Daily Briefing: Daily four-hour briefings
Estimates of the number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza have reached at least 10,800, with Israel agreeing to a new halt to its bombing to support relief efforts. Also in the news: Kaiser Permanente health care workers get a new employment contract and a look at the University of Michigan’s claim that other Big Ten schools stole signs.
🙋🏼♀️ I Nicole Fallert, Author of the daily briefing. Cuffing season has arrived. Don’t jump into a relationship just because it’s here.
Here’s the news to know on Friday.
What does four hours in wartime really mean?
President Joe Biden said he asked Israel for a humanitarian truce for at least three days during negotiations over the release of hostages held by Hamas. But for now, Israel has agreed to introduce daily four-hour periods in its attack on Hamas in northern Gaza.
While Biden said that a complete ceasefire is not possible at the present time, The pause represents a crucial breakthrough in global efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, as aid envoys struggle to reach the besieged north.
Pivotal West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin will not seek re-election
Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, announced Thursday that he will not run for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2024. But the retirement announcement sounded more like the launch of a new campaign: The lawmaker said he was not done with public service and outlined his frustrations with both major political parties. Manchin has previously said he would consider running for president without labels, a potential third-party effort to field centrist candidates to challenge President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Read more
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More than 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers agree to the new contract
More than 85,000 Kaiser Permanente employees have ratified a four-year contract that will provide wage and minimum wage increases for health care workers across hundreds of facilities in seven states and Washington, D.C. Last month, workers walked off their jobs in a three-day strike to protest staffing and pay levels. And other injustices. The coalition of Kaiser Permanente and Kaiser Permanente unions said the agreement would raise wages by 21% over four years for current workers and set a minimum hourly wage of $25 for California workers and $23 for employees elsewhere in the country. Read more
A Newly Funded IRS: Scary Times for Wealthy Americans
The IRS goes after the rich for evading taxes, but what does that mean for the rest of us? The Internal Revenue Service recently announced a campaign aimed at dramatically increasing audits of high-income Americans and large corporations, leveraging billions of dollars in new funding from Congress to recover lost tax revenue. The tax agency confirms that its new campaign will focus on the truly wealthy. The IRS assures the public that audit rates will not increase for taxpayers who earn less than $400,000 annually, a threshold that roughly corresponds to the top 2% of earners. Read more
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What is signature sharing and why is it important?
A scandal has been embroiled in the world of college football involving the practice of attending rival teams’ games to monitor the signals used to indicate key plays. And now the Michigan football sign-stealing saga, which already had no shortage of unusual twists and daily developments, has a new layer. The Big Ten received documents from Michigan that the university claimed were proof that Ohio State, Rutgers and Purdue communicated about Wolverines signals in 2022. The documents allegedly show Purdue obtained offensive signals from Ohio State and defensive signals from Rutgers as they prepared to play. Jim Harbaugh’s team in the 2022 Big Ten Championship game. Read more
Photo of the Day: Taylor Swift returns to the Eras Tour in flamingo pink
Taylor Swift entered the Estadio Más Monumental on Thursday wearing a new dazzling pink suit for the “Lover” set from her hit Eras Tour and a bright pink jacket for her song “The Man.” Swifties know “flamingo pink” from the first line of Swift’s new 1989 song “Slut!” Read more about her performance in Argentina.
Nicole Vallert is a USA TODAY newsletter writer, sign up for email here. Want to send Nicole a note? Email her at NFallert@usatoday.com or follow her musings Twitter. Support journalism like this – subscribe to USA TODAY here.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
