Kim Jong Un’s sister dismisses chances for talks with US

California will pay off all the past-due rent accumulated by residents during the coronavirus pandemic, said Gov. Newsom. The state has about $5.2B from federal aid packages approved by Congress to pay off people’s rent, which should be enough to cover, said a senior counselor to Newsom. What’s unclear is whether California will continue to ban evictions for unpaid rent beyond June 30.

A federal judge ruled that BLM cannot claim damages from former President Trump over the removal of protesters from Lafayette Square last summer before his much-publicized walk from the White House to a nearby church. The judge dismissed claims that Trump, former AG Barr and former defense secretary Esper directed a conspiracy targeting black protesters.

Bitcoin fell below $30,000 for the first time in nearly five months as China’s latest crackdown on cryptocurrencies weighed. Besides concerns from China, environmental concerns have also become a new flashpoint for the asset class. With Tuesday’s losses, bitcoin has slid about 54% from its all-time high of more than $64,000 in mid-April. Other cryptocurrencies were also facing pressure.

A mouse plague ravaging Australia’s farmlands has forced the evacuation of hundreds of inmates from a rural jail on Tuesday. Scores of mice have gnawed through ceiling panels and wiring at a New South Wales prison. Up to 420 inmates and 200 staff members from the Wellington Correctional Center will be moved to other facilities by the end of the month.

At least 54 people were wounded and eight were killed in dozens of shootings and other incidents reported throughout Chicago over the weekend, police said Monday.

A new book by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, two Washington Post reporters, claims that in the early days of the Covid pandemic, former President Trump advocated shipping Americans who contracted Covid-19 abroad to Guantanamo Bay. Trump reportedly asked aides at a meeting: ’Don’t we have an island that we own? What about Guantanamo?’ The aides blocked the idea when Trump brought it up again.

More than 8,500 children were used as soldiers last year in various conflicts across the world and nearly 2,700 others were killed, the UN said on Monday. The UN report verified that violations had been committed against 19,379 children in 21 conflicts. The most violations in 2020 were committed in Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.

Sen. Schumer condemned former President Trump’s ’stolen election’ narrative and its invasive influence in GOP-dominated state legislatures. ’How despicable a man is Donald Trump? He lost an election legitimately. He can’t face that, that it was his failure, and he creates a lie, a big lie,’ Schumer said. Those ’despicable lies’ have ’lit a fire beneath Republican state legislatures,’ he added.

The policy covers four primary areas that offer actionable recommendations to continue to seek out storytelling that amplifies diverse voices throughout all aspects of the production process: Developing Stories and Characters, Hiring and Production, Reporting and Documentation, and Meeting Goals.

Carl Nassib has become the first active NFL player to come out as gay, making the announcement in a video posted to Instagram on Monday. ’I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that I’m gay. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now but finally feel comfortable enough to get it off my chest,’ Nassib said. Nassib also announced a $100,000 donation to the Trevor Project.

The Australian govt. said it will strongly oppose a UNESCO plan to list the Great Barrier Reef as ’in danger’ over its deterioration caused by climate change. UNESCO released a draft report recommending the reef’s World Heritage status be downgraded because of its coral decline. The govt. said the decision did not consider the billions spent attempting to protect the world’s largest coral reef.

Rep. Maxine Waters is demanding former President Trump and his 2020 campaign be investigated for any role in the Jan. 6 rioting by his supporters at the Capitol. ’It should be concerning that FEC reports show the Trump Campaign, at some point, paid over $2.7 MILLION to people who helped organize Jan. 6!’ Waters tweeted. Waters also blasted Republicans for blocking an investigation into the riot.

Palestinians and Jewish settlers have hurled stones, chairs and fireworks at each other overnight in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood where settler groups are trying to evict several Palestinian families. Israeli police arrested four suspects. The threatened evictions fueled protests and clashes in the runup to last month’s 11-day Gaza war and pose a test for Israel’s new governing coalition.

According to a columnist for the NYT, Tucker Carlson is a ’go-to source’ for the US political media he claims to ’hate’ and has called ’cowards.’ Ben Smith, former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, outed Carlson as ’the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr Carlson himself).’

A letter signed by 56 House Republicans says it is time for President Biden to give the job of solving the border crisis to someone other than VP Harris. While Harris has met with leaders in Mexico and Guatemala, she is still to visit the border. Republican Rep. Grothman is leading the effort to have Harris divested of any role in border policy. He posted the letter on his Twitter account.

The Federal Reserve signaled on Wednesday that it may act sooner than previously planned to start dialing back the low-interest rate policies that have helped fuel a swift rebound from the pandemic recession. Fed’s policymakers forecast that they would raise their benchmark short-term rate twice by late 2023. They had previously estimated that no rate hike would occur before 2024.

The UEFA has turned down a request to illuminate the Allianz Arena in rainbow colors for Germany’s final Euro 2020 group stage match against Hungary. Munich mayor said he wanted to light up the city’s stadium in the colors in protest against a new law in Hungary that bans gay people from appearing in school educational materials. UEFA turned down the request citing a political context.

A City Council candidate running in Manhattan, NY, admitted to enjoying BDSM after a video of him engaging in it was anonymously leaked last week and went viral. ’I am a proud BDSMer. I like BDSM activity,’ Zack Weiner said. Weiner’s campaign manager said they had reported the account which posted the video to Twitter and that it was briefly taken down, but it was later reinstated.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s removal of two Coca-Cola bottles during a press conference at the European Championship has coincided with a $4B fall in the company’s share price. Ronaldo shifted a few bottles of Coca-Cola away from him during a press conference on Monday. He then held up a bottle of water before declaring in Portuguese: ’Agua!’, appearing to encourage people to choose that instead.

A campaign volunteer for NYC mayoral candidate Eric Adams was stabbed multiple times following an argument in the Bronx Sunday. The NYPD said officers encountered a ’42-year-old male with multiple stab wounds.’ The victim remains in stable condition. Police said that a ’male perpetrator’ fled the scene and remains at large. No arrests have been made.

Google is developing an alternative to the industry standard method for classifying skin tones, which a growing chorus of technology researchers and dermatologists says is inadequate for assessing whether products are biased against people of color. At issue is a six-color scale known as Fitzpatrick Skin Type (FST) used since the 1970s. Critics say FST disregards diversity among people of color.

The DOJ released three videos on Monday used in a federal court case against a Capitol riot defendant accused of leading the Proud Boys in the insurrection on January 6. The videos show the defendant, Charles Donohoe, among the rioters and other Proud Boys preparing their moves, then pushing into the US Capitol with makeshift weapons. DOJ didn’t identify where it got the video from.

The US and the EU reached a deal Tuesday to end a damaging dispute over subsidies to rival plane makers Boeing and Airbus and phase out billions of dollars in punitive tariffs. US Trade Rep Katherine Tai said the two sides have come to terms on a five-year agreement to suspend the tariffs at the center of the dispute. Airbus welcomed the agreement.

China’s first crewed spacecraft in nearly five years blasted off from the Gobi desert on Thursday, carrying astronauts to the new Tiangong space station. A Long March-2F rocket carried the three astronauts in the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft, and was expected to dock with Tianhe, the main section of the Tiangong station, about six to eight hours later. Construction of Tiangong began in April.