“The FDA’s vaccine advisory group is set to discuss Covid-19 vaccines for younger children this week, and Dr. Anthony Fauci says he’s optimistic kids ages 5 to 11 -- about 28 million in all -- could start getting shots in the first two weeks of November. Pfizer and the FDA released company data that showed the vaccine was 90.7% effective against symptomatic disease for children in this age group. Pfizer's vaccine is already authorized for children 12 to 15 and is approved for people age 16 and older. If authorized by the FDA, it would be the first Covid-19 vaccine available for younger children. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico has become the most vaccinated place in America, with about 73% of its 3.3 million residents fully vaccinated against Covid-19.” Read more at CNN
“This will be a critical week for President Biden’s domestic agenda as both the bipartisan infrastructure package and the Democratic-led spending bill may come to fruition. The House could vote on the infrastructure package on Wednesday or Thursday. The spending bill is a little trickier, since closed-door negotiations are still going on. Democrats hope to agree on a framework for a trimmed-down package of social, health care and education programs but remain insistent on items like free pre-kindergarten education and a Medicare extension. The spending bill also must appeal to House progressives, who will otherwise blockade a vote on the infrastructure bill. And Biden wants some sort of climate initiative set in these bills before his trip this week to the G20 summit in Rome and the United Nations climate summit in Scotland.” Read more at CNN
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Pivotal Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin appears to be on board with White House proposals for new taxes on billionaires and certain corporations to help pay for President Joe Biden’s scaled-back social services and climate change package.
Biden huddled with the conservative West Virginia Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the president’s Delaware home on Sunday as they work on resolving the disputes between centrists and progressives that have stalled the Democrats’ wide-ranging bill. A person who insisted on anonymity to discuss Manchin’s position told The Associated Press the senator is agreeable to the White House’s new approach on the tax proposals.
What had been a sweeping $3.5 trillion plan is now being eyed as $1.75 trillion package. That’s within a range that could still climb considerably higher, according to a second person who insisted on anonymity to discuss the private talks.” Read more at AP News
“The violent rally started with a mob of men brandishing burning torches in the heart of a US city while chanting racist, antisemitic slogans, and it ended with a woman murdered, scarring a nation. Now, more than four years later, a civil trial starting Monday in Charlottesville, Va., will revisit those unsettling events.
The long-delayed lawsuit in federal court against two dozen organizers of the march will examine one of the most violent manifestations of far-right views in recent history. Since the rally in August 2017, extremist ideology has seeped from the online world and surfaced in other violence, ranging from street clashes between far-right groups and leftists in Portland, Ore., to the storming of the Michigan Statehouse, to the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. The federal government has called the rise of domestic extremism a lethal threat to the United States.
The plaintiffs accuse the organizers of the Charlottesville rally of plotting to foment the violence that left them injured, while the defendants counter that their views constituted free speech, however offensive others might find it, and that the bloodshed stemmed from self-defense.
Using a combination of digital sleuthing and a 19th-century law written to curb the Ku Klux Klan, the lawyers for the nine plaintiffs in the Charlottesville case are hoping that their quest for unspecified financial damages will both punish the organizers and deter others.” Read more at Boston Globe
“SEA ISLAND, Ga. — Russia’s premier intelligence agency has launched another campaign to pierce thousands of U.S. government, corporate and think-tank computer networks, Microsoft officials and cybersecurity experts warned on Sunday, only months after President Biden imposed sanctions on Moscow in response to a series of sophisticated spy operations it had conducted around the world.
The new effort is ‘very large, and it is ongoing,’ Tom Burt, one of Microsoft’s top security officers, said in an interview. Government officials confirmed that the operation, apparently aimed at acquiring data stored in the cloud, seemed to come out of the S.V.R., the Russian intelligence agency that was the first to enter the Democratic National Committee’s networks during the 2016 election.
While Microsoft insisted that the percentage of successful breaches was small, it did not provide enough information to accurately measure the severity of the theft.
