Dr. Anthony Fauci is cautioning against deviating from the two dose regimen for the approved coronavirus vaccines, warning that delaying the second dose could increase the number of potentially dangerous variants. (Feb. 8)
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A Florida businessman whose fraud-busting business was exposed as a fraud itself was sentenced Monday to a year and a day in prison in a case in which prosecutors said Rudy Giuliani was hired as a consultant to attract investors. David Correia, 45, was sentenced remotely by U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken in Manhattan. The judge cited Correia's lesser role in the fraud scheme — he was charged alongside co-defendant Lev Parnas — and medical issues that might make his time in prison more challenging as he granted requests for leniency. He also ordered Correia to pay back the roughly $43,000 he received illegally, as well as over $2 million in restitution.
Buckingham Palace has insisted the Queen has never tried to block legislation, after newly unearthed memos suggested her personal lawyer lobbied the government to change a draft law that would have disclosed details of her private share dealings. Documents from the National Archives revealed a series of meetings between her lawyer, Matthew Farrer, and senior civil servants in 1973 after Edward Heath's government proposed legislation that would have made company shareholdings more transparent. A report in The Guardian claims the Queen was made aware of the draft law through the enactment of Queen's Consent, when the monarch is informed of legislation that could affect the private interests of the Crown. Documents suggest that in Nov 1973, after becoming aware of a bill that would potentially expose the "embarrassing" extent of her share holdings, the Queen dispatched Mr Farrer to press the government to make changes. The government inserted a clause into the draft legislation granting the power to exempt companies used by "heads of state" from transparency measures. But further correspondence suggested unhappiness at that compromise because it would still make it obvious what investments the Queen held.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday that American workers who earn $60,000 per year should receive stimulus checks as part of the White House's proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday said he would not wear a face mask after his recovery from COVID-19, in spite of widespread support from top officials and the public for the measure. In his first news conference since testing positive for COVID-19 on Jan. 24, Lopez Obrador brushed aside repeated questions from reporters about whether he would wear a mask to help contain the spread of the coronavirus. Unlike many of his top officials, Lopez Obrador has shunned face masks throughout the pandemic.
The 1st Infantry Division's CAB will replace the 101st Airborne Division's CAB in April.
Twitter users advised that he should turn off his TV if he was 'triggered'
A woman who killed a Vietnamese nail salon manager in Las Vegas in 2018 has been sentenced to a prison term of 10 to 25 years. The verdict: On Friday, Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones sentenced Krystal Whipple to prison for the death of 51-year-old Nhu "Annie" Ngoc Nguyen, the Associated Press reports. With the plea, she effectively avoided trials of felony murder, burglary, robbery and stolen vehicle charges, which she initially faced.
Joe Biden rounded on his predecessor’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, saying “it was even more dire than we thought”. In his first major interview since becoming president, Mr Biden told CBS news anchor, Norah O’Donnell, the country faced a challenge to reach herd immunity before the end of the summer. The US president said the rate of vaccination had to be accelerated to meet the target of 75 per cent of Americans getting the jab set by infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. Mr Biden said his administration had been led to believe there was far more vaccine available than turned out. “So that’s why we’ve ramped up every way we can,” he added. The new administration is using the Defence Production Act to get companies to boost production of vaccine and protective equipment.
Republican John Cox formally opened his campaign for California governor Monday with a TV ad depicting his leading GOP rival as a political twin of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and promising to work for lower housing costs and new jobs. The 30-second ad airing statewide marks the official kickoff of his second campaign for the state's top job, after Cox finished behind Newsom in their 2018 matchup. Cox will be a candidate in the proposed recall election that threatens to oust Newsom this year, if it qualifies for the ballot, or will run against Newsom when he is expected to seek a second term in 2022.
One of the major challenges the United States is facing in its COVID-19 vaccine drive is the fact that demand is outstripping supply, but Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb thinks that will flip suddenly and "sooner than we think." In an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box on Monday, Gottlieb noted that vaccine production is ramping up — about 220 million doses will be put into the market by the end of March, and another 100 million will be made available in April. Those numbers will be higher if the FDA soon authorizes Johnson & Johnson's candidate for emergency use, as Gottlieb expects. By that point, he said, states will likely have to make the shots "generally available" because a shrinking, but still significant reluctance to get vaccinated among the American public means there won't be enough takers if only specific groups of people have access. "If we continue to ration it based on more and more narrow slices of the population, it's going to get harder to administer. So, I think we're just going to have to open this up to general availability, which is good news," he said, pinpointing the end of March and "certainly" April as target dates. Gottlieb cautioned that doesn't mean everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by April 1, but he does think most people will be able to schedule an appointment. "We're going to run out of demand sooner than we think. At some point in March and certainly by the end of March we're going to have to make this generally available ... everyone is going to be able to go online and get an appointment sooner than we think," says @ScottGottliebMD. pic.twitter.com/0mnWAUJN9J — Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) February 8, 2021 More stories from theweek.comWhat's the point of Trump's second impeachment trial?5 brutally funny cartoons about America's bungled vaccine rolloutTrump's impeachment lawyers argue he only wanted supporters to 'fight' in 'the figurative sense'
Two children kidnapped during a carjacking while their father was on a DoorDash delivery run in San Francisco are now safe in their home on Sunday, authorities said. An officer found the 1-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl inside their father’s Honda Odyssey minivan that was stolen on Jackson Street in Pacific Heights, San Francisco, around 1 a.m. on Sunday, ABC7 News reported. “Every minute was excruciating,” says Jeffrey Fang. He was reunited with his two young children overnight after his van was stolen in San Francisco with his 4-year-old and 1-year-old inside.
