“Just a day after President Biden issued broad mandates aimed at encouraging American workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, federal health officials released new data showing that unvaccinated Americans are 11 times as likely as vaccinated people to die of Covid-19.
Three large studies, published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also highlighted the effectiveness of the shots at preventing infection and hospitalizations with the virus.
The research underscored a deep conviction among scientists that vaccine hesitancy and refusal have prolonged the pandemic. The administration’s new plan should stem the flood of infections and return the country to some semblance of normalcy in the long term, several experts said in interviews.” Read more at New York Times
“President Biden’s orders pushing millions of workers to get vaccinated were aimed at turning the tide on a pandemic that has killed 650,000 Americans. But on Friday, the mandates immediately deepened the nation’s political divisions over coronavirus vaccinations and government power.
Some employers and business groups welcomed the sweeping new requirements, which affect most federal employees and contractors, health care workers, and companies with 100 or more employees. Labor unions representing millions of workers expressed a mix of support and reservations. And Republican leaders issued outright condemnations, calling the mandates a big-government attack on personal freedoms and private business.
News of the mandates prompted Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina to say he would fight Mr. Biden and his party ‘to the gates of hell.’
Several Republican governors vowed to go to court to challenge the constitutionality of the rules that affect two-thirds of American workers, setting the stage for one of the nation’s most consequential legal battles over public health since Republicans sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
‘@JoeBiden see you in court,’ Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Biden offered a curt response to the legal threats as he visited a Washington middle school to urge parents to get shots for their vaccine-eligible children. ‘Have at it,’ he said.
The mandates represented an aggressive change of posture for the administration, which had resisted widespread vaccine requirements as a more contagious variant of the virus fueled resurgent Covid-19 infections and deaths this summer even though about 65 percent of American adults were fully vaccinated.
‘I am so disappointed, particularly that some of the Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities,’ Mr. Biden said as he delivered remarks at the Washington school.” Read more at New York Times
“Some countries are setting records for daily covid-19 infections. Others are pursuing sweeping rules to mandate vaccination. But in Denmark, something like normal life has resumed.
After nearly 550 days, the Scandinavian country has lifted the last of its domestic pandemic-era restrictions, declaring that the coronavirus is no longer a ‘critical threat to society.’ Denmark appears to be the first European Union member to issue such a declaration, potentially providing a glimpse into the future of the bloc’s recovery — or serving as a cautionary tale of a nation that moved too quickly.
The country’s leaders have pointed to its high vaccination rates — among the best in the world, with nearly 75 percent of residents fully immunized — as evidence that the step is justified, though they have not claimed herd immunity has been reached. Denmark also has one of Europe’s lowest levels of newly reported infections.” Read more at Washington Post
“Pfizer and BioNTech announced this week that it will soon seek approval from global regulators for use of its coronavirus vaccine in children ages 5 and over.
The vaccine makers said in an interview published on Friday that they are looking to produce smaller doses of the vaccine for younger children.
‘We will be presenting the results from our study on five- to 11-year-olds to authorities around the world in the coming weeks,’ Ozlem Tureci, the co-founder of BioNTech and its chief medical officer, told German news outlet Der Spiegel.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency use in adolescents 12 to 15 years old in May and granted full approval of the vaccine for recipients 16 and older last month.
Vaccines for children 12 and younger have yet to be approved by the FDA, according to The New York Times.
Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the FDA and a Pfizer board member, said in August that the vaccine maker ‘could be in a position’ to file an application for vaccine approval in children as early as October.” Read more at The Hill
“FAIRFAX, Va. — Terry Orie, a 61-year-old real estate agent, has skipped vacations because of the pandemic. She has canceled plans with friends. She has bristled at the frustrations of communicating with clients when everybody is wearing masks.
Ms. Orie is fed up with the coronavirus’s effects on her life. And she knows exactly whom to blame. ‘I don’t get it, I don’t get why they don’t wear masks and why they won’t get vaccinated,’ she said Friday, sitting outside a Whole Foods in Fairfax with her 14-year-old toy poodle, Tootsie. ‘People think it’s their God-given right to put everybody else’s health at risk.’
After President Biden resisted comprehensive vaccine mandates for months, his forceful steps on Thursday to pressure the 80 million unvaccinated Americans to get their shots put him squarely on the side of what had been a fairly quiet but increasingly frustrated majority: vaccinated Americans who see the unvaccinated as selfishly endangering others and holding the country back.
The new federal rules — including a requirement that private-sector businesses with more than 100 workers require vaccinations or frequent testing — are a sharp pivot for the administration, which had feared that a heavy-handed approach would be viewed as government overreach and be met with even fiercer opposition from those leery of getting the shot. But with the Delta variant surging, overwhelming I.C.U.s and creating a fresh drag on the still-fragile economic recovery, failing to take more aggressive action was even riskier, both to public health and to Mr. Biden’s political standing, White House allies said.” Read more at New York Times
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“Twenty years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks set off the global war on terrorism, the war is evolving.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is ushering in a new era as the Biden administration seeks to balance the continued need to keep terrorist threats in check with both a war weary public and newer global challenges such as competition with China.
