“After hours of discussion and a request to revise the question they were being asked, a key federal advisory committee on Friday recommended a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine six months after full vaccination for people aged 65 and older and those at high risk of severe COVID-19.
The initial question, posed by Pfizer, would have made the booster available to everyone aged 16 and up.
There isn’t yet sufficient evidence to show boosters for people under 65 are necessary, said members of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
Those at high risk would include health care workers, first responders and people likely to be exposed to the virus at work, committee members said.
Members said getting it right, and waiting to follow the science, were important factors.” Read more at USA Today
“The rift between the Biden administration and the oldest U.S. ally widened Friday, as French President Emmanuel Macron ordered the recall of France’s ambassador to Washington in response to this week’s announcement of a secretly negotiated U.S.-British deal to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the unprecedented move an ‘extraordinary decision’ that ‘reflects the exceptional seriousness’ of the situation.
What he called ‘a new partnership’ excluding France, and the resulting cancellation of a $66 billion Australian contract to buy diesel-powered French submarines, ‘constitute unacceptable behavior among allies and partners,’ Le Drian said in a statement.
France also recalled its ambassador to Australia.
In a statement, the White House played down the breach. ‘We have been in close touch with our French partners. . . . We understand their position and will continue to be engaged in the coming days to resolve our differences, as we have done at other points over the course of our long alliance,’ National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said in a statement.” Read more at Washington Post
“A U.S. drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, was conducted after numerous miscalculations by commanders who wrongly believed an aid worker was hauling explosives in his car, defense officials said Friday, reversing the Pentagon’s earlier insistence that the operation prevented an imminent suicide attack on U.S. forces.
The Defense Department had previously defended the Aug. 29 operation as a ‘righteous strike,’ saying it tracked a white sedan for hours after the vehicle left a suspected Islamic State-Khorasan safe house. In fact, the driver, Zamarai Ahmadi, was a longtime aid worker for a U.S.-based group and was hauling water cans for his family, officials acknowledged.” Read more at Washington Post
Haitian migrants use a dam in the Rio Grande to enter the United States in Del Rio, Tex., on Sept. 17. (Eric Gay/AP)
“The Biden administration is preparing to send planeloads of migrants back to Haiti starting as soon as Sunday in a deportation blitz aimed at discouraging more border-crossers from streaming into a crude South Texas camp where nearly 14,000 have already arrived, according to five U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans.
Homeland Security officials are planning as many as eight flights per day to Haiti, three officials said, while cautioning that plans remained in flux. The administration was preparing to announce the flights Saturday, said two of the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the plan.
Haitian authorities have agreed to accept at least three flights per day, but Biden officials want to maximize deportations to break the momentum of the massive influx into the Del Rio, Tex., camp, one official said.
Thousands of Haitian migrants wait under bridge in South Texas after mass border crossing
Another U.S. official involved in the planning insisted that the flights were not a targeted measure aimed at Haitians, but the application of U.S. immigration laws allowing the government to swiftly return border-crossers who arrive illegally.” Read more at Washington Post
“The Interior Department will summon the far-flung headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management back to Washington from the mountains of western Colorado, reversing a move by the Trump administration that caused upheaval within the agency and led to nearly 90 percent of the former headquarters staff to retire, quit or leave for other jobs.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland broke the news to BLM staffers on a phone call Friday afternoon, before the announcement was made public in a statement shortly afterward. Haaland said the agency will create a new ‘Western headquarters’ in Grand Junction, Colo.
During the staff call, Haaland said her ‘primary concern has always been for your well being and to restore the effectiveness of the BLM’s operations.’
‘I know the past few years have been difficult for many of you. The relocation of the BLM headquarters scattered employees and programs across the West, driven others out of the agency, and put enormous stress on those who remained,’ Haaland said, according to the call heard by The Washington Post.”
Haaland and other BLM leaders have been surveying employees about the headquarters move to Grand Junction, which was completed last year at the end of the Trump administration. The move led to widespread stress and frustration among headquarters staff in Washington, who were given a deadline of last summer to move to rural Colorado or other Western cities, or lose their jobs, despite the pandemic.
Of the 328 positions that were slated to move out of Washington, 287 employees either retired or quit for other jobs, Haaland noted during a visit to Grand Junction in July. Just three people ultimately ended up relocating to Grand Junction, she told reporters at the time, and the headquarters ended up with more than 80 vacancies.
