearing the data would be manipulated for political reasons or hidden from public view all together. However, the real threat so far has been the administrative chaos. The switch took effect July 15, giving hospitals and states just days to adjust to the new data collection and submission process.
Source: COVID-19 Hospital Data Is a Hot Mess After Feds Take Control – Slashdot
How Many People in the U.S. Are Hospitalized With COVID-19? Who Knows? — ProPublica
The Trump administration told hospitals to stop reporting data to the CDC, and report it to HHS instead. Vice President Mike Pence said the information would continue to be released publicly. It hasn’t worked out as promised.
Nationally, The COVID Tracking Project reports that more than 56,000 people were hospitalized around the country with the virus, as of Thursday.
Source: How Many People in the U.S. Are Hospitalized With COVID-19? Who Knows? — ProPublica
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