Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Coronavirus and South Africa's toxic relationship with alcohol
A ban on drinking highlights a legacy of the country's racist past but threatens its economic future.

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Russia registers virus vaccine, Putin's daughter given it

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Russia approves world's first COVID-19 vaccine
Russia's health ministry has given regulatory approval for the world's first COVID-19 vaccine, developed by Moscow's Gamaleya Institute, after less than two months of human testing, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. The move paves the way for mass inoculation even as the final stages of clinical trials to test safety and efficacy continue. The speed at which Russia is moving to roll out its vaccine highlights its determination to win the global race for an effective product but has stirred concerns that it may be putting national prestige before science and safety. More to follow.

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Yahoo! Sports - News, Scores, Standings, Rumors, Fantasy Games

Coaches make their case to play, but will it matter?
Jim Harbaugh and other coaches pleaded for a college football season that appears on the brink of cancellation. Will university presidents listen, or is it too late?

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Rory McIlroy hits out at Brooks Koepka ‘mind games’ at US PGA Championship
Major or no major, Rory McIlroy believes there is a line you do not cross, regardless of your ambition in any given week. The Northern Irishman re-emphasised his belief on Sunday night by calling out Brooks Koepka for disrespectful “mind games” against Dustin Johnson before the final round of the 102nd USPGA Championship. Koepka was on the first hole at Harding Park and trying to become the first player to win three strokeplay Wanamaker Trophies when McIlroy made his comments. After his 68 to close on two under, McIlroy was asked what he thought about Koepka’s sideswipe at his Ryder Cup team-mate the previous evening, saying that “he’s only won one”. Koepka also implied that Johnson had found the second major the hardest to win. “I was watching the golf last night and heard the [Koepka] interview and was just sort of taken aback a little bit by what he said and whether he was trying to play mind games or not – if he’s trying to play mind games, he’s trying to do it to the wrong person,” McIlroy said. “It’s a very different mentality to bring to golf that I don’t think a lot of golfers have. Just different. I try to respect everyone out here. Everyone is a great player. If you’ve won a major, you’re a hell of a player.” Then McIlroy delivered his own biting barb towards Koepka. “It’s sort of hard to knock a guy that’s got 21 wins on the PGA Tour, which is three times as many as Brooks,” McIlroy said. Koepka has a burgeoning reputation as an elite golfer willing to put down his peers. Apart from his many jibes at Bryson DeChambeau, Koepka was dismissive last year when asked if he felt there was a rivalry between him and McIlroy. “I’ve been out here for, what, five years – Rory hasn’t won a major since I’ve been on the PGA Tour,” Koepka said. ”So I just don’t view it as a rivalry.” McIlroy shrugged it off at the time, but was known privately to be unimpressed. In some ways McIlroy’s attitude towards Koepka’s irreverence is curious seeing as he, himself, declared that the European golfers such as Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari were wrong to skip the early PGA Tour restart events following lockdown and stated they should be there “if they cared about their careers”. Except McIlroy did not name anyone directly and climbed down from those comments recently. There is plainly a distaste of Koepka’s discourtesy. As it was, it was another quote in McIlroy’s post-major press conference on Sunday night that will make the eyebrows rise the most in some quarters. Monday is the six-year anniversary of the 31-year-old’s last major win – the 2014 US PGA win. He was quizzed by an Irish journalist “why you find it’s difficult to hang around for 54, 63 holes in recent seasons compared to say earlier in your career?” McIlroy replied: “Maybe I’m just not as good as I used to be. I don’t know.” The world No 3 was being prickly and does not truly believe that. “I feel like the golf that I’ve played in the majors has been sort of similar to the golf I’ve played outside of them, and I’ve won some big events and played well and had a good season last year,” McIlroy said. “I can’t really put my finger on it. I go out there and try my best every single day. Some days I play better than others, and I just have to keep going and keep persisting and see if you can do better the next time.” It was a legitimate query on the reporter’s behalf. Something is plainly missing when it comes to the majors for McIlroy, seeing as he won four by the age of 25 and all too often it is slow starts and/or sloppy errors at crucial times. This was a satisfactory end to his San Francisco quest, but a finishing time before the leaders had even teed-off obviously fell far short of what he expects. For now, McIlroy is simply trying to rediscover the consistency that saw him chalk up seven successive PGA Tour top-fives before the coronavirus hooter sounded. In his six events since the resumption, McIlroy has not recorded a single top-10 finish and only one top 20. “This was one of the tougher tests that we’ve faced since coming back, together with the Memorial a few weeks ago,” he said. “I’ve sort of gauged those two events as the barometer of where my game is, and I’m going to pretty much finish in the same spot around 30th. There’s been enough good stuff in there, I’m just making a few too many mistakes. Try to clean that up going forward.”

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Commentary: Big Ten's swift turnabout shows schools will always put amateurism first
The college football season is in serious peril because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But what spurred the Big Ten to push for the season to be canceled?

