Emergency workers at the site of a stampede on Mount Meron, Israel, this morning. David Cohen/Jini Photo Agency Ltd, via Reuters
“Tragedy in Israel. At least 44 people are dead, including some children, following a stampede at a religious gathering at Mount Meron in northern Israel—one of the country’s worst peacetime disasters.
It’s not yet clear what caused the crush, with initial reports referencing a grandstand collapse and a resulting stampede. At least 150 people remain in critical condition following the incident. The Lag B’Omer festival was the first mass religious event following the easing of coronavirus restrictions following a successful vaccination drive. An estimated 90,000 people came together to worship on Thursday night.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“There have now been more than 150 million reported coronavirus cases worldwide, less than 13 months after the pandemic began. Across the United States, more cities are reopening -- New York City, for instance, is primed to lift all restrictions by July 1. Still, experts say more people need to get vaccinated in order to maintain safety. That could be a problem, since a CNN poll reveals about a quarter of American adults say they won’t try to get a vaccine. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has been consulting ‘nonstop’ with the Indian government about aid priorities as the country grapples with a catastrophic surge. The first shipment of supplies from the US, including PPE, oxygen, test kits and masks, should be arriving in India soon. On Thursday, India reported 3,645 deaths, the highest number the country has ever claimed in a single day.” Read more at CNN
“The FBI warned Rudolph W. Giuliani in late 2019 that he was the target of a Russian influence operation aimed at circulating falsehoods intended to damage President Biden politically ahead of last year’s election, according to people familiar with the matter.
The warning was part of an extensive effort by the bureau to alert members of Congress and at least one conservative media outlet, One America News, that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia’s attempt to influence the election’s outcome, said several current and former U.S. officials. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive.
Giuliani received the FBI’s warning while deeply involved with former president Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and related activities in Ukraine to surface unflattering or incriminating information about the Biden family. The revelation comes as the FBI this week seized Giuliani’s cellphone and other electronic devices as part of a long-running criminal investigation into whether the onetime New York mayor and personal attorney for Trump acted as an unregistered foreign agent.” Read more at Washington Post
“More than 100 U.S. colleges will require in-person students to be vaccinated.” Read more at New York Times
“If you are in the U.S., China, the U.K. and parts of Europe, things may appear to be looking up in the fight against Covid-19.
Vaccines are rolling out and the lockdowns that hammered economies are easing, giving hope to industries ranging from tourism to manufacturing.
Yet in much of the world, the catastrophe is still unfolding. India reported record new cases today, while Brazil’s fatalities exceeded 400,000 as the country registered more Covid-19 deaths in the first four months of the year than all of 2020. Even Singapore chalked up the most community infections since July yesterday.
The outlook is darkening in nations ranging from Thailand to Russia and Romania, where authorities are struggling to convince people to receive shots.
And that’s the nub of the problem. Until inoculations reach critical mass in more places the pandemic will continue its march — and so will the multiplication of variants that could render vaccines less effective.
Increasingly, this is a rich-poor issue. Countries with the highest incomes are getting vaccinated about 25 times faster than those with the lowest, Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker shows, and Africa, with 1 billion people, is trailing the rest of the world.
Initial hoarding by developed countries has been a big part of the problem. The U.S., for example, has a stockpile of AstraZeneca vaccines it hasn’t even approved for use.
