#1: Biden Signs Executive Order on Abortion:

On Friday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on abortion and contraception access. 

Facing pressure from his fellow Democrats in an important election year, Biden was pushed to make a bold move after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.

The order includes measures to safeguard access to abortion medication.

It improves protection against potential penalties that could be faced by women seeking abortion and clinicians that provide them.  It also protects access to contraception and protects patient privacy.

Biden reminded the public that he can only go so far without action from the US Congress.”Until then, he has committed to doing everything in his power to defend reproductive rights and protect access to safe and legal abortion,” the White House said in a statement on Friday.

#2: Unrest in Sri Lanka:

A curfew was imposed in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo after police fired tear gas and a water cannon on students protesting about the bad economy. A scheduled weekend rally and the unrest prompted the curfew.  

Sri Lanka is suffering through its worst economic crisis in almost a decade, and 22 million people have been feeling the effects of high inflation, currency depreciation and power outages. 

Thousands have taken to the streets in protest, and police have used gunfire to control the crowds, wounding several. 

#3: Eight-Year-Old Victim of July 4 Paralyzed:

As horrible details emerge from the July 4th parade mass shooting in the Chicago suburbs, it is learned that an 8-year-old boy suffered severe spinal cord injury from a gunshot wound to his chest, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. His twin brother and his mother was also wounded in the shooting.

The young boy was listed in critical but stable condition on Thursday but is still breathing on a ventilator.

The boy’s twin brother was hospitalized with shrapnel wounds in his lower body but was able to be discharged from the hospital. Their mom, Keely Roberts, suffered gunshot wounds to her legs and feet, according to a family spokesperson.

#4: The July 4th Killer’s Family Life:

We’re learning more about the Highland Park shooter, Robert Crimo III. It is reported that his mother, Denise Pesina, was convicted of leaving him in a hot car for 27 minutes when he was two-years-old in 2002. There’s also a history of her being arrested for domestic violence against her husband, multiple times. 

In spite of all the violence in the family home and turbulent family history, the alleged killer’s father, Robert Crimo Jr, ran for Mayor in Highland Park in 2019, unsuccessfully. Crimo Jr reportedly blamed the domestic violence on his wife, who he says was “intoxicated.”

Crimo III was arrested and faces seven charges of first-degree murder for killing seven people at the July 4th parade last Monday.

#5: New Pandemics Coming As Ice Melts: 

After beginning to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re now hearing that, according to scientists, a new wave of pandemics could be brewing. They’ve discovered many never-seen-before microbes in samples from 21 Tibetan glaciers, released by the ice melting, in a total of 968 microbes discovered. They identified more than 25 million genes in the microbes that could cause disease. 

‘Ice-entrapped modern and ancient pathogenic microbes could lead to local epidemics and even pandemics,’ the researchers wrote in their study, published in Nature Biotechnology.

The Tibetan plateau is an important source of water for large rivers in the area, and the dangerous microbes could quickly reach large groups of people in China and India. 

The majority of the microbes found, about 82%, have very little genetic similarity to microbes found elsewhere. 

A 2019 government report warned that up to two-thirds of the Tibetan Plateau’s glaciers will disappear (melt) by the end of the century.