“Roughly one in every six U.S. adults has been fully vaccinated for the coronavirus, according to new data released Saturday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s vaccine tracker, which was updated Saturday afternoon, shows that 16.7 percent of the adult population has been fully vaccinated. More than 40 percent of adults aged 65 years and older are also fully vaccinated.
More than 121 million doses in total have been administered, and nearly 43 million adults are fully inoculated.” Read more at The Hill
“Only about 13 percent of Europeans have received a first dose, compared with 23 percent in the U.S. and 40 percent in Britain. The slow rollout in Europe can be explained by a cascade of small decisions that have led to increasingly long delays.” Read more at New York Times
“As people nationwide rallied in support of the nation's Asian American community following Tuesday's killings in Georgia, hundreds gathered Saturday afternoon in downtown Atlanta for a rally and march to honor the victims and decry anti-Asian violence.
‘We have been invisible and ignored in our country for over a century,’ New York City-based actor Will Lex Ham told the crowd. ‘We are getting violently physically attacked. It took an elderly man in San Francisco to die to get attention. It took six Asian women to die in Atlanta to get people to care.’
Eight people were killed in Tuesday's rampage, six of them Asian women. While police say the suspect said he did not target them because of their race, the crime touched a nerve in a community already reeling from a year-long rise in anti-Asian incidents that has spiked in recent months.
Saturday in Atlanta, the crowd gathered near the State Capitol, many holding signs reading ‘Stop Asian Hate’ as Ham, among the event's organizers, led them in a chant of ‘Stand Up, Fight Back!’
Gaby Lynch, 32, carried a piece of cardboard that read, ‘Does this sign make me look submissive?’” Read more at USA Today
“NCAA president Mark Emmert said it shouldn't have happened. Dan Gavitt, the NCAA vice president for basketball, apologized. The disparities between the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments are far and wide.
The outcries began when players, such as the Oregon Ducks' Sedona Prince, posted on social media the lack of exercise equipment available to players despite ample space, which the NCAA initially cited as the reason for the differences.
Several companies, including Dick's and Tonal, posted on social media in the aftermath of the revelation to offer support. And practically overnight, a new weight room for first- and second-round teams — the original plan called for a weight room to be created for the Sweet 16 — was set up.
In the space next to the practice court, where the original photo shared by Stanford sports performance coach Ali Kershner that sparked the outrage was taken, there are now more (and heavier) weights, benches, bikes and rowing machines.
On Saturday, former Notre Dame women's coach Muffet McGraw posted a scathing missive on Twitter.
‘While I appreciate the outrage, the fact that there's a huge disparity between men's and women's sports is hardly breaking news.’” Read more at USA Today
“It was a Faustian bargain that college basketball made last autumn when it plowed ahead with a season into the headwinds of the coronavirus pandemic. There would be games, college sports administrators declared, because there needed to be a path to the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament, which the governing body could ill afford to have canceled for the second year in a row.
But there would also be positive tests, pauses from play, and schedules reconstructed on the fly. Isolation and anxiety were part of the compact for four months.
The calculus, though, is different now.
A positive test won’t just pause a season; it can end it.
That cold reality found a victim on Saturday night when Virginia Commonwealth, the 10th-seeded team in the West region, stunningly dropped out of the tournament just more than three hours before it was scheduled to tip off against Oregon because it had received ‘multiple positive tests’ over the last 48 hours, the school said.
The N.C.A.A.’s coronavirus standards dictate that teams can play with at least five players who are not held out by either a positive test or contact tracing. V.C.U.’s athletic director, Ed McLaughlin, said the Rams had enough players, but that health officials in Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, were concerned about the spate of positive tests in recent days. Since the 68-team tournament bracket was locked on Tuesday night, V.C.U.’s departure — which necessitated a no-contest — meant that Oregon, the seventh seed in the West Region, advanced to the second round.” Read more at New York Times
“The Louisiana special election to replace former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D) is heading to a runoff between state Sen. Troy Carter (D) and state Sen. Karen Peterson (D) after no candidate won a majority of the votes on Saturday.
Peterson had 36 percent of the ballots cast compared to Peterson's 23 percent, according to WDSU in New Orleans.
The race for Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District, which spans from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, was hotly contested by 15 contenders. The rare vacancy for the deep blue seat was opened when Richmond joined the White House as a top aide to President Biden.” Read more at USA Today
“Louisiana Republican Julia Letlow won the special election in the state’s 5th Congressional District in the race to replace her late husband, former Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R), who died from COVID-19 complications in December.
According to election results recorded by The New York Times, Letlow won a resounding 64.5 percent of the vote.” Read more at The Hill
“The volcano in the Fagradals Mountain, 20 miles southwest of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, had lain dormant for some 6,000 years.
