“For fully vaccinated Americans, the risk of being hospitalized or dying from Covid-19 is low -- much lower than the risk for unvaccinated people. But in those rare cases when a fully vaccinated person gets infected, data suggests it's older adults and those with multiple underlying medical conditions who are most at risk of serious illness.
As of August 30, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has received reports of 12,908 severe breakthrough cases of Covid-19 among fully vaccinated people that resulted in hospitalization or death. For the more than 173 million people who were fully vaccinated by that date, that represents a less than a 1 in 13,000 chance of experiencing a severe breakthrough case of Covid-19.
About 70% of breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalization were among adults 65 and older and about 87% of breakthrough cases resulting in death were among adults 65 and older, the CDC data suggests.
This CDC data is based on voluntary reporting from states and may be incomplete, but multiple studies suggest similar trends.” Read more at CNN
“HOUMA, La. (AP) — The death toll in Louisiana from Hurricane Ida rose to 26 Wednesday, after health officials reported 11 additional deaths in New Orleans, mostly older people who perished from the heat. The announcement was grim news amid signs the city was returning to normal with almost fully restored power and a lifted nighttime curfew.
While New Orleans was generally rebounding from the storm, hundreds of thousands of people outside the city remained without electricity and some of the hardest-hit areas still had no water. Across southeastern Louisiana, 250,000 students were unable to return to classrooms 10 days after Ida roared ashore with 150 mph (240 kph) winds.” Read more at AP News
“KABUL—Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities are allowing some 200 Americans and other foreign citizens to leave the country on a flight to Qatar scheduled for Thursday, the first such departure by air since U.S. forces withdrew last month, Qatari and American officials said.
The expected flight by a Qatar Airways Boeing 777 would mark the resumption of international passenger operations at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, and is expected to be followed by daily air links to foreign countries, a senior Qatari official said.
The Qatari official said it wasn’t an evacuation flight as all the passengers hold foreign passports and, if required, visas to their destinations, and have been ticketed by the airline. Qatar is facilitating the movement to the airport in a convoy of minibuses that were parked Thursday morning in a Kabul hotel, one of them with a bullet hole through the windshield. Most of the foreign citizens still in Afghanistan are dual nationals.
The Taliban have consistently pledged to allow foreigners to leave unimpeded. At Tuesday’s press conference announcing the formation of their new government, the movement’s spokesman and new deputy information minister, Zabiullah Mujahid, said problems with international travel would be resolved soon. ‘When Afghans and foreigners want to leave Afghanistan, they should do it lawfully, having a passport and visa,’ he said.
U.S. forces rendered the radar and other equipment at the Kabul airport inoperable as they left on Aug. 30, concluding an emergency airlift that transported some 120,000 foreigners and Afghans who had helped the West during the 20-year war. Since then, Qatar sent a team of technicians to restore some flight-control capabilities, and Ariana Afghan Airlines resumed flight-by-sight domestic connections to the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar and Herat on Saturday.
The flight planned for Thursday doesn’t address the issue of tens of thousands of Afghans at risk who haven’t been able to leave the country during the U.S.-led airlift. The U.S. has estimated that the majority of Afghans who qualify for the so-called Special Immigrant Visa because of having helped American military and civilian efforts remain stranded in Afghanistan.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“China’s Afghan aid. China committed $31 million in aid to Afghanistan on Wednesday as it makes its first moves in a budding relationship with the new Taliban government. The commitment of food supplies and aid come before an international donor conference next week where the United Nations hopes to raise $600 million for immediate relief efforts. Beijing’s move highlights the challenge Washington faces in trying to coordinate an international response to the Taliban takeover, a subject Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer reported on in-depth on Sept. 2.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“When Darin Hoover traveled to Dover Air Force Base to receive the casket of his 31-year-old Marine son, who was killed in Afghanistan, he, like several other families, declined an offer to meet with President Biden.
But out of the blue last week his cellphone rang, and he instantly recognized the voice on the other line: Donald Trump.
‘It was just very cordial, very understanding. He was awesome,’ Hoover said, recalling the conversation. ‘He was just talking about the finest of the finest. He said he heard and saw everything that we had said, and he offered his condolences several times, and how sorry he was.’
The past two weeks have put on display not only a nation divided about a 20-year war and its messy withdrawal but also a nation whose politics do not allow it to grieve together. Some families opted to not meet with or hear from Biden at all, while others have been publicly critical of him and have resisted having any further dialogue with the president.
