Police in the Minneapolis area shot and killed a man in the city of Brooklyn Center on Sunday afternoon, sparking clashes between hundreds of protesters and police officers in an area already on edge during the murder trial of former officer Derek Chauvin.

Family members at the scene of the shooting identified the victim as 20-year-old Daunte Wright, who is Black. According to Brooklyn Center police, the incident occurred shortly before 2pm when an officer pulled over a vehicle due to an alleged traffic violation. Police stated that the driver re-entered the vehicle as officers attempted to take him into custody and one officer opened fire.

“The vehicle traveled several blocks before striking another vehicle,” a statement said. A female passenger sustained non-life threatening injuries during the crash, and a police officer was also reportedly taken to hospital.

Daunte Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, told reporters on Sunday afternoon she had been on the phone with her son as the encounter with police occurred. According to her account, reported by local TV news, her son had called her as he was being pulled over to get car insurance for the vehicle, which she had recently given him.

She said she heard officers instruct her son to get out of the car and then “scuffling” shortly before the phone hung up.

“A minute later, I called and his girlfriend answered, who was the passenger in the car, and said that he’d been shot and she put it on the driver’s side, and my son was laying there lifeless,” she said.

Protesters face off with police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

On Sunday evening, hundreds of protesters marched to the Brooklyn Center police department and were met by officers dressed in riot gear who discharged teargas, flash bangs and other munitions at the crowd. Confrontations were ongoing at 11pm local time.

As groups of protesters gathered to march on the city’s police department, the mayor, Mike Elliott, said the shooting was “tragic” but urged protesters “to be peaceful and that peaceful protesters are not dealt with with force”. As it approached midnight, Elliott said he would issue a curfew order.

Brooklyn Center is a city north-west of Minneapolis with a population of about 30,000. Tensions are high in Minneapolis and the surrounding area as the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the white former officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, is set to continue into its third week on Monday.

Police said Brooklyn Center officers involved in the incident were wearing body- cameras that were activated during the shooting. They also believe dash cameras were activated during the incident.

Some protesters damaged police vehicles. Photograph: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images

“I am closely monitoring the situation in Brooklyn Center. Gwen and I are praying for Daunte Wright’s family as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement,” Governor Tim Walz said in a statement posted on Sunday night.

A woman who lives near the crash scene, Carolyn Hanson, said she saw law enforcement officers pull a man out of a vehicle and perform CPR. A passenger who got out of the car was also covered in blood, Hanson said.

Officials from the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension said the agency was on the scene of a shooting involving a police officer in Brooklyn Center on Sunday afternoon.

Associated Press contributed to this report

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/12/protests-minneapolis-fatal-police-shooting-traffic-stop

Police in Huntington Beach, California shut down an organized so-called “White Lives Matter” rally within 90 minutes on Sunday afternoon after a few attendees violently clashed with counter-protesters.

Black Lives Matter counter-protesters far outnumbered the white nationalists that gathered near Huntington Beach pier for the rally, which started at 1 p.m. local time. After some arrests, cops declared the event an unlawful assembly by 2:30 p.m. and ordered the “unruly crowd” to disperse.

Several violent confrontations occurred between rallygoers and counter-protesters before authorities broke up the event.

In a video shared to YouTube, one man can be seen punching another man in the face in front of a police officer for repeatedly asking him, “Why do you hate me?”

“F*** off you Nazi b****,” one bystanders yelled at the violent man as he turned to walk away.

An Evangelical Christian Donald Trump supporter carries flags at the site of a “White Lives Matter” rally on April 11, 2021 in Huntington Beach, California.
David McNew/Getty Images

Another man welding a Trump 2020 flag was reportedly involved in a separate scuffle with counter-protesters. Authorities also arrested a few people who were carrying knives and pepper spray.

Police arrested two Black Lives Matter counter-protesters gathered with a group near the pier this morning ahead of the rally. The counter-protesters arrived hours before the “White Lives Matter” rally was scheduled to start.

In a video shared to Twitter, cops can be seen arresting a Black man while being surrounded by an angry crowd of counter-protesters.

