BBC:  “A pair of trainers worn by the US basketball star Michael Jordan have sold for a record $1.47m (£1.1m) at auction.  Jordan used the pair of red and white Nike Air Ships during his first season with the Chicago Bulls in 1984.  That was the year he and Nike began their collaboration to create his signature brand of clothes and shoes.

Pro Publica:  “Universities across the country have long faced scrutiny for their handling, and mishandling, of sexual assault cases. But Liberty University’s responses to such cases stand out. Interviews with more than 50 former Liberty students and staffers, as well as records from more than a dozen cases, show how an ethos of sexual purity, as embodied by the Liberty Way, has led to school officials discouraging, dismissing and even blaming female students who have tried to come forward with claims of sexual assault.

“Three students, including Axley, recalled being made to sign forms acknowledging possible violations of the Liberty Way after they sought to file complaints about sexual assaults. Others say they were also warned against reporting what had happened to them. Students say that even Liberty University police officers discouraged victims from pursuing charges after reporting assaults.

“Some students still confided in school staff — who at times did not report the cases to the Title IX office, despite being legally required to do so. When students filed complaints themselves, they were often not given legally required notice that they had the option of going to the police.”

Daily Beast:  “Houston cops carrying out a welfare check on an apartment found a nightmare: three siblings abandoned and living with the skeletal remains of a fourth.  ‘A very horrific situation out here, very tragic,’ Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said at a Sunday press conference. ‘I’ve been in this business a long time and I had never heard of a scenario like this. It really caught me by surprise.’

“The surviving children were ages 15, 10, and 7, and they had been living in ‘deplorable conditions’ for ‘quite a long time,’ Gonzalez said. Asked whether he meant weeks, the sheriff said the kids were on their own for a much longer period of time. ‘It seems they were in there while the body was deteriorating,’ he said.  It was unclear where the children’s parents were or how long they had been gone from the apartment at the City Parc II apartments. Someone answering the phone at the management company hung up on a reporter.

“’Somebody alerted us that we need to check that apartment,’ Gonzalez said, though he added that he did not know who that person was.  Deputies sent to the scene found the three unsupervised minors and then saw the skeleton, which was out in open view. The age and cause of death of the dead child was unknown.  ‘It appears they were basically fending for each other. The older sibling was doing the best she could to take care of the others,’ Gonzalez said. ‘Our hearts break for those three.’

Rolling Stone:  “As the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack heats up, some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.

“Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence.”

WNBC NBC-4 New York:  “Demonstrators supporting Nets guard Kyrie Irving and protesting New York’s vaccine mandate gathered outside Barclays Center on Sunday before Brooklyn’s home opener.  A few dozen people were in the plaza outside the arena, some chanting ‘Let Kyrie play! Let Kyrie play!’ and holding signs that said ‘Stand with Kyrie.’  A small group even broke through barriers and got all the way to the front entrance of the arena about an hour before tipoff.

“Irving is not with the Nets because of his refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19. A New York mandate requires professional athletes playing for a team in the city be vaccinated in order to play or practice in public venues.  The Nets could have allowed Irving to play in road games, but they decided he wouldn’t be with the team until he could be a full participant. Irving explained during an Instagram Live post that he was doing ‘what’s best for me.’

“Protester Curtis Orwell said he and others were fighting for ‘bodily autonomy and sovereignty,’ and the right to choose what goes in their bodies.  ‘We also know so much more than we knew 18 months ago about the virus,’ he said. ‘We have therapeutics that have been tried and proven to great success. Unfortunately, those kinds of voices are being totally suppressed and censored.’  Orwell said he was not vaccinated and knew some people who had lost jobs because they weren’t.  ‘It doesn’t feel right to them and that’s OK,’ he said. ‘We need to respect that.'”

Democratic California Congressman Eric Swalwell released audio of a voicemail message left at his office threatening him on behalf of “Trump Nation” and stemming from lies told about Swalwell on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program.  “This is the Tucker Carlson effect where you see a straight line from Tucker Carlson lying about me, inciting his viewers, and then aiming them at me,” Swalwell said.

Associated Press:  “A strong Pacific storm system that triggered mud flows in wildfire-scarred areas of California also slammed the coasts of Washington state and Oregon Sunday, threatening coastal flooding and causing power outages affecting thousands of customers in the Pacific Northwest.

“Wind gusts topping 60 mph (96 kph) downed trees on Interstate 90 east of Seattle and cut power to more than 150,000 customers in the metro area and around Puget Sound, KOMO-TV reported. In Oregon, about 25,000 customers lost power in Portland and the northwest part of the state, according to The Oregonian.  More power outages are possible through Monday, Samantha Borth, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle, told The Seattle Times.

“Forecasters issued severe thunderstorm warnings with damaging winds and hail possible for the Oregon coast and Portland area as well as northwestern Washington.  The weather service urged mariners to stay in port due to heavy seas, with waves up to 25 feet (7.5 meters) accompanied by 50-mph (80-kph) wind gusts capable to eroding beaches and causing coastal flooding from northern Washington to central Oregon. Dangerous conditions were expected to continue overnight into Monday.  Conditions were expected to slowly subside on Monday.”

