The long awaited 2020 Summer Olympics have finally begun in Tokyo, Japan. US athletes are expected to perform extremely well in many events. However, the US team failed to earn any medals whether gold, silver, or bronze, on the first day of competition. This result is the first time since the 1972 Summer Olympics that the US has failed to achieve any medals on the first day of events.

Elon Musk’s Tesla vehicles have taken the US by storm in recent years with the development of the world’s first effective electric vehicles. In the aftermath many major automobile manufacturers are looking to break into the market now that Tesla has achieved such success. Mercedes-Benz is the latest manufacturer to follow Tesla’s lead as they have pledged to have all of their vehicles become fully electric by 2030.

If 2020 is known as the year of COVID-19 then 2021 is the year of wild weather. Across the globe weather has been behaving in abnormal ways and in some cases setting records. Across the US temperatures have hit historic highs in places used to the heat as well as places in the north where homes do not even have A/C units. In addition, meteorologists and hurricane trackers are predicting a longer than normal and more tumultuous than normal hurricane season. Throughout Europe torrential rain has brought deadly and destructive flash floods which have generated land slides. Finally, in Asia and the Middle East countries are adopting measures to produce rain that seem to come from science fiction novels.

There is increasing concern that the recent surge of the COVID-19 Delta variant in the US may cause government officials to reinstitute prevention measures that America has just begun to rid itself of. The Delta strand of the virus is much more resistant to medical treatment, including the Pfizer vaccine, and is also more infectious than the original base virus. It is now the dominant strand of the virus around the world and accounts for over 80% of new cases in the US which are rapidly rising.