A Florida county sheriff has prohibited his officers from wearing masks while on-duty or in the office, despite the fact that the Sunshine State remains the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.

"My order will stand as is when you are on-duty/working as my employee and representing my Office - masks will not be worn," Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods told employees in an Aug. 11 email obtained by the Ocala Star-Banner.

Woods also says in the email that any residents that visit the sheriff's office will also be asked to remove their mask, or leave.

"We can debate and argue all day of why and why not. The fact is, the amount of professionals that give the reason why we should, I can find the exact same amount of professionals that say why we shouldn't," Woods said in the email.

A man was shot and wounded at a Louisiana hospital Wednesday morning in what police called an active shooter situation.

Shreveport police said SWAT and hostage negotiation teams made their way to Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport - St. Mary Medical Center around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.

One man was shot in the leg, police spokeswoman Sgt. Angie Willhite told news outlets. She said the wound is not believed to be life-threatening.

Businesswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday won the Republican primary runoff in Georgia's 14th District to replace outgoing Rep. Tom Graves (R), overcoming concerns about her past bigoted rhetoric and embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Greene and her opponent, neurosurgeon John Cowan, had both advanced to the runoff after neither candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote in the June 9 primary. Greene won with 60 percent of the vote on Tuesday, while Cowan trailed at 40 percent, according to The Associated Press.

Greene celebrated her victory, saying she would work to "Save America," "Stop Socialism" and "Defeat the Democrats."

The race was thrust into the national spotlight in June after a number of videos showing Greene making bigoted remarks were unearthed by Politico.

The comments included Greene comparing Democratic donor George Soros to a Nazi, saying the 2018 midterms were like an "Islamic invasion of our government" and asserting that African Americans "are held slaves to the Democratic Party."

Lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell complained that she is being "treated worse" than her fellow inmates as prison officials attempt to prevent her untimely death.

The British socialite and heiress is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, pending her July 12, 2021, trial, according to Forbes. Epstein was formerly held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he is said to have been subjected to rodents, bad food, little natural lighting and cramped conditions, Forbes reported.

Maxwell's lawyers sent a letter Monday to a New York judge saying that Maxwell is being subjected to conditions unequal to her fellow prisoners. The lawyers emphasized in the letter that Maxwell's treatment stems from fears over Epstein's apparent suicide last summer in a New York City jail.

A Democratic alderman in Chicago said Mayor Lori Lightfoot has "lost the confidence" of the city.

Anthony Beale, alderman of the 9th Ward of Chicago, joined Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning and discussed the violence that has plagued the city in recent months, and most notably, the looting and destruction that took place early Monday morning.

"I think the mayor has lost the confidence and the control of this city. She's listening to the wrong people, and the wrong people are the ones that's really leading this unrest in the city of Chicago," he said of Lightfoot.

"The aldermen are the ones elected by their constituency, and there is a total disregard of listening to the aldermen who knows the post of this city, knows the post of their ward," he added.

UK retailer Marks & Spencer is the latest company targeted by grifters using the Black Lives Matter moment to sell their con. It's a feeding frenzy for corporate panderers and scammers, but leaves behind those it claims to help.

The chain has issued a groveling apology over the "covert racism" supposedly implicit in the color options offered for a padded bra sold on its website, reversing course after initially defending the palette as an industry standard unrelated to race or skin tone.

What changed? The complainer, a 29-year-old black customer named Kusi Kimani, went to the media to accuse the chain of deliberately naming its dark brown shade "tobacco" to evoke negative connotations, while lighter shades such as "cinnamon" and "fudge" carried more pleasant associations.

Hundreds of thousands of wealthy residents have already left New York City, and more are leaving every day as America's biggest city rapidly degenerates into a hellhole. This is incredibly sad to watch, because in many ways New York had been an incredible success story over the past several decades. The 1970s and 1980s were nightmarish times for the city, but over the past several decades it was transformed into a virtual paradise for the wealthy and famous. Crime rates absolutely plummeted, the city was given a dramatic facelift and a booming financial community brought an unprecedented amount of wealth into New York. But now many of the old problems are starting to come back again, and a lot of wealthy New Yorkers have decided that it is time to look for greener pastures.