User @waterspider__, who shared the footage, claimed that the Black male was “arrested for a ‘noise violation.'”

Huntington Beach Police Chief Lt. Brian Smith confirmed that one counter-protester was arrested for use of amplified sound. He also said a second was arrested for attempting to interfere with the first man’s arrest.

“The first gentleman was being detained and escorted off for a noise violation when the second gentleman interfered and impeded in the officers’ duties. He was detained and taken into custody for that and found to be in possession of a metal baton, a knife and two cans of pepper spray,” he said.

A group called the Loyal White Knights of the KKK organized the rally on social media, with an aim to “revive the White Racial Consciousness and to unify White People against white hate,” according to messages shared on Telegram.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department assisted city authorities by sending its regional mounted unit to the event. “That’s the extent of our involvement at this time,” said Carrie Braun, a spokesperson for the department, according to the Los Angeles Times. “We are monitoring open-source information to monitor additional events in our jurisdiction, but at this time we aren’t aware of any.”

Newsweek reached out to the Huntington Police for further information.

Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/cops-shut-down-white-lives-matter-rally-huntington-beach-that-turned-violent-90-minutes-1582751

In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to get a boost.

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses abroad while trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine made using the previously experimental messenger RNA, or mRNA, process.

“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

Officials at a news conference Sunday didn’t respond directly to questions about Gao’s comment or possible changes in official plans. But another CDC official said developers are working on mRNA-based vaccines.

Gao did not respond to a phone call requesting further comment.

“The mRNA vaccines developed in our country have also entered the clinical trial stage,” said the official, Wang Huaqing. He gave no timeline for possible use.

Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer-BioNTech and the traditional AstraZeneca vaccine.

The coronavirus pandemic, which began in central China in late 2019, marks the first time the Chinese drug industry has played a role in responding to a global health emergency.

Vaccines made by Sinovac, a private company, and Sinopharm, a state-owned firm, have made up the majority of Chinese vaccines distributed to several dozen countries including Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary, Brazil and Turkey.

The effectiveness of a Sinovac vaccine at preventing symptomatic infections was found to be as low as 50.4% by researchers in Brazil, near the 50% threshold at which health experts say a vaccine is useful. By comparison, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been found to be 97% effective.

Health experts say Chinese vaccines are unlikely to be sold to the United States, western Europe and Japan due to the complexity of the approval process.

A Sinovac spokesman, Liu Peicheng, acknowledged varying levels of effectiveness have been found but said that can be due to the age of people in a study, the strain of virus and other factors.

Beijing has yet to approve any foreign vaccines for use in China.

Gao gave no details of possible changes in strategy but cited mRNA as a possibility.

“Everyone should consider the benefits mRNA vaccines can bring for humanity,” Gao said. “We must follow it carefully and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines already.”

Gao previously questioned the safety of mRNA vaccines. He was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying in December he couldn’t rule out negative side effects because they were being used for the first time on healthy people.

Chinese state media and popular health and science blogs also have questioned the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

As of April 2, some 34 million people in China have received both of the two doses required for Chinese vaccines and about 65 million received one, according to Gao.

The Sinovac spokesman, Liu, said studies find protection “may be better” if time between vaccinations is longer than the current 14 days but gave no indication that might be made standard practice.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/12/china-coronavirus-vaccine-top-official-admits-low-effectiveness.html

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) announced on Sunday that he is directing the Virginia State Police to conduct an independent investigation into a December traffic stop that ended with two Windsor police officers pepper-spraying an Army officer. 

“The incident in Windsor is disturbing and angered me – and I am directing the Virginia State Police to conduct an independent investigation,” Northam wrote in a statement posted to Twitter.

“Our Commonwealth has done important work on police reform, but we must keep working to ensure that Virginians are safe during interactions with police, the enforcement of laws is fair and equitable, and people are held accountable,” he continued.

Caron Nazario, a second lieutenant in the Army, filed a lawsuit earlier this month arguing that the officers violated his constitutional rights during a traffic stop in the southeastern town of Windsor, located about 46 miles west of Virginia Beach.