It’s now promising to share some with India — home to the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer — which has gone from exporting or donating millions of shots to being unable to fulfill its global commitments or provide for its own citizens.Defeating the pandemic remains a chimera, and getting there is going to take a more united effort.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The Justice Department is reportedly moving forward with plans to charge Derek Chauvin and three other former Minneapolis police officers with federal civil rights violations in connection with the death of George Floyd last May. The reports of the possible federal indictments come a week after Chauvin was found guilty on three charges of murder related to Floyd’s death. The three other officers involved will face trial in August. Yesterday, lawmakers on Capitol Hill and advocates who want to overhaul the nation's policing laws held a series of meetings to identify legislation that can pass both chambers of Congress. The families of several victims of police violence also met with prominent Republican lawmakers to request meaningful change on the issue.” Read more at CNN
“At least five federal civilian agencies appear to have been breached in a hack affecting Pulse Secure VPN, a widely used remote connectivity tool. Hackers with suspected ties to China took advantage of vulnerabilities in the system to gain access to government agencies, defense companies and financial institutions in the US and Europe, according to a report released earlier this month. Now, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is trying to determine the full scope of the hack. In a separate incident, hackers stole personnel files of some Washington Metropolitan Police Department officers in a ransomware attack earlier this month. The attackers posted a ransom note claiming they had stolen more than 250 GB of data, and threatened to publish the material if they were not paid. The FBI and the police department are investigating the incident.” Read more at CNN
“The US has begun the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, but al Qaeda is still vowing a ‘war on all fronts.’ Al Qaeda’s influence has been greatly reduced in the ten years since the death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, but the group is far from dead. And now, it says it's planning a comeback after US forces leave Afghanistan by partnering once again with the Taliban. During an interview with CNN conducted through intermediaries, two al Qaeda operatives said the group’s war against the US ‘will be continuing on all other fronts unless they are expelled from the rest of the Islamic world.’ The troop drawdown was made possible when the US cut a deal with the Afghan Taliban to sever ties with al Qaeda. The latter group’s willingness to talk now, which is unusual, could raise concern about the Taliban’s honesty regarding the deal.” Read more at CNN
“Protests continued Thursday, hours after the names of seven deputies involved in the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. in North Carolina last week were released. Protesters want video of the incident made public. Among the chants heard in the streets: ‘Release the tapes — the whole tapes.’” Read more at USA Today
“South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem told a crowd she has directed her office to file a lawsuit against the National Parks Service after the agency rejected permits to hold the fireworks display at Mt. Rushmore on July 4th.” Read more at USA Today
“Five people have been arrested and charged in the shooting Lady Gaga's dogwalker and stealing two of her French bulldogs in February. Three of the suspects have been charged with attempted murder and robbery.” Read more at USA Today
“President Joe Biden couldn’t get everything he wanted into his own $1.8 trillion families plan.
His proposed child tax credit is set to expire after 2025. It would provide parents with $300 a month for each child under 6 and $250 a month for older children. Democratic lawmakers are pushing hard to make the credit a permanent policy, but the administration told them that the annual costs of roughly $100 billion were too high.
Biden is embracing a dramatic shift from four decades of politics in which presidents from both parties focused more on containing government than expanding it. But the resistance to making the child tax credit permanent is a sign that even in a White House that embraces big government, there are some limits.
‘This is a very expensive policy, probably another $500 billion-plus to extend this for the rest of the decade,’ said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. ‘According to the principles they’ve laid out, they would want to show they’re paying for it, and the current ‘pay-fors’ would be insufficient even on a 15-year basis.’
Still, the tax credit is integral to the administration’s goal of reducing child poverty to the single digits and improving the well-being, education and earnings of America’s next generation. It was first introduced in part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus package as a yearlong benefit that increased the size of the existing credit, opened it up to almost every family and enabled it to be paid out monthly.
‘With two parents, two kids, that’s up to $7,200 in your pocket to help take care of your family,’ Biden said in his joint address to Congress on Wednesday night.
The policy gets at the essence of Biden’s belief that people should feel that government policies are bettering their lives. That philosophy is a fundamental difference from the response to the 2008 financial crisis where the focus was on regulation and buttressing major banks as millions lost their homes to foreclosure.” Read more at AP
“The tension in Idaho over whether universities are ‘indoctrinating’ students with a leftist agenda was codified into law on Wednesday. Gov. Brad Little signed a bill that bars public schools and institutions of higher education from directing or compelling students to ‘affirm, adopt, or adhere’ to what the state legislature views as the principles of critical race theory.
‘The claim that there is widespread, systemic indoctrination occurring in Idaho’s classrooms is a serious allegation,’ the Republican governor wrote in a letter to the Speaker of the state’s House of Representatives. ‘Most worryingly, it undermines popular support for public education in Idaho.’
The Idaho State Board of Education did not take a position on the bill, but Matt Freeman, the board’s executive director, said in an emailed statement that ‘the Board has not received any documented evidence of systematic ‘indoctrination’ occurring in Idaho’s public schools or our public higher-education institutions.’
The new law outlines what the legislature believes are ‘tenets’ found in critical race theory and says that they ‘exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho.’