Earlier this year, the White House blamed the S.V.R. for the so-called SolarWinds hacking, a highly sophisticated effort to alter software used by government agencies and the nation’s largest companies, giving the Russians broad access to 18,000 users. Mr. Biden said the attack undercut trust in the government’s basic systems and vowed retaliation for both the intrusion and election interference. But when he announced sanctions against Russian financial institutions and technology companies in April, he pared back the penalties.” Read more at New York Times
“Swedish and Pakistani ministers have warned that Afghanistan will swiftly collapse if the international community does not come to its aid. Many countries and international institutions have halted development assistance, reluctant to legitimize the Taliban rulers who took over in August. However, they have increased humanitarian aid. Sweden's development minister said economic free fall could provide an environment for terrorist groups to thrive. Pakistan’s information minister, however, said direct engagement with the Taliban is the only way to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. In the US, the Biden administration is making massive changes to the resettlement program to find homes for the 55,600 Afghans evacuated from US military bases.” Read more at CNN
“Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his wife have been arrested and taken to an undisclosed location, the prime minister's economic adviser told CNN, in events that bore the hallmarks of an apparent coup. Multiple government ministers and officials have also been arrested, the country’s Information Ministry said, and military forces have stormed Sudan's state broadcaster. Internet in Sudan is also severely throttled, according to a monitoring site. Military and civilian groups have been sharing power in the east African country since the toppling in 2019 of longtime President Omar al-Bashir. However, the uneasy alliance has caused political and social unrest, and a failed coup last month by forces loyal to Bashir only increased tensions. After September’s attempt, military leaders demanded major changes to the coalition and a replacement of the country’s cabinet.” Read more at CNN
Caltrans maintenance supervisor Matt Martin walks by a landslide covering Highway 70 in the Dixie Fire zone on Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021, in Plumas County, Calif. Heavy rains blanketing Northern California created slide and flood hazards in land scorched during last summer's wildfires.Noah Berger, AP
“Several severe weather patterns will batter the US this week. A ‘bomb cyclone’ -- a sudden low pressure event that intensifies storms -- is ramping up heavy rain across the West, even prompting evacuations in some parts of wildfire-scarred California. Heavy rain can cause dangerous debris flows in such areas. That same system could cause other problems. Several feet of snow are forecast for the Sierra Nevada mountain range, creating nearly impossible driving conditions. In the Midwest, tornadoes, large hail and damaging wind have been reported in parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, and the threat will continue today. The East Coast by midweek could also be facing a nor'easter that could bring serious flooding.” Read more at CNN
“The search for 12 jurors and four alternates continues this week in the murder trial of the three men charged with killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Complicating the process is the fact that multiple prospective jurors in the small town of Brunswick, Georgia, have told the court they know Arbery , the defendants, potential witnesses, jurors, or other figures in the case. Some worried they would be identified as a juror in the press and face personal repercussions after rendering a verdict. Arbery, who was Black, was fatally shot last year while out jogging. Three white men – Greg McMichael, 65, his son Travis, 35, and their neighbor William ‘Roddie’ Bryan, 52 – stand accused of his murder.” Read more at USA Today
“Facebook this week faces a trifecta of tumult: ‘The Facebook Papers,’ a new series of document revelations by a consortium of two dozen news organizations, starting today ... a critical earnings report today ... and a reported name change, Axios' Scott Rosenberg and Sara Fischer report.
Why it matters: All this is unfolding as Mark Zuckerberg tries to transform Facebook from a social network into the prime mover behind a new ‘metaverse’ of VR- and AR-driven remote work and play.
What's happening: Critical stories based on internal reports leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen continue to surface in waves following The Wall Street Journal ‘Facebook Files’ series that kicked it all off.
Friday night, the gusher was about Facebook's role in the Jan. 6 riot.
Over the weekend, it was India: AP, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post each offered in-depth reports on Facebook researchers' and employees' concerns that their platform promotes extremism in the company's largest market.
Facebook hosts a virtual developer conference, Connect, on Thursday, with a keynote by Zuckerberg that's expected to go deeper into the company's metaverse-building project.” Read more at Axios
“‘Rust’ star Alec Baldwin, sitting in a church pew, was rehearsing drawing his weapon "and pointing his revolver towards the camera lens" when cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot, according to a Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office affidavit.” Read more at USA Today
“Diplomatic threat | Turkey’s lira touched a record low against the dollar today after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared the ambassadors of 10 nations including the U.S., Germany and France were no longer welcome over their demand for the release of a government critic. Investors are watching for the foreign ministry to make the declaration official. It potentially puts Erdogan in an awkward position ahead of the G-20 summit, where he hopes to meet with Biden.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Terror in Kampala. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a restaurant bombing in Uganda’s capital Kampala on Sunday. The attack killed one person and injured three others. The Islamic State first acknowledged operating in Uganda in April 2019. The leader of Uganda’s Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) an Islamist rebel group, pledged allegiance to the Islamic state in 2016.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“45 — The number of new facilities being added by the U.S. Postal Service to handle extra shipping volume expected ahead of the holidays, as Postmaster General Louis DeJoy aims to prevent a repeat of last year's delays.
89% — The decline in population of the American bumblebee in the U.S. in the past 20 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the species under the Endangered Species Act.
$84 billion — Average yearly cost in damage from weather and climate disasters over the past decade in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, compared with $54 billion in the previous decade. Washington and the private sector are expected to pledge to spend trillions of dollars to turn the country carbon neutral in the coming 30 years.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Lives Lived: James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther on ‘Friends,’ started as an extra on the show. ‘His unique spirit caught our eye and we knew we had to make him a character,’ the show’s co-creators said. Tyler died at 59.”
Boji rides Kadikoy's historic tram.Chris McGrath, Getty Images
“A street dog named Boji has shot to Internet fame with his travels around Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, by public transportation. The clever canine regularly catches subway trains, ferries, buses and historic trolleys to get around, and has amassed a following of about 80,000 on Instagram.” Read more at USA Today
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