“A first on two fronts: The World Health Organization approved the first-ever malaria vaccine — which is also the first-ever vaccine against a parasitic disease.
The WHO recommended the vaccine, called Mosquirix, for kids in sub-Saharan Africa and other at-risk regions.
The big picture: Malaria primarily kills very young children, reports Axios Future author Bryan Walsh.
The vaccine's efficacy is moderate: Clinical studies found it was about 30% effective at preventing severe malaria over the four-year course of the study.
But case counts are so high that widespread distribution in Africa could result in millions of fewer cases — and tens of thousands of fewer deaths per year, infectious disease expert Azra Ghani told AP.
What we're watching: Malaria deaths have been cut in half since 2000. But progress has stalled.” Read more at Axios
“AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., calling it an ‘offensive deprivation’ of a constitutional right by banning most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state since September.
The order Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges. In the weeks since the restrictions took effect, Texas abortion providers say the impact has been ‘exactly what we feared.’
In a 113-page opinion, Pitman took Texas to task over the law, saying Republican lawmakers had ‘contrived an unprecedented and transparent statutory scheme’ by leaving enforcement solely in the hands of private citizens, who are entitled to collect $10,000 in damages if they bring successful lawsuits against abortion providers who violate the restrictions.
The law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once cardiac activity is detected, which is usually around six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant.
‘From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution,’ wrote Pitman, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama.
‘That other courts may find a way to avoid this conclusion is theirs to decide; this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.’
But even with the law on hold, abortion services in Texas may not instantly resume because doctors still fear that they could be sued without a more permanent legal decision. Planned Parenthood said it was hopeful the order would allow clinics to resume abortion services as soon as possible.
Texas officials swiftly told the court of their intention to seek a reversal from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously allowed the restrictions to take effect.” Read more at AP News
“WASHINGTON — Even by the standards of President Donald J. Trump, it was an extraordinary Oval Office showdown. On the agenda was Mr. Trump’s desire to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to carry out his demands for more aggressive investigations into his unfounded claims of election fraud.
On the other side during that meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 were the top leaders of the Justice Department, who warned Mr. Trump that they and other senior officials would resign en masse if he followed through. They received immediate support from another key participant: Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. According to others at the meeting, Mr. Cipollone indicated that he and his top deputy, Patrick F. Philbin, would also step down if Mr. Trump acted on his plan.
Mr. Trump’s proposed plan, Mr. Cipollone argued, would be a ‘murder-suicide pact,’ one participant recalled. Only near the end of the nearly three-hour meeting did Mr. Trump relent and agree to drop his threat.
Mr. Cipollone’s stand that night is among the new details contained in a lengthy interim report prepared by the Senate Judiciary Committee about Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to do his bidding in the chaotic final weeks of his presidency.
The report draws on documents, emails and testimony from three top Justice Department officials, including the acting attorney general for Mr. Trump’s last month in office, Jeffrey A. Rosen; the acting deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, and Byung J. Pak, who until early January was U.S. attorney in Atlanta. It provides the most complete account yet of Mr. Trump’s efforts to push the department to validate election fraud claims that had been disproved by the F.B.I. and state investigators.
The interim report, expected to be released publicly this week, describes how Justice Department officials scrambled to stave off a series of events during a period when Mr. Trump was getting advice about blocking certification of the election from a lawyer he had first seen on television and the president’s actions were so unsettling that his top general and the House speaker discussed the nuclear chain of command.
‘This report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis,’ Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. ‘Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the department to his will. But it was not due to a lack of effort.’
Mr. Durbin said that he believes the former president, who remains a front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024, would have ‘shredded the Constitution to stay in power.’
The report by Mr. Durbin’s committee hews closely to previous accounts of the final days of the Trump administration, which led multiple Congressional panels and the Justice Department’s watchdog to open investigations.” Read more at New York Times
“WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats and Republicans neared agreement as they met into the early morning hours Thursday to temporarily pull the nation from the brink of a debt default. The deal would punt their showdown on raising the federal borrowing limit to December after Republicans bowed to pressure to stave off immediate fiscal calamity.
With the threat of a default as little as 12 days off, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, made a tactical retreat on Wednesday and announced that Republicans would allow Democrats to vote on a short-term extension. He did not, however, lift his blockade of a longer-term increase in the debt cap, demanding anew that Democrats eventually use a complicated and time-consuming budget procedure known as reconciliation to lift it into next year or beyond.
