The National Basketball Association is resuming its season Thursday, 20 weeks after suspending play when a player tested positive for the coronavirus.The regular season was nearing its end at the time of the shutdown, so the league is finishing with an eight-game schedule for 22 teams that have either already qualified for the playoffs or have a chance to do so.All games are being played at three arenas at the Disney complex in Orlando, Florida, where players and staff have been living for several weeks.The league employing a “bubble” strategy with no travel, mandatory quarantines for anyone who leaves the site, no unauthorized visitors and no fans in order to try to prevent coronavirus infections.NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he is anxious about the league’s return, but that everyone on the campus is being tested daily and that officials are ready to act if cases emerge.“Probably if we had any significant spread at all, we’d immediately stop and one thing we’d do is try to track those cases to determine where they’re coming from and whether there had been spread on the campus,” Silver said Wednesday. “I would say, ultimately, we would cease completely if we thought that this was spreading around the campus and something more than an isolated case was happening.”A league statement Wednesday said there were no confirmed positive tests among 344 players who were tested since July 20.Thursday’s first game is between the New Orleans Pelicans and Utah Jazz, with a second matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers.Of those four teams, only the Pelicans have yet to clinch a playoff spot.The playoffs begin August 17, and will conclude with the final round in October.Across the state in Bradenton, Florida, the Women’s National Basketball Association began its season last week in its own bubble with similar rules and no fans at its games. The league typically starts in late May or early June, and this year will begin its playoffs in September.Saturday brings the beginning of the National Hockey League season, employing a similar bubble strategy using two Canadian cities – Toronto and Edmonton – to host players and games for 24 teams. The league announced Monday it also had no positive coronavirus tests during the past week.Major League Baseball began its season last week. It is not using a bubble but rather relying on limiting team travel to geographic regions to try to minimize risks. But already there have been setbacks, with multiple games postponed after members of the Miami Marlins tested positive.
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NASA’s next-generation Mars rover Perseverance is set for liftoff from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Thursday on a mission to search for traces of potential past life on Earth’s planetary neighbor.The U.S. space agency’s $2.4 billion mission is scheduled for launch at 7:50 a.m. ET and is expected to reach Mars in February.The car-sized six-wheeled robotic rover, which will launch atop an Atlas 5 rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance, also is scheduled to deploy a mini helicopter on Mars and test out equipment for future human missions to the fourth planet from the sun.The weather forecast from the Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron put chances of an undisturbed liftoff at 80 percent, reporting a slim chance that thick clouds would form over the launchpad and delay the launch.”This is the ninth time we’ve landed on Mars, so we do have experience with it,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.Perseverance is due to land at the base of a 250-meter-deep crater called Jezero, a former lake from 3.5 billion years ago that scientists suspect could bear evidence of potential past microbial life on Mars. Scientists have long debated whether Mars — once a much more hospitable place than it is today — ever harbored life.One of the most complex maneuvers in Perseverance’s journey will be what mission engineers call the “seven minutes of terror,” when the robot endures extreme heat and speeds during its descent through the Martian atmosphere, deploying a set of supersonic parachutes before igniting mini rocket engines to gently touch down on the planet’s surface.It’s the latest launch from Earth to Mars during a busy month of July, following probes sent by the United Arab Emirates and China.Aboard Perseverance is a 1.8-kilogram autonomous helicopter named Ingenuity that is due to test powered flight on Mars for the first time.Since NASA’s first Mars rover Sojourner landed in 1997, the agency has sent two others — Spirit and Opportunity — that have explored the geology of expansive Martian plains and detected signs of past water formations, among other discoveries. NASA also has successfully sent three landers: Pathfinder, Phoenix and InSight.The United States has plans to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s under a program that envisions using a return to the moon as a testing platform for human missions before making the more ambitious crewed journey to Mars.Perseverance will conduct an experiment to convert elements of the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere into propellant for future rockets launching off the planet’s surface, or to produce breathable oxygen for future astronauts.  
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The U.S. Census Bureau director testified Wednesday that he was not given advance notification about an order by the Trump administration that called for undocumented immigrants to be excluded from the national census.President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this month in which he argued that having people who are in the country illegally affect representation in Congress “would be a perversion of our democratic principles.”Steven Dillingham was called before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee to discuss the order affecting the 2020 census, the once-a-decade count of every person living in the United States and its five territories.The census has vast implications for the country. The results are used to decide how many congressional seats each state gets, as well as the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending.Dillingham told lawmakers that he did not know if any Census Bureau staff were involved in drafting the order, which has been called unconstitutional by civil rights groups.The Democrats who chair the House Oversight Committee said Trump’s order went against prior assurances from administration officials who pledged at earlier hearings to conduct a complete count that includes everyone residing in the United States.But Republicans said the order was constitutional, saying the president’s order applied only to redrawing the congressional districts, not the count or how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed.The Census Bureau was forced to suspend field operations in March and April because of the coronavirus pandemic. The deadline for finishing the count was pushed from July 31 to October 31.Dillingham also offered in his testimony that despite the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 census self-response has been a “tremendous success.”“We are now at almost 63 percent, with more than 92 million households counted. About 80 percent have chosen to respond using the internet. Our response system has not had a single minute of downtime since we first invited people to respond online, beginning in March,” he said.  
