https://www.ft.com/content/57834c2c-a078-4736-9173-8fb32cfbbf4e

Hannah Kuchler 3 HOURS AGO

I hear Anthony Fauci before I see him. Out of view of our video call, he asks his tech assistant: “Have you wiped down the table?” The assistant, who has already sprayed down the 79-year-old’s chair, hurries to disinfect the desk. The top adviser on the White House’s coronavirus task force cannot afford to fall ill. 

Of all the unenviable jobs in this pandemic, Dr Fauci may have the trickiest. He is a leading public health scientist in a world growing suspicious of expertise; an affable self-described humanist in a society where soundbites get more play than sound advice. After 36 years as director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he is facing a challenge that eclipses even the epidemics he has previously battled — Aids and Sars. 

Now, Fauci reports to his sixth president: Donald Trump. The president flouts his advice — refusing to wear a mask and holding rallies — and, Fauci tells me, hasn’t even met him for more than a month. Trump appears to me to be preoccupied with polls and economic data, rather than the soaring case counts in the country hardest hit by Covid-19 in terms of confirmed cases and deaths. 

We meet this week as the situation is becoming even more dire. Overflowing hospitals in Houston are beginning to look like New York’s in April, while areas of states including Texas, California, Arizona and Florida are starting to shut back down. 

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we have a serious ongoing problem, right now, as we speak,” Fauci says, in an accent tinged by his native Brooklyn. He warned Congress late last month that the number of new cases could rise to 100,000 a day. “What worries me is the slope of the curve,” he explains, using his fingers to draw a chart in the air. “It still looks like it’s exponential.” 

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“I have a reputation, as you probably have figured out, of speaking the truth at all times and not sugar-coating things. And that may be one of the reasons why I haven’t been on television very much lately,” he says.

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https://www.theblaze.com/news/ready-former-blaze-radio-host-jay-severin-dead-at-69



Longtime conservative political operative, civics connoisseur, and radio personality Jay Severin has passed away after battling cancer. He was 69.

Severin became a giant force in political talk in New England before spending years as a host on TheBlaze Radio Network's national platform.

"Jay was one of the rare talents that could not only see beyond the headline, but had the empathy to understand how it affected the listener," Glenn Beck told TheBlaze. "He was a good man, and I'm a better one for having known him."

Tom Shattuck, podcaster and senior editor of the Lowell Sun, paid tribute to Severin after news broke of his death on Thursday, calling him "the Boston talk titan."

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Controversies and termination from WTKK
In April 2004, when a caller said United States citizens should "befriend Muslims living in the United States," Severin replied, "the vast majority" of those Muslims "... are not loyal to the United States and are ready, when the time comes, to take over this country ... You think we should befriend them. I think we should kill them." On 25 April 2004, Severin said his comments were directed at terrorists, not Muslims in general, and stated, "I certainly regret any discomfort that may have been caused by the misunderstanding of my remarks." The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) unsuccessfully called for Severin's dismissal.

On 30 April 2009, Severin said Mexicans were "the world's lowest of primitives". He said "Its [Mexico's] millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America." Severin was suspended until June 3, 2009, at which time he apologized by saying (in part), "My remarks were hurtful, unkind and wrong. For these remarks and for failing to meet the standards you are right to expect of me, I am sincerely sorry."

In March 2011, Severin said, "I slept with virtually every young college girl I hired to be an intern or an employee for my firm." Following this statement, Severin was fired from WTKK. Greater Media said, "Severin was let go because he did not maintain an appropriate level of civility and adhere to a standard that respects our listeners and the public at large....it had become clear at several points in the past two years that Jay was either unwilling or unable to maintain our standards on the air. It's for that reason we have made the decision to end our relationship."

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https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/09/milley-confederates-treason-review-army-base-names-355452

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto any defense policy legislation that changes the names of the bases.


Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testifies during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday. | Greg Nash/Pool via AP

By CONNOR O’BRIEN

07/09/2020 05:14 PM EDT

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley on Thursday condemned Confederate leaders as traitors and said he supports a review of Army bases named after those who fought against the Union, a viewpoint that puts him at odds with the commander in chief.

Pressed by Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) about the 10 Army installations named for Confederate leaders, Milley told the House Armed Services Committee that the military needs "to take a hard look at the symbology" of the Civil War — such as base names, display of the Confederate battle flag and statues — as well as improve in other areas such as "the substance of promotions."

"The American Civil War … was an act of treason at the time against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution — and those officers turned their backs on their oath," Milley said. "Now, some have a different view of that. Some think it's heritage. Others think it's hate."