As a result, the so-called forever wars may not be ending any time soon, but the way they are being fought is changing as the United States shifts to a greater reliance on ‘over the horizon’ forces and individual strikes over broader military conflict.” Read more at The Hill
“The White House said that 21 American citizens were evacuated from Afghanistan on Friday via a chartered flight and overland route, bringing the total Americans evacuated over the past two days to 31.” Read more at The Hill
“BERLIN — The federal prosecutor’s office in Germany said Friday it was investigating who was responsible for a spate of hacking attempts aimed at lawmakers, amid growing concerns that Russia is trying to disrupt the Sept. 26 vote for a new government.
The move by the prosecutor’s office comes after Germany’s Foreign Ministry said this week that it had protested to Russia, complaining that several state lawmakers and members of the federal parliament had been targeted by phishing e-mails and other attempts to obtain passwords and other personal information.
Those accusations prompted the federal prosecutor to open a preliminary investigation against what was described as a ‘foreign power.’ The prosecutors did not identify the country but did cite the Foreign Ministry statement, leaving little doubt that their efforts were concentrated on Russia.” Read more at Boston Globe
“KABUL, Afghanistan — It was the last known missile fired by the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan, and the military called it a ‘righteous strike’ — a drone attack after hours of surveillance on Aug. 29 against a vehicle that American officials thought contained an ISIS bomb and posed an imminent threat to troops at Kabul’s airport.
But a New York Times investigation of video evidence, along with interviews with more than a dozen of the driver’s co-workers and family members in Kabul, raises doubts about the U.S. version of events, including whether explosives were present in the vehicle, whether the driver had a connection to ISIS, and whether there was a second explosion after the missile struck the car.
Military officials said they did not know the identity of the car’s driver when the drone fired, but deemed him suspicious because of how they interpreted his activities that day, saying that he possibly visited an ISIS safe house and, at one point, loaded what they thought could be explosives into the car.
Times reporting has identified the driver as Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group. The evidence suggests that his travels that day actually involved transporting colleagues to and from work. And an analysis of video feeds showed that what the military may have seen was Mr. Ahmadi and a colleague loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.” Read more at New York Times
“A Pentagon program that delegated management of a huge swath of the Internet to a Florida company in January — just minutes before President Donald Trump left office — has ended as mysteriously as it began, with the Defense Department this week retaking control of 175 million IP addresses.
The program had drawn scrutiny because of its unusual timing, starting amid a politically charged changeover of federal power, and because of its enormous scale. At its peak, the company, Global Resource Systems, controlled almost 6 percent of a section of the Internet called IPv4. The IP addresses had been under Pentagon control for decades but left unused, despite being potentially worth billions of dollars on the open market.
Adding to the mystery, company registration records showed Global Resource Systems at the time was only a few months old, having been established in September 2020, and had no publicly reported federal contracts, no obvious public-facing website and no sign on the shared office space it listed as its physical address in Plantation, Fla. The company also did not respond to requests for comment, and the Pentagon did not announce the program or publicly acknowledge its existence until The Washington Post reported on it in April.
And now it’s done. Kind of.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon made a technical announcement — visible mainly to network administrators around the world — saying it was resuming control of the 175 million IP addresses and directing the traffic to its own servers.
On Friday, the Pentagon told The Post that the pilot program, which it previously had characterized as a cybersecurity measure designed to detect unspecified ‘vulnerabilities’ and ‘prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space,’ was over. Parts of the Internet once managed by Global Resource Systems, the Pentagon said, now were being overseen by the Department of Defense Information Network, known by the acronym DODIN and part of U.S. Cyber Command, based at Fort Meade.
Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon’s dormant IP addresses sprang to life
The IP addresses had never been sold or leased to the company, merely put under its control for the pilot program, created by an elite Pentagon unit known as the Defense Digital Service, which reports directly to the secretary of defense and bills itself as a ‘SWAT team of nerds’ that solves emergency problems and conducts experimental work for the military.” Read more at Washington Post
“A former associate of Rudy Giuliani pleaded guilty to solicitation of a political contribution by a foreign national on Friday, nearly two years after he and his business partners emerged as key figures in the impeachment inquiry into former President Donald Trump.
Igor Fruman was a little-known Soviet-born businessman who came under national scrutiny in October 2019 when federal prosecutors charged him and others with conspiring to funnel foreign money into U.S. elections and influence American politics on behalf of a Ukrainian official.
The charges drew attention to their role helping Mr. Giuliani try to persuade Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, then a Democratic presidential candidate, and his son Hunter. The Bidens have denied wrongdoing.
