Health officials in San Francisco and six other Bay Area counties have announced that they are reinstating a mask mandate for all indoor settings as COVID-19 infections surge. Monday's order applies to everyone, regardless of vaccination status, and starts on Tuesday. California last week recommended that people wear masks indoors, but stopped short of issuing a mandate, following guidance from the U.S Centers for Disease Control. Three other California counties have already adopted mandates as COVID rates rise because of the highly contagious delta variant. Read more

Firefighters in Turkey are battling for the sixth straight day to control wildfires that are tearing through forests near some of the country's top beach resorts. Water-dumping planes from the European Union were preparing to join in. Fueled by scorching temperatures and strong winds, the fires that began Wednesday have left eight people dead and forced residents and tourists to flee vacation resorts and villages in small boats or convoys of cars and trucks. Many villagers have lost their homes and farm animals and a thick yellow haze has coated the air. Turkey's interior minister said Monday that 10,000 people have been evacuated in one province alone. Read more

The U.S. finally reached President Joe Biden’s goal of getting at least one COVID-19 shot in the arms of 70% of American adults. But it’s a month late and amid a fierce surge by the delta variant that is swamping hospitals and leading to new mask rules and mandatory vaccinations around the country. Biden set a goal of reaching the 70% threshold by the Fourth of July. But that target was set well before the highly contagious delta variant enabled the virus to come storming back and undermined the assumptions that were used to arrive at that figure. The U.S. still has not hit the administration’s other goal of fully vaccinating 165 million American adults by July 4. It is about 8.5 million short. Read more

Landlords and tenants are rushing back to court and advocates are bracing for a wave of evictions following the end of the federal moratorium over the weekend. Most advocates expect evictions to build slowly over the coming weeks and months as the bureaucracy of removing people from their homes restarts Monday. The Biden administration announced Thursday it would allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moratorium to expire. It argued that its hands were tied after the Supreme Court signaled the measure needed to come to an end. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for the moratorium to be extended. Read more

A judge has denied a convicted man’s request for a new trial in the 2018 killing of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts. Judge Joel Yates issued his ruling Monday, clearing the way for sentencing to proceed Aug. 30 in the trial of Cristhian Bahena Rivera. The farmhand who came to the U.S. illegally as a teenager was convicted in May of first-degree murder in the killing of Tibbetts, who disappeared while out for a run near her Iowa hometown. Bahena Rivera was to be sentenced to life in prison last month, but Yates postponed sentencing to allow defense attorneys to present a new theory about who killed Tibbetts based on information two witnesses gave police.  Read more

Firefighters have gotten more control over a Hawaii wildfire that forced thousands of people to evacuate over the weekend and destroyed at least two homes on the Big Island. But officials warned strong winds on Monday could raise the danger again. Authorities lifted evacuation orders Sunday night but warned they could be reinstated at any time. Big Island officials said the more than 62-square-mile blaze was the largest wildfire ever recorded there. Fires in Hawaii are unlike many of those burning in the U.S. West. They tend to break out in large grasslands on the dry sides of the islands and are generally much smaller than mainland fires. Read more

Nick Chubb has signed a three-year, $36.6 million contract extension with the Cleveland Browns. The deal is an indication of the team's regard for his skills as an elite running back and his quiet leadership. The Browns made sure they locked him up early in training camp leading into what they hope will be a special season. He had one year left on his rookie contract. Chubb completed the deal with his signature before Monday’s practice. Read more

The Treasury Department has unveiled plans to borrow $673 billion in the current quarter while employing emergency measures to keep the government from an unprecedented default on the national debt. The department said Monday that its plans for borrowing in the July-September period assume Congress will pass either a suspension of the current debt limit or an increase in the limit. The debt limit had been suspended for two years but has gone back into effect at the level where the debt stood on Sunday — $28.4 trillion. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced a new round of measures to keep the government under the newly established debt limit. Those involve halting investments in some pension funds for government workers. Read more

Stocks closed mixed on Wall Street Monday after a day of choppy trading. Investors were balancing unease about the spread of a more contagious coronavirus variant against another round of encouraging company earnings. The S&P 500 lost 0.2%  It was slightly higher for much of the day before turning lower in the last half-hour of trading. Roughly 150 members of the index will report their results this week, and the July jobs report comes out on Friday. Square rose 10.2% after saying it would acquire the “buy now, pay later” company Afterpay for $29 billion. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.17%.  Read more