Talking to crowd at the QAnon-Con in Las Vegas this weekend, the “Cowboys for Trump” founder and Capitol rioter Couy Griffin complained that after telling his fans he would lock Hillary up during his 2016 campaign “at the end of your 4 year time, the only ones locked up were men like me, and others like me, that have stood by the president the strongest.”

“Senate President Wilton Simpson late Saturday sharply criticized a top official in the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis for failing to adhere to a request from state Sen. Tina Polsky to wear a mask while visiting her in her office. Polsky, a Democrat from Palm Beach County who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is about to start radiation treatment, asked Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo to leave her office this past week after Ladapo refused to don a mask,” reports Florida Politics.

“Colombian security forces have captured the country’s most wanted drug trafficker, a rural warlord who stayed on the run for more than a decade by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right. President Iván Duque likened the arrest Saturday of Dairo Antonio Úsuga to the capture three decades ago of Pablo Escobar. Colombia’s military presented Úsuga to the media in handcuffs and wearing rubber boots preferred by rural farmers,” reports France 24.com.

“Úsuga, better known by his alias Otoniel, is the alleged head of the much-feared Gulf Clan, whose army of assassins has terrorized much of northern Colombia to gain control of major cocaine smuggling routes through thick jungles north to Central America and onto the US. He has long been a fixture on the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted fugitives list, for whose capture it had been offering a $5 million reward.’

“The founder of the software codebase program apparently lifted by Donald Trump’s new “Truth Social” media venture is seeking “legal counsel” to make certain the operation complies with licensing requirements to keep the program free and accessible to the public,” reports Apple News. “The Trump site already appears to be violating licensing requirements. Twitter users earlier this week reported that the operation seems to be based on an open-source social networking software called Mastodon.”

AP: “A former politician who called for the overthrow of the French government has been charged with terrorism in connection with what authorities have said was an extreme-right plot to attack vaccination centers, a masonic lodge and other targets. Rémy Daillet-Wiedemann was already accused of masterminding the international QAnon-style kidnapping of a girl on behalf of the child’s mother, who had lost custody. He was jailed in eastern France in that case when the new allegations emerged involving many in the same extreme-right circle of his supporters.”

“During the search for the girl, who was eventually recovered safely in Switzerland, anti-terrorism investigators realized that the abduction involved many people they had placed under surveillance for unrelated far-right extremism. Daillet was in self-imposed exile in Malaysia at the time but was ultimately forced back to France and was arrested immediately on his return. Daillet’s lawyer described his client as a political prisoner. He said Daillet called only for the peaceful end to the political system and retained his faith in French justice despite the charges against him. He has vowed to run for president in France’s upcoming elections. Daillet was charged on Friday”

“In May of this year, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen left her position as a product manager at the social media giant and took tens of thousands of internal documents with her. The documents have triggered a maelstrom of allegations, including that Facebook knew its products were damaging teenagers’ mental health, were fomenting ethnic violence in countries such as Ethiopia and were failing to curb misinformation before the 6 January Washington riots. On Monday, Haugen will take her damning views of the company to Westminster when she testifies before MPs and peers. Meanwhile, Facebook spirals deeper into crisis,” reports The Guardian.

“Her concerns over an apparent lack of safety controls in non-English language markets, such as Africa and the Middle East, where the Facebook platform was being used by human traffickers and armed groups in Ethiopia, were a key factor in her decision to act. ‘I did what I thought was necessary to save the lives of people, especially in the global south, who I think are being endangered by Facebook’s prioritisation of profits over people. If I hadn’t brought those documents forward that was never going to come to light.’ Haugen said.”

“The number of coronavirus infections recorded so far in eastern Europe surpassed 20 million on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, as the region grapples with its worst outbreak since the pandemic started and inoculation efforts lag. Countries in the region have the lowest vaccination rates in Europe, with less than half of the population having received a single dose,” reports Reuters.

“Hungary tops the region’s vaccination rates with 62% of its population having gotten at least one shot, whereas Ukraine has given just 19% of its residents a single dose, according to Our World in Data. New infections in the region have steadily risen and now average over 83,700 new cases per day, the highest level since November last year, Reuters data through Friday showed. Although it has just 4% of the world’s population, eastern Europe accounts for roughly 20% of all new cases reported globally.” Eastern European countries are rapidly becoming “the Florida of the EU”.