In body camera footage shared online by The Associated Press, Nazario who is Black and Latino, can be seen sitting in his parked car at a gas station, dressed in uniform with his hands up, as the two officers point their guns at him.

The officers were captured on video ordering Nazario to exit his vehicle, to which he responds “I’m honestly afraid to get out.”

“Yeah, you should be, get out!” one of the officers can be heard responding.

Windsor police officer Daniel Crocker, according to The AP, had earlier radioed the station saying he was trying to pull over a vehicle with tinted windows that appeared to not have a rear license plate.

Another officer, Joe Gutierrez, responded to Crocker’s call and joined him at the scene.

Crocker said the situation was a “high-risk traffic stop,” as he claimed the driver was “eluding police.”

Nazario, however, says he was not trying to escape the officer on his drive home from his duty station, but instead wanted to stop in a well-lit area “for officer safety and out of respect for the officers.”

In the lawsuit, Nazario argued that once the officers arrived at the gas station his rear license plate was clearly visible, but the officers still immediately drew their guns and pointed them at Nazario.

In the statement, Northam said he was inviting Nazario to meet soon, adding “we must all continue the larger dialogue about reform in our country.”

The Hill reached out to the Windsor Police Department and the Virginia State Police for comment.

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/547619-virginia-governor-orders-investigation-after-police-pepper-sprayed-army

Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Gaetz met through the tight-knit group of prominent Trump backers in Florida in 2017, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Greenberg had no political experience before he was elected. Mr. Gaetz represents a district some 400 miles away.

Yet Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Gaetz saw each other regularly in recent years. They gathered at Mr. Dorworth’s home in January 2019 to celebrate that Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican close to Mr. Gaetz, had overturned a ban on smokable medical marijuana. The three men visited Washington together that June, and Mr. Greenberg posted photographs on social media from the White House lawn, including one of his daughter with Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Trump.

A few years ago — the exact date is unclear — Mr. Greenberg brought Mr. Gaetz into the tax collector’s branch office in Lake Mary over a weekend. The following Monday, an employee found the alarm deactivated and driver’s licenses strewn over a desk. She reviewed surveillance video and saw Mr. Greenberg with another man by that desk. When she asked Mr. Greenberg about it, according to text messages reviewed by The Times, he wrote back, “Yes I was showing congressman Gaetz what our operation looked like. Did I leave something on?”

What the men were doing is unclear.

In a separate episode on a Sunday in September 2018, Mr. Greenberg texted an employee about getting Mr. Gaetz an “emergency replacement” I.D. by Tuesday, claiming that the congressman had lost his. Mr. Gaetz told Politico that he had briefly lost his wallet but found it before needing the I.D. replacement.

Days after Mr. Greenberg was first indicted last year, a woman crashed her car into a tree a few hundred yards from his home early one morning, according to a crash report. The woman, according to two people familiar with their relationship, had previously had sex with Mr. Greenberg and received money from him on mobile payment apps; she had been leaving his house, the people said.

When a neighbor called 911, the woman was crying out incoherently in the background, according to a recording of the call. The neighbor said the woman was calling a friend. Moments later, an unidentified man could be heard on the caller’s end of the line.

“She got a bump on her head,” the man said. “There’s a little cut on her head. She’s just very shaken.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/us/politics/joel-greenberg-matt-gaetz.html

A Brooklyn Center police officer fatally shot a man during a traffic stop Sunday afternoon, inflaming already raw tensions between police and community members in the midst of the Derek Chauvin trial.

Relatives of Daunte Wright, 20, who is Black, told a tense crowd gathered at the scene in the northern Minneapolis suburb Sunday afternoon that Wright drove for a short distance after he was shot, crashed his car, and died at the scene.

Protesters later walked to the Brooklyn Center police headquarters near 67th Avenue North and North Humboldt Avenue and were locked in a standoff with police in riot gear late Sunday night. Officers repeatedly ordered the crowd of about 500 to disperse as protesters chanted Wright’s name and climbed atop the police headquarters sign, by then covered in graffiti.