The Trump administration justified the move, saying the vast majority of the public lands managed by the BLM is in the Western United States and the move would put leadership closer to that land. But current and former employees have said they believe the intention was to weaken the agency that does environmental assessments and regulates fossil fuel and other energy interests.” Read more at Washington Post
“WASHINGTON –The actions President Joe Biden took this month to increase the number of workers who are vaccinated against COVID-19 will apply not just to most federal employees and larger businesses.
State and local government workers in 26 states, including teachers and school staff, will also be affected by the new workplace rules being written by Washington.
That includes workers in some states, like Arizona, that have banned vaccination requirements for public employees, setting up another clash between GOP-led states and the Democratic administration.” Read more at USA Today
“ATHENS — The top US military officer said Friday that calls he made to his Chinese counterpart in the final stormy months of Donald Trump’s presidency were ‘perfectly within the duties and responsibilities’ of his job.
In his first public comments on the conversations, General Mark Milley said such calls are ‘routine’ and were done ‘to reassure both allies and adversaries in this case in order to ensure strategic stability.’ The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke to The Associated Press and another reporter traveling with him to Europe.
Milley has been at the center of a firestorm amid reports he made two calls to General Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army to assure him that the United States was not going to suddenly go to war with or attack China.” Read more at Boston Globe
“MADISON, Wis. — Prosecutors won’t be allowed to argue at trial that a man who shot three people during a Wisconsin protest against police brutality believes in the Proud Boys’ violent tactics or was affiliated with the white nationalist group the night of last year’s shootings, a judge ruled Friday.
Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder’s decision marks a victory for Kyle Rittenhouse as he prepares for his trial in November. The ruling removes a line of attack for prosecutors who had hoped to show that Rittenhouse, as Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger described him in court, was a ‘chaos tourist’ drawn to Kenosha ‘like a moth to a flame.’
It was among several requests that Schroeder was considering Friday, including whether jurors will see video that prosecutors say shows Rittenhouse talking about wanting to shoot people.
Rittenhouse traveled from his home in Antioch, Illinois, about 20 miles to Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020, after seeing a post on social media for militia to protect businesses. The city was in the throes of several nights of chaotic protests that began after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, during an altercation as police tried to arrest him on an outstanding warrant. The shooting left Blake paralyzed from the waist down.
Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, opened fire with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle on Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, of Kenosha, and Anthony Huber, 26, of Silver Lake, killing both. He also shot Gaige Grosskreutz, of West Allis, who survived. All three men were white, as is Rittenhouse.
His attorneys argue all three men attacked Rittenhouse and that he was acting in self-defense. The case has become a rallying point for conservatives, who funded Rittenhouse’s $2 million bail with donations.
Black Lives Matter supporters have painted him as a trigger-happy racist, pointing to photos of Rittenhouse posing with Proud Boys members at a Racine Bar in January. Binger said in court Friday that Rittenhouse traveled to Miami days after the meeting at the bar to eat lunch with the Proud Boys’ national president.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Of the roughly 600 people charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, 78 remain jailed pending trial, with a majority of those still detained accused of assaulting police officers or some of the worst violence seen that day.
Defendants are being jailed pending trial at lower rates than federal defendants nationwide charged with similar offenses, however.
And nearly half face misdemeanors that typically carry little or no prison time for first offenders. No one charged with a misdemeanor remains jailed.
Hundreds of far-right supporters of Donald Trump are expected to rally in Washington on Saturday to push a counternarrative to the violent Capitol insurrection that authorities say resulted in five deaths, about 1,000 recorded assaults on police and the panicky evacuation of Congress.
Those arrested, supporters of the rally say, are victims of ‘a two-tiered system of justice,’ and subjected to harsher treatment for their political views.” Read more at Washington Post
“WASHINGTON — In June, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited Israel to scout investments for his new company, then flew to Qatar for a conference. At the time, Mnuchin had been out of office for five months.
But, because of an order given by former president Donald Trump, he was still entitled to protection by Secret Service agents. As agents followed Mnuchin across the Middle East, the US government paid up to $3,000 each for their plane tickets, and $11,000 for rooms at Qatar’s luxe St. Regis Doha, according to government spending records.
In all, the records show US taxpayers spent more than $52,000 to guard a multimillionaire on a business trip.
These payments were among $1.7 million in additional government spending triggered by Trump’s highly unusual order — which awarded six extra months of Secret Service protection for his four adult children and three top administration officials — according to a Washington Post analysis of new spending documents.
That $1.7 million in extra spending is still tiny in comparison to the Secret Service’s $2.4 billion budget.