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Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

‘Economic tsunami’: US cities and states hit by Covid-19 face dire budget cuts
State and local governments facing deep shortfalls wrestle with the devastating economic impact of the coronavirusEvery day, New Yorkers throw out 10,000 tons of trash – a third of which is food and yard scraps that could skip the incinerators and landfills and be turned into compost.Over the last several years, a curbside pick-up program allowed New Yorkers to compost their food and yard scraps by putting them in a brown bin from the city that would be picked up just like trash.Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit.Along with over 200,000 cases of the virus and 20,000 deaths, the New York City, like many of its residents, took a hard economic hit due to mandatory stay-at-home orders. Facing a $9bn deficit, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed $5bn out of the city’s budget. The city’s composting program was completely gutted, save for about $3m to allow for a few dozen community composting outlets to run.The move is “probably the biggest environmental reversal of a policy in the De Blasio administration”, said Eric Goldstein, senior attorney and New York City environment director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This was a program that already was underfunded and a concept that had not expanded citywide as planners and waste experts have suggested was necessary for years.”The decision will be just one of thousands that will affect people across the US in the coming months as cities and states wrestle with the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus. Decisions that will cost people their jobs and residents services they have loved or relied upon.Across the country, state and local governments are facing dire budget deficits. With falling personal income tax and sales tax revenue, state budgets are looking at an estimated $500bn shortfall over the next two years. Local budgets are not looking bright either: nearly all cities with populations over 50,000 are expecting revenue shortfalls this year.State and local governments fund nearly every public good that directly touches Americans, from public schools and parks to police departments and trash collection. They employ over 18 million people, and spending by state and local governments make up about 9% of GDP.Some states have already taken drastic measures to offset revenue shortfalls. At least four states – Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas – have announced across-the-board cuts to all state agencies by at least 5%. Florida, which is still dealing with thousands of new Covid-19 each day, announced budget cuts that the governor likened to Game of Thrones’ infamous Red Wedding scene, slashing $1bn in funding from education and social services, including the state’s affordable housing program.So far state and local governments have largely avoided mass layoffs, turning instead to hiring freezes and temporary furloughs to try to rein in spending while keeping employees on payroll. Michigan and Washington temporarily furloughed employees, requiring workers to take unpaid days off.But one sector of government that is already seeing waves of layoffs is higher education, one of the largest chunks in state budgets. Colorado, Ohio and Wisconsin have already made huge cuts to their higher education budgets, with other states likely to follow.Mike Tosko and his wife, Angela Bilia, were two of 178 faculty members at the University of Akron to be laid off. Tosko, a tenured professor on the university’s library staff, and Bilia, a non-tenured track English professor, had worked for the university for 17 years. While they were expecting staff layoffs, it came as a surprise to them that they both would be cut.“It’s kind of pretty cruel, really. We’re the only married couple to be laid off,” Tosko said. Since the faculty union is going into arbitration with the university to fight the layoffs, Tosko and Bilia cannot apply for unemployment insurance since they have not formally been laid off. But they are not getting a paycheck, and the university is no longer paying for their health insurance. With two sons, health insurance on Cobra – the program that allows the newly unemployed to continue receiving their work health cover for limited periods – costs about $2,000 a month.Some states have chosen to target their higher education budgets in an attempt to protect their K-12 education budgets, which makes up the largest portion of spending in state budgets. Still, some states have had to make deep cuts to their K-12 budgets: Georgia slashed $950m from its K-12 funding while Nevada squeezed out $156m from its education budget.Cuts to state education budgets have already put educators and policy experts on edge. During the Great Recession, an estimated 300,000 school employees were laid off and by 2011, education funding in the country dropped 4%. Research has traced direct links between cuts to funding and lowered student performance.Most vulnerable to state K-12 education cuts are school districts that serve students from low-income communities. When a state cuts funding from all school districts by the same percentage, schools that rely more on state funding, which tend to be schools in high-poverty areas, end up losing the most funding. Schools in wealthier districts rely more on local property taxes for funding and are not as adversely impacted by state budget cuts.A recent analysis from the Education Law Center pointed out that New York, which cut funding for schools depending on how much money each school got from federal aid in the Cares Act, ending up reducing the most money from its poorest school districts. Meanwhile, Ohio’s governor took a more targeted approach and cut higher percentages from wealthier school districts that got less state funding.“In the Great Recession, we saw huge layoffs … the majority of which were in high-poverty districts. We can’t repeat those mistakes,” said Ary Amerikaner, a vice-president at the Education Trust and a former education deputy assistant secretary for the Obama administration.As the Senate negotiates with House Democrats on a new stimulus deal, many state and local government leaders have spoken out about the need for more federal aid. The National Governors Association has asked the Senate to include $500bn in unrestricted funding for state and local governments. Without it, “we will need to make steeper cuts and reduce payrolls even more, at precisely the time these services are needed the most”, the association said in a statementMultiple governors and mayors have painted bleak pictures of what the future would look like without additional federal funds. The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, alluded to layoffs and big budget cuts without federal aid. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, laid out a state budget with $11bn cuts that would happen if the state does not get at least $14bn in aid. Some states, like Illinois, have passed budgets with the expectation that they will be receiving federal dollars.Democrats have advocated for nearly $1tn in relief to state and local governments, but it is unclear how much the Republican-controlled Senate will allocate to states. Donald Trump and his administration have balked at the idea of giving states that much money, with Trump saying that Democrats want to assist “poorly run states”.Without a deal for those working – and living – in those states, the future is looking increasingly bleak. “The impact is dramatic. The declines are so deep and so vast,” said Lucy Dadayan, senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Overall, the states were in a great place prior to the pandemic, and it just hit states like an economic tsunami.”

