James' World 2

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A little-known illness called Legionnaires’ disease has infected at least 58 people in New York City’s Central Harlem neighborhood in the past two weeks. Two people have died during the outbreak, which has been tied to cooling towers that tested positive for the disease-causing bacterium Legionella pneumophila, according to a statement from city health officials on August 4.

The disease is a severe pneumonia and one of two infections caused by bacteria in the genus Legionella, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The bacteria can also cause a milder illness called Pontiac fever, which can manifest with fever, muscle aches, and headaches.) When diagnosed early, Legionnaires’ can be treated successfully with antibiotics.

Health care providers report about 6,000 cases of Legionnaires’ disease annually in the U.S., although some cases are likely mistaken as other types of pneumonia. In addition, the infection often does not cause symptoms in healthy people. Individuals who are aged 50 or older, as well as current or former smokers and people with underlying lung or immune issues, are most vulnerable to Legionnaires’. The disease became five times more prevalent between 2000 and 2018 for reasons experts have struggled to identify.

Legionnaires’ does not typically spread between people directly; instead, people catch the infection by inhaling mist that contains the pathogen. The bacterium particularly thrives in stagnant water between 77 and 113 degrees Fahrenheit (25 and 45 degrees Celsius). Water systems such as cooling towers, large air-conditioning systems, spas, and hot tubs can then aerosolize the microbe, making bacterial control in these types of structures a vital prevention measure.

When the current outbreak was first identified, New York City health officials directed an investigation into all cooling towers in the affected neighborhood. These towers evaporate water to dispel heat, and they are a common feature in large buildings in the city. But such structures have long been known to cause some of the largest Legionnaires’ outbreaks on record. New York City laws require cooling towers to be registered, tested, and disinfected regularly to reduce the presence of Legionella bacteria.

Legionnaires’ was first identified at a convention of the American Legion’s Department of Pennsylvania (hence the name) that was held in late July 1976. Scientists who helped identified the Legionella bacterium that caused an outbreak among at least 221 people at the convention called the detective work “one of the largest and most complex investigations of an epidemic ever undertaken” in an article published in the October 1979 issue of Scientific American.

Scientists had to rule out potential causes, including foodborne pathogens and metal poisoning, among other challenges, before managing to identify the previously unknown bacterium. Simultaneously, investigators pored through reports of other then recent, mysterious outbreaks of pneumonialike diseases, piecing together an image of an infection that “has turned out to be not very rare after all,” the researchers wrote in their 1979 article.

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Fluctuations in shape are an inevitable part of being alive, and while few have access to the resources of Rihanna—including super-stylist Jahleel Weaver—anyone navigating a changing body (bear with me) could take a cue from her latest maternity look: a spring summer 2001 Issey Miyake dress made from semi-sheer pleats in a gradient of sorbet tones with a shoulder-engulfing neckline. She paired the dress with neon green and silver Ottolinger X Puma Mostro sneakers, a blossoming pink rose ring, and silver floral earrings.

Originally worn by a straight-sized model in Miyake’s September 2000 show—staged in collaboration with Japanese electronic duo Silent Poets, and inspired by a futuristic tribe—the look reinforces the late designer’s interest in seeing the body as something fluid, rather than fixed. It’s why his designs—in particular his Pleats Please line—are that rare thing in luxury fashion: accommodating of bigger bodies. “Few brands have done what Issey Miyake has in the luxury designer space,” writer Tracy Achonwa wrote British Vogue in March. “Catering to women who want the best plus-size, high-end clothing, [the brand] boasts a cleverly designed textile that expands with accordion-like pleats.”

Not everyone will get it. “Rihanna steps out in odd attire,” read one tabloid headline. Her own fans weren’t much kinder: “What is up with what she’s wearing?” But tell me, what is the point of being one of the world’s most famous billionaires if you can’t step outside the margins of what’s considered normal, and wear things others wouldn’t? Now pregnant with her third child, Rihanna is leaning full tilt into these sorts of bizarro-chic silhouettes—like the so-called “condom dress” from Pieter Mulier’s fall 2025 collection for Alaïa, which she recently wore to dinner at her favorite restaurant of all time, Giorgio Baldi—as her own form shifts. Good for her. To quote Miyake himself: “The space created between the clothes and the body is what interests me and communicates the most.”

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Walmart, Apple, and Amazon, the most successful companies in the U.S., base their corporate strategies on data: consumer behavior data, market research, financial, product, and competitive analysis data.

Any CEO who deliberately relied on falsified data, or who demanded cooked books, would be fired immediately — and likely sued by the Board of Directors.

Any CEO of any company who tried to manipulate the appearance of short-term success for his own personal gain, at the expense of long-term viability for the company, would also be fired and likely sued for malfeasance, and worse.

A successful CEO knows that falsifying economic or financial data can lead to charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, and other financial crimes, because false data can ruin investors, corporations, and markets overnight.

Enter Donald Trump, whose self-proclaimed governing philosophy is “running the country like it’s a business.” Debunking the lie of his own manufactured image as a “successful businessman,” last Friday, Trump angrily fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner because he didn’t like her data, even as he wears 34 felony convictions for falsifying records.