But, as the records show, Trump’s order required the Secret Service to devote agents and money to an unexpected set of people: wealthy adults, with no role in government, whom the agents trailed to ski vacations, weekend houses, a resort in Cabo San Lucas, and business trips abroad.” Read more at Boston Globe
“A panel of North Carolina judges on Friday struck down the state’s law requiring voters to present photo identification before casting ballots, saying that the measure ‘was enacted in part for a discriminatory purpose’ against African American voters.
The ruling is the latest development in a state battle over voting rights that has drawn national attention, and it comes amid a raft of new restrictions by GOP-led state legislatures across the country, as well as an effort in Congress to restore key parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The North Carolina measure, known as S.B. 824, was enacted in December 2018 after a supermajority of the state legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Roy Cooper (D). North Carolina voters also approved a ballot measure creating a constitutional requirement that voters present a photo ID. At the time, Cooper said the law would disenfranchise minority voters, who are less likely to possess the required identification.” Read more at Washington Post
“LOS ANGELES — Robert A. Durst, the enigmatic real estate scion who evaded criminal suspicion for half his life only to become a national sensation after damaging admissions were aired in a 2015 documentary on HBO, was convicted on Friday in the execution-style murder of a close confidante more than 20 years ago.
The verdict, which came after about seven and a half hours of deliberations, was the latest act in a case that spanned almost four decades. It began in the wealthy precincts of New York with the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Durst’s first wife, Kathie, in 1982 and concluded with his conviction for the killing two decades ago of Susan Berman, a friend who prosecutors said helped him cover up his wife’s disappearance and death.
Mr. Durst, a frail 78-year-old millionaire who sat through the trial in a wheelchair, was convicted of first-degree murder and faces a life sentence with no option for parole. A judge is scheduled to sentence him in October.” Read more at New York Times
“MOSCOW — An app designed by Russian activists to coordinate protest voting in this weekend’s elections disappeared from the Google and Apple app stores in the country Friday, a major blow to opposition leader Alexei Navalny and allies who hoped to subvert the commanding position of President Vladimir Putin’s governing party.
Google removed the app Friday morning after Russian authorities issued a direct threat of criminal prosecution against the company’s staff in the country, naming specific individuals, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision. The move comes one day after a Russian lawmaker raised the prospect of retribution against employees of the two technology companies, saying they would be ‘punished.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“LONDON — A UK watchdog has called on police to treat ‘an epidemic’ of violence against women with as much urgency as fighting terrorism, in the wake of a murder that stunned the nation.
Crimes from stalking to sexual assault should be as much of a priority as other police work that gets better funding, according to an investigation published Friday, which reviewed how officers respond to the abuse of women and girls.
On average, a woman was killed by a man in the United Kingdom every three days, it said — by their partner or former partner in almost two-thirds of cases. The report, which examined police forces in England and Wales, also noted that incidents were often closed without charges: 3 out of every 4 in the case of domestic abuse.” Read more at Boston Globe
“The global average temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by century’s end even if all countries meet their promised emissions cuts, a rise that is likely to worsen extreme wildfires, droughts and floods, the United Nations said in a report on Friday.
That level of warming, measured against preindustrial levels, is likely to increase the frequency of deadly heat waves and threaten coastal cities with rising sea levels, the country-by-country analysis concluded.
The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said it shows ‘the world is on a catastrophic pathway.’
Perhaps most starkly, the new report displayed the large gap between what the scientific consensus urges world leaders to do and what those leaders have been willing to do so far. Emissions of planet-warming gases are poised to grow by 16 percent during this decade compared with 2010 levels, even as the latest scientific research indicates that they need to decrease by at least a quarter by 2030 to avert the worst impacts of global warming.” Read more at New York Times
“Fast-food restaurants have a problem: Customers are returning but workers aren’t.
And, increasingly, neither are their dining rooms.
A labor squeeze is transforming an industry that has been an enduring and at times controversial symbol of American capitalism. For many fast-food workers, the coronavirus pandemic opened new and better-paying alternatives to the demands of hot grills and deep-fryers. And a resurgent virus, powered by the delta variant, has compounded staffing shortages, forcing many store managers to reverse recent dining room reopenings or extend closures that took effect early in pandemic….
Some McDonald’s outlets have also pivoted to drive-through-only service and reduced hours, while the chain touts polished online ordering tools and invests in technology designed to smooth out the pick-up and drive-through experience. Yum Brands, which operates KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has leaned into services that minimize contact between workers and customers, including curbside pick-up and, in some cases, delivery.