Police used tear gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets on the crowd. Looters also targeted the Brooklyn Center Walmart and nearby shopping mall.

Sunday’s fresh outrage came as Twin Cities officials and law enforcement are already on edge as Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, stands trial for murder and manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd.

Floyd’s death 10 months ago sparked waves of protests and violent demonstrations across the cities, which seriously damaged hundreds of buildings.

Law enforcement has already been bracing for unrest once the jury reaches a verdict, erecting barricades and marshaling an intense police presence at the Hennepin County Government Center, where the trial resumes Monday.

The trial, which is being livestreamed, has drawn international attention.

Gov. Tim Walz tweeted that he was “closely monitoring the situation” and “praying for Daunte Wright’s family as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement.”

Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott also tweeted, urging protesters to remain peaceful. According to Teddy Tschann, the governor’s spokesman, Walz and Elliott spoke Sunday night.

The Minnesota National Guard is already deployed to the Twin Cities for the Chauvin trial.

According to Brooklyn Center police, officers pulled over a vehicle for a traffic violation shortly before 2 p.m. in the 6300 block of Orchard Avenue.

The driver, who had a warrant, got back into the vehicle as officers were trying to take him into custody. That’s when an officer discharged a weapon, striking the driver, police said. The vehicle traveled several blocks before crashing into another vehicle.

Officers and medical personnel performed lifesaving measures but the driver was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. A female passenger was taken to the hospital with injuries that weren’t life-threatening.

Wright was identified by family members, not by authorities.

His family had said earlier that the shooting occurred in Plymouth but it had not.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was on the scene and will conduct an independent investigation.

Brooklyn Center officers wear body cameras and the Police Department said Sunday that it believes the body cameras and dash cameras were on during the incident.

Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, tearfully pleaded near the scene Sunday afternoon for more information and for her son’s body to be moved from the street. She also urged the protesters to remain peaceful.

“All he did was have air fresheners in the car and they told him to get out of the car,” Wright said, explaining that her son called her when he was getting pulled over. During the call, she said she heard scuffling and then someone saying “Daunte, don’t run” before the phone call ended. When she called back, her son’s girlfriend answered and said Daunte had been shot.

“He got out of the car, and his girlfriend said they shot him,” she said. “He got back in the car, and he drove away and crashed and now he’s dead on the ground since 1:47. … Nobody will tell us anything. Nobody will talk to us. … I said please take my son off the ground.”

A woman who lives near the crash scene, Carolyn Hanson, said she saw officers pull a man out of a car and perform CPR. A passenger who got out of the vehicle was covered in blood, she said.

Within hours of the shooting, a couple hundred people had gathered near the scene, where emotions were running high.

Protesters pushed past police tape and confronted officers donning riot gear. Around 7:15 p.m., the crowd broke the windshields of two squad cars and police fired nonlethal rounds to try to disperse the crowd.

But by 8:30 p.m., police presence eased at the scene and the remaining crowd there gathered to light candles, burn sage and write messages like “Justice for Daunte Wright” in chalk on the street near the scene.

mara.klecker@startribune.com • 612-673-4440

kim.hyatt@startribune.com • 612-673-4751

Source Article from https://www.startribune.com/brooklyn-center-police-fatally-shoot-man-20-inflaming-tensions-during-the-derek-chauvin-trial/600044821/

Israel, which considers Iran a dire adversary, has sabotaged Iran’s nuclear work before, with tactics ranging from cyberattacks to outright assassinations. Israel is believed to have orchestrated the killings of several Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years, including an ambush on a key developer of its nuclear program last November.

Israel, as a matter of policy, neither confirms nor denies such actions.

The explosion at Natanz struck barely a week after the United States and Iran, in their first significant diplomacy under the Biden administration, participated in the new talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the nuclear agreement abandoned by Mr. Trump, who described it as “the worst deal” and a giveaway to Iran.

The talks to salvage the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., are set to resume this week.

It was not immediately clear how the incident at Natanz might affect that. But Iran now faces a complicated calculation on how to respond, especially if it concludes that Israel was responsible.