"The way we should do it matters as much as that we should do it. So we need to have, I've recommended, a commission of folks to take a hard look at the bases, the statues, the names, all of this stuff, to see if we can have a rational, mature discussion."

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto any defense policy legislation that changes the names of the bases, and earlier tweeted that the discussion is off the table for his administration.

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https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200710000300325

(URGENT) Seoul mayor Park Won-soon apparently found dead
All Headlines 00:32 July 10, 2020
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https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1281236033661779970
Josh Marshall @joshtpm

Court ruled that no President is above the law and Congress has the right to scrutinize them - and then postdated it for Biden.

10:37 AM · Jul 9, 2020

https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/07/at-least-16-sick-after-coronavirus-exposure-at-dewitt-in-home-day-care-take-this-seriously-stay-home-if-sick-at-all.html

By Elizabeth Doran | edoran@syracuse.com
DeWitt, N.Y. — At least 16 children and adults have come down with the coronavirus after it spread from contact at a DeWitt family in-home child care.

The cluster of the coronavirus cases has made people in four families sick, including six children at the child care, one sibling, seven parents and two grandmothers, according to Heidi Feathers, who operates the licensed in-home child care with two other parents.

The cases go back to a mom who didn’t quarantine as she waited to learn if she had the virus. For three days she brought her child to the child care, Feathers said. It turned out the child was asymptomatic and both the child and mom have since tested positive for the virus, she said.

“I’m so frustrated that she didn’t tell me, and she didn’t stay home,‘' said Feathers, who had a fever and was sick for eight days. “People need to take this seriously, and stay home if they are sick at all.”

The way the virus spread so easily because people didn’t stay home and made so many people sick is why Feathers and a mom whose family got sick are talking about what happened.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire



A major fire broke out in a 20th Century-Fox film storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, United States on July 9, 1937. Flammable nitrate film had previously contributed to several fires in film industry laboratories, studios and vaults, although the precise causes were often unknown. In Little Ferry, gases produced by decaying film, combined with high temperatures and inadequate ventilation, resulted in spontaneous combustion.

One death and two injuries resulted from the fire, which also destroyed all the archived film in the vaults, resulting in the loss of most of the silent films produced by the Fox Film Corporation before 1932. Also destroyed were negatives from Educational Pictures and films of several other studios. The fire brought attention to the potential for decaying nitrate film to spontaneously ignite, and changed the focus of film preservation efforts to include a greater focus on fire safety.

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Little Ferry
In the earlier 20th century nearby Fort Lee on the Hudson Palisades was home to many film studios of America's first motion picture industry. When Little Ferry, New Jersey, contractor William Fehrs was hired to construct a film storage facility in 1934, he designed the structure to be fireproof. The building had 12-inch (30 cm) brick outer walls and a reinforced concrete roof. Internally, it was divided into 42 individual vaults, each enclosed behind a steel door and separated by 8-inch (20 cm) brick interior walls. The local fire department confirmed Fehrs's fireproofing. However, it had neither a fire sprinkler system nor mechanical ventilation, and no security guard was employed to watch the facility. Despite the potential fire danger of stored film, the building was located in a residential neighborhood.

Film processing company DeLuxe Laboratories owned the building and rented it to 20th Century-Fox to store the silent films acquired from Fox Film Corporation after its merger with Twentieth Century Pictures.

Fire
Northern New Jersey experienced a heat wave in July 1937, with daytime temperatures of 100 °F (38 °C) and warm nights. The sustained heat contributed to nitrate decomposition in the film vaults, and the building's ventilation was inadequate to prevent a dangerous buildup of gases. At some time shortly after 2:00 a.m. on July 9, spontaneous ignition occurred in the vault at the building's northwest corner. Local truck driver Robert Davison observed flames coming from one of the structure's window vents, and within five minutes, used a municipal fire alarm call box to report the fire.

Davison then attempted to awaken the residents of the surrounding houses, many of whom were already alerted to the situation by the noise and intense heat. As decomposition gases in additional vaults ignited, bursts of flame shot out 100 feet (30 m) horizontally across the ground from the windows, and a similar distance into the air from the building's roof vents. The vaults in the south and east of the building contained a higher concentration of flammable gas. When the fire spread to them, they exploded, damaging the brickwork and blowing out window frames. Anna Greeves and her two sons, John and Charles, were caught in a "sheet of flame" while attempting to flee the area. All three were seriously burned; 13-year-old Charles eventually died from his injuries on July 19. Other families were able to escape unharmed as the fire spread to five neighboring residences and destroyed two vehicles.