Meanwhile, Trump has placed several calls over the past week to some family members of the 13 service members killed in an Islamic State-Khorasan terrorist attack during the withdrawal. Several have invited him to attend the funerals, and he has suggested he may try to do so.
Trump and his allies have seen the calamitous end to the war in Afghanistan as a potent political opportunity as he weighs a potential 2024 reelection bid — even though Trump himself advocated for the withdrawal, negotiated with the Taliban before leaving office and urged Biden to leave even sooner.
As Biden plans to attend several solemn ceremonies Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Trump has not announced any plans to attend memorial events, though an adviser said he may attend one in Manhattan. That evening, he is slated to provide color commentary for a pay-per-view heavyweight boxing match at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla.” Read more at Washington Post
“The Biden administration on Wednesday released a plan to produce almost half of the nation’s electricity from the sun by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change.
Solar energy provided less than 4 percent of the country’s electricity last year and the administration’s target of 45 percent would represent a huge leap and will most likely take a fundamental reshaping of the energy industry.
In a new report, the Energy Department said the country needed to double the amount of solar energy installed every year over the next four years compared with last year. And then it will need to double annual installations again by 2030.” Read more at Boston Globe
“RICHMOND, Va. — After more than a year of legal wrangling, one of the nation’s largest Confederate monuments — a soaring statue of Robert E. Lee, the South’s Civil War general — was hoisted off its pedestal in downtown Richmond on Wednesday morning.
At 8:45 a.m., a man in an orange jacket waved his arms, and the 21-foot statue rose into the air and glided, slowly, to a flatbed truck below. The sun had just come out and illuminated the towering gray pedestal as a small crowd on the east side of the monument let out a cheer.
‘As a native of Richmond, I want to say that the head of the snake has been removed,’ said Gary Flowers, a radio show host and civil rights activist, who is Black and was watching the activity. He said he planned to celebrate Wednesday night and would tell pictures of his dead relatives that ‘the humiliation and agony and pain you suffered has been partly lifted.’
It was an emotional moment. The Lee statue was erected in 1890, the first of six Confederate monuments — symbols of white power that dotted the main boulevard in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy. On Wednesday, it became the last of them to be removed, opening up the story of this city to all of its residents to write.” Read more at Boston Globe
PARIS — The trial of 20 men accused of involvement in the November 2015 attacks in Paris began Wednesday, nearly six years after the coordinated and devastating assault that left more than 100 dead and shook France to its core.
Salah Abdeslam, who prosecutors say is the sole surviving attacker, arrived at the courthouse Wednesday under tight police escort and, when asked by the presiding judge to confirm his name, set a defiant tone.
‘I abandoned all professions to become a fighter for the Islamic State,’ said Abdeslam, wearing a black T-shirt and black face mask, when asked about his job.
All the other men on trial are accused of being accomplices and will, along with Abdeslam, be tried by a panel of judges in a courtroom designed specifically for the monumental proceedings, with space for 550 people. More than 300 lawyers and nearly 1,800 plaintiffs will take part, and it is expected to last a record nine months.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Paris (AP) -- France will offer free birth control to all women up to age 25 starting next year, the health minister announced Thursday.
The measure will also include free medical visits about contraception, and will start Jan. 1, Health Minister Olivier Veran announced on France-2 television.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The thing Americans want most from Joe Biden is beyond his power to deliver: an end to the pandemic.
But the President will make a new attempt on Thursday to chart a path out of a national nightmare that is beginning to feel like a dark, repeating, permanent reality -- and to prove he is the leader that can reach that elusive destination.
His speech will coincide with a frightening new dimension of the emergency, with children now representing about one in four new infections, with hundreds in hospitals, a surge that is terrifying parents and threatening in-person school.
The raging resurgence of the crisis this summer, fueled by the Delta variant of the virus, did not just sow yet more human misery -- with daily deaths now averaging more than 1,500. It encroached on the widespread perception that normality -- vacations, family visits, returns to the office -- might be returning amid hopes of a summer of freedom earlier this year. The relapse into crisis also harmed Biden's credibility as the President who was elected to put the pandemic in the past, since he declared on July Fourth the nation was emerging from a ‘year of pain, fear and heartbreaking loss’ and left a clear impression that the worst was over.” Read more at CNN
“Americans increasingly say the events of Sept. 11, 2001, had a more negative than positive impact on the country, and predictions for the pandemic’s long-term impact are even more downbeat, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Saturday, more than 8 in 10 Americans say those events changed the country in a lasting way. Nearly half (46 percent) say the events of 9/11 changed the country for the worse, while 33 percent say they changed the country for the better.
