“The nation’s most restrictive abortion law remains in place for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday sided with the state of Texas.
In a 2-to-1 order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit refused the Justice Department’s request to reinstate an earlier court ruling that temporarily lifted the ban, which bars abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy and makes no exceptions for rape or incest.
The four-sentence order, which is expected to be appealed the Supreme Court, was backed by Judges James C. Ho, a nominee of President Donald Trump, and Catharina Haynes, a nominee of President George W. Bush. It did not detail the court’s reasoning, but noted the dissent of Judge Carl E. Stewart, a nominee of President Bill Clinton.
The order follows a temporary decision last week by the same panel of judges to reinstate the ban, less than 48 hours after it was suspended by the lower-court judge. The decision was based on previous rulings in a separate challenge, which said that because the ban is enforced by private individuals, and not government officials, it is not clear when and how the law can be challenged in federal court.” Read more at Washington Post
“Italy set a new bar on Friday for major Western democracies seeking to move beyond the pandemic by putting in place a sweeping law that requires the nation’s entire work force — public and private — to have government-issued health passes.
The measure requires workers to show proof of vaccination, a negative rapid swab test or recent recovery from Covid-19 before returning to offices, schools, hospitals or other work places.
Under the new rules, those who do not have a Green Pass, as Italy’s health pass is called, must take unpaid leave. Employers will be responsible for verifying the certificates, for the most part a cellphone app. Workers risk fines of up to 1,500 euros ($1,760) for not complying.
The law goes further than those in other European countries or the United States in pushing vaccination mandates, which have become central — and hotly contested — parts of government strategies to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
With the step, Italy — the first democracy to have quarantined towns and applied national lockdowns — is again first across a new threshold, making clear that it is willing to use the enormous leverage of the state to try to move beyond the pandemic.
President Biden has appealed to private companies to mandate coronavirus vaccinations for employees, asking them to take initiative as an effort that he announced in September to require 80 million U.S. workers to get the shot undergoes a lengthy rule-making process.
China, where more than one billion people are now fully vaccinated, has no qualms about pushing a more forceful stance on vaccines. In August, the authorities in at least 12 Chinese cities warned residents that unvaccinated people could be punished if they are found to be responsible for spreading outbreaks.
In Italy, where more than 80 percent of people over age 12 are now fully vaccinated against Covid, the sweeping national mandate has stirred protests among hard-core holdouts. Some workers, including at the a major port in Trieste, didn’t report for work on Friday.
But the measure has faced no serious legal challenge, and Prime Minister Mario Draghi and his government say they are confident that the courts will not delay or reverse the law.
Italy has now taken the boldest position in Europe. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has tried to make life uncomfortable for unvaccinated people, requiring a health pass to enter restaurants and for long-distance train travel, for instance, but has mandated vaccines only for some essential workers.
Italy earlier put in place tough requirements for health workers and teachers, significantly increasing vaccination rates in those categories. But to reach the most reluctant unvaccinated workers — an estimated 3.5 million people — the government has now taken one of the Western world’s hardest lines.
Government officials say that the measure is already working, and that more than 500,000 previously reluctant people — much higher than expected — have gotten inoculated since the government announced its plan last month.
Italians have largely embraced the Green Pass, as they have rules about wearing masks on public transit and other closed public spaces, as a small sacrifice for a return to normalcy. But a small population of eligible people remain unvaccinated — a mix of vaccine skeptics, conspiracy theorists and other anti-establishment types.” Read more at New York Times
“FDA advisers are set to meet today to consider authorizing a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. They'll also discuss whether a mix-and-match strategy of using a booster from a different vaccine maker is safe or even beneficial. The same advisers voted yesterday to recommend emergency use authorization of a Moderna vaccine booster for those at high risk of Covid-19 -- the same groups authorized to receive a booster dose of Pfizer's vaccine. Third doses of the Moderna and Pfizer shots are already authorized for some immunocompromised people. Some experts, however, note that while antibodies may wane over time, the initial two-dose regimen for both vaccines is still holding up against severe infection.” Read more at CNN
“The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection is moving forward to hold Steve Bannon, the architect of former President Trump's national populism, in criminal contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena. It's an aggressive attempt to hold Trump's inner circle accountable but may have the unintended effect of further politicizing US democratic institutions, CNN's Stephen Collinson writes. The move sets up a legal battle between Bannon and the federal government that could take years, as criminal contempt cases have historically been derailed by appeals and acquittals. In other news, a New York judge has ordered Trump to sit for a video deposition next week involving an alleged assault during a 2015 demonstration outside Trump Tower.” Read more at CNN
“Ronnie Floyd, the acting CEO of the business arm for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, has resigned from his position as head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee after a weeks-long internal battle over how the denomination should handle a sex abuse investigation.
Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee handles the business of the SBC, including its $192 million cooperative program that funds their missions and ministries.
Floyd’s resignation comes after weeks of intense debates that played out on Zoom and Twitter over an internal investigation into how the Executive Committee has handled sexual abuse allegations.
The SBC has been rocked by reports of hundreds of sexual abuse cases revealed in a 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle. It has ousted churches that employed pastors who were abusers and set up resources for churches to prevent sexual abuse. However, several sexual abuse survivors have said the denomination has not done enough to investigate and prevent more abuse from happening, because it does not have a way of tracking abusers within its network of churches.” Read more at Washington Post
“Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe won back his pension Thursday after the Justice Department settled rather than face a federal lawsuit asserting he was illegally fired for political reasons in March 2018 for overseeing the FBI’s Russia investigation after becoming the target of a leak investigation himself.
The longtime FBI official approved the decision in May 2017 to investigate then-President Donald Trump over possible obstruction of justice and briefly led the bureau after Trump fired Director James B. Comey in 2017. But McCabe was fired hours before his retirement by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
In Thursday’s settlement, the Justice Department admitted no wrongdoing. But the Biden administration rescinded McCabe’s dismissal, restored his full pension and other benefits, and allowed him to officially retire and receive about $200,000 in missed payments.” Read more at Washington Post
“The 2020 census may have undercounted the nation's Black population by as much as 7%, according to simulations conducted by an independent researcher.” Read more at USA Today
“Former President Bill Clinton was admitted to UC Irvine Medical Center on Tuesday for a non-COVID-related infection, his spokesperson Angel Ureña tweeted.
Clinton, 75, remains hospitalized. The medical team has administered IV antibiotics and fluids, Axios' Shawna Chen writes from the statement by Clinton's physicians.
‘After two days of treatment, his white blood cell count is trending down and he is responding to antibiotics well,’ the doctors said. ‘We hope to have him go home soon.’
The Clinton Foundation said he was in the L.A. area for private events related to the foundation.” Read more at Axios
“Courting change | A bipartisan panel set up by Biden to consider Supreme Court reforms wrote favorably of creating term limits, but said that while it would be legal to increase the number of justices, it may not be wise. The commission, which will hold a public meeting today, was established after former President Donald Trump filled three vacancies with conservatives during his four years in office.” Read more at Bloomberg
“KONGSBERG, Norway (AP) — The suspect in a bow-and-arrow attack that killed five people and wounded three in a quiet Norwegian town this week is facing a custody hearing Friday. He won’t appear in court because he has confessed to the killings and has agreed to being held in custody.
Espen Andersen Braathen, a 37-year-old Danish citizen was arrested Wednesday night, 30 minutes after he began his deadly rampage targeting random people. Police have described the attack as an act of terror.
On a central square in Kongsberg, a town of 26,000 people surrounded by mountains and woods some 66 kilometers (41 miles) southwest of Oslo, people were laying flowers and lighting candles Friday.” Read more at AP News
“Lebanon saw its worst violence in more than a decade after a protest yesterday descended into deadly street battles. Supporters of two Shia Muslim parties -- Hezbollah and the Amal movement -- were calling for the removal of a popular judge in charge of an investigation into Beirut's August 2020 port blast when snipers on rooftops fired at the crowd. At least six people were killed. Hezbollah and Amal accused right-wing Christian party The Lebanese Forces of being behind the sniper attacks. The party rejected those claims. The epicenter of the clashes is near the birthplace of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, and some activists say the latest fighting has prompted feelings of ‘deja vu.’” Read more at CNN
“ISLAMABAD —A suicide bomber hit a Shiite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar during Friday prayers killing at least 32 people, according to a local health official.
