“WASHINGTON — Half of all adults in the United States have received at least one COVID-19 shot, the government announced Sunday, marking another milestone in the nation’s largest-ever vaccination campaign but leaving more work to do to persuade skeptical Americans to roll up their sleeves.
Almost 130 million people 18 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or 50.4 percent of the total adult population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Almost 84 million adults, or about 32.5 percent of the population, have been fully vaccinated.
The US inoculation drive has pushed ahead despite a major setback Tuesday when federal health agencies recommended putting injections of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on pause while they investigated whether it was linked to a rare blood-clotting disorder.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Shootings across the US made for a harrowing, heartbreaking weekend of gun violence. Three people were killed and three injured in a shooting at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, tavern. A person of interest has been located and is facing a charge. In Austin, Texas, three people were killed after an apparent ‘domestic situation,’ and the suspect -- an ex-sheriff's detective -- is still on the run. In Columbus, Ohio, one person was killed and five wounded in a drive-by shooting at vigil for a gun violence victim. The US has recorded at least 50 mass shootings since the Atlanta-area spa shootings on March 16, which left eight people dead. We’re also learning more about last week’s Indianapolis shooting, in which police say a 19-year-old killed eight people at a FedEx facility. The suspect legally bought the two assault rifles used in the attack after he'd been investigated by the FBI due to his potential for violence.” Read more at CNN
“All Americans 16 years and older are now eligible for Covid-19 vaccines. The White House recently moved up this blanket eligibility date from May 1 and is now embarking on a media blitz to get more shots into arms. More than half of US adults have now had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, but there’s still a long way to go to achieve herd immunity and vanquish the growing threat of coronavirus variants. Dr. Anthony Fauci says the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, temporarily paused due to a handful of reports of dangerous blood clots, could be back to the market with restrictions or warnings by Friday. Meanwhile, the global coronavirus death toll has now surpassed 3 million, and several countries, like India and Brazil, are battling some of the worst waves of the virus they’ve seen yet.” Read more at CNN
“Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced he will propose a new migration deal between the countries of North and Central America this week at a virtual climate summit convened by President Biden. His plan would involve asking Central American migrants -- and Mexicans considering emigration -- to work planting trees and crops across Mexico for three years in return for a six-month US work visa and an eventual path to US citizenship. López Obrador says he hopes the arrangement would provide jobs for more than 1.2 million Central Americans and Mexicans. Economic uncertainty, worsened by the pandemic and natural disasters, has sent record numbers of migrants northward. Biden has discouraged migration at this time and asked Central American leaders to tighten borders to lessen the crush in the US.” Read more at CNN
“Jury deliberations in Derek Chauvin's trial in the death of George Floyd are expected to begin this week, meaning a verdict could come soon. Minneapolis and other US cities are preparing for possible protests in the aftermath. Unrest is already roiling other communities as they process their own police violence tragedies. At least 100 people were arrested in demonstrations in nearby Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, following the police shooting death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright. The governor also addressed law enforcement's alleged mistreatment of journalists covering those protests, including the arrest of a CNN producer. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot is facing growing calls for police reform after bodycam footage was releasedshowing the deadly police shooting of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old boy.” Read more at CNN
“Navalny’s health. Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is at risk of dying ‘at any moment ‘according to his personal physician. Navalny is three weeks into a hunger strike in protest of the medical treatment he has received since he was incarcerated at a Russian penal colony. On Sunday, U.S National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned the Russian government of ‘consequences’ if Navalny was to die in custody.” Read more at Foreign Policy
The state clobbered hardest by COVID ...
Data: Hamilton Place Strategies. Chart: Will Chase/Axios
is New York.
“The job facing governments was to save lives and save jobs. Very few states did well on both measures. New York, almost uniquely, did particularly badly on both, Axios Capital author Felix Salmon writes.
A new analysis from Hamilton Place Strategies shows New York lost 55,000 jobs per million inhabitants. That's the second-worst result in the country, behind only tourism-dependent Hawaii.