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HUYA Inc. Reports Second Quarter 2020 Unaudited Financial Results
HUYA Inc. ("Huya" or the "Company") (NYSE: HUYA), a leading game live streaming platform in China, today announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2020.

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Water Soluble Fertilizers Market Projected to Surpass $8 Billion by 2026, Says Global Market Insights Inc.
Based on Global Market Insights Inc., report, the water soluble fertilizers market was estimated at $6.58 billion in 2019 and is slated to exceed $8 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 7.3% from 2020 to 2026. The report provides a thorough analysis of the major winning strategies, market estimations as well as size, main investment avenues, competitive scenarios, drivers and opportunities, and wavering industry trends.

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Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Sen. Sasse Tells Trump ‘America Doesn’t Have Kings’ in Response to Recent Executive Orders
Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) doubled down on his criticism of President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders in a tweet on Monday afternoon, saying “no president” has the power to make such unilateral policy decisions.“No president — whether named Obama or Trump or Biden or AOC — has unilateral power to rewrite immigration law or to cut taxes or to raise taxes,” Sasse said. “This is because America doesn’t have kings.”> Mr. President- > I understand that you’re mad. A few thoughts…. > ⁰⁰(1) As we’ve discussed before, I don’t think Twitter is the best place to do this. But, since you moved our conversation from private to public, here we are. > (2)…https://t.co/AYF2ApdRR2 pic.twitter.com/2rtiPuhJJB> > -- Team Sasse (@TeamSasse) August 10, 2020Sasse’s comment was the latest in a war of words between the pair that played out on Twitter after the senator called Trump’s executive orders “unconstitutional slop.” “The pen-and-phone theory of executive lawmaking is unconstitutional slop,” Sasse said earlier.The orders, which Trump signed in response to legislative gridlock over additional Covid relief legislation, extended the expanded unemployment benefits Congress approved in March, deferred payroll taxes and extended rent and student loan payment assistance.“President Obama did not have the power to unilaterally rewrite immigration law with DACA, and President Trump does not have the power to unilaterally rewrite the payroll tax law. Under the Constitution, that power belongs to the American people acting through their members of Congress,” he continued.The president shot back at Sasse’s initial criticism, calling the senator a “Republican in Name Only” or RINO.“RINO Ben Sasse, who needed my support and endorsement in order to get the Republican nomination for Senate from the GREAT State of Nebraska, has, now that he’s got it (Thank you President T), gone rogue, again. This foolishness plays right into the hands of the Radical Left Dems!” Trump wrote in a Monday morning tweet, branding Sasse as a “Republican in Name Only” or RINO.In his latest response, Sasse accused the president of being “frustrated I didn’t join your re-election committee & that I ran a primary ad admitting to Nebraskans that we sometimes agree and sometimes disagree.”“You also know I never asked for your endorsement nor did I use it in the campaign,” he added. “I have pleaded with you but for bigger things like better U.S. policy on the Chinese Communist Party — and on this, you’ve done a very good job.” Sasse then offered to “move the conversation back to a private channel” if Trump so desires.The senator's criticism of Trump's executive action put him at odds with GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who called the orders a necessary action.“Struggling Americans need action now. Since Democrats have sabotaged backroom talks with absurd demands that would not help working people, I support President Trump exploring his options to get unemployment benefits and other relief to the people who need them the most,” McConnell said.

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Biden teases VP pick: 'Are you ready?'
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is expected to announce his running mate this week, teasing a reporter on Sunday by asking, "Are you ready?"Biden has said he will choose a woman as his vice presidential pick, with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice having emerged as frontrunners. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and California Rep. Karen Bass have also been floated by analysts as potential picks."[Biden] has a very difficult decision to make … but it's almost an embarrassment of riches," Howard University political science professor Niambi Carter told USA Today, while others have worried that Biden's delay has made his choice "messier than it should be" and pitted "women, especially Black women, against one another." Check out the seven candidates The Week's Matthew Walther believes have the best chance here.More stories from theweek.com Donald Trump's impotent tyranny Protesters, police clash during 2nd night of protests over disputed Belarus election QAnon goes mainstream

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Police searched a United Airlines jet after a reportedly hallucinating passenger claimed there was a bomb on board
Police officers searched the plane with passengers still on board and offloaded each piece of luggage on the plane to be checked by canine units.

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