The explosion targeted Emam Bargha Ptima mosque, which is located in an area of the city dominated by Shiites.” Read more at Washington Post
“The U.S. is planning to resume evacuation flights from Afghanistan.Though the last U.S. troops departed on Aug. 31, a small number of American citizens and thousands of Afghans were left behind. Priority for seats on the flights will be given to the U.S. citizens still in the country, U.S. legal permanent residents and their immediate family members.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The US is officially a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council again, three years after the Trump administration withdrew over what it called bias against Israel and a failure to hold human rights abusers accountable. The council has long been criticized for including countries accused of grave human rights abuses, and yesterday was no different, with Cameroon, Eritrea and the United Arab Emirates elected to the council despite their domestic records. The Biden administration has said that while the council has its flaws, rejoining will help push it to ‘live up to its mandate.’ Reelection of the US is the latest effort to restore the nation's standing on the global stage.” Read more at CNN
“SAN FRANCISCO -- It was a 24-round heavyweight prize fight in spikes, a tape-measure finish after a six-month marathon, and by the end of the night, the Los Angeles Dodgers were the last ones standing.
The Dodgers were weary and utterly exhausted, but they hung on Thursday night to finally depose the San Francisco Giants, 2-1, in front of a frenzied sellout crowd of 42,275 at Oracle Park, for their 110th victory of the season.” Read more at USA Today
“First lady Jill Biden will head to Richmond, Virginia on Friday to stump for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor who holds a slim polling lead over Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin in a commonwealth where Republicans haven't won statewide in a decade. Biden's trip comes as an unexpectedly tight race for the governor's mansion has set off alarm bells over Democrats' political standing and President Joe Biden's agenda before next year's midterm elections. The bellwether race may have wider implications for the Democratic Party, reinforcing its brand despite President Joe Biden's sagging polls and giving a critical boost to stalled efforts in Congress to pass the president's pair of domestic spending bills.” Read more at USA Today
“A Netflix transgender-employee group called for a walkout over Dave Chappelle. The workers, who said the comedian’s stand-up special was offensive to transgender people, are encouraging staff to protest co-chief executive and chief content officer Ted Sarandos’s recent defense of the program.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Nearly four decades after his wife’s abrupt disappearance cast a cloud of suspicion that would make his case one of the most notorious in the country, Robert A. Durst was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison for the execution-style killing in 2000 of a close confidante.
The 78-year-old Mr. Durst, whose life story inspired a Hollywood movie and an HBO documentary, will not be eligible for parole. The jury that convicted him of first-degree murder in Los Angeles last month found that the prosecution had proven special circumstances: Namely, that Mr. Durst shot Susan Berman, a journalist and screenwriter, because he feared she was about to tell investigators what she had learned as his liaison with the news media after the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathie McCormack Durst.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Alex Murdaugh, the South Carolina lawyer who has endured a dramatic downfall since his wife and son were shot in an unsolved killing in June, was arrested on Thursday and charged with swindling millions of dollars from the sons of his former housekeeper.
Mr. Murdaugh, 53, was taken into custody at a drug detox center in Orlando, Fla., and charged with two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, a felony with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. He was booked into a jail in Orlando.
The charges stem from a settlement that Mr. Murdaugh and his insurers reached with the sons of the housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died in 2018 after falling on the front steps of the Murdaugh family’s rural home in Islandton, S.C. Following Ms. Satterfield’s death, Mr. Murdaugh referred her two sons to a lawyer he promised would help them, the sons claimed in a recent lawsuit, but he did not disclose that the lawyer, Cory Fleming, was a close friend and former college roommate.” Read more at New York Times
“Workers are quitting at or near the highest rates on record in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, transportation and utilities, as well as professional and business services. Participation in the workforce has fallen broadly across demographic groups and career fields, but dropped particularly fast among women, workers without college degrees and those in low-paying service industries such as hotels, restaurants and child care.
There are many, often interrelated reasons for the labor shortage. Take day care for example: Day-care centers are short-staffed and turning away families in need of their services. That has pushed up wages for workers in the industry even as day care remains costly and hard for consumers to find, leading some parents to stay home with young children rather than return to work.