The Empire State saw 3,300 extra deaths per million inhabitants, compared to pre-pandemic trends. That's about the same as Arizona and Alabama. The worst outcome was in Mississippi, which had 3,800 excess deaths per million.
Two states — Idaho and Utah — saw net job gains.” Read more at Axios
“Israel, a leader in vaccination rates, has lifted its outdoor mask mandate. New daily cases are down by 98 percent since January.” Read more at New York Times
“The Supreme Court on Monday will hear an appeal in a 2015 case that could impact the status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. living in a state of limbo . At issue in the dispute is whether those who received Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are eligible to apply for green cards even if they initially entered the country illegally. Some 400,000 people, most of them from El Salvador, live in the U.S. under the TPS program, which permits foreign nationals to remain if the administration decides conditions in their country prevent them from safely returning. If the justices uphold the decision, TPS recipients would have to leave the country before applying for lawful permanent residency – with no guarantee of being accepted.” Read more at AP
“Biden’s refugee plans. The White House plans to announce an increase to its refugee admissions cap on May 15, after pressure from Democratic party members and rights groups over the delayed move. Biden had said he would increase the cap, lowered to 15,000 annual admissions by President Trump, in early February but has yet to sign the order. Drawing on lessons from Europe and recent U.S. history, James Traub, writing in Foreign Policy, offered solutions for how Biden can reconcile both the moral and political tensions to move toward a more humane refugee policy.” Read more in Foreign Policy
The Republican leader in the House of Representatives and an extremist congresswoman who champions ‘Anglo-Saxon political traditions’ have demanded action against the Democratic representative Maxine Waters, after she expressed support for protesters against police brutality.
On Saturday, Waters spoke in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by police last week.
The California congresswoman spoke before final arguments on Monday in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd for more than nine minutes last May, resulting in the Black man’s death and global protests.
‘I’m going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice,’ said Waters, who is Black. ‘We’ve got to get justice in this country and we cannot allow these killings to continue.’
Tensions are high in Minneapolis.
Waters said: ‘We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.’
Of Chauvin, Waters said: ‘I hope we’re going to get a verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty. And if we don’t, we cannot go away.’
On Sunday night the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said: ‘Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis – just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi doesn’t act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week.’
Waters, 82, a confrontational figure sometimes known as ‘Kerosene Maxine,’ made headlines last week by telling the Ohio congressman Jim Jordan to ‘respect the chair and shut your mouth’ during a hearing with Anthony Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser.
She regularly clashed with Donald Trump, angering some Democratic leaders. In 2018, Waters said people should harass Trump aides in public. Pelosi called the comments ‘unacceptable’. Senate leader Chuck Schumer went for ‘not American’.
Observers said McCarthy’s most likely course of action is to seek formal censure – a move unlikely to succeed unless enough Democrats support it.
From the far right of McCarthy’s party, the Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene compared Waters’ words with those of Trump, when he told supporters to march on Congress and overturn his election defeat, resulting in the deadly Capitol riot of 6 January.
‘Speaker Pelosi,’ she tweeted. ‘You impeached President Trump after you said he incited violence by saying ‘march peacefully’ to the Capitol. So I can expect a yes vote from you on my resolution to expel Maxine Waters for inciting violence, riots, and abusing power threatening a jury, right?” Read more at The Guardian
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter unlocked its rotor blades, allowing them to spin freely, on April 7, one of several steps that needed to be taken before the helicopter could fly on another planet. PHOTO: HANDOUT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
“NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter made history early Monday when the small but intrepid drone became the first powered craft to fly on another world, space agency officials announced.
Overcoming extreme cold, dangerously thin air and flawed flight software, the $85 million autonomous copter spun its twin carbon fiber rotor blades to rise about 10 feet into the thin Martian air. It hovered briefly in the breeze before safely landing at about 3:30 am ET Monday back on Earth, NASA officials said. The flight was the first of five planned for the next 30 days.
