Tom Harris: To hold off the SNP, Unionists must combine hard facts with hard politics https://bit.ly/3fiyv0g
Do Scots really believe they could have weathered the COVID crisis without Westminster's aid?
No going back to business as usual: France’s biggest export industry, aeronautics, is going through its biggest ever crisis. Nobody can say how quickly flying will resume after the pandemic: already Airbus has announced up to 15,000 job cuts worldwide. https://bit.ly/2W0xcev
A return to Africa: Why North African states are looking south https://bit.ly/3gCRJOf
+ Algeria may be showing new flexibility in its response to security threats to its south.
+ Tunisia is beginning to look for new economic opportunities in Africa.
+ Egypt is responding to a series of strategic concerns, particularly over the waters of the Nile.
+ Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are also all dealing with increased migration flows, with migrants seeking to work on their territories or pass through it to reach Europe.
The Aussies step up: As most countries get ready to tighten their belts in the wake of COVID-19, Australia is ramping up its defense spending. https://bit.ly/2CcVT0l
Trade war in strategic minerals: China once had a virtual monopoly in rare earths and dominated the value chain. In the past two years, it has imported more than it exported but, even so, it is threatening to stop shipments to the US. https://bit.ly/2Z8VbKD
This is what the future of globalization will look like: The pandemic proved, once and for all, that the world can’t be flat. But global trade can recover—if we rewrite the rules. https://bit.ly/3ejbF7r
Andreas Kluth: The fight over a coronavirus vaccine will get ugly: Once COVID-19 shots become available, there will be arguments about who gets them, and an even bigger battle with anti-vaxxers who refuse them. https://bloom.bg/2CfWlLh
Why won’t people use contact-tracing apps? https://bit.ly/2ZbLD1y
Evian’s new 100% recycled plastic bottle comes without a label: The bottle, which has the brand name engraved onto the recycled plastic, is part of Evian’s effort to become fully circular by 2025. https://bit.ly/3efJeXM
A bird? A plane? No, it’s a Google balloon beaming the internet: A commercial deal in Kenya marks the first application of balloon-powered internet in Africa, the region with the lowest percentage of internet users globally. https://nyti.ms/38PIojD
Cook Political Report: This election is looking more like a Democratic tsunami than simply a Blue wave. Trump, mired in some of the lowest job approval ratings of his presidency, is trailing Biden by significant margins in key battleground states like Pennsylvania (8 points), Michigan (9 points), and Wisconsin (9 points). He’s even running behind Biden in his firewall states of Florida and North Carolina. https://bit.ly/3fcZzxH
Changes to Cook Political Report's Electoral College ratings:
+ Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska’s 2nd district move from Toss Up to Lean Democrat.
+ Maine, once in Lean Democrat, moves to the safer Likely Democratic category.
+ Georgia has joined Arizona, North Carolina and Florida in the Toss Up column, although, at this point, Biden would be slightly favored to win at least Arizona and Florida.
+ Maine’s 2nd district has moved from Likely Republican to a more competitive Lean Republican.
+ These moves alone push Biden over the 270 electoral vote threshold (to 279).
How Newt Gingrich laid the groundwork for Trump's Republican Party: Time reports, as Republicans prepare for their party convention this summer, we will see the inevitable head-scratching take place about how the party leaders gave way to Donald Trump. There will be panels of pundits on television endlessly debating why the "establishment" failed to hold back the renegades-Republicans who refuse to abide by any norms, Republicans who are willing to tear down institutions, and Republicans who have almost no interest in governance. https://bit.ly/2AHzoQT
Donald Trump fails to 'fully appreciate' the office of US president: Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton revealed Trump's 'mistrust' of his office and his own staff in an exclusive DW interview. He also claimed Trump envies 'big guys' like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. https://bit.ly/2O7UFGr
1 in 4 men think women’s equality has come at their expense: Fortune reports, roughly one in four US men say that the progress women have made toward equality has come at the expense of men, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. Ahead of the August centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted some women the right to vote, Pew took a big-picture look at the state of gender equality in America. In a survey of more than 3,000 US adults conducted in March and April of this year, men and women shared their feelings on the progress women have—or haven't—made in the last century. That sentiment was particularly strong among Republican men (38%), who are twice as likely as Democratic males (19%) to see men's status as undermined by the progress of women. A quarter of Republican women agree with their male political peers. https://bit.ly/3fd15jw
Why people are toppling monuments to racism: Statues are ideological powerhouses that compress whole systems of authority into bodies of bronze or marble. https://bit.ly/2ZT7cmn
What if the Republicans pivoted on climate? How ambitious, conservative environmentalism came into being. An imagined scenario from 2024. https://econ.st/2Z8d7VI
Apartments become Silicon Valley’s hot new thing: Real-estate startup Juno plans to build its projects using techniques familiar to carmakers. https://on.wsj.com/3edfnzk
New bootcamp wants to start 1700 companies a day: An insanely ambitious project by Rainmaking is aiming to turn people laid off because of coronavirus into entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3gGieCp
Summer on Mars: NASA’s Perseverance Rover is one of three missions ready to launch: A new generation of orbiters, landers and rovers will study the Red Planet as never before, setting the stage for returning pristine samples to Earth. https://bit.ly/2BQGcfu
What poker can teach us about making the world a better place https://whr.tn/2AFtvn5
SOTD: Foo Fighters - Everlong - Letterman's Final Show https://bit.ly/31SFyZp
Christopher Buckley’s ‘Make Russia Great Again’ is the Trump satire we’ve been waiting for https://wapo.st/3ffHBuI
Simon Evans: Comedy can bring us back together (if we’ll let it) https://bit.ly/31UAHHj