Dr. Erika McEntarfer, a widely respected statistician, enjoyed bipartisan support, including confirmation votes from Marco Rubio and JD Vance. Appointed commissioner under the Biden administration, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech, and served at the Census Bureau for two decades under both parties prior to her BLS appointment.

By federal law, McEntarfer’s appointment ends in 2028. Trump fired her anyway because he was embarrassed by jobs data that didn’t match his own hype. In May, the White House said that April’s jobs report “proved” that Trump was “revitalizing” the economy. In June, Trump posted, “GREAT JOBS NUMBERS.” After the Labor Department released revised jobs figures for those months — a common practice because jobs reports are sample projections that get adjusted when actual employer data come in — Trump fired the messenger.

Trump’s penchant for hiding and falsifying data has put American corporations and the economy in more danger. Just as he scrubbed government websites of climate data to bolster his fossil fuel donors, just as he ordered the Smithsonian to remove an exhibit accurately reflecting his own impeachments, Trump thinks reality is whatever he says it is.

As he fantasizes about returning America to the Gilded Age, where robber barons extracted the earth’s resources for unimaginable profit while laborers worked for starvation wages, he’s forgetting that his oligarch donors need accurate economic data too. At least oligarchs creating real products and delivering real services—as opposed to merely speculating- in Trump’s image—need real, reliable, and uncooked data.

McEntarfer should sue

When Trump fired McEntarfer in a social media post, he declared that her numbers were “phony.” He wrote on Friday, “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” adding: “But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!”

He said the numbers had been manipulated for political purposes and announced he fired McEntarfer as a result.

Trump also baselessly accused McEntarfer of manipulating jobs numbers before the November election to advantage Kamala Harris. Trump said to reporters, “I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election, and there were other times. So you know what I did? I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing.”

When asked what his source was, he said, “my opinion,” confirming that there was no evidence to back up his reckless claims, claims that permanently tanked the reputation of a celebrated career professional.

Presidents are not immune from civil prosecution

No doubt Trump slurred McEntarfer based on his own “opinion” to avoid defamation liability, but an opinion that implies a false fact is still defamatory, it is still actionable, and presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits for defamation.

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NASA could soon go nuclear on the moon.

The space agency’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, has issued a directive to expedite building a nuclear reactor on the lunar surface. Duffy, a former Fox News host, is also head of the U.S. Department of Transportation, and he took over leadership of NASA in July after the Trump administration pulled its nomination of private astronaut and businessperson Jared Isaacman.

The directive, first reported by Politico, would accelerate NASA’s long-simmering—and, to date, largely fruitless—efforts to develop nuclear reactors to support space science and exploration.

The space agency has pursued various projects over the years, most recently in 2022, when it awarded three $5-million contracts to companies to craft designs for small space-ready reactors meant for lunar operations in the mid-2030s. Inspired in part by a space policy directive issued by President Donald Trump during his first term, those reactors were intended to produce 40 kilowatts of power—enough to sustain a small office building—and to weigh less than six metric tons. Duffy’s directive is more ambitious: it calls for NASA to solicit proposals for reactors that would yield at least 100 kilowatts of power and be ready for launch by late 2029. The space agency is tasked with appointing an official to oversee the effort within 30 days and to issue its solicitation within 60 days.

Lunar nights are very long—two Earth weeks—and perilously cold, making nuclear power desirable for surface operations. But according to the directive, the greater impetus for the fast-tracked plan is a burgeoning partnership between China and Russia to build a nuclear-powered outpost near the moon’s south pole by the mid-2030s. The sun never crests high above the horizon there, leaving some craters in permanent shadow—and valuable deposits of water ice lacing their eternally dark floors. Despite its cryogenic chill, this lunar region is hotly contested, with NASA’s Artemis program also targeting crewed landings there as early as 2027 as part of the Artemis III mission.

Besides providing abundant electricity for surface operations, a nuclear reactor on the moon could also allow for a strategic lunar land grab. Ownership of otherworldly territory is prohibited, according to the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, but the treaty also obliges spacefaring powers to exercise “due regard” in their activities, meaning that they should not encroach on or interfere with sensitive infrastructure built by others. A nuclear reactor placed on the lunar surface, therefore, could allow the declaration of what Duffy’s directive calls a “keep-out zone.”

Although the Trump administration’s acceleration of NASA’s nuclear-power efforts may be welcomed by many space-exploration advocates, it comes alongside other proposals from the White House that seek to radically reshape the space agency and that could be at cross-purposes with the new directive. These include plans for extraordinarily deep cuts to NASA’s science programs, as well as an active and ongoing culling of the space agency’s workforce. The president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 notably zeroes out funding for a joint program between NASA and the Department of Defense to develop nuclear rocketry. It would also wind down the space agency’s ability to build and deploy radioisotope power sources, which offer nuclear-derived heat and electricity sans complex and heavy reactors for robotic missions to the outer planets and other sunlight-sparse parts of the solar system.