Twenty people were killed in a Syrian displacement camp in January – including 10 who were beheaded – with guards suspecting Islamic State sleeper cells of the executions, according to a research group based in northeast Syria. The 20 Iraqis and Syrians killed in Al-Hol camp in January included a guard from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that maintains the detention facility, according to The Rojava Information Centre, which estimated 35 people were killed in the camp in all of 2020. Camp authorities, who struggle to impose security even around the camp perimeter, believe most of the deaths were the work of Islamic State assassins active inside Al-Hol. “The details of the assailants are unknown, most of the executions take place at night in the victims' tent or shelter,” said Charles Flynn, a researcher with the RIC. “Not all killings can be [attributed] to ISIS, as some deaths in the past have been related to feuds or disagreements in the camps,” he added. Among the most grisly of the recent killings at Al-Hol, an Iraqi elder was reportedly publicly beheaded in the camp on January 16. “The victim's head was completely removed,” said Mr Flynn, who reviewed photos of the incident. Local media reports suggest the slain guard was part of a security detail that was fired upon during a raid by unknown shooters inside the camp on January 8. A second guard was reportedly wounded in the attack. The RIC said local media reports and SDF statements formed the basis of its tally, which was partly corroborated by the United Nations, which warned of the deteriorating situation at Al-Hol on January 16 after receiving reports of 12 murders there since the start of the year. “The disturbing events indicate an increasingly untenable security environment at Al Hol,” the UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Imran Riza, and the regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Muhannad Hadi, said in a joint statement at the time. Al-Hol is the largest displacement camp in Syria, holding almost 62,000 residents in squalid conditions near the Iraqi border. Women and children make up more than 80 percent of the population in the camp, where aid agencies say hunger and disease are rife amid a lack of clean water and healthcare. Most of the inhabitants arrived in the camp in early 2020 after fleeing the final fighting between the Western-backed SDF and IS fighters around the terrorist group’s last sliver of territory at the town of Baghouz on the Euphrates River. As well as Iraqi and Syrians there are reportedly 8,705 third country nationals in Al-Hol, mostly from former Soviet central Asian states. In the past year, many Westerners – including high profile IS supporters such as the Halane twins from Manchester – have been moved from Al-Hol to the much smaller Roj camp, where security is stronger and living conditions are reportedly better. Killings in Al-Hol have increased over the past year since IS supporters were able to smuggle firearms into the camp, according to Elizabeth Tsurkov, a non-resident fellow with the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy. “The SDF's grip on the camp is clearly limited – smuggling of people and banned goods such as weapons, and smuggling of phones into the foreigners' annex, continue apace,” she said. The Kurdish-led SDF acknowledges that it has struggled to limit trafficking and has warned repeatedly of the deteriorating conditions, calling on foreign governments to repatriate their citizens. “Efforts are being made to control the camp,” it said in a January statement calling for greater support from the international community. On Monday, a group of United Nations human rights experts sent letters to the 57 governments who are believed to have nationals in Al-Hol and Roj camps calling on them to repatriate their citizens. “Thousands of people held in the camps are exposed to violence, exploitation, abuse and deprivation in conditions and treatment that may well amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international law, with no effective remedy at their disposal. An unknown number have already died because of their conditions of detention,” the experts said. “States have a primary responsibility to act with due diligence and take positive steps and effective measures to protect individuals in vulnerable situations, notably women and children, located outside of their territory where they are at risk of serious human rights violations or abuses, where States’ actions or omissions can positively impact on these individuals’ human rights,” they wrote. Meanwhile, the killings in Al-Hol have continued. On Monday, the SDF reported that a 27-year-old Iraqi man and a 20-year-old Syrian man were the latest victims. “Assassinations continue in the camp,” the SDF said on Twitter.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday called for Americans earning up to $60,000 to receive stimulus checks as part of the Biden administration’s massive coronavirus relief package. “If you think about an elementary school teacher or a policeman making $60,000 a year and faced with children who are out of school and people who may have had to withdraw from the labor force in order to take care of them and many extra burdens, [President Biden] thinks, and I would certainly agree, that it’s appropriate for people there to get support,” Yellen said on CNN. “The exact details of how it should be targeted are to be determined, but struggling middle class families need help,” she added. The administration has signaled that it is willing to potentially compromise on lowering the income threshold for Americans to be eligible to receive the one-time $1,400 stimulus checks included in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, but President Biden has refused to budge on the size of the checks. “President Biden is certainly willing to work with members of Congress to define what’s fair and he wouldn’t want to see a household making over $300,000 receive these payments,” Yellen said Sunday. Some Republicans and moderate Democrats including Senator Joe Manchin have proposed sending checks to individuals earning up to $50,000 and couples earning up to $100,000 instead of $75,000 and $150,000, respectively, the thresholds for the last round of direct payments. Last week, Senate Democrats used budget reconciliation, a process requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, to pass the relief bill because not enough Republicans were willing to get on board. Republicans previously used budget reconciliation to pass the Trump administration’s major tax reform bill. Biden and Senate Democrats have indicated their intention to push the package through without GOP support after a group of ten Republican senators proposed a stimulus package costing only about $600 billion. “I’m going to act, and I’m going to act fast,” Biden said last week. “I’d like to be doing it with the support of Republicans. I’ve met with Republicans — there’s some really fine people want to get something done. But they’re just not willing to go as far as I think we have to go.”