“Tehran faces an extremely tricky balance,” said Henry Rome, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “It will feel compelled to retaliate in order to signal to Israel that attacks are not cost-free.”

At the same time, Mr. Rome said, “Iran also needs to ensure that such a retaliation does not make it politically impossible for the West to continue pushing forward with J.C.P.O.A. re-entry.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-natanz.html

Officer Joe Guttierez aims his weapon at Lt. Caron Navario during a traffic stop. Navario is suing Guttierez and the other officer, Daniel Crocker, for violation of his constitutional rights.

NPR screenshot/Windsor Police Department body camera footage


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NPR screenshot/Windsor Police Department body camera footage

Officer Joe Guttierez aims his weapon at Lt. Caron Navario during a traffic stop. Navario is suing Guttierez and the other officer, Daniel Crocker, for violation of his constitutional rights.

NPR screenshot/Windsor Police Department body camera footage

When a patrol car activated its siren and emergency lights behind Caron Nazario in December, the Army lieutenant says he was reluctant to immediately pull over. That stretch of road, just west of Norfolk, Va., was dark, and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to stop safely.

So Nazario, who is Black and Latino, slowed down, put his blinker on, and — about a mile down the road — pulled over at a well-lit BP gas station, according to a federal lawsuit he filed earlier this month. At that point, two officers approached Nazario, guns drawn, yelling at him to get out of the car.

“What’s going on?” Nazario, dressed in uniform, repeatedly asked.

Windsor Police Department officer Joe Gutierrez responded: “What’s going on is you’re fixing to ride the lightning, son.”

Gutierrez — whose employment with the department has since been terminated following an internal investigation — and his partner Daniel Crocker are now the defendants in a lawsuit arguing that they violated Nazario’s constitutional rights through the use of excessive force and unlawful search and seizure.

The complaint alleges that the officers’ behavior is “consistent with a disgusting nationwide trend of law enforcement officers, who, believing they can operate with complete impunity, engage in unprofessional, discourteous, racially biased, dangerous, and sometimes deadly abuses of authority.”

In a report filed on the night of the incident, Gutierrez says they were treating it as a “high risk traffic stop” because Nazario’s vehicle had no tag displayed, he took a long time to stop, and he had “extremely dark” window tint.

But in the federal complaint, Nazario’s attorney writes that the newly purchased Chevrolet Tahoe did have two temporary plates inside of his car, taped to the rear window and on the passenger side. The complaint alleges that by the time the officers approached Nazario’s vehicle, they knew of the temporary plates — yet continued the high-risk felony stop anyway.

The officers decided to “pull their weapons, illegally detain Lt. Nazario, threaten to murder him, illegally spray him with [pepper spray], and illegally searched his vehicle,” the complaint says.

The murder threat, the complaint claims, comes from Gutierrez’s comment that Nazario was fixing to “ride the lightning” — a colloquial expression for execution that refers to death by electric chair.

In the police report, Gutierrez indicates that he threatened to use his Taser on Nazario. Nazario’s lawyer, Jonathan Arthur, told NPR that even if Gutierrez meant to refer to using a Taser on Nazario when he talked about riding the lightning, he said, the video “leaves little doubt” that he also “meant and intended every word of the implicit meaning.”

Multiple videos — from Nazario’s cell phone and the body cameras worn by Crocker and Gutierrez — captured the interaction from several angles. At one point, Nazario said: “I’m honestly afraid to get out.” In response, Gutierrez said: “Yeah, you should be.”

Gutierrez proceeded to pepper-spray Nazario multiple times, footage shows. Nazario then got out of his vehicle and asked for a supervisor. Gutierrez responded by knocking him to the ground with “knee-strikes,” the suit alleges. The officers then struck him, handcuffed and interrogated him. Paramedics arrived soon after to treat Nazario’s eyes for the pepper spray.

Ultimately, Nazario was let go — but not before the officers “threatened Lt. Nazario’s job and his commission in the United States Army if he spoke out knowing the harm criminal charges would cause him,” the complaint says. That attempt to “extort” Nazario formed the basis of the complaint’s argument that the officers violated Nazario’s First Amendment rights.