The biggest question facing NASA’s latest nuclear foray, however, may be what these notional new reactors would actually power. Many experts say a 2027 launch for Artemis III is unlikely and citing factors such as the ongoing difficulties of developing a requisite lunar lander based on SpaceX’s Starship rocket. With each logistical misstep or schedule delay, additional Artemis missions that would put more meaningful and power-hungry infrastructure on the moon slip further over the horizon, potentially making the entire program more vulnerable to additional rounds of budget cuts—or even outright cancellation by future administrations.

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On Thursday, Florida put Edward Zakrzewski to death for the 1994 murder of his wife and children. He was the ninth person executed so far this year in the Sunshine State, surpassing its previous single-year high of eight executions in 2014.

Florida used lethal injection to execute Zakrzewski, one of two methods that, until recently, were the only ones allowed under state law. The other was electrocution, which an inmate could choose as an alternative to lethal injection.

There was nothing unusual about that law, as many other death penalty states specify more than one possible execution method. For example, Alabama law states that in death penalty cases, “lethal injection will be administered, unless the prisoner affirmatively chooses nitrogen hypoxia or electrocution.” There’s a similar law in South Carolina.

But Florida’s new law is the first of its kind. It gives the people in charge of carrying out executions, as the journalist Olivia Burke explains, “free rein to put prisoners who were given the ultimate punishment to death however they see fit.”

“The only condition,” Burke notes, “is that the technique is ‘not deemed unconstitutional’—which opens the floodgates to a host of barbaric ideas.”

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Actress Loni Anderson, who starred as receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati, died on Sunday at the age of 79.

Her cause of death is from “an acute prolonged illness,” Anderson’s publicist Cheryl J. Kagan said, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Newsweek reached out to Anderson’s representative via email for comment on Monday.

Why It Matters

Anderson’s role on CBS’ WKRP in Cincinnati catapulted her to stardom. The sitcom, which aired from 1978 until 1982, earned her two Emmy nominations and three Golden Globe nominations.

The actress went on to star in films like A Night at the Roxbury, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Stroker Ace, where she fell in love with her co-star Burt Reynolds. The pair later married in 1988 and divorced in 1994.

What To Know

Anderson died on August 3 at a Los Angeles hospital just days before her 80th birthday.

“We are heartbroken to announce the passing of our dear wife, mother, and grandmother,” Anderson’s family said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.

In an interview with Fox News in 2021, Anderson addressed her sex symbol status on WKRP in Cincinnati.

“I remember we all did posters back then. Everybody always asks me, ‘What made you do a poster?'” she recalled. “I would say, ‘Because someday my grandchildren will look at this. And I’ll be able to tell them that I really looked like that.’ What you saw is what you got.”The Minnesota native added, “I never thought I would be Loni Anderson, sex symbol. But I embrace it. I think I was lucky enough to have been able to play so many different things and sex symbol was a part of it. I took whatever my career threw at me.”

What People Are Saying

Steve Sauer, president and CEO of Media Four and Anderson’s manager for three decades, said in a statement, per The Hollywood Reporter: “Loni was a class act. Beautiful. Talented. Witty. ALWAYS a joy to be around. She was the ultimate working mother. Family first … and maintained a great balance with her career. She and I had wonderful adventures together that I shall forever cherish. I will especially miss that infectious chuckle of hers.”

I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden penned a sweet tribute to her “dear friend” on X: “The news just came through that my dear friend Loni Anderson has passed. Like many, I am absolutely stunned and heartbroken. Our friendship has spanned many years, and news like this is never easy to hear or accept.”

“What can I say about Loni that everyone doesn’t already know? She was a real talent, with razor smart wit and a glowing sense of humor… but, even more than that, she had an impeccable work ethic. Even beyond that, Loni was a darling lady and a genuinely good person … I am truly at a loss for words.”

“My condolences to her family, her husband Bob, and her children, Deidra and Quinton. Loni, you were one in a trillion, my friend, and even a trillion more.”

Morgan Fairchild, who starred alongside Anderson in the 2023 Lifetime movie Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas, wrote via X: “I am heartbroken to hear of the passing of the wonderful Loni Anderson! We did Bob Hope specials together & a Christmas movie 2 years ago. The sweetest, most gracious lady! I’m just devastated to hear this. Love & condolences to Bob (who was on set every day w her) & her kids and grandkids, who she adored. #RIPLoniAnderson”

Airplane! actor Robert Hays posted to X: “Today, my dear friend Loni Anderson passed away. She was an absolutely wonderful woman and friend, a wife, mother, and grandmother. Love and condolences to Bob, Deidra, Quintin, and all the grandkids. Loni is singing with the angels now. God bless her.”

Comedian Loni Love said on X: “Very sad to hear about the passing of Loni Anderson.. I grew up watching this Queen and was so thrilled to meet her. Condolences to her family and fans.”

What Happens Next?

Anderson’s funeral plans have not been publicly announced.

She is survived by her husband, Bob Flick, daughter Deidra, son Quinton Anderson Reynolds, stepson Adam Flick, her two granddaughters, and two step-grandchildren.

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Actress Loni Anderson poses in a photo shoot on September 17,1986 in Los Angeles, California. Actress Loni Anderson poses in a photo shoot on September 17,1986, in Los Angeles, California.

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