As flight data streamed from Ingenuity to Earth Monday, mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California cheered and clapped.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The U.S. Military Academy will end a program that provided a second chance to cadets who violated the honor code, The New York Times reported. The program was scrapped because it had ‘not met its intended purpose’ of increasing the self-reporting of honor code violations and reducing cadets’ tolerance for them, West Point officials told the Times. The announcement came as West Point announced that 51 cadets who were accused of cheating last year would have to repeat a full year at the academy, two would have to repeat half a year and eight would be expelled.” [Inside Higher Ed]
“The leader of Sinn Fein, the Irish political party, apologized for the 1979 assassination of Louis Mountbatten, an uncle of Prince Philip.” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Joye Hummel wrote the scripts for more than 70 Wonder Woman comic book adventures, but her role went unrecognized for decades. That changed when a 2014 book brought her late-life acclaim. Hummel died at 97.” Read more at New York Times
An ‘absolute disgrace’ and a symbol of greed within soccer were among the reactions by former players, pundits and politicians to a plan by some of the world’s richest soccer clubs, including Manchester United and Real Madrid, to form a European breakaway league starting in August. As James Ludden and David Hellier explain, the sport’s biggest shakeup in decades could make elite teams even wealthier. President Emmanuel Macron praised French clubs for not signing up so far.” Read more at Bloomberg
Manchester City players throw Manager Josep Guardiola in the air as they celebrate winning the Premier League title on May 12, 2019.
“A day after the government of the Czech Republic blamed operatives from Russia’s military intelligence agency for a series of mysterious explosions at an ammunition depot in 2014 and expelled 18 Russian diplomats, the Russian government announced on Sunday that 20 Czech diplomats would be ejected in response.
The expulsions signal further escalation of tensions between the Kremlin and western governments, reaching an intensity not seen since the Cold War. The spat between the Czech Republic and Russia comes just days after the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Russian government officials and businesses in response to a large-scale hacking of American government computer systems.” Read more at New York Times
“The choice for Angela Merkel’s successor will be narrowed down today as the two leading parties announce their candidates for chancellor ahead of a general election in September.
Merkel’s CDU/CSU Christian democrat bloc has endured a turbulent path to today’s impending announcement. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had been anointed Merkel’s replacement in 2018 until disastrous results in the 2019 European election led to her resignation the following year. The party sought to reset in early January, nominating Armin Laschet, a Merkel ally, to serve as CDU party chairman—a natural launchpad to the chancellery.
Like many countries during the pandemic, public opinion has been on a rollercoaster as Germany’s handling of the pandemic has wavered. Into that turmoil has stepped Söder, whose media-friendly persona and decisive approach to the coronavirus pandemic in Bavaria has endeared to him to the German public. His status has grown so much over the past year that public polling places him as first-choice for chancellor among the German public, with 37 percent backing him in a recent survey. Laschet garnered 13 percent support in the same poll.
Even as Söder’s star is rising, his party bloc’s popularity is diminishing; reflected by bad losses in two state elections in March. Those defeats match recent polls, where support for the CDU/CSU has dropped from 37 percent to 28 percent over the past year.
The CDU/CSU dip has coincided with a surge in support for Germany’s Green party, who are expected to announce their chancellor candidate today. Recent polling puts the Greens eight points behind the CDU/CSU, a gap that has narrowed from 19 points at the beginning of the year.
The Green challenge. The Greens opted for Annalena Baerbock for the role. Baerbock stands out as both the youngest candidate and only woman in the running. Robert Habeck, her rival until today, comes from the party’s centrist camp, and has been described as a German Emmanuel Macron. In a signal of their changing fortunes, this is the first time the Greens will name a chancellor candidate.
The new coalition. Although the parties will fight it out in September’s elections, a coalition government is still the likely outcome. If polls hold and the CDU/CSU ditch their Social Democrat partners to enter a Green coalition, they would follow their southern neighbors in Austria (as well as Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Sweden).
‘Conservative-green coalitions,’ are, Liam Hoare writes in Foreign Policy, if’ not the future, are at least a future for European politics,’ as he outlines the relative smoothness with which Austria’s alliance has run since entering power together in early 2020.” Read more in Foreign Policy
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