During a hearing in federal court in Manhattan on Friday, Mr. Fruman, a 56-year-old U.S. citizen who was born in Belarus, admitted to soliciting a foreign national to make contributions adding up to more than $25,000 in a year. Only American citizens can make political contributions in the U.S.
‘I deeply regret my actions and apologize to the court,’ Mr. Fruman said.
The plea agreement entered into by Mr. Fruman and prosecutors included a sentence of more than three years in prison and a fine between $15,000 and $150,000. It didn’t include an agreement to cooperate with the government.
District Judge J. Paul Oetken scheduled his sentencing for Jan. 21.
Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, has been under investigation since at least 2019 by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for his business dealings in Ukraine, for possible violation of federal lobbying laws. Federal agents earlier this year executed a search warrant at his New York City apartment and office.
Mr. Giuliani has denied ever serving as a lobbyist or agent of a foreign government. His lawyer called the search warrant ‘legal thuggery.’
Mr. Fruman and his associate, Lev Parnas, a U.S. citizen born in Ukraine, worked closely with Mr. Giuliani in his push for investigations in Ukraine, including pressing officials there to investigate President Biden and his son before he became president, according to prosecutors.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Republicans angling for potential 2024 presidential runs are at risk of colliding with former President Trump.
For months, Trump has floated the idea of a 2024 rematch against President Biden. But in recent weeks, he has begun to signal that he may be more likely to run again than not, intensifying a collective headache for other would-be White House contenders who have already started laying the groundwork for their own campaigns.
There’s little appetite within the GOP to challenge Trump for the 2024 presidential nod. He’s still the most influential Republican in the country, and running against him in a primary would be a major political risk for any ambitious Republican. The little polling that has been done shows Trump dominating any potential primary opponent by wide, double-digit margins.And while a lot can still happen between now and 2024, Trump’s increasingly aggressive flirtation with a third presidential run has caught the attention of his would-be rivals.” Read more at The Hill
“House Democrats have proposed extending the expanded child tax credit until 2025, part of a vast array of new tax policies unveiled Friday to aid low-income Americans, combat climate change, reduce the cost of health insurance and lower prescription drug prices.
The slew of new credits and other policies form a central component of Democrats’ still-forming $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending package. Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee released the draft measure as work continues across the Capitol to translate President Biden’s economic agenda into fuller legislation.
With the child tax credit, Democrats have sought to extend the life of a policy that President Biden and top party lawmakers have described as essential toward addressing poverty. If adopted, it would allow families to benefit from a credit of $3,000 for each child between ages 6 to 17, and $3,600 for each kid under age 6. Families could receive those sums in monthly installments, rather than waiting until they file their taxes at the start of each year to claim what they are owed.” Read more at Washington Post
“For years, Li Guangman, a retired Chinese newspaper editor, wrote in obscurity, firing off attack after attack at chic celebrities and celebrated tycoons whom he accused of betraying the sturdy socialist values of Mao. Few outside of China’s fervent but narrow world of Maoist leftists read them.
Until now.
Mr. Li leapt to prominence recently after an essay he wrote railing at celebrity culture and misbehaving corporations ricocheted across China’s internet, spreading on far-left-wing websites and then on at least five major Communist Party-run news websites, including the People’s Daily, suggesting support from at least some officials.
The official boost for Mr. Li’s polemic startled Chinese political and business circles when doubt had already been rising about the growing role of the Communist Party in the economy. Among some, the essay left the impression that the party could intensify its crackdown on private corporations, tighten its grip on culture and hound the rich. Some critics pointed ominously to echoes of Mao’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, which had also emerged from attacks on the cultural elite by polemicists who were previously little known.
Perhaps surprised by the response, party officials and news outlets have tried to calm the waters without explicitly disavowing Mr. Li or removing his essay, and that has let confusion linger. On Wednesday, People’s Daily — one of the party news sites that shared Mr. Li’s essay — published a front-page editorial that said the government remained committed to market forces.” Read more at New York Times
“Advertising against a tragic event is a delicate calculation for American companies. Do they acknowledge the occasion and invite accusations of being opportunistic? Do they stay silent and risk appearing out of touch or unpatriotic? What is the border between commemoration and commercialization?
On Saturday, during a break in an afternoon football game, Budweiser will mark the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with a commercial showing a team of Clydesdale horses pulling a red Budweiser-branded wagon across the Brooklyn Bridge and down a cobblestone street of Lower Manhattan. In the final image, the horses, standing on the grass of Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J., lower their heads before the city skyline, where the Tribute in Light installation is visible against the twilight sky.
The 60-second commercial, which appeared on YouTube on Friday, is an updated version of Budweiser’s ‘Respect’ ad, which first ran during the 2002 Super Bowl, five months after the attacks. The company released that commercial again on the 10th anniversary, in 2011.
The new ad will appear during the CBS broadcast of the college football matchup between the Air Force Falcons and the Navy Midshipmen and once more in the evening, on Fox, during the baseball game between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets.” Read more at New York Times
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