Happy Friday! We think (knock on wood) we just made it through our first “slow news week” since we first launched this newsletter 10 months ago. Probably our last one for a while, too. Buckle up!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The United States confirmed 58,177 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday, with 8.2 percent of the 731,700 tests reported coming back positive. An additional 1,841 deaths were attributed to the virus on Thursday, bringing the pandemic’s American death toll to 160,090.

• Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville announced that as part of President Trump’s troop drawdown from Germany and subsequent realignment the U.S. Army V Corps headquarters group will be going to Krakow, Poland in 2021.

• Initial jobless claims dropped approximately 250,000 week-over-week to 1.2 million for the week ending on August 1, according to Labor Department data. It was the 20th straight week more than 1 million Americans applied for unemployment insurance.