Joe Biden drops out of 2024 race and endorses Kamala Harris: Live updates

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden said in a letter addressed to Americans. “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and my country for me to stand down and to focus solely on my duties as President for the rest of my term.”

USA Today

Historically Black frat Alpha Phi Alpha moves to ban trans members

Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest historically Black fraternity in the U.S., has reportedly moved to ban transgender members, a decision that has caused a rift between the older members that make up the organization’s national leadership and its younger general body and collegiate and alumni chapter leadership, according to GLAAD.

LGBTQ Nation

‘I Guess This Is Normal Politics Now’

As the prospect of political violence becomes enmeshed in daily life, even an assassination attempt can come to seem routine.

The Atlantic

New Hampshire governor signs bill banning transgender girls from girls’ sports

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire has signed a bill that would ban transgender athletes in grades 5-12 from teams that align with their gender identity, adding the state to nearly half in the nation that adopted similar measures.

The bill passed by the Republican-led Legislature would require schools to designate all teams as either girls, boys or coed, with eligibility determined based on students’ birth certificates “or other evidence.” Supporters of the legislation said they wanted to protect girls from being injured by larger and stronger transgender athletes.

CBS News

John Deere Bows To Conservative Pressure, Ends Support For Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Initiatives

“We will no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events,” the statement read.

The statement also said that John Deere would be completing audits of its company policy, saying that it would be “auditing all company-mandated training materials and policies to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages,” as well as “reaffirming within the business that the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been and are not company policy.”

Black Enterprise

RNC calls for unity ring hollow for some in LGBTQ community

“It can be difficult to stay hopeful when anti-LGBTQ sentiment comes to town,” said the LGBTQ group Fair Wisconsin in a post on X. It continued, “But Fair Wisconsin knows that this sentiment is not who we are. The majority of Wisconsinites support the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and with fair maps for the first time in over a decade, we’re hopeful about the opportunity to shift the tide on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.”

ABC News

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warns anti-Biden Democrats about what comes next if they succeed

Ocasio-Cortez also highlighted the racial, ethnic and class divisions that appear to have formed between the majority of those pining to blow up the ticket — led mostly by white Democrats and media pundits — and those elected officials who feel they and their constituents have too much at stake to upend the process at this point and so are willing to do the work to re-elect Biden-Harris

MSNBC

“It’s not that complicated”: Pete Buttigieg on why a gay billionaire is backing JD Vance

“I think it’s a profound contradiction, but maybe it’s not that complicated,” Buttigieg says. “I know there are a lot of folks who say, ‘What’s going on with these Silicon Valley folks veering into Trump world with JD Vance, and backing Trump?’ . . . We’ve made it way too complicated. It’s super simple. These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for very rich men.”

Salon

Clyburn predicts election loss if Democrats have contested convention

“If you go to the convention, have an open process in the convention, It will come out the same way it came out in 1968, 1972 and 1980,” Clyburn said.

“When we had a contested process on the floor of the convention in 1980, we lost an incumbent president, and in 1972, we carried one state, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia,” he continued. “And all of us know what happened in 1968 when we ran Lyndon Johnson out of the race, with a great record Lyndon Johnson had, got rid of him over one issue, the Vietnam War. Here, we are now using one issue to get rid of a president, the result would be the same.”

The Hill

Some companies managed to dodge the dreaded CrowdStrike BSOD…because they still use Windows 3.1 and 95

As spotted by Tom’s Hardware, this news started with a post on X by Artem Russakovskii. In it, they stated that a few US airlines had been grounded due to the bug, but Southwest was still operating as normal. They started it was because they still ran on Windows 3.1, which they originally wrote as a joke.

However, Artem did some further digging and discovered that his little joke was a bit closer to reality than he first thought. Turns out, Southwest does use Windows 3.1 in their systems, which gave the company some resistance to the BSOD bug.

XDA Developers

Biden has COVID-19 and didn’t wear a mask. The CDC’s guidelines say he doesn’t have to

The CDC describes masks as an “additional strategy” for preventing disease spread, but it generally leaves it up to individuals to decide whether to use them. It calls masks “especially helpful” when someone is sick and suggests they be used as a precaution during recovery.

AP News

Republicans could file challenges if Biden replaced, Speaker Johnson says

Technically, Biden has not yet been formally nominated to be the Democratic presidential candidate and won’t be until a vote of the delegates selected to the Democratic National Convention. Still, Johnson said there might be grounds for a challenge, given that Biden was the overwhelming winner of the party’s primaries.