Little Ferry firefighters first arrived at 2:26, followed by companies from Hawthorne, Ridgefield Park, River Edge, and South Hackensack. It took 150 men employing 14 hose streams to put the fire out by 5:30. All the film in the facility was destroyed; more than 40,000 reels of negatives and prints burned to ashes inside their film cans. The building was also badly damaged. Exploding vaults had destroyed segments of both the exterior walls and interior partitions and had deformed the structure's concrete roof. Total property damage was estimated at $150,000–200,000. Fifty-seven truckloads of burned film were hauled from the site to have their silver content extracted. Each can contained about five cents' worth of silver; the salvaged metal returned $2,000.

Legacy


Damage to 361 Main, the residence closest to the vaults, with 375 Main in the background

Although 20th Century-Fox officials at the time remarked that "only old films" were destroyed, the fire is now understood as a significant loss of American film heritage. Film historian Anthony Slide called the destruction of the Fox vault "the most tragic" American nitrate fire. The highest-quality examples of every Fox film produced prior to 1932 were destroyed; all known copies of many films had been stored in the facility. Films lost to the fire include pictures starring Theda Bara, Shirley Mason, William Farnum, and many others. Tom Mix made eighty-five pictures with Fox, most of which were archived exclusively at Little Ferry. The grandfather of director Blake Edwards, J. Gordon Edwards, had directed all the highest grossing epics for Fox and all the masters for his films were lost (though a few survive as low quality prints which were housed elsewhere). For some actors, such as Valeska Suratt, none of their films survive; "there are entire careers that don't exist because of [the fire]", according to Museum of Modern Art film curator Dave Kehr. Because some copies were located elsewhere, some of Fox's silent films survive as lower-quality prints, or in some cases fragments—but more than 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost.

The Little Ferry vaults also held works by other film studios that had contracted with Fox for distribution. Educational Pictures lost more than 2,000 negatives and prints, including the negatives of Buster Keaton's silent films with the company. Also present was the original negative of D. W. Griffith's Way Down East (which Fox had purchased with the intent of remaking), the negative for the controversial Christie Productions sponsored film The Birth of a Baby and films by smaller studios such as Atherton Productions, Peck's Bad Boy Corporation, Principal Pictures and Serial Producing. Archival material intended for the Museum of Modern Art's Film Library was lost as well.


Map of the area involved in the fire

The destruction of the Little Ferry facility spurred an interest in fire safety as an aspect of film preservation. Unlike previous large nitrate-film fires, investigators determined that the spontaneous combustion of decomposing film stock was responsible. They suggested that the older nitrocellulose film in the archive was of lower quality than their current film, and thus more unstable. The Society of Motion Picture Engineers' Committee on Preservation of Film, three months after the vault fire, cited "recent and rather extensive film fires" as evidence that existing preservation efforts had failed to adequately address the risk of fire. More heavily reinforced film vaults were suggested, to prevent fires in a single vault from destroying entire archival facilities. Film storage cabinets with ventilation and cooling systems were also proposed, as was further research into improving the quality of cellulose acetate film to encourage its use as a safer replacement for nitrate film. By the 1950s, the use of nitrate film in the United States had been essentially eliminated.

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https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-to-start-trump-tower-black-lives-matter-mural-on-thursday-morning/2506262/



Work on what President Trump called a "symbol of hate" was supposed to start last week before being postponed abruptly

By Jonathan Dienst, Melissa Russo and Hilary Weissman • Published July 8, 2020 • Updated on July 8, 2020 at 10:45 pm

New York City will start painting "Black Lives Matter" on Fifth Avenue directly in front of Trump Tower on Thursday, picking up a delayed project that President Trump blasted as a "symbol of hate."

City sources tell News 4 New York the plan is to start Thursday morning, with Mayor Bill de Blasio taking part some time Thursday afternoon. A police official adds that the street could be closed for a couple of days to do the work.

The original announcement drew furious condemnation from the president.

"Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, won’t let this symbol of hate be affixed to New York’s greatest street. Spend this money fighting crime instead!" the president tweeted.

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https://twitter.com/ErinBanco/status/1280970236464939010
Erin Banco @ErinBanco

WH press sec announces new operation by DOJ titled "Operation Legend" in which the federal government is going to dispatch agents to the streets Kansas City to stop violent crime

5:01 PM · Jul 8, 2020