Why America has 8.4 million unemployed when there are 10 million job openings
The Big Mac maker, which had temporarily done away with most indoor dining early in the pandemic, said in late July it was on track to open nearly all of its dining rooms by Labor Day, barring a coronavirus resurgence. But a month later Reuters, citing internal company materials, reported that McDonald’s was advising franchisees on when to consider closing dining rooms in areas being hit hard by the delta variant….
Of the nearly 10 million job openings in the United States, roughly 1 in 6 are in the leisure and hospitality sector that includes food service workers, according to data maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s 1,734,000 openings vs. an estimated 1,475,000 unemployed people, the Fed data shows….
Fast-food wages historically trail those in other service industry jobs, with the typical U.S. worker collecting about $11.80 per hour or $24,540 a year as of May 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A retail salesperson, by comparison, made $30,940 a year. But even the biggest among them are going to greater lengths to attract workers: Walmart, Target and Amazon, for example, all announced full-ride college tuition programs for employees in recent weeks.
Some current and former fast-food workers say labor shortages merely reflect the limited appeal of low-wage work that can be physically demanding and stressful, conditions that existed long before the pandemic. The labor group known as Fight for $15 has grown into a global movement in more than 300 cities since its formation in 2012. And some economists question the accuracy of the term ‘labor shortage’ in this context, saying businesses are simply offering too low a wage for an hour’s work.
In May, McDonald’s announced that it had raised its hourly rate to a range of $11 to $17 for entry-level workers, and $15 to $20 for managers. Also in May, the fast-casual chain Chipotle announced that it had raised its average wage to about $15 per hour.Taco Bell, meanwhile, has used hiring parties to attract staff, as well as expanded benefits with paid time off, free family meals and more employee development opportunities, Yum Brands CFO Chris Turner said during an earnings call in July.” Read more at Washington Post
“The 10 nominees for this year’s National Book Award in fiction include four authors who have been finalists for the prize before and one debut novelist who made last year’s poetry longlist.
She is Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, whose novel, “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” focuses on a young Black woman who tracks her family’s history to a Georgia town where her ancestors were enslaved. Jeffers was longlisted in 2020 for her book of poetry, “The Age of Phillis.”
The four authors previously shortlisted for fiction are Lauren Groff, nominated this year for “Matrix”; Anthony Doerr for “Cloud Cuckoo Land”; Elizabeth McCracken for “The Souvenir Museum”; and Richard Powers for “Bewilderment,” the one National Book Award nominee this year who is also a Booker Prize finalist.
The other authors longlisted for fiction include Laird Hunt for “Zorrie,” Katie Kitamura for “Intimacies” and Jason Mott for “Hell of a Book,” as well as two other debut novelists: Jakob Guanzon, whose book “Abundance” follows a father and son for 24 hours after they are evicted on New Year’s Eve from their trailer, and Robert Jones Jr., whose novel “The Prophets” is a love story between two enslaved men on a plantation in the Deep South.
The 10 nonfiction contenders include one author longlisted in 2019, Hanif Abdurraqib, this time for his book “A Little Devil in America,” as well as two books that examine the legacy of slavery in the United States. Clint Smith visited nine sites connected to slavery for his book “How the Word Is Passed,” while Tiya Miles, in her book “All That She Carried,” explores the history of a family through a cotton sack, embroidered with a list of mementos given from mother to daughter as they were about to be sold apart.
In the poetry category, all but one are first-time nominees, the exception being Forrest Gander for “Twice Alive.” Several of the longlisted collections deal with loss, and two explore what it means to feel like a foreigner in the United States. They are “The Wild Fox of Yemen,” by Threa Almontaser, who shifts between family histories of Yemen and stories of America after Sept. 11, and “Ghost Letters,” in which Baba Badji probes what it means to be Senegalese, Black and in the United States.” Read more at New York Times
“The General Sherman Tree — a giant sequoia that's the world's largest tree by volume — has its base wrapped in a fire-resistant aluminum blanket to protect it from the heat of California's approaching wildfires.
Firefighters are racing to save the famous grove of gigantic old-growth sequoias from fires in the Sierra Nevada.
The Colony Fire in Sequoia National Park is expected to reach the Giant Forest, a grove of 2,000 sequoias, within days, AP reports.”
The giant sequoia known as the General Sherman Tree with its base wrapped in a fire-resistant blanket. Photo: Southern Area Blue Incident Management Team via AP
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