These tenets, according to the legislature, include the idea that people ‘are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or nation of origin.’ The law states that students cannot be distinguished or classified based on their race — while also saying the legislation would not interfere with requirements to collect students’ demographic data. And it outlaws teaching the idea that ‘any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin’ is superior to any other or can be used to justify treating people adversely.
The Idaho Press reported that the lawmakers who objected to the bill say that it will detract from classroom conversations and that antidiscrimination protections aren’t needed because Idaho already has them. But the newspaper reported that conservative lawmakers in the state are afraid that white students are being taught that they should be ashamed of ‘past wrongs carried out by earlier generations, such as slavery.’” Read more at Chronicle of Higher Education
“Four months ago, America’s most populous state was struggling to combat a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations that packed patients into outdoor tents and killed hundreds of people each day.
On Friday, Disneyland, California’s world-famous theme park, will reopen to visitors after an unprecedented 13-month closure in what tourism officials hope is a sign of the state’s rebound from the pandemic. For now, the park is allowing only in-state visitors and operating at limited capacity.
‘It has such a symbolic nature to really quantifying that we’re finally rolling out of COVID,’ said Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of the state tourism agency Visit California.
The news comes as California boasts the country’s lowest rate of confirmed coronavirus infections and more than half of the population eligible for vaccination has received at least one dose of the shots. It’s a dramatic turnaround from December, when hospitals across the state were running out of ICU beds and treating patients at overflow locations.” Read more at AP
“Then, of course, was an actual live draft with players and fans on hand.
And there was Alabama dominating the selections the way it overpowered college football, carrying its conference with it.
No suspense at the top: quarterback, quarterback and, yep, quarterback.
With Commissioner Roger Goodell dispensing greetings to players Thursday night, Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence went to the Jacksonville Jaguars to get things started. Next was BYU’s Zach Wilson going to the New York Jets, and North Dakota State’s Trey Lance landing with the San Francisco 49ers.
That matched 1971 (Jim Plunkett, Archie Manning, Dan Pastorini) and 1999 (Tim Couch, Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith) as the only drafts with quarterbacks taken with the top three picks. Only Plunkett won a Super Bowl among those QBs, and he didn’t do it with New England, which drafted him.
Two more passers went in the top 15: Ohio State’s Justin Fields to Chicago, which traded up to the 11th slot with the Giants, and Alabama’s Mac Jones to New England.
Lawrence, a junior who led Clemson to a national title, generally is considered the best prospect at the position since Andrew Luck in 2012. He joins new coach Urban Meyer, himself a major success in the college ranks, in trying to turn around a franchise that went 1-15 last season.
‘I’m just pumped,’ Lawrence said. ‘The best is yet to come.’
‘I don’t what the point is ... if you don’t expect to win every week. I’m going to bring the same mindset.’
The mindset in Cleveland was positive simply because there were 12 prospects (not Lawrence) and thousands of fans — including, according to the league, fully vaccinated folks near the stage — joining Goodell on the shore of Lake Erie. Last year’s draft, scheduled for Las Vegas, was instead a totally remote affair because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Perhaps emboldened by successfully finishing the 2020 season on time and then staging the playoffs and Super Bowl without a hitch during the pandemic, the NFL targeted the draft as an opportunity to embrace some normalcy in America’s biggest sport. It also has used the event to support vaccinations for COVID-19 and, for the second consecutive spring, as a Draft-a-Thon raising money for a variety of causes.” Read more at AP
“Legislative blitz | Mexico’s president is pushing through sweeping economic reforms that will affirm his power ahead of midterm elections in June. The laws are part of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s promise to transform public life, increasing the presence of the state and reversing the ‘neoliberal model’ he argues has been behind Mexico’s malaise for decades.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Stimulus checks likely drove record rise in household income.Economists expect household income—the amount Americans received from wages, investments and government programs—rose 20% in March from the previous month. Higher income, spending and savings are expected to help power a fast economic recovery.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Former Vice President Mike Pence returned to public life, speaking to a conservative crowd in South Carolina. He praised Donald Trump's administration, bashed President Joe Biden's first 100 days in office and said nothing about the Jan. 6 insurrection that put his life in danger.” Read more at USA Today
