Weekday morning and evening editions. Saturdays once. Good news on Sundays. All sources labeled.
TASIA FORTUNE UPDATE
Tasia Fortune, 29, was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 3. The Hinds County Coroner’s Office identified her three days later. Her family broke its silence Thursday. A Jackson city councilman asked federal prosecutors to investigate her death the same day.
Fortune’s sister, LaToni Fortune, told Mississippi Today she last saw Tasia about a month ago. Tasia had traveled to Kentucky to visit family. Nothing about the visit stood out. Fortune’s aunt, Etta Avolio, started a GoFundMe to cover burial costs. “Tasia was a strong-minded, big-hearted, vibrant young woman,” the fundraiser reads. The family says it holds firmly to its faith that justice will be served.
Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes sent a letter Wednesday to US Attorney Baxter Kruger for the Southern District of Mississippi. Multiple outlets confirm Stokes explicitly called Fortune’s death a murder in that letter. That is Stokes’s own characterization. Police have not called it a murder. Nobody has confirmed how Fortune died. Stokes said publicly that even without a confirmed racial element, Mississippi’s history with lynching has to be part of the conversation. Officials should not stay silent, he said.
Jackson police still will not say whether they suspect foul play. They have not released an incident report. They are calling it an active investigation.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A councilman is now asking who murdered Tasia Fortune before investigators have said whether anyone did. Her family wants answers. So does a growing list of people watching a pattern that keeps repeating across the country.
Sources: Mississippi Today (US, independent — sister’s account, police declining comment); AllHipHop (US — family’s public statement, active investigation status); TheGrio (US — Stokes letter details, lynching history quote); Yahoo (US — Stokes name and ward, GoFundMe quote)
NO AMERICAN SHIPS
Iran wants to bar US and Israeli vessels from the Strait of Hormuz entirely under a proposed deal with Oman, according to local media reports cited by Bloomberg. Hostile countries would also have to pay compensation before any of their ships could transit.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said Wednesday that Iran and Oman are close to finalizing a shipping framework. He said the deal would not automatically reopen the strait. The two countries have agreed on coordinates for a new safe shipping route. They have also discussed a joint coordination center. That center would monitor traffic and collect information from vessels passing through. Existing temporary routes near Iran’s Larak Island would close under the new arrangement. Negotiations have continued for more than three weeks.
The current push builds on an earlier framework that never fully worked. Iran and the US reached a temporary agreement in April. Under Article 5 of that deal, Iran committed to using its “best efforts” to ensure safe commercial passage for 60 days. The article’s language was vague on one key point: who would actually administer the strait once ships started moving again. That vagueness produced months of disagreement. The new Iran-Oman talks are meant to settle it for good, by defining maritime administration and services directly rather than leaving the question open.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called the Oman talks “positive” on Thursday. Iran’s Sepah News, which is linked to the Revolutionary Guard, took a harder line. It quoted an official saying US military threats remain the main obstacle to any agreement. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Sunday that negotiations were in their final stages. He said the strait would never return to its pre-war status.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Iran is not just negotiating a route through Hormuz. It is trying to write the US and Israel out of the strait entirely, and require payment from anyone Tehran considers hostile before they can pass. Washington has said a deal is close for weeks. Iran’s own account of what it wants keeps getting harder to reconcile with that optimism.
Sources: Bloomberg (US — proposed ban on US and Israeli ships, compensation requirement); CNN (US — Gharibabadi quotes, negotiation timeline, Article 5 “best efforts” language, joint coordination center); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Baghaei quote, Sepah News account); Bloomberg (US — Araghchi “final stages” statement)
THE STRATEGIC AMBUSH
Israeli officials are discussing whether to openly abandon the Gaza disarmament roadmap and escalate strikes further, according to the Times of Israel. Some officials are now describing Hamas’s earlier acceptance of the plan as a “strategic ambush.”
The characterization marks a sharp reversal. Hamas agreed to the roadmap after the Board of Peace, backed by the UN Security Council, announced the framework last week. Israel had described that acceptance as progress at the time. IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir visited Gaza on Wednesday. He vowed the army would keep operating proactively against Hamas regardless of the roadmap’s status.
The ambush framing is new, but Israeli resistance to the roadmap is not. Al Jazeera has reported since Sunday that Israel’s government says it has serious security concerns about the plan. Israeli forces have intensified operations in Gaza since the roadmap was announced. Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israeli Army Radio he was very skeptical Hamas would actually disarm. Far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a formal letter demanding the security cabinet block the roadmap’s implementation entirely, according to TIME.
The Israeli government does not appear fully united behind the ambush framing. One official involved with the peace proposal told the Times of Israel that recent IDF restraint has been important to keeping the roadmap’s sequencing on track. The official called it steps in the right direction. That account sits uneasily next to the ambush language other officials are using. Uganda has separately approved deploying troops to the international force overseeing Gaza’s transition. That is a sign other governments are still planning around the roadmap’s survival, even as parts of the Israeli government question it.