Peter Wehner, The Atlantic: “The election of the elders of an evangelical church is usually an uncontroversial, even unifying event. But this summer, at an influential megachurch in Northern Virginia, something went badly wrong. A trio of elders didn’t receive 75 percent of the vote, the threshold necessary to be installed. David Platt, a 43-year-old minister at McLean Bible Church said church members had been misled, having been told, among other things, that the three individuals nominated to be elders would advocate selling the church building to Muslims, who would convert it into a mosque. In a second vote on July 18, all three nominees cleared the threshold. But that hardly resolved the conflict. Platt, who is theologically conservative, had been accused in the months before the vote by a small but zealous group within his church of ‘wokeness’ and being ‘left of center,’ of pushing a ‘social justice’ agenda and promoting critical race theory, and of attempting to ‘purge conservative members.’ A Facebook page and a right-wing website have targeted Platt and his leadership. For his part, Platt, speaking to his congregation, described an email that was circulated claiming, ‘MBC is no longer McLean Bible Church, that it’s now Melanin Bible Church.'”

“What happened at McLean Bible Church is happening all over the evangelical world. Political conflicts are hardly the whole reason for the turmoil, but according to news accounts, they played a significant role, particularly on matters having to do with race. ‘Nearly everyone tells me there is at the very least a small group in nearly every evangelical church complaining and agitating against teaching or policies that aren’t sufficiently conservative or anti-woke,’ a pastor and prominent figure within the evangelical world told me. (Like others with whom I spoke about this topic, he requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.) ‘It’s everywhere.'”

“Our Country is being poisoned with the millions of people that are illegally flowing through our Borders, in most cases not even questioned or stopped. Many are criminals from the emptied prisons of other countries, most of these are very dangerous people. Our Country is dying from within and nobody is doing anything to stop it. The first thing that should be done, and it can be done quickly, is FINISH THE WALL. A deal must be made with Mexico, where Mexico serves as a 2,000 mile barrier, not a launching pad for the illegals that are coming in. Also, 97 percent of the people that came in from Afghanistan rushed the planes and should not be here.”

“Those people must be checked very carefully because many of them will turn out to be strongly related to high-level terrorism. How stupid our Country has become, so sad to watch when just 10 months ago we had none of these problems, and none either with bad economy, inflation, fuel prices going through the roof, and so much else. And never forget, because the Fake News will not talk about it any longer, those needlessly killed in Afghanistan and the thousands of people and the $85 Billion worth of Military equipment left behind in the complete and total surrender by the United States of America. We would have been out but we would have been out with dignity and strength. Our Country is now a laughingstock all over the world!” screeches Trump in a statement.

Following the Atlanta Braves’ Saturday night win over the Los Angeles Dodgers to clinch the NLCS to take on the Houston Astros in the World Series, it’s clear now that Republican Governors Brian Kemp of Georgia and Greg Abbott of Texas are headed to a bit of an awkward position given their angry meltdowns at Major League Baseball for relocating the 2021 All Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in protest over Georgia’s new voter suppression laws. Kemp’s rage over the move in April is well documented, but even Low Energy Greg got in on the action with his angry cancelation of a first pitch appearance at the Texas Rangers’ home opener in protest of the MLB’s protest.

So what does this mean for the long tradition of mayors and governors getting into good-natured bets with each other over the outcome of pro sports championship battles between their respective cities’ teams? For Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner it’ll probably be something normal and anodyne, like the loser mayor has to wear a jersey of the other city’s team at a press conference. But Kemp and Abbott’s bet ought to be more interesting. Like maybe the loser has to write an even more excessive voter suppression bill and send it to the winner’s state, or show up at a predominantly Black church in their state – without any security accompanying them – and tell the congregation that they should be able to show ID when they vote if they also have to show it when they get on a plane. They probably won’t agree that the loser has to publicly apologize for they threw in April. That’s too harsh of a punishment.

Associated Press:  “About 40 shipping containers tumbled into the Pacific Ocean in rough seas west of the Strait of Juan de Fuca entrance on Friday, authorities said.  The U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Northwest said on Twitter Friday afternoon that the ship lost the containers when it listed to its side.

“A Coast Guard helicopter from Port Angeles was sent to the area and the crew was monitoring 35 floating containers as they move north. The ship was headed to Canada when the incident happened, officials said.

“Photos from the helicopter captured containers, with one group of three linked together, floating in the water, a Coast Guard Twitter post showed.  The Strait of Juan de Fuca is located northwest of Seattle.”

Associated Press:  “A driver lost control during a Texas drag racing event and slammed into a crowd of spectators, killing two and injuring at least five others Saturday, authorities said.  The crash occurred Saturday afternoon at an event called ‘Airport Race Wars 2’ at the Kerrville-Kerr County Airport, police said in a news release. The organized event involved drivers speeding down a runway as they competed for cash.

“The driver ‘lost control and left the runway, crashing into parked vehicles and striking spectators who were observing the races,’ Kerville police said.  Four people were airlifted to hospitals in San Antonio, while at least one person was receiving treatment at a local Kerville facility, police said. Kerville is about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of San Antonio.

“Authorities did not immediately release information about the two people who died or give details about those who were injured.  The Kerrville Convention and Visitors Bureau’s website promoted the event as an “action packed, family-friendly day” in which fans could watch the ‘fastest drag cars compete for over $8000 in total prizes.'”