1. Covid. The drug companies completely manipulated the data, as some identified the missing holes at the time. For example, they chose an unusually healthy group in the clinical trials to inflate the "low death" rate of the vaccine, even though those who took the placebo had a lower mortality rate than those who took the vaccine. The next thing they did was pick the one metric that would suggest 90%+ success rate against the virus by ignoring the asymptomatic and other covid testing data. Turns out, if you measured asymptomatic or other symptomatic measurements than the ones they highlighted, the vaccine wasn't anywhere near that level of success, and sometimes no different than the placebo group. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109522

2. Legal. Federal court issues Biden another loss on immigration. https://www.valleycentral.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2021/08/REMAIN-IN-MEXICO.pdf

3. Economic. The Producer Price Index -- inflation for businesses -- rose a record near 8% over the same quarter last year. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.nr0.htm

4. Political. Strong opposition to vaccine mandate for schools, with strongest opposition coming from two groups: Republicans and black families. Looking like the populist south, 1890. https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/education/2021-08-14/poll-parents-favor-classroom-masks-but-not-vaccine-mandates-for-students

5. Cultural. NBC, SNL, Jimmy Fallon, James Gunn...all implicated in minor sex abuse case filed in NYC. https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=PHfgrAF4J5zKa3usCZ7dBw==

• Bonus: The year-long free masterclass in sports information and sports betting commences with a video requested by one of the board members here: an introduction to some of the basic terms of sports betting. https://sportspicks.locals.com/post/952730/introduction-to-sportsbetting