“Amazon reports record quarterly profit. The company’s profit in the year since the pandemic started exceeded $26 billion, more than the previous three years combined.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Florida Republicans pass bill tightening voting rules. The bill adds new rules for voting by mail, including restrictions on ballot drop boxes, marking another example of GOP lawmakers amending remote-voting systems after the 2020 elections.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“$500 billion — The estimated amount in defaulted student loans that U.S. taxpayers could end up on the hook for, according to an outside analysis commissioned in 2018 by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The report, compiled by a former JPMorgan executive, found that defaults have become more likely over the past three decades, even as federal officials have made the loan program appear profitable.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“40 — The record number of executive orders President Biden has issued in his first 100 days in office. That flurry of action reflects both the hurdles he faces in trying to pass his agenda through a closely divided Congress as well as his desire to undo many of his predecessor’s policies.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“$70 billion — Analysts’ projected full-year profit for Apple this year, nearly a third more than last year’s. The tech giant reported $89.6 billion in revenue in its latest quarter, up 54%, as the company saw record sales during the pandemic—a streak Apple expects to continue.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Lives Lived: After being eliminated early in the 1948 London Olympics, Clara Lamore Walker gave up competitive swimming. Then, in her 50s, she made an astonishing comeback. She died at 94.” Read more at New York Times
“In his first on-camera interview since coming out as transgender in a social media post last December, Elliot Page got real with Oprah Winfrey on ‘The Oprah Conversation,’ talking about the ‘crucial’ moment when he came out, how he felt ‘unwell’ after the success of "Juno" (a 2007 movie that earned him an Oscar nomination) and how his transition is bringing him ‘tears of joy.’ Winfrey said she first came to know Page when he was promoting ‘Juno,’ which Page described as an ‘intense time.’ The interview premieres Friday on Apple TV+.” Read more at USA Today
“MOSCOW — Associates of Alexei Navalny said they were shutting down their nationwide network of regional offices on Thursday even as the imprisoned Russian opposition leader vowed, in an online court appearance, to keep fighting the ‘emperor with no clothes’ in the Kremlin.
Disbanding Navalny’s 40 regional offices became inevitable in recent weeks, an aide to Navalny said, amid the Kremlin’s latest efforts to stifle political dissent, adding that some of the offices may continue to operate as independent entities. Prosecutors are seeking to have Navalny’s movement declared an extremist organization, and a Moscow court this week ordered Navalny’s groups to halt all public activity, including participating in political campaigns or referendums.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Tajik-Kyrgyz border clash. At least 14 people were killed in clashes on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border on Thursday, as tensions over access to a water distribution center turned violent. Approximately 13,500 Kyrgyz have been evacuated from villages following the incident, which both sides accuse the other of starting. Although a cease-fire was declared on Thursday evening, gunfire erupted again in the early hours of Friday.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Germany’s climate ruling. Germany’s government must go further in planning its course to become carbon-free by 2050 a German court ruled on Thursday in a victory for climate activists. Current legislation only plans for carbon reductions up to 2030, a short-term view that violated the liberties of the young appellants who brought the case, the court ruled. Some politicians used the ruling to chide Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union for watering down climate legislation, as both the Social Democrats and Green party position themselves as alternatives ahead of elections in September.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Palestinian elections postponed. The Palestinian Authority’s legislative election—scheduled for May 22—will now be postponed, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said late Thursday, blaming Israel for not allowing voting in East Jerusalem. His rivals, Hamas, rejected the decision which comes as Abbas’s official Fatah party list trails a rival Fatah grouping in polls. Abbas did not say whether he would postpone the upcoming presidential elections slated for July.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“A checkers world championship match between Russian and Polish opponents became the site of diplomatic tension on Tuesday after a Polish official disrupted an ongoing game to remove the Russian flag from the table. Russia’s Tamara Tansykkuzhina, a six-time world champion, went on to lose the round, prompting Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to blame her defeat on the intervention.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has banned Russian athletes from competing under their flag until December 2022 after it ruled that the country did not strictly enforce anti-doping measures, a fact match organizers had overlooked. Jacek Pawlicki, the official responsible for the incident, has apologized to the Russian people. ‘There’s this position on the board called zugzwang—which means there’s no good move to make,’ Pawlicki told Reuters. ‘And that’s what we had yesterday, a zugzwang.’
Natalia Sadowska, Tansykkuzhina’s opponent, removed her Polish flag in solidarity following the interference. The two are currently in a best-of-nine series for the world title, culminating on May 3.” Read more at Foreign Policy