Rapper DaBaby has apologized a second time for crude and homophobic remarks at a recent Miami-area music festival. The Grammy-nominated performer says he was misinformed for his comments about HIV/AIDS in his post on social media Monday. His post comes a day after the rapper was cut from Lollapalooza’s lineup in Chicago on Sunday. New York City’s Governors Ball and Day N Vegas in Las Vegas each announced Monday that DaBaby would be dropped from their lineups. The rapper, who real name is Jonathan Kirk, apologized to the LGBTQ+ community for his “hurtful and triggering” comments. DaBaby's “Rockstar” was one of the biggest hits last year. Read more

Several House Democrats have called on House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to apologize to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or resign after audio surfaced of him saying at a fundraiser over the weekend that it would be “hard not to hit her” with a gavel if he’s sworn in as speaker after the 2022 midterm elections. The comment is emblematic of the rising tension between the two leaders since the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which a violent mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol and some hunted for Pelosi by name. Read more

Twitter has signed deals with The Associated Press and Reuters to help elevate accurate information on its platform. Twitter said Monday that the program will expand its existing work to help explain why certain subjects are trending on the site, to show information and news from trusted resources and to debunk misinformation. Twitter said the news agencies will help ensure that credible information is available in real time around key conversations as they come up in real time, especially "where facts are in dispute" or when the company's internal team doesn’t have the necessary expertise or access to enough reputable reporting. Read more

The Biden administration is expanding efforts to help Afghan citizens flee increasing Taliban violence as the U.S. military pullout looms at the end of the month. The State Department says it's widening the scope of Afghans eligible for refugee status in United States to include current and former employees of U.S.-based news organizations and U.S.-funded aid and development agencies. Current and former employees of the U.S. government who don't meet strict criteria for a special immigrant visa are also covered by the expansion. But the move comes with a major caveat: Applicants must leave Afghanistan to begin the process that may take 12-14 months in a third country. Read more

Sorry, Cormac McCarthy fans. That blue-checked account for the famous, and famously media-shy author is fake. The McCarthy account, @CormacMcCrthy, had more than 48,000 followers as of midday Monday, among them Stephen King. It was established in September 2018, but was only recently given a blue check for verification.  The 88-year-old McCarthy rarely speaks to the press and has no known presence on social media. His novels include “All the Pretty Horses,” “No Country for Old Men” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Road.” Some of the tweets on the parody account make light of his unfamiliarity with technology. Read more

Zoom has agreed to pay $85 million to settle a lawsuit alleging allegations its videoconferencing service’s weak privacy controls opened too many peepholes into its users’ personal information and made it too easy to disrupt their meetings during the early stages of the pandemic. The proposed deal disclosed in federal court documents filed Saturday still requires a judge's approval. Millions of people in the U.S. could get a slice of the settlement.  The payment amounts are expected to average $34 or $35 for those who subscribed to Zoom's paid version and $11 or $12 for the overwhelming majority who used the free version. Read more

NFL Alumni Health announced Monday that in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention it is kicking off an outreach and education initiative to help build COVID-19 vaccination confidence. The campaign features some 40 current and retired NFL players who will encourage the public to make the decision to protect themselves, their families and their communities by getting vaccinated. Marshall Faulk says his message is for those hesitant to get the vaccine to seek their doctor's advice and ignore all the chatter on social media. Rod Woodson says education will lead to more jabs in the arm. Read more

Employers are increasingly losing patience with unvaccinated workers. A growing number of businesses are requiring their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, alarmed by the rise of the more contagious delta variant and frustrated that vaccination rates in the U.S. have plateaued. Others are stopping short of a mandate while taking steps to make it more onerous for workers to remain unvaccinated, requiring them to take regular COVID tests or denying them certain privileges reserved only for the vaccinated. Read more

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Carson Wentz is expected to miss 5 to 12 weeks because a broken left foot. Coach Frank Reich made the announcement following his return to the practice field after missing all of last week's workouts because of a positive COVID-19 test. Reich says Wentz will have surgery to remove a piece of bone Monday afternoon. Reich says doctors found Wentz had broken the foot years ago, probably in high school, and that a piece of bone came loose when he hurt the foot last Thursday. For now, Indy plans to use Jacob Eason as the starter. Eason was a fourth-round draft pick in 2020 and has not appeared in an NFL game — regular season or preseason.  Read more