That represents a shift from 10 years ago when Americans were roughly divided on this question, and it marks an even larger swing from the first anniversary of the attacks in 2002. Back then, 55 percent said the country had changed for the better.” Read more at Boston Globe
“WASHINGTON — The Biden administration asked 11 officials appointed by former President Donald Trump to military service academy advisory boards to resign or be dismissed, CNN first reported Wednesday.
The list includes prominent members of Trump's cabinet, such as former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former senior counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and former national security advisor H.R. McMaster.
Spicer was appointed to the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy, Conway to the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Air Force Academy and McMaster to the Board of Visitors of the United States Military Academy West Point.
The dismissals come after The Pentagon reorganized its advisory boards after a purge of former Trump appointees in February.
Russell Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, posted to Twitter a copy of a letter from Catherine M. Russell, director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, in which he was asked to resign as a Member of the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy.
‘No. It’s a three year term,’ Vought tweeted.
Military academy advisory board members typically serve three-year terms, CNN confirmed.
Spicer also tweeted a copy of his letter and wrote ‘Instead of focusing on the stranded Americans left in #Afghanistan, President Biden is trying to terminate the Trump appointees to the Naval Academy, West Point and Air Force Academy.’
In a letter addressed to Biden, Conway accused the president of using the dismissals to distract from current events, including the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.” Read more at USA Today
“WASHINGTON — The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are the nation’s most egregious tax evaders, failing to pay as much as $163 billion in owed taxes per year, according to a Treasury Department report released on Wednesday.
The analysis comes as the Biden administration pushes lawmakers to embrace its ambitious proposal to beef up the Internal Revenue Service to narrow the “tax gap,” which it estimates amounts to $7 trillion in unpaid taxes over a decade. The White House has proposed investing $80 billion in the agency over the next 10 years to hire more enforcement staff, overhaul its technology and usher in new information-reporting requirements that would give the government greater insight into tax evasion schemes.
The proposals have been met with deep skepticism from Republicans and business lobbyists who argue that the I.R.S. cannot be trusted with more power and that the proposals are an invasion of privacy.
Democrats are counting on raising money by collecting more unpaid taxes to help pay for the $3.5 trillion spending package they are drafting. On Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee is set to begin formally drafting its voluminous piece of the 10-year measure to combat climate change and reweave the nation’s social safety net, with paid family and medical leave, expanded public education, new Medicare benefits and more.” Read more at New York Times
“WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the execution of a Texas inmate whose request that his pastor be able to touch and pray aloud with him in the death chamber had been rejected by prison authorities.
The court also agreed to review the case on its merits, without noted dissents. The court’s brief order said the case would be argued in October or November.
The stay was the latest in a string of Supreme Court rulings on the role that spiritual advisers may play in death row inmates’ final moments.
The new case concerned John Henry Ramirez, who was sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of a convenience store worker. Mr. Ramirez stabbed the worker, Pablo Castro, 29 times in a robbery that yielded $1.25.” Read more at New York Times
“SAN JOSE, Calif.—After years of making promises it couldn’t keep, Theranos Inc. turned to fraud to keep money coming in the door, prosecutors told jurors during opening statements of the highly anticipated criminal trial of company founder Elizabeth Holmes.
‘Out of time and out of money, Elizabeth Holmes decided to lie,’ Robert Leach, an assistant U.S. attorney, told a jury of five women and seven men.
The beginning of Ms. Holmes’s trial marked a new chapter in the fall of a Silicon Valley superstar, a drama that has inspired books and television series since Theranos dissolved three years ago. After months of delays related to the pandemic and Ms. Holmes’s pregnancy, the government laid out its case against the 37-year-old Stanford University dropout whose charisma and salesmanship helped vault her blood-testing startup’s valuation to more than $9 billion before its implosion over its technology’s repeated failures.
Ms. Holmes’s attorneys took their turn before the jury to portray Ms. Holmes as a hardworking, dedicated entrepreneur who may have been a bit naive but had conviction that she could achieve technological breakthroughs.
“Failure is not a crime,” said Lance Wade, an attorney with the law firm Williams & Connolly LLP. “Trying your hardest and coming up short is not a crime.”
Ms. Holmes has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The maximum penalty for each wire-fraud count is 20 years in prison.
‘This is a case about fraud, about lying and cheating to get money.’
— Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Leach
The opening remarks were the first opportunity for Ms. Holmes’s lawyers and prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of California to influence the jury in a trial expected to last more than three months and that will feature weeks of testimony from dozens of witnesses, including potentially from Ms. Holmes herself.