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds auctioned off an afternoon of her time to raise money for the namesake charity of a couple who own one of the nation's largest pork producers and have contributed nearly $300,000 to her campaign. The 2019 auction to benefit the Deb and Jeff Hansen Foundation provides a striking example of the Republican governor's close relationship with the state's pork industry and particularly Iowa Select Farms, owned by the West Des Moines couple. Details of the auction surfaced recently in public records the governor's office released to Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights group that has accused Iowa Select of mistreating hogs.
More than a quarter of the 4,800-member crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for coronavirus during a shipboard outbreak last year.
At least nine people are dead and 140 missing after part of a glacier in the Himalayas broke off on Sunday, causing water, debris, boulders, and mud to surge down into villages in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. More than 2,000 people are part of the search and rescue effort, trying to get to villagers who are under the debris. A hydroelectric plant was destroyed while another that was under construction was damaged; authorities said 12 workers at the site have been rescued and 30 remain trapped. Dinesh Negi lives in the village of Raini, and told The Associated Press that when a piece of the Nanda Devi glacier snapped off on Sunday morning, "We heard a bang, which shook our village. We knew something wrong had happened. We could see the fury of the river." Water trapped inside the glacier was released when it cracked open. Anjal Prakash, research director and adjunct professor at the Indian School of Business, has worked with the United Nations to study global warming, and told AP this "looks very much like a climate change event as the glaciers are melting due to global warming." More stories from theweek.comWhat's the point of Trump's second impeachment trial?5 brutally funny cartoons about America's bungled vaccine rolloutTrump's impeachment lawyers argue he only wanted supporters to 'fight' in 'the figurative sense'
Syrian authorities believe they have found the remains of a famed archaeologist who was beheaded by Islamic State militants in Palmyra in 2015, reportedly after refusing to divulge the location of the site’s hidden treasures. One of three bodies recently recovered from an area outside the Palmyra was thought to be that of Khaled al-Asaad, the longtime director of antiquities in the ancient city, state news outlet Sana reported on Sunday. In August 2015 Asaad was publicly executed in a local square in Palmyra, months after IS militants overran the strategic oasis city in Syria’s eastern desert. The crime made global headlines as the urbane Asaad had served as the custodian of the Unesco world heritage site for over half a century, receiving numerous awards and accolades in Syria and abroad. The octogenarian antiquities scholar was born in Palmyra and had remained in the city after the IS takeover to attempt to preserve its heritage. IS militants detained Asaad for over a month before his murder, his family said. The group was earning millions from looting and smuggling artefacts at the time and Syria’s antiquities minister said they had killed him after trying to extract information about the whereabouts of the city’s hidden treasure. The fate of Asaad’s own mortal remains has been something of a mystery since then. Following his death, unverified images circulated online showing a dismembered corpse supposedly belonging to Asaad hanging from a traffic light, with a handwritten sign accusing him of being director of Palmyra’s “idols”. But other sources later suggested his body was found tied to one of an ancient pillar in the ruins of Palmyra’s central square. Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra until March 2016 with the help of Russian air strikes. But that December IS fighters managed to recapture the strategic oasis city in a surprise assault and it was not finally liberated until March 2017. The Sana report did not give further information about the recently recovered bodies but said their identity would be confirmed by DNA analysis.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday she was not aware of any request from Donald Trump for an intelligence breifing, but reaffirmed that President Joe Biden would allow intelligence officials to make the decision on whether to grant access to them for the former Republican President. "If at any point the former president requests a briefing, so that is not currently applicable, but if he should request a briefing, (President Joe Biden) leaves it to (his intelligence team) to make a determination," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in a briefing on Monday.
A former campus police officer convicted of manslaughter in the death of his wife, an adult model who posted racy photos online, was sentenced to 16 years in prison Monday by a judge who said the man still hadn't taken responsibility for the death. William Jeffrey West, 47, will get credit for the three years he has spent in jail since his arrest in the death of Kathleen Dawn West, 42, news outlets reported. Kat West was found dead in January 2018 along the street in front of the couple’s suburban home in Calera, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Birmingham.