Virginia lawmakers have called for the police officers to be investigated immediately. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus said the officers must be “held accountable for their atrocious actions.”

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring called the incident unacceptable. “The Windsor Police Department needs to be fully transparent about what happened during the stop and what was done in response to it,” Herring said.

Gov. Ralph Northam said on Sunday that he’s directed Virginia State Police to conduct an independent investigation into what he called a “disturbing” incident.

As a result of last year’s incident, Gutierrez was “terminated from his employment,” the Town of Windsor said in a news release on Sunday. The decision was made following an internal investigation at the Windsor Police Department that led to “disciplinary action” as well as additional training that began in January 2021.

“The pursuit and ultimate stop resulted in the use of pepper spray against Lt. Nazario by Officer Gutierrez,” the statement read. “At the conclusion of this investigation, it was determined that Windsor Police Department policy was not followed.”

NPR tried unsuccessfully to reach Windsor police for comment. An email was not returned and their voicemail was full. It’s unclear whether Gutierrez and Crocker have attorneys who could comment on their behalf.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/04/11/986271819/black-army-lieutenant-sues-virginia-police-officers-for-excessive-force

Huntington Beach police declared an unlawful assembly Sunday afternoon around the city’s famous pier as tensions increased among protesters who clashed with Donald Trump supporters and others displaying allegiance to white supremacist groups.

Several hundred people gathered in the plaza area at the base of the pier beginning Sunday morning to demonstrate against the so-called White Lives Matter rally.

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-11/photos-rival-demonstrators-protest-during-a-white-lives-matter-rally-at-huntington-beach

In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to get a boost.

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses abroad while trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine made using the previously experimental messenger RNA, or mRNA, process.

“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

Officials at a news conference Sunday didn’t respond directly to questions about Gao’s comment or possible changes in official plans. But another CDC official said developers are working on mRNA-based vaccines.

Gao did not respond to a phone call requesting further comment.

“The mRNA vaccines developed in our country have also entered the clinical trial stage,” said the official, Wang Huaqing. He gave no timeline for possible use.

Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer-BioNTech and the traditional AstraZeneca vaccine.

The coronavirus pandemic, which began in central China in late 2019, marks the first time the Chinese drug industry has played a role in responding to a global health emergency.

Vaccines made by Sinovac, a private company, and Sinopharm, a state-owned firm, have made up the majority of Chinese vaccines distributed to several dozen countries including Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary, Brazil and Turkey.

The effectiveness of a Sinovac vaccine at preventing symptomatic infections was found to be as low as 50.4% by researchers in Brazil, near the 50% threshold at which health experts say a vaccine is useful. By comparison, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been found to be 97% effective.

Health experts say Chinese vaccines are unlikely to be sold to the United States, western Europe and Japan due to the complexity of the approval process.

A Sinovac spokesman, Liu Peicheng, acknowledged varying levels of effectiveness have been found but said that can be due to the age of people in a study, the strain of virus and other factors.

Beijing has yet to approve any foreign vaccines for use in China.

Gao gave no details of possible changes in strategy but cited mRNA as a possibility.

“Everyone should consider the benefits mRNA vaccines can bring for humanity,” Gao said. “We must follow it carefully and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines already.”

Gao previously questioned the safety of mRNA vaccines. He was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying in December he couldn’t rule out negative side effects because they were being used for the first time on healthy people.

Chinese state media and popular health and science blogs also have questioned the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

As of April 2, some 34 million people in China have received both of the two doses required for Chinese vaccines and about 65 million received one, according to Gao.

The Sinovac spokesman, Liu, said studies find protection “may be better” if time between vaccinations is longer than the current 14 days but gave no indication that might be made standard practice.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/12/china-coronavirus-vaccine-top-official-admits-low-effectiveness.html

At another moment in the trial, Eric Nelson asked a paramedic if he had responded to “other” overdose calls before quickly correcting himself to say “overdose calls” — perhaps a simple mistake, or an attempt to plant the idea that Floyd’s death was an overdose.