Additionally, pandemic border closures have made immigrant workers scarcer, and many baby boomers—fearful of the virus and their portfolios fattened by the bull market—are retiring early. Meanwhile, employers are adjusting what some see as a new status quo, making changes that promise to have a lasting impact.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The new problem involves certain titanium parts that are weaker than they should be on Dreamliner 787s built over the past three years, people familiar with the matter said. The discovery is among other Dreamliner snafus that have left Boeing stuck with more than $25 billion of the jets in its inventory. Boeing’s 787 woes come as the FAA examines a series of alleged quality-control lapses across the plane maker’s commercial-airplane unit, according to an Aug. 18 agency letter and people familiar with the probe. Boeing has disputed some of the FAA’s claims. The company and regulators have determined that the new titanium issue doesn’t pose an urgent safety risk. Boeing made immediate repairs to two undelivered aircraft that would have been grounded over the weak parts.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“An Alaska lawmaker who was banned from Alaska Airlines flights after allegedly refusing to comply with its face mask policies has tested positive for COVID-19.” Read more at USA Today
“Not enough | Rich nations have come up short in meeting their pledge to provide $100 billion a year to help poorer nations cut planet-warming emissions and adapt to climate change, with most of the blame falling on the U.S. That failure, John Ainger writes, may undermine any hope for a grand deal at the COP26 talks that start this month in Glasgow.” Read more at Bloomberg
A White House report out this morning says climate change poses "systemic risks" to the U.S. financial system, Axios Generate co-author Ben Geman writes.
Why it matters: The administration will increasingly weave climate risk into policies and regulations throughout the government.
A White House ‘roadmap’ aims to build a ‘climate-resilient’ economy:
Climate change will be considered in long-term budget forecasts.
HUD plans to factor climate risk into federally insured or guaranteed mortgages.
FEMA will revise building standards in flood zones.
Labor Department retirement fund managers will weigh climate change in investment decisions, reversing Trump-era policies.
What we're watching: A separate strategy out later this year will focus on how banks should confront these risks.” Share this story. Read more at Axios
“The global energy crisis — which has brought $3.30-a-gallon gas to the U.S., gas lines to the U.K. and blackouts to China and India — is exposing ‘deeper problems as the world shifts to a cleaner energy system,’ The Economist writes in its cover story.
These include ‘inadequate investment in renewables and some transition fossil fuels, rising geopolitical risks and flimsy safety buffers in power markets.’
The bottom line: ‘Without rapid reforms there will be more energy crises and, perhaps, a popular revolt against climate policies.’” Read more at Axios
“If you were to use the perpetually-upbeat language of the platform it owns, you might say Microsoft is ‘energetically seeking new and exciting opportunities’—just not in China. The software giant decided to pull its professional networking site LinkedIn from the country on Thursday, making it the last major U.S. social network to leave China amid a crackdown on online expression.
In a statement, Mohak Schroff, LinkedIn’s Senior Vice President of Engineering, cited ‘a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements’ in China as the impetus behind the move.
LinkedIn follows Facebook and Twitter (both blocked since 2009) out of the country as China’s online regulator forces a choice between playing ball with Beijing or exiting entirely to avoid the hassle. Increasingly harsh penalties, including prison time, for internet users posting comments critical of the Chinese government has made doing business particularly arduous for the social network.
LinkedIn’s troubles in China came to the fore in March, when it paused new Chinese sign-ups and was given 30 days by China’s internet regulator to better police content on its platform. The pressure led LinkedIn to block the profiles of several activists and academics from being viewed in China, regardless of whether they were residents or not.
It’s not the end for Microsoft in China. It still makes software that is widely used, and its search engine Bing is still available in a country where Google is not. Even LinkedIn in China won’t go fully dark, as the company plans on retooling as a pure jobs board, removing any features that could run afoul of Chinese regulators.
The episode reflects the ways in which the West and China are continuing to diverge on the previously shared space of the world wide web. China has even begun pushing for its own version of the internet. Dubbed New IP, the Huawei-developed infrastructure allows for more government control than today’s more freewheeling internet, with the ability to restrict individual users at will.
As LinkedIn leaves China, U.S. hysteria over the Chinese-owned TikTok app appears to have waned, a year after a threat to ban it under President Donald Trump. Backlash against the app may yet resurface, however, after President Biden in June gave government agencies 180 days to assess and report on the national security risks associated with foreign-owned apps.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cher has sued the widow of her former musical partner and ex-husband Sonny Bono over royalties for Sonny and Cher songs including ‘I Got You Babe’ and ‘The Beat Goes On.’
In a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Cher alleges that former Rep. Mary Bono and other defendants have attempted to terminate provisions of business agreements Cher and Sonny Bono reached when they divorced in 1975 that entitled each to 50% of songwriting and recording royalties.
The lawsuit says that Sonny Bono’s heirs filed notice in 2016 that they were terminating some of his song licensing agreements, but they “did not terminate, and could not have terminated” his agreements with Cher.
The breach-of-contract lawsuit alleges that the damages to Cher total at least $1 million.
Mary Bono’s attorney said the family’s moves are within their rights and the law.” Read more at AP News
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