Politico

JD Vance roadblocked dozens of US diplomats while he obsessed over their views on gay rights

Before he was Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, JD Vance was known, at least in the State Department, for grilling nominees with a questionnaire about LGBTQ+ rights, Pride flags, diversity and inclusion, and other so-called “woke” issues,” part of a series of holds he placed on Biden nominees that delayed the confirmation of more than 30 diplomats to senior positions until this April.

“The publics of many of our allies, and those countries we seek to build stronger relationships with, have traditional Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu moral values,” reads one section of the questionnaire, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “If confirmed, how would you explain to them what the United States’ promoting ‘human rights for LGBTQ people’ would look like in their country?”

Independent

You’re not going crazy — you may actually be paying higher prices than other people

This personalized pricing strategy is not unique to Starbucks. Companies are increasingly leveraging customer data, often derived from loyalty programs, in coordination with machine-learning models to uniquely price goods and services based on an individual’s willingness to pay.

The end goal: “Get you to buy more items, buy the same items again or to spend more on the same items,” said Jain.

CNN

At the RNC Prayer Breakfast, Speakers Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

“This party is going to be a pro-life, pro-family, pro-faith party.”

Mother Jones

Trench collapses have killed hundreds of workers in the U.S. over the last decade

The men are two of the more than 250 people across the country who died over the last decade when trenches they were working in collapsed, according to an investigation by NPR, Texas Public Radio and 1A. In every instance, the deaths were preventable, experts say. All but one of the victims were male; the youngest was 16. In many cases, the companies failed to follow basic government rules for making trenches safe.

“There’s no reason, really, that any worker in this country should be dying in a collapsed trench,” said Jordan Barab, who was deputy assistant secretary for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) during the Obama administration. “All trench collapse deaths are preventable if the employer complies with well-recognized OSHA standards.”

NPR

Bangladesh court scraps job quotas after deadly unrest

Bangladesh’s top court has scrapped most of the quotas on government jobs that had sparked violent clashes across the country that have killed more than 100 people.

A third of public sector jobs had been reserved for the relatives of veterans from the country’s war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

But now the court has ruled just 5% of the roles can be reserved for veterans’ relatives.

BBC

Pope Francis calls for Olympic truce for countries at war, prays for peace

“According to ancient tradition, may the Olympics be an opportunity to establish a truce in wars, demonstrating a sincere will for peace,” Francis said during his Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.

AP News

Yemen’s Houthis claim new attack on Israel amid escalation

Yemen’s Houthis said on Sunday they had attacked “important targets” in Israel, a day after the Israeli military confirmed strikes in the militia-controlled port city of Hodeidah, fuelling regional escalation.

dpa International

Iran, China launch freight trains as part of new rail corridor

Iran and China launched freight trains travelling between the two countries as part of the China-Iran-Europe rail corridor, IRNA reported on July 21.

Iran launched its first freight train to China on July 21 using the new railway. The Iranian train will pass through the neighbouring countries of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan on its way to China.

BNE Intellinews

Macau government insists chief executive in good health, despite prolonged absence from post

The Macau government has said its chief executive is in “good condition” after he extended his absence to 39 days, which sparked concerns about his health.

South China Morning Post

Turkey ready to build Cyprus naval base ‘if necessary’: Erdogan

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that his country was ready to build a Cyprus naval base “if necessary”, 50 years after Turkish forces invaded the now-divided island.

The New Arab

Ancient carving — from first century — discovered in France. See gruesome depiction

The severed head of a Gaul is carved with a hollow eye, and the head is resting on what is identified as a Roman sword. Researchers said the image is a clear depiction of the Romans’ victory over the Gallic people in northeastern France.

Miami Herald

Teenagers divided over voting age reform

In its election manifesto, the Labour government promised to offer the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds, a policy also championed by the Greens and Liberal Democrats.

BBC

Nepal’s new prime minister seeks vote of confidence in parliament, secure more than two-third votes

Nepal’s newly appointed prime minister secured overwhelming support in parliament on Sunday with more than two-thirds of members voting in his favor.

AP News

CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage: Chinese cybersecurity firms take victory lap

360 Security, QAX and Tencent all took swipes at CrowdStrike online after the American firm caused global Microsoft outages, wreaking havoc on businesses

South China Morning Post