Of course the COVID-19 pandemic has been the primary motivation for a lot of the wealthy individuals that have been fleeing the city. According to the New York Times, there was a mass exodus of 420,000 New Yorkers between March 1st and May 1st...

Roughly 5 percent of residents — or about 420,000 people — left the city between March 1 and May 1. In the city's very wealthiest blocks, in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, the West Village, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, residential population decreased by 40 percent or more, while the rest of the city saw comparably modest changes.

In April I wrote a postscript to my critique of the 'unofficial left' (David Graeber, Noam Chomsky, Media Lens, etc.), criticising their non-response to the already highly suspicious coronavirus narrative. Things have moved on — now into the past tense — so here is the same summary, now updated and revised.

A deadly pandemic, we are told, swept across the planet, forcing governments to massively enhance state and police power, lock everyone up in their homes and bork the economy. National governments, transnational institutions and all media outlets were of one voice. Panic. We just had to put millions and millions of people out of work then shut them up in a heavily policed panic room. Anyone unable to perceive the foundations of the unofficial left might imagine that they would have interrogated this extraordinary situation, that they would have critically appraised official accounts of the severity of the 'pandemic', that they would have asked themselves what the likely effects might be of putting so many people out of work; or that it would have been the perfect time for 'radicals' to seriously question the functioning of the system, to explore wider questions about its stability and to critically investigate vested interests; perhaps also take a look at the universal denial of death and how easily people can be manipulated by playing on their fears, or even explore the possibilities for genuine revolt as the economy contracted. They would have been disappointed.

What was the response of the unofficial socialists mentioned in the original article? Did they criticise the official story? Did they ask if anything else might have been motivating their leaders than altruistic concern for human life? Did they question the extraordinarily repressive measures governments have taken to contain the problem? Did they question official figures (or even looked at them — many were surprisingly frank)? Did they take a second look at other epidemics and pandemics (such as the flu pandemics of 57 and 68: each of which were twice as deadly as C-19), or at deaths from influenza under normal conditions (around half a million a year — about the same as C-19), or at deaths from other similar illnesses, like pneumonia? Did they sound any alarm bells about rather suspicious proposed solutions such as an express vaccine, contact-tracing and so forth? Did any of these people ask any seriously critical, or even very interesting, questions? The answer to all of these questions was an almost entirely predictable no. Every man jack of them fell straight into line. Jonathan Cook peeped his head about the parapet for a split-second, spiritual astronaut Caitlin Johnstone asked one or two questions on peripheral matters before concluding that she finds 'the whole thing ultimately irrelevant and boring', XR started rubbing their hands, Afshin Rattansi vaguely gestured towards a few sceptical RT pieces and Paul Kingsnorth sat in a barley field and stared majestically into the sunset. But that was pretty much it.

'Target Tori' launches fundraiser for fellow viral retail worker 'Kroger Andy'
A Massachusetts manager who was nicknamed "Target Tori" when a customer shamed her online has now come to the defense of another viral retail worker dubbed "Kroger Andy" — and has raised $18,000 to send him on a vacation.

Tori Perrotti, a manager at a Target store in Swansea, Massachusetts, jumped into the fray when a customer griped on Twitter about Andy, also a manager, at a Kroger in Louisville, Kentucky.

In the tweet, the customer, Danielle Muscato, explained that she had gone to Andy after she confronted another shopper about not wearing a mask and was threatened with assault.

Mainstream media have denounced RT's Ruptly video agency for documenting Portland protesters burning Bibles, dismissing the unaltered footage as 'Russian disinfo' in an attempt at bad-faith 'shoot the messenger' gaslighting.

Protesters gather around a burning Bible, chanting "F*** Trump," as they neatly drapean American flag over the flames. A few of the demonstrators rub their hands over the tiny fire, aping warming themselves as the flames devour the book. The 90-second clip was part of a 4-hour livestream.

It's an incendiary image (no pun intended) - protesters already denounced from some corners as anti-American taking aim at beloved national and religious symbols - but Ruptly didn't attempt to interpret the video beyond explaining the events took place on the 65th day of protests, after federal agents had left the courthouse. The images speak for themselves.