That was until about 8:45 p.m. local time Friday, when fountains of fiery lava began oozing out.
A volcano in Iceland's Fagradals Mountains erupts. (Icelandic Coast Guard/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The eruption was the Reykjanes Peninsula’s first in 781 years, according to the Associated Press. But the Icelandic Meteorological Office said in a statement that it was ‘considered small’ and there was no need to evacuate residents of the closest town, about six miles away.” Read more at Washington Post
“President Biden on Friday nominated Bill Nelson, a former senator from Florida, to head NASA.
A statement from the White House announcing the nomination said of Mr. Nelson, ‘In the Senate he was known as the go-to senator for our nation’s space program.’
The selection raised concerns that the Biden administration may restore a more traditional space program that relies on large, legacy aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, rather than more nimble newcomers like SpaceX.
Many people in the field had also hoped that Mr. Biden would nominate the first woman to serve as administrator.
‘Given how many qualified and talented women were rumored to be in consideration, he’s putting great trust in his former Senate colleague,’ said Lori Garver, a former deputy administrator of NASA during the Obama administration.
Mr. Nelson, who lost his bid for re-election to a fourth term in 2018, was a onetime astronaut and longtime supporter of NASA in the Senate. He was also a chief architect of the 2010 law that directed NASA to develop a heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System. Although the rocket had a successful engine test on Thursday, it is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
That has created challenges to the agency’s ability to reach destinations in deep space in the years ahead. Some wonder if Mr. Nelson, as an ardent supporter of the Space Launch System, would be willing to change course if less expensive commercial alternatives like SpaceX’s Starship, currently under development, become available.” Read more at New York Times
“Turkey withdrew early Saturday from a landmark European treaty protecting women from violence that it was the first country to sign 10 years ago and which bears the name of its largest city.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s overnight decree annulling Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention is a blow to women’s rights advocates, who say the agreement is crucial to combating domestic violence. Hundreds of women gathered at demonstrations across Turkey on Saturday to protest the move.
The Council of Europe's Secretary General, Marija Pejčinović Burić, called the decision ‘devastating.’
‘This move is a huge setback to these efforts and all the more deplorable because it compromises the protection of women in Turkey, across Europe and beyond,’ she said.” Read more at Boston Globe
Northeastern's Alina Mueller takes a shot in front of Wisconsin's Grace Bowlby in the women's Frozen Four NCAA championship game in Erie, Pa.JARED WICKERHAM FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
“It wasn’t the way the Northeastern women’s hockey team wanted its season to end.
Three minutes into overtime of Northeastern’s first-ever national championship game appearance, the game was decided when Wisconsin’s Daryl Watts — a player the Huskies used to face regularly before she transferred from Boston College to the Badgers — bounced the puck off Huskies’ defender Megan Carter and into the net for as unexpected a game-winning goal as there could be.
The 2-1 victory in the Women’s Frozen Four at the Erie Insurance Arena earned Wisconsin its sixth national title and ended NU’s 22-game unbeaten streak.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Christine Nofchissey McHorse was 50, and a celebrated Native American potter, when she stopped producing the traditional painted vessels collectors loved. She instead began making rich, black unadorned sculptural forms, mysterious and sensual pieces that owed more to Constantin Brancusi than any Native American vernacular.
Inspired by the photographs of Edward Weston and the buildings of Antoni Gaudí, along with her own internal vision, she tacked away from the artisanal toward fine art (though the line between the two can be unclear), “dropping the ethnic for the universal,” her gallerist, Garth Clark, said, confounding her existing collectors and drawing in new ones. She had more than mastered the traditional work, and chafed at its restrictions.
She used micaceous clay, an incredibly strong, tensile material flecked with mica, which once fired accrues a shimmering, ebonized finish. In Ms. McHorse’s hands it became sculpture, akin to bronze.
Ms. McHorse died Feb. 17 at a hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was 72. The cause was complications of COVID-19; she had cancer as well, her husband, Joel McHorse, said.” Read more at Boston Globe
NEW YORK (AP) — “Elsa Peretti, who went from Halston model and Studio 54 regular in the 1960s and ’70s to one of the world’s most famous jewelry designers with timeless, fluid Tiffany & Co. collections often inspired by nature, has died. She was 80.
She died Thursday night in her sleep at home in a small village outside Barcelona according to a statement from her family office in Zurich and the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation.
Ms. Peretti’s sculptural cuff bracelets, bean designs and open-heart pendants are among her most recognizable work. She lent her classical aesthetic to functional goods, too, including bowls, magnifying glasses, razors and even a pizza cutter done in sterling silver, a metal she favored and helped popularize as a luxury choice.” Read more at Boston Globe