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is resting comfortably after undergoing a non-surgical medical procedure on a bile duct stent on Wednesday at a New York City hospital, the court said. Ginsburg, at 87 the oldest member of the Supreme Court and its senior liberal justice, expects to be released from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center by the end of the week after doctors revised a bile duct stent that was originally placed in August 2019, the court said in a statement. “According to her doctors, stent revisions are common occurrences and the procedure, performed using endoscopy and medical imaging guidance, was done to minimize the risk of future infection,” it said. Ginsburg, who has had a series of health issues, said two weeks ago she was receiving chemotherapy treatment for a recurrence of cancer after a biopsy revealed lesions on her liver. Ginsburg was treated for pancreatic cancer in 2019 and 2009, for lung cancer in 2018 and colon cancer in 1999. Ginsburg’s health is closely watched because a Supreme Court vacancy could give Republican President Donald Trump the opportunity to appoint a third justice to the nine-member court and move it further to the right. The court currently has a 5-4 conservative majority including two justices appointed by Trump – Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Neil Gorsuch in 2017. 
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More than $21.5 billion in past-due rent is looming over Americans struggling to make ends meet, global advisory firm Stout, Risius and Ross estimated on Wednesday, as Republicans and Democrats fight over a new COVID-19 relief package.Senate Republicans this week proposed a new plan that would not reinstate the recently lapsed federal eviction ban, which carried a stay for rent due for one-third of renters. Adding to the strain, enhanced $600 weekly federal unemployment benefits are set to evaporate this Friday.Without a solution soon, the likely result “will be a staggering surge in homelessness unlike anything we have seen,” said John Pollock, a Public Justice Center attorney and coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel (NCCRC), which helped develop the eviction tracking tool with Stout, Risius and Ross.The unprecedented amount of back rent is not a macroeconomic game changer, said Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. But for renters, “it’s catastrophic. Very few people will be able to pay this back,” he said.A debt spiral could haunt displaced tenants “for a lifetime,” he added.Patchwork of bansOver the spring and early summer, as unemployment surged to levels unseen since the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression, a patchwork of federal, state and local eviction bans kept renters in their homes.On Friday, the eviction ban that covered the third of renters in buildings with mortgages backed by the federal government lapsed. The rent deferred over four months is now due, as is all the rent where local and state moratoria on evictions have also ended.When rent goes missing over such an extended period, the low end of the market becomes a house of cards and “it starts to fall down,” said Emily Benfer, who co-created the COVID-19 Housing Policy Scorecard at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, a national research center on evictions.FILE – In this May 30, 2020, photo, a car caravan calling for the cancellation of rents during the coronavirus pandemic prepares to parade through Boston.”Risk of eviction increases, risk of foreclosure and bankruptcy follows, property taxes go unpaid, leaving communities and schools under-resourced,” said Benfer, a visiting law professor at Wake Forest University.The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a measure in May that would have extended the enhanced jobless aid through January and allocated $100 billion for rental assistance. It would also have extended the federal ban on evictions for up to one year.The Republican-controlled Senate package unveiled Monday focuses on getting kids back in school, getting workers back to work and winning the fight against the virus, the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.It proposes cutting the enhanced unemployment assistance to $200 a week and does not mention housing, evictions or the eviction ban.The Senate Republican Communications Center did not respond to requests for comment.’Something, I hope’The Senate Banking Committee, which oversees housing, cited a statement by Chairman Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, on Tuesday.”I can’t answer that yet,” he told reporters when asked about an extension of the eviction moratorium. “There will be something, I hope, dealing with rental assistance.”An avalanche of filings are hitting eviction courts nationwide, as hearings ramp up again online, in courtrooms that require social distancing, and even at the Columbus, Ohio, convention center. In July alone, 21% of renters paid no rent, according to research firm Apartment List.Stout and the NCCRC analyzed census survey results and income data to create their eviction tracker, which uploads data weekly. Of the 44 million U.S. renter households, 17.3 million are unable to pay rent and risk eviction, the tracker estimates.
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The summer’s third and final mission to Mars — featuring NASA’s most elaborate life-hunting rover — is on the verge of liftoff.The rover Perseverance will follow China’s rover-orbiter combo and a United Arab Emirates orbiter, both launched last week. It will take the spacecraft seven months to reach Mars after traveling 300 million miles.Once on the surface, Perseverance will scrounge for evidence of past microscopic life in an ancient lakebed, and gather the most promising rock samples for future pickup. NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to return the samples to Earth around 2031.This unprecedented effort will involve multiple launches and spacecraft — and cost more than $8 billion.”We don’t know if life existed there or not. But we do know that Mars at one point in its history was habitable,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on the eve of launch.The U.S. remains the only country to land successfully at Mars. If all goes well next February, Perseverance will become the ninth U.S. spacecraft to operate on the Martian surface.First things first, though: Good flying weather is forecast for United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. The Denver-based rocket maker and its heritage companies have launched all of NASA’s Mars missions, beginning with the Mariners in 1964.ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said Perseverance is arguably the most sophisticated and most exciting of all the Mars missions.”We are literally chomping at the bit to take this nuclear-powered dune buggy out to Mars,” he said earlier this week.
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily DebunkClaim: Coronavirus may be sexually transmitted and cause male infertility.Verdict: Lacks ContextRead the full story at: Health Feedback​Social Media DisinfoScreenshotCirculating on social media: Claim that countries most affected by COVID-19 are run by men, and the countries with the best COVID-19 response are led by women.Verdict: Partly falseRead the full story at: USA Today​ Factual Reads on CoronavirusCOVID-19 and heatwaves: a double whammy for Indian cities
The onset of the hot season presents individuals and local decision makers with new challenges on the optimal ways to stay safe from both heat stress and COVID-19.
— The Lancet Planetary Health, July 27Coronavirus trend: The pandemic is far from over
While the first countries are easing their lockdowns, others report more and more new cases every day.
— Deutsche Welle, July 24
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Національна комісія, що здійснює державне регулювання у сферах енергетики та комунальних послуг (НКРЕКП) отримала доручення усунути причини порушень на ринку електроенергії.