Democrats declared the offer at least a temporary victory, even as they said they would never capitulate to Mr. McConnell’s longer-term demand. Senators met late into the night to try to iron out the details, though Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, adjourned the Senate for the day shortly after midnight Thursday without a firm agreement.
‘We’re making good progress — we’re not there yet, but I hope we can come to agreement tomorrow morning,’ Mr. Schumer said.” Read more at New York Times
“WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard the government’s plea to block Central Intelligence Agency contractors from testifying regarding the brutal interrogation program they oversaw at a ‘black site’ in Poland.
Some justices proposed an alternative: Could the government allow Abu Zubaydah, the detainee who alleges he was tortured, to testify instead?
The query, which the government’s lawyer wasn’t immediately able to answer, posed a dramatic end to an argument that several justices suggested was riddled with legal fictions, including that a black site’s location was secret or that the U.S. continued to be at war in Afghanistan despite the withdrawal of all U.S. forces in August.
Wednesday’s case is one of many legal fallouts of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the unorthodox legal positions and intelligence tactics the U.S. adopted in response. Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, whose nom de guerre is Abu Zubaydah, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. According to the European Court of Human Rights, he then was taken to black sites in Thailand and Poland.
The CIA transferred him to the military prison at Guantanamo in September 2006, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Geneva Convention’s minimal standards of humane treatment applied to all detainees in American custody. He remains among 39 detainees at Guantanamo and hasn’t been charged with a crime.
In 2010, lawyers for Mr. Zubaydah brought a legal action in Poland alleging that Polish authorities were complicit in his torture. That litigation eventually led to the U.S., where Mr. Zubaydah sought depositions from James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, CIA contractors who designed an interrogation regime including waterboarding, being slammed into walls and ‘rectal rehydration.’
Messrs. Mitchell and Jessen have testified previously regarding the interrogation program, and Mr. Mitchell wrote a book titled ‘Enhanced Interrogation.’ The U.S. government objected to the depositions, however, asserting that the men’s testimony could disclose a state secret: Not the torture, which is described in declassified CIA documents and a Senate Intelligence Committee report, but the presence of the black site in Poland.
Given that the black site’s location is so widely known, Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether it was a state secret. ‘At a certain point, it becomes a little bit farcical’ to make such an argument, she said.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A massive cargo ship made a series of unusual movements while anchored in the closest spot to a Southern California oil pipeline that ruptured and sent crude washing up on beaches, according to data collected by a marine navigation service.
The Coast Guard is investigating whether a ship anchor might have snagged and bent the pipeline owned by Amplify Energy, a Houston-based company that operates three offshore oil platforms south of Los Angeles.
The Associated Press reviewed more than two weeks of data from MarineTraffic, a navigation service that tracks radio signals from transponders that broadcast the locations of ships and large boats every few minutes.
That data shows the Rotterdam Express, a German-flagged ship nearly 1,000 feet (305 meters) long, was assigned to anchorage SF-3, the closest to where the pipeline ruptured off Huntington Beach. The ship made three unusual movements over two days that appear to put it over the pipeline.” Read more at AP News
“The Delta wave may truly be behind us, though unvaccinated people in heavily unvaccinated areas will always be in danger, Axios' Sam Baker writes.
The U.S. is now averaging 102,000 new cases per day — a 22% drop over the past two weeks.
Deaths are also falling, by a nationwide average of about 13%. The virus is now killing roughly 1,800 Americans per day.
Context: A year ago, when no one was vaccinated and the worst wave of the pandemic was just getting started, experts were sounding the alarm because cases had crept up above 50,000 a day.
To be sitting above 100,000 daily cases now, even after millions of Americans have been vaccinated or have some level of immunity from a previous infection, is a sign of just how transmissible the Delta variant is — and how poorly the U.S. has contained it.
While some vaccinated people do get infected, almost none will die.
Stunning stat: Six months after every American adult became eligible for a vaccine, the virus' death toll in the U.S. is still roughly equivalent to a 9/11 every two days.” Read more at Axios
“Health care systems, schools, public-sector agencies and private businesses with COVID vaccine mandates have seen vaccination rates jump 20 points — in many instances to over 90%, according to a White House analysis released ahead of President Biden's trip to Chicago today.
Why it matters: That's a lot higher than the average fully vaccinated rate for working-age adults — 63%.
