Top stories this PM: Delta variant spreads; Kushner's meltdown over masks

Advertisement
Top stories this PM: Delta variant spreads; Kushner's meltdown over masks

Good afternoon. Here are the top stories so far today.

Advertisement

For more daily and weekly briefings, sign up for our newsletters here.

What happened today:

Beats a trophy any day. The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the NCAA can't limit the education-related benefits that colleges give student-athletes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh criticized the NCAA's business model, saying it would be "flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America."

Delta variant spreads. The Delta coronavirus variant may have been responsible for 31% of coronavirus cases in the US as of Wednesday, the Financial Times estimated. That would mean the share of Delta-variant infections in the US tripled in 11 days. Two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca shot have been found to protect against hospitalization from the variant.

Advertisement

Don't come home. That's the message more than 70,000 people are sending Amazon founder Jeff Bezos before he launches into space on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket in July. Of two petitions, the one with the most signatures says billionaires "should not exist...on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there."

Kushner's meltdown. A new book reportedly says Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and former senior advisor, lashed out at an official after hearing that millions of masks purchased in March 2020 wouldn't arrive until that June. "You f---ing moron," he reportedly said. "We'll all be dead by June." If that weren't enough, he threw a pen, the book reportedly says.

Such a waste. An ITV investigation into a UK Amazon warehouse found that it marked millions of items for destruction each year. One former Amazon employee said staff members were given a weekly target of 130,000 items to destroy. Amazon said the warehouse handled returns and destroyed items for the UK.

That's all for now. See you Tuesday.

{{}}