Zamir is also facing pressure on a separate front. He has accused the Israeli government of ignoring the army’s views on a proposed law governing ultra-Orthodox military conscription, calling the legislation warped.
The reversal is drawing international pushback. The United Arab Emirates joined other Muslim-majority nations this week in accusing Israel of breaching the disarmament agreement. Separately, Israel has escalated strikes on southern Lebanon to a level not seen in several weeks, following what it says was a ceasefire violation by Hezbollah. A State Department official downplayed the escalation Wednesday, saying talks with Lebanon would resume as planned and that technical teams had made progress on the underlying framework.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The Times of Israel’s own coverage is treating that ambush characterization as live internal Israeli government language, not outside speculation about Israeli intentions. That framing suggests officials are actively building a public case for abandoning the roadmap rather than quietly walking away from it. Regional coverage of the UAE’s objection is also notably sharper than the muted US response. Gulf states are treating the disarmament roadmap’s collapse as a credibility test for the Board of Peace itself, not just a bilateral dispute between Israel and Hamas.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A US-backed peace framework announced as a breakthrough last week may already be unraveling. Israeli officials are laying rhetorical groundwork to abandon it. A Gulf ally is publicly objecting. Lebanon strikes are intensifying at the same time. Even inside Israel’s own government, officials cannot agree on whether the roadmap is working or was a trap. The State Department is calling this progress.
Sources: Times of Israel (Israel, right-centre — “strategic ambush” characterization, UAE objection, Zamir quote, Uganda troop deployment, “steps in the right direction” account, Haredi draft law dispute); Times of Israel (Israel, right-centre — Lebanon strike escalation, State Department statement); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Israel’s stated security concerns, intensified operations since roadmap announcement); TIME (US — Cohen skepticism, Smotrich/Strock letter to Netanyahu)
ABORTION SURVEILLANCE
The Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as CDC director Wednesday. During her confirmation hearing, she told lawmakers that abortion surveillance is a critical part of the agency’s work.
Senator Josh Hawley pressed Schwartz on the CDC’s abortion data program. The program is currently voluntary. California, Maryland, and New Jersey do not report their abortion numbers to the agency. Forty-four states have some form of required reporting. Schwartz told the committee she wants clearer case definitions so the data is accurate. She said she wants to make sure states are not hiding abortions inside broader emergency services categories. HuffPost reported there is no factual evidence that any state is doing this.
Schwartz is the first permanent CDC director in more than a year. She is also the first Black woman to lead the agency. Her predecessor, Susan Monarez, was ousted in August 2025 after refusing to endorse vaccine guidance from a CDC advisory panel that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had restaffed with vaccine skeptics. The Senate confirmed Schwartz 51 to 44, largely along party lines. She now reports directly to Kennedy.
Reproductive rights advocates say the stakes go beyond data collection. Mini Timmaraju is president of Reproductive Freedom for All. She said Schwartz’s confirmation “cements an anti-abortion agenda at the center of the CDC’s work.” Her organization has separately warned that expanded federal abortion surveillance could be used to investigate or prosecute patients and providers. The concern lands alongside a separate commitment from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. He said last month he is working with the Department of Health and Human Services to make the Dobbs decision permanent nationwide.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The nation’s top public health agency now has a director who called tracking abortions a critical priority. That priority targets a system built on voluntary state reporting, with no documented history of the fraud she described. She reports to a health secretary already reshaping vaccine policy. Her confirmation lands the same week the acting attorney general is separately working to lock in Dobbs nationwide.
Sources: HuffPost (US — Schwartz quotes, confirmation vote, voluntary reporting details, no-evidence finding); Reproductive Freedom for All (US, advocacy — Timmaraju quote, surveillance misuse concerns); The New Republic (US — Blanche/Dobbs connection, Schwartz background)
I will never put the news behind a paywall. If you want to support keeping it free for everyone else, there’s a paid option. That’s all it is.
WAR DAY 161 | NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,485+ killed (tracker base of 3,468 as of June 10 per Al Jazeera live tracker, plus at least 17 confirmed killed in US strikes July 9-10 per Iran Health Ministry — floor estimate; strikes since July 11 not yet independently confirmed)
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 4,321 killed (Al Jazeera live blog, updated July 8)
🇮🇱 Israel: 35+ killed (tracker frozen June 10)
🌍 Gulf states / Iraq: 131 killed (tracker frozen June 10; does not reflect Iranian strikes on Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, UAE, and Oman since)
🇺🇸 US military: 18 killed, 687 wounded (Defense Casualty Analysis System, as of August 4)
🇵🇸 Gaza: 73,381+ killed cumulative since October 7, 2023 (Gaza Health Ministry, via Al Jazeera), 174,231 wounded; 1,254+ killed and 4,121 wounded since the October 11 “ceasefire” — unchanged since last update, separate conflict tracked independently of the war numbers above
🛢️ Brent crude: $82.94/barrel (OilPrice.com)
⛽ US national gas average: $4.04/gallon (AAA)
Sourcing note: Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Gulf states, and US military figures are unchanged from Day 160. Gaza figures carry forward unchanged.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