Mandates are quickly becoming standard practice:
They're now in place at 25% of businesses, 40% of hospitals, and colleges serving 37% of students, according to the White House.
The bottom line: 95 million eligible Americans were unvaccinated when Biden made his mandate announcement last month. That number is down to 67 million today — and the federal rule for private businesses hasn't even been finalized yet.” Read more at Axios
“NEW YORK (AP) — The number of U.S. children orphaned during the COVID-19 pandemic may be larger than previously estimated, and the toll has been far greater among Black and Hispanic Americans, a new study suggests.
More than half the children who lost a primary caregiver during the pandemic belonged to those two racial groups, which make up about 40% of the U.S. population, according to the study published Thursday by the medical journal Pediatrics.” Read more at AP News
“WASHINGTON — The White House announced Wednesday that it will buy $1 billion worth of rapid, at-home coronavirus tests to address ongoing shortages, a plan hailed by public health experts who called the move long overdue.
The actions will quadruple the number of tests available to Americans by December, according to Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. The news follows Monday’s decision by the Food and Drug Administration to allow the sale of an antigen test from US-based Acon Laboratories.
The White House expects that that decision and the purchase of the additional tests will increase the number of at-home tests to 200 million per month by December.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Los Angeles will require proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, gyms and other indoor businesses.” Read more at New York Times
“Home health care agencies in New York are bracing for staffing shortages if more workers don’t get vaccinated before a state mandate takes effect tomorrow.” Read more at New York Times
“Some countries are recommending that children 12 and over receive just one Pfizer dose for now.” Read more at New York Times
“The Transportation Security Administration will impose new cybersecurity mandates on the railroad and airline industries as part of a wide effort to protect critical infrastructure from recent waves of cyberattacks. These new provisions will require high-risk railroad and rail transit entities to designate cybersecurity leaders, create contingency plans and report any breaches to the government. Earlier this year, TSA issued two similar security directives aimed at critical pipeline companies. Meanwhile, cybersecurity experts tracking a Russian hacking group behind the crippling SolarWinds hack in 2020, which affected several federal agencies, say the group recently tried to infiltrate US and European government networks.” Read more at CNN
“WASHINGTON — The White House proposed restoring parts of one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws Wednesday, requiring agencies to conduct a climate analysis of major projects and give affected communities greater input into the process.
If finalized, the move to change how the government reviews pipelines, highways, and other projects under the National Environmental Policy Act would reverse a significant rollback by the Trump administration. While the proposal won praise from environmentalists, it came under criticism from developers and could make it harder to upgrade the aging bridges and roads President Biden has pledged to rebuild.
Brenda Mallory, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement that the changes would not delay major projects because they would make it easier to forge a consensus on how they would be built.” Read more at Boston Globe
“The Biden administration is overhauling a student loan forgiveness program for public service employees that had become a notorious quagmire, introducing a sweeping set of fixes Wednesday that Education Department officials said would help more than a half-million people get closer to the relief they had been denied for years.
Previous patchwork efforts to mend the program have largely failed, brought down by the same complexity that crippled the original initiative. But this time, the agency is taking a chain saw to the program’s rules to temporarily clear the way for many people who were previously rebuffed. Advocates who have long pushed for such changes said they were thrilled.” Read more at Boston Globe
“A trial of two parents featured audio of the mastermind behind the college-admissions scandal. Some of the taped conversations, entered as evidence by prosecutors, center on the illicit opportunities Rick Singer offered, as he laid them out to prospective clients or reviewed his actions with those who already used his services.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“SAN JOSE, Calif.—Safeway Inc.’s former top executive testified Wednesday that the grocery-story chain relied on Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes’s promises when it decided to invest over $350 million in a partnership with the blood-testing company.
The relationship between Ms. Holmes and Safeway’s then-chief executive, Steven Burd, started with a shared vision of making healthcare more accessible, but it soured as Mr. Burd faced the end of his career with nothing to show from the expensive pursuit of installing Theranos clinics in hundreds of stores.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Gallup polling finds trust in news media is down to 36%, four points above the record low in 2016, amid the divisive presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Look at this party breakdown of media trust: 68% of Democrats ... 31% of independents ... 11% of Republicans.
