Here are the headlines you Need2Know for Monday, July 19, 2021:
COVID-19 LATEST
The United States is quickly falling behind in the global vaccination race. After a slow start, Canada has now overtaken the U.S. in terms of its percentage of fully vaccinated adults. The EU is also catching up after lagging far behind until recently. In the developing world, the picture is grim: just 1% of people in low-income countries have been even partially vaccinated. Some hospitals in under-vaccinated parts of the Midwest and South are reactivating their surge plans as the Delta variant drives up hospitalizations, which are back up to about 3,000 a day nationally. Deaths have also ticked up to 238 on the 7-day average. BLOOMBERG.
VAX MISINFO
The White House and Facebook are engaged in a war of words over vaccine misinformation after President Biden said social media platforms were “killing people” by allowing falsehoods about the COVID vaccines to spread. Facebook immediately shot back that the president was “finger-pointing.” According to Facebook, 85% of users in the U.S. either want to or have been vaccinated and 2 billion people have “viewed authoritative information” about COVID and vaccines. The surgeon general added that whatever Facebook is doing to curb the spread of misinformation is “not enough.” NBC NEWS
WESTERN WILDFIRES
The Bootleg Fire in Oregon is now the size of Los Angeles, one of about 70 blazes currently burning in the West. A growing wildfire near Lake Tahoe has exploded in size, jumping a highway and leading to evacuations near the California-Nevada state line. Firefighters say the conditions they’re facing across the region are more typical of late summer or fall. GUARDIAN
AMERICA'S PASTIME
A shooting outside Nationals Park in D.C. during the Nats-Padres game on Saturday sent fans and players fleeing for cover in the bottom of the sixth inning. No one was injured inside the venue and police say the stadium was not the target. A night earlier, a 6-year-old girl was killed two miles away while riding her scooter. Those were just two of the dozens of shootings that occurred over the weekend across the country. In Philly, a 1-year-old boy was shot in the leg. In Chicago, 53 people were shot in 41 separate shootings. In Tucson, Ariz. police are investigating a deadly shooting rampage across three separate crime scenes. Several American cities are outpacing their 2020 homicide rates, which were already up 25% from the year before. CNN
OPEC OPENS SPIGOT
The world’s major oil producers have agreed to drastically increase the supply of crude oil over the next two years that would restore all of the cuts they made during the pandemic. The production agreement will add millions of barrels of oil to the market, which should help lower gas prices as well as inflation. WSJ
SMARTPHONE WARS
Apple has fallen from second to third place in global smartphone market share, according to a new research report. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is now in second place with 17% of the market, ahead of Apple’s 14% and behind Samsung’s 19%. Xiaomi’s strategy has been to undercut Samsung and Apple with devices that cost about 75% less than an iPhone and 40% less than a Galaxy. THE VERGE
COCO A NO-GO
Coco Gauff will sit out the Olympics after testing positive for COVID, meaning the U.S. tennis team will be without its two top stars after Serena Williams pulled out earlier. With less than a week to go until the Opening Ceremony, at least three people have tested positive while staying in the Olympic Village. Thousands of athletes are flying into Tokyo this week for the Games, raising fears that a virus outbreak will be hard to stop once it starts. Organizers are taking measures to keep that from happening, from the obvious -- testing athletes daily -- to the ridiculous -- making them sleep on cardboard beds that can only support the weight of a single person. Organizers say the beds are environmentally-friendly, but some athletes think the real reason is to keep them from hooking up. YAHOO NEWS
BRITNEY UNCENSORED
Britney Spears lashed out at her family over the weekend, taking to Instagram to blast not just her father but her sister, Jamie Lynn, for performing her music. Spears called out her “so-called support system” for failing her over the course of her 13-year conservatorship and wrote that she will not perform so long as her father continues to control her career. PEOPLE
SPOTTED...
… Adele, making a rare public appearance in the front row at the NBA Finals in Phoenix, where she watched the Bucks pull ahead of the Suns, 3-2: SEE PICS
LEFTOVERS: UNSTOPPABLE
A 14-year-old girl from China is being compared to the basketball great Yao Ming after her hoop skills went viral around the world. Zhang Ziyu is 7 foot 5 inches tall -- and growing -- and has been, unsurprisingly, dominating her under-15 league, where her closest opponent in height is two feet shorter: SEE HER
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