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| Presented By Google |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen ·Jul 27, 2021 |
| Happy Tuesday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,296 words ... 5 minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu. ⚡ Retired Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican known as a consensus-builder in an increasingly polarized Washington, died three days after a bike accident in Wyoming that broke his neck and ribs. He was 77. Latest. 🎾 Major Olympics tennis news: Some AM readers are recording events and asked me to warn about spoilers. Click here for details. |
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| 1 big thing: Floodgates open for vaccine mandates |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios |
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| State governments, private businesses and even part of the federal government are suddenly embracing mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for their employees, Axios' Caitlin Owens writes. - Why it matters: America has run out of carrots to incentivize more people to get the shot. So now, sticks are in.
Monday was a turning point: - The VA became the first federal agency to require its employees to be vaccinated.
- California announced that state employees and health care workers must show proof of vaccination or get tested regularly.
- New York City brought all municipal workers — including teachers and police officers — under a vaccine requirement that had previously only applied to health workers.
- The San Francisco Bar Owner Alliance hopped onboard: The 500 San Francisco bars it represents will require indoor customers to show proof of vaccination or a negative test.
- Banner headline of today's Chicago Tribune (subscription): "Lightfoot warns of masks, restrictions."
Vaccine requirements are also gaining steam internationally: - France's parliament voted yesterday to require a "health pass" — full vaccination or a recent negative test — to enter restaurants, trains and planes. The measure sparked huge weekend protests.
- Italy's "green" passes will be needed beginning Aug. 6 to access gyms, museums, cinemas and indoor dining.
What we're watching: Many Republican-led states are preemptively prohibiting vaccine requirements. |
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| 2. You see the problem |
Graphic: The City. Used by kind permission Context: For the U.S., 69% of adults (18+) have had at least one COVID shot, and 60% are fully vaccinated. (CDC tracker) |
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| 3. Barbara Boxer to mugger: "Why would you do that to a grandmother?" |
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| Barbara Boxer in L.A. in 2018. Photo: Presley Ann/Getty Images |
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| Former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), 80, was assaulted and robbed of her iPhone yesterday while walking near her apartment in Oakland. Boxer — a senator for 24 years, and now a co-chair at Mercury Public Affairs — told the L.A. Times that she purposefully walked on a quiet street so she could concentrate on a work call. - "[T]he driver of the car jumped out and started to come at me and come behind me," she told The Times. "When I saw the guy coming out of the car, coming at me, I started to run away across the street. And he shoved me really, really hard on the shoulder with one hand, and with the other, he put it around my waist and grabbed my phone."
- "He ran toward the car. I was standing and shaking and I just said to them, 'Why would you do that to a grandmother? I need to call my grandkids.' He jumped in the car and sped away."
Boxer, calling herself "a 5-foot-tall grandma with gray hair," told The Times that she was so close that she ran back to her apartment, where she and her husband, Stewart, called police. - At a nearby Verizon store, employees wiped her iPhone and made sure pictures of her grandchildren had been saved to the cloud.
- She emphasized that she wasn't hurt: "I want to make that clear — he pushed me hard, I did not fall down."
Boxer noted that she has founded community policing efforts and after-school programs. She told The Times that the narrative that Democratic politicians want to defund police is "a false flag. It's just untrue." |
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| A message from Google |
| Shielding four billion devices from malware every day |
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| Google's protections like Safe Browsing are designed to automatically detect threats and can alert you when you might visit a risky site. To make the internet safer for everyone, Google makes this technology free for other companies to use in their browsers. Learn more. |
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| 4. U.S. shrink danger |
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| Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios |
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| Demographers cite an outside chance the U.S. population could shrink for the first time ever, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription). - COVID death rates, immigration restrictions and persistently low birth rates pushed the weak U.S. population growth rate close to zero.
Why it matters: Demography is destiny for nations. Low population growth will bring major economic and political problems for the U.S., Axios Future editor Bryan Walsh writes. By the numbers: In half of U.S. states, more people died than were born in 2020, up from just five states in 2019. - Every type of U.S. county — from very rural to very urban — saw a decrease in births per death in the second half of the 2010s.
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| 5. Tech's massive money shield |
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| Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios |
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| Tech industry giants are floating on a cushion of record profits in lakes of reserve cash — and all that money makes them just about unsinkable, Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg writes from the Bay Area. "Silicon Valley ... has never seen so much loot," David Streitfeld writes in a N.Y. Times article (subscription), "How Tech Won the Pandemic and Now May Never Lose." - Flashback: The industry's boom during the '90s dotcom era was dubbed "the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet" by one of its leading investors, John Doerr.
The bottom line: The sheer magnitude of tech's financial power also makes the companies a target for outrage and regulation — but little has made an impact. |
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| 6. Zuck's new mega-project |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo / Axios |
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| Facebook announced a Metaverse product group to build a 3D social space using virtual and augmented reality, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes. - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with Casey Newton last week that he sees the metaverse — widely used in tech and science fiction to describe broadly shared, open virtual environments — as "the successor to the mobile internet."
- Zuckerberg said it's not "something that any one company is going to build."
Facebook's new Metaverse product group will report to Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of virtual and augmented reality, who announced the new organization in a Facebook post. - Bosworth's announcement linked to a Facebook hiring page for AR/VR jobs that lists more than 700 openings.
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| 7. First person: Charging travails of a non-Tesla EV |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| Axios Pro Rata author Dan Primack writes from Boston: Several weeks ago, I bought a Ford Mustang Mach-E, the automaker's first all-electric crossover vehicle. It's worked great for my daily commute to the coffee shop, errands and social engagements. - Drive around, charge it overnight in my suburban Boston garage, and wake up to an estimated range of around 215 miles.
- My only worry was driving to New York City, which I do around once a month in non-pandemic times. It's about 200 miles door-to-door.
- But I was assured that this might be one of the country's easiest EV routes, as the Acela corridor was an early electrification adopter.
My plan was to recharge at one of the three I-95 rest stops just south of New Haven. This was my plan because the website for those rest stops said they had "electric vehicle charging stations." - At the first one, I spotted some Tesla chargers but none for other EVs. My charge level: 30%.
- At the second one, I went to the truck refueling spot. Charge level: 26%.
- Third rest stop. More Tesla chargers. None for me. Charge level: 23%.
Keep reading. |
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| 8. Ina's Tokyo diary: Softball on the brink |
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| USA's Cat Osterman, pitching against Japan yesterday, came out of retirement to play in the Tokyo Olympics. Photo: Ina Fried/Axios |
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| Axios' Ina Fried writes from Tokyo: When the U.S. and Japan take the softball field in Yokohama today, they will be playing for more than gold. They want to show that their sport deserves a permanent place in the Olympics. - Why it matters: Softball is returning to the Olympics after a 12-year absence. But its long-term Olympic future is uncertain. The sport isn't part of the 2024 Games in Paris, and plans are up in the air after that.
Ina's thought bubble: Fans (and I am a huge one) are right to note just how competitive the sport has been here in Tokyo. - But detractors aren't wrong that softball doesn't have the global appeal of many other Olympic sports.
Keep reading ... In photos: Softball at the Olympics ... Axios' Olympics dashboard ... Events to watch today. |
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| A message from Google |
| Google blocks 100 million phishing attacks every day |
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| To keep hackers from accessing your personal information, Gmail uses industry-leading technology to automatically detect threats, blocking more than 99.9% of spam, phishing attempts, and malware from reaching your inbox. Learn more. |
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