Trust has fallen in half since the Nixon era. Gallup polling between 1972 and 1976 found 68% to 72% of Americans trusted mass media. Go deeper.” Read more at Axios
“The Biden-Xi summit. U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will hold a virtual summit later this year, the White House announced late Wednesday. The announcement came after U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi met in Zurich for talks the same day. A U.S. official described the Zurich talks as a ‘more meaningful and substantive engagement’ than previous meetings.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“A strong earthquake hit Pakistan early this morning. At least 20 people died and hundreds of buildings collapsed.” Read more at New York Times
“The ruler of Dubai used spyware to hack the phones of his ex-wife, a Jordanian princess, and her associates, a British court said.” Read more at New York Times
“U.S. immigration authorities have cut the frequency of deportation flights to Haiti to one per day this week, the result of a sharp decline in the number of Haitian migrants trying to enter the United States, according to three administration officials.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operated as many as seven flights per day to Haiti last week, returning more than 700 migrants daily. On Tuesday, the agency returned 57.
The cause of the drop-off is that most of the Haitians taken into custody last month at a makeshift camp in Del Rio, Tex., have been processed by immigration authorities, and far fewer Haitians have crossed since the camp’s closure on Sept. 24, according to the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the data with reporters.” Read more at Washington Post
“Lives Lived: Robert Schiffmann realized the potential of microwave ovens when he observed one heat up a sandwich in the 1960s. He became one of the technology’s leading experts, developing products and processes to expand its abilities. He died at 86.” Read more at New York Times
“Sports anchor Sage Steele is off the air at ESPN after she called vaccine mandates ‘sick’ and ‘scary’ and questioned why former President Barack Obama identifies as Black even though he was raised by his white mother.
Steele made the comments last week on the podcast Uncut with Jay Cutler, and her removal from the air was reported by Front Office Sports.” Read more at NPR
The photobomb that turned Ndakasi into a viral sensation in 2019
“(CNN) Ndakasi, a mountain gorilla whose image went viral when she photobombed her caretaker's selfie, has died at the age of 14.
She died on September 26 after a prolonged illness, according to a statement published Tuesday by the Virunga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
‘It is with heartfelt sadness that Virunga announces the death of beloved orphaned mountain gorilla, Ndakasi, who had been under the care of the Park's Senkwekwe Center for more than a decade,’ the park said.
‘Ndakasi took her final breath in the loving arms of her caretaker and lifelong friend, Andre Bauma,’ it added.
The Senkekwe Center, located inside the park, is the only facility in the world that looks after orphaned mountain gorillas.
Ndakasi pictured with her caretaker, Andre Bauma
Bauma had looked after Ndakasi ever since rangers found her clinging to the body of her dead mother in 2007, when she was just two months old.” Read more at CNN
“LOS ANGELES - Come on, it’s Hollywood.
It’s the drama everyone wants to see.
It’s the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, one of the fiercest rivals in all of sports.
And it is now here, back in living color, thanks to Chris Taylor’s two-run walk-off homer in the ninth inning, leading the Dodgers to a 3-1 thriller over the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday night in the National League wild card game.
‘It’s what baseball wants, Giants-Dodgers, one of the best rivalries in sports, and it’s here, ‘said Dodgers managers Dave Roberts.
It was the first time the Dodgers won an elimination game at Dodger Stadium since Game 7 of the 1988 NL Championship Series against the powerful New York Mets, back in the days of Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden.
‘I was like a little kid running around the bases,’ said Taylor. ‘Pure excitement, I don't even know what I did.’
But, oh, was this a beauty, setting up the fabulous theater of the Giants-Dodgers once again, with perhaps the two greatest teams in baseball.
The Giants proved they were the better team in the regular season, winning a franchise-record 107 games.
The Dodgers won 106 games.
Now, we’re about to find out who’s the best team in a best-of-five series beginning Friday night at Oracle Park in San Francisco.” Read more at USA Today
“A shortage of agriculture workers is forcing winemakers in the U.S. and Europe to turn to robots for their autumn grape harvest, reports The Wall Street Journal
The machines can run $100,000 or more.
What's happening: Pandemic-related travel restrictions have cut down on the availability of migrant workers, exacerbating an existing labor shortage in viticulture.
New research at UC Davis shows that not only can vineyards safely replace manual laborers by switching to machinery, the wine can also taste better.
‘The new system entails different trellises so the vine is higher up off the ground, so it has better flavor, it has better color, which winemakers desire,’ a researcher told CBS Sacramento.” Read more at Axios