Такі рекомендації дав Антимонопольний комітет України (АМКУ) після «численних звернень суб’єктів господарювання, асоціацій та об’єднань підприємств, народних депутатів та органів державної влади щодо можливих маніпуляцій з боку окремих учасників ринку електроенергії, що призводять до необґрунтованих змін цін на різних сегментах ринку електроенергії та спотворення конкуренції на ринку в цілому», – йдеться на сайті установи. 

У регулятора є 15 днів для того, що розглянути рекомендації Антимонопольного комітету та повідомити про результати їхнього розгляду, йдеться в офіційному повідомленні. Серед іншого, комітет рекомендує НКРЕКП провести моніторинг функціонування балансуючого ринку електричної енергії за період протягом 2019 року – І півріччя 2020 року і за результатами повідомити про виявлені можливі ознаки порушення законодавства про захист економічної конкуренції. 

Про можливі «маніпуляції» на ринку електроенергії раніше йшлося у розслідуванні журналістів програми «Схеми: корупція в деталях» (проєкт Радіо Свобода та телеканалу UA:Перший). Журналісти встановили, що компанія «Центренерго» заробляє мільярди гривень на енергетичному ринку за рахунок використання виробничих потужностей атомних електростанцій, чим завдає збитків «Енергоатому» та держпідприємству «Гарантований покупець».

Масштаби ймовірних оборудок з боку «Центренерго», як виявили «Схеми», обчислюються мільярдами. Згідно з фінансово-господарською діяльністю «Центренерго», яку журналісти отримали від джерел у податковій, держкомпанія почала активно заробляти на цій схемі, починаючи з кінця 2019 року. Так, журналісти виявили, що з жовтня 2019-го до кінця лютого 2020 року «Центренерго» отримало від «Укренерго» майже 1 ГВт*годин електроенергії для балансування на загальну суму 1,06 мільярда гривень.

«Починаючи з березня, масштаби використання цієї схеми з боку «Центренерго» суттєво збільшились», – йдеться в журналістському розслідуванні.

Так, загальний обсяг проданої, але не виробленої «Центренерго» електроенергії за період з 1 березня до 15 травня склав 2,1 ГВт*годин. Ці дані «Схеми» отримали від джерел у Кабінеті міністрів.

В «Енергоатомі» підтвердили, що відколи запрацював новий ринок електроенергії, становище держкомпанії стало поступово погіршуватись: «На сьогодні ані «Енергоатом», ані ДП «Гарантований покупець» не можуть продати «на добу наперед» (РДН) весь обсяг виробленої на АЕС електроенергії через перенасиченість». І додали: «Результат – «Енергоатом» щоденно завершує торги на РДН з небалансами на рівні від 20% до 40% продукції, виставленої на продаж, а «Гарантованому покупцю» вдається реалізувати продукцію АЕС лише в окремі години доби».

Можливість продавати «повітря» і заробляти на цьому – створила саме держава, зокрема регулятор – НКРЕКП, йдеться у матеріалі.

НКРЕКП у відповідь на запит «Схем» повідомили, що неодноразово вживали заходи для того, щоб державні «Гарантований покупець» та «Енергоатом» не зазнавали таких фінансових збитків через ситуацію на балансуючому енергоринку. В регуляторі визнали, що надлишок електроенергії на ринку міг призвести до «маніпуляцій з продажем обсягів електричної енергії деякими учасниками ринку, зокрема, ТЕС/ТЕЦ». Для того, щоб обмежити такі маніпуляції, 3 червня НКРЕКП ухвалила постанову, відповідно до якої продавати електроенергію можна тільки за умови підтвердження фізичної можливості її виробити.

Згідно з аналізом «Схем», відтоді «Центренерго» продовжило знаходити шляхи для використання цієї схеми, щоправда, купуючи електроенергію зі знижкою у 20%, а не 50%, як раніше.

В «Центренерго» не відповіли на запитання «Схем». Утримались від коментарів і в Фонді держмайна, який володіє 78% акцій «Центренерго».

 
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