Once known for a uniform of black turtlenecks that drew comparisons to Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs, Ms. Holmes appeared in court Wednesday in a business suit and blouse, and wore a blue mask through the entire proceeding. She was joined by a handful of family members and supporters in a courtroom with limited capacity because of pandemic restrictions.
Over about 45 minutes, Mr. Leach told jurors Ms. Holmes defrauded patients and investors with claims of revolutionary blood-testing technology that could test for a range of health conditions using just a few drops of blood from a finger prick. Those claims helped draw in board members such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and major investors including former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal.
In fact, Mr. Leach said, the company’s technology didn’t work, and Ms. Holmes knew it.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Donald Trump is expected to announce Thursday that he is endorsing Harriet Hageman to take on Republican Rep. Liz Cheney in a Wyoming primary contest that will serve as the marquee test of the former president’s ability to purge his critics from the party, particularly lawmakers who challenge his false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has vowed to unseat Cheney since she voted to impeach him in January over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which was carried out by a mob of supporters who echoed Trump’s false claims about the election while seeking to stop Congress from certifying its results and declaring Joe Biden the president-elect.
The news of Trump’s expected endorsement was confirmed by a person familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it has not been announced publicly. A spokeswoman for Trump declined to comment.” Read more at Washington Post
“As 20 million jobs vanished at the start of the coronavirus pandemic and traffic jams formed outside food banks, many experts warned that the twin crises of unemployment and disease would produce soaring rates of hunger.
But huge expansions of government aid followed, and data released on Wednesday suggests the extraordinary spending achieved a major goal: Despite shuttered businesses and schools, food insecurity remained unchanged from prepandemic levels. That result defied past experience, when recessions caused food hardship to spike.
‘This is huge news — it shows you how much of a buffer we had from an expanded safety net,’ said Elaine Waxman, who researches hunger at the Urban Institute in Washington. ‘There was no scenario in March of 2020 where I thought food insecurity would stay flat for the year. The fact that it did is extraordinary.’
The government found that 10.5 percent of American households were food insecure, meaning that at some point in the year, they had difficulty providing enough food to all members of the home because of a lack of money. It also found that 3.9 percent experienced ‘very low food security,’ meaning the lack of resources caused them to reduce their food intake. That was statistically unchanged from the previous year.” Read more at New York Times
“Nearly four-fifths of U.S. oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico remains offline, more than 10 days after Hurricane Ida tore through Louisiana, as companies struggle to restart offshore platforms.
Ida, which barreled through the heart of the Gulf as a Category 4 hurricane, is turning out to be the most damaging storm for offshore production in more than 15 years. It crippled key onshore infrastructure, which has contributed to keeping about 12% of U.S. oil production idle. Its storm surge and maximum winds of 150 miles an hour also damaged some offshore operations, including underwater pipelines that have leaked oil into the Gulf.
The Gulf of Mexico accounts for about 17% of U.S. oil output, and about 5% of natural gas output. Companies including Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and Exxon Mobil Corp. operate sizable facilities in the area.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Congratulations are in order for Jennifer Lawrence and Cooke Maroney!
The ‘Don't Look Up’ star, 31, and her art gallerist husband, 37, are expecting their first child together, Lawrence's representative Liz Mahoney confirmed to USA TODAY on Wednesday.
Mahoney said no other details will be provided at this time.
Lawrence and Mahoney tied the knot at a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island in October 2019. He is a director of the Gladstone Gallery, an art gallery with locations in New York City, Los Angeles and Brussels. The couple began dating in the summer of 2018 and confirmed their engagement in February 2019.” Read more at USA Today
“Clinton Portis, the former star running back in Washington and Denver, and two other former N.F.L. pros pleaded guilty for their roles in a wide-ranging effort to defraud a health care benefit program for retired players, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Portis and Tamarick Vanover pleaded guilty on Friday, while Robert McCune, a ringleader of the scheme, entered his plea on Aug. 24.
In all, 15 people have pleaded guilty to taking part in a plan to defraud the Gene Upshaw N.F.L. Player Health Reimbursement Account Plan, which repays former players for out-of-pocket medical care expenses up to $350,000.
The N.F.L. declined to comment. The N.F.L. Players Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to court documents, Portis submitted fraudulent claims for nearly $100,000 in medical equipment that was never delivered. Vanover recruited three other former N.F.L. players and helped them file false claims for almost $160,000 total.” Read more at New York Times
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