Viral News: As the Delta variant of the coronavirus causes a surge of infections, some companies are re-thinking when or if they will call employees back to the office and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is talking about mandatory vaccinations.

  The mayor said he’s considering required vaccination for some indoor activities, like dining in restaurants, and mandating that more city employees get vaccinated. He’s also encouraging private employers to require their workers to get vaccinated.

  “I’m calling upon all New York City employers, including our private hospitals, to move immediately to some form of mandate,” de Blasio said in a radio interview. Just over 41 percent of New York City residents are vaccinated.

  Indiana University has won a judgement in a lawsuit aimed at knocking down its vaccine requirement. A federal judge ruled that the University’s rule can stand.

  New cases of Covid-19 are up 173 percent over the past two weeks in this country. Deaths have risen 20 percent.

  Hospitalizations are rising in 45 states, up 57 percent across the country. In Florida, some hospitals now have more Covid patients in the hospital than they’ve had since the start of the pandemic.

  Nonetheless, only 49 percent of the US population is vaccinated and the resisters are digging in.

  In Alabama, only 34 percent of residents are fully vaccinated ad new cases are up 213 percent. The state’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey said, “Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,”

Ball Four: In a surprising act of social consciousness for a sport in which the athletes chew tobacco during the game, the Cleveland Indians announced that after 100 years they are renouncing their name and logo to become the “Guardians.” They had already been phasing out their “Chief Wahoo” mascot and logo.

  The Indians … Guardians … after years of objections from fans and native Americans surrendered amidst a general push to end the use of indigenous names and logos for sports teams. They took their new name from two statues on the Hope Memorial Bridge known locally as “the traffic guardians.”

  The Washington Redskins, now the “Washington Football Team,” gave up their racist name for the 2020 season.

  Not everyone is on board with this stuff. “Oh no!” Donald Trump tweeted. “What is going on? This is not good news, even for ‘Indians’. Cancel culture at work!”

Political Correction: The bust of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the slave trader and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, was removed from the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville after years of protest and debate about its presence  

  Also removed, to make it look like the state was not buckling to good sense, they removed busts of Adm. David Farragut, the first leader of the US Navy, and Adm. Albert Gleaves, a commander in World War I. 

The Spin Rack: The search for bodies in the collapsed Surfside, Florida condominium building has ended. Ninety-eight people are confirmed dead and one woman is still missing. —  President Trump’s friend Thomas Barrack, who ran the former president’s inauguration committee, has been freed from jail on a $250 million bond. He’s accused of illegally lobbying the US government on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. Barrack is considered a flight risk because he’s rich and has private jets.  – American bombers hit Taliban positions this week in support of threatened Afghan government forces, even as the US withdraws. The Taliban have taken half the country.

The Obit Page: Laura Foreman, a writer and former journalist whose romance with a source inspired one of the most famous edicts in the news business, is reported to have died in June at the age of 76.

  As Kit Seelye reports for the Times, Foreman was a talented reporter with a literary style who had an affair with a corrupt Philadelphia politician, accepting as much as 20,000 in gifts while she was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1970s. 

  She had moved on to The NY Times  by the time the affair came to light. Despite her claim that her personal life never influenced her work, Foreman was fired by the Times and was exiled from journalism. The paper’s legendarily tough executive editor Abe Rosenthal was inspired to say of the romantic lives of reporters, “You can sleep with elephants if you want to, but if you do, you can’t cover the circus.”

Trump 2024: Author Michael Wolfe, who’s written three books about Donald Trump, writes in The NY Times that he believes Trump will run for president again in 2024.

  In an interview, Wolfe asked Trump about his plans for a presidential library, something former presidents establish when their career is over. Wolfe writes that Trump snarled in response, “No way, no way, no way.”

  Like a shark that has to keep moving to breathe, Trump lives for political adoration and revenge. Wolfe believes that Trump’s 2016 campaign based on building a border wall will be replaced by “the steal,” Trump’s clam that the election was rigged.

 Wolfe writes, “This is Donald Trump, always ready to strike back harder than he has been struck, to blame anyone but himself, to silence any doubts with the sound of his own voice, to take what he believes is his and, most of all, to seize all available attention. Sound the alarm.”

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