Expert witnesses for the prosecution have asserted drugs did not kill Floyd.

Nelson has repeatedly called the bystanders at Floyd’s arrest a “crowd” and “unruly” and suggested there were more people present than seen on camera. He drilled a fire department captain on taking 17 minutes to reach the scene when an ambulance called first arrived much sooner. And he persistently suggested Chauvin’s knee wasn’t on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds as prosecutors have argued — suggesting instead it was across Floyd’s back, shoulder blades and arm.

“Many times as an attorney, you’ve got some facts that are just … bad for you. But you either want to downplay them or create another narrative,” said Mike Brandt, a Minneapolis defense attorney who is closely watching the case.

Any good defense attorney has to try and “take what you can get,” Brandt said. “Sometimes we say in a trial, you want to throw as much mud on the wall as you can and hope some of it sticks.”

Nelson, 46, handles cases ranging from drunken driving arrests to homicides, and is one of a dozen attorneys who take turns working with a police union legal defense fund to represent officers charged with crimes. One of his bigger cases involved Amy Senser, the wife of Joe Senser, a former Minnesota Vikings tight end, who was convicted in a 2011 hit-and-run death.

Nelson has joked with witnesses at times and, perhaps to connect with the jury, made light of his occasional fumbles with technology or mispronunciations of words. He’s a Minnesota native who, during a break in the trial, chatted up Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, asking whether he remembered the fight song for Minneapolis Roosevelt — the high school both attended.

Away from the lighter moments, Nelson has appeared well-prepared even as he goes up against a prosecution team many times larger. He has gone hard and consistently at his chief message: that Floyd’s consumption of illegal drugs is to blame for his death, rather than something Chauvin did. An autopsy found fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd’s system.

In the trial’s second week, Nelson played a snippet of officer body-camera video and asked two witnesses whether they could hear Floyd say, “I ate too many drugs.” The audio was hard to make out, but Nelson got a state investigator to agree with his version of the quote. Prosecutors later played a fuller clip and the investigator backtracked, saying he believed Floyd said “I ain’t do no drugs.”

As the state paraded medical experts to testify that Floyd died because his oxygen was cut off, not because of drugs, Nelson challenged the substance of their findings that the amounts detected in Floyd either were small or that people had survived significantly higher levels. But he also frequently framed questions to include the phrase “illicit drugs,” pointed out there’s no legal reason for a person to have methamphetamine in their system, and asked one witness whether he agreed that the number of deaths of people mixing meth and fentanyl had risen.

“This is a typical tactic that we’d say good defense attorneys do,” David Schultz, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who is watching the trial closely, said. “Not all of them are as subtle or gifted as Eric Nelson.”

When the paramedics first to the scene testified, Nelson’s questions included asking them why they did a “load and go” — that is, putting Floyd in their ambulance and moving a few blocks away before beginning treatment. It implied a delay in potentially life-saving treatment, but also fed into another recurring Nelson theme that prosecutors reject: the officers were distracted from caring for Floyd by a threatening crowd.

Video of the scene worked against the argument, showing about 15 people watching as Floyd was restrained, including several teens and girls, though several were shouting at the officers to get off Floyd and check him for a pulse.

Nelson has at times taken aim at the mountain of bystander, surveillance and body-camera video offered by police, suggesting it only tells part of the story and can be misleading. At one point, Nelson used the phrase “camera perspective bias” to suggest that Chauvin’s knee was not where the camera appeared to show it.

He has also argued that Chauvin was merely following the training he’d received throughout a 19-year career, even as several police supervisors — including Arradondo — testified otherwise. Nelson showed jurors an image from department training materials of a trainer with a knee on the neck of an instructor playing a suspect, and got some witnesses to agree generally that use of force may look bad but still be lawful.

Brandt said anything Nelson can do now – while the state is presenting its case – is huge, and will only serve as building blocks that he can use when he starts presenting his own case.

Schultz said attorneys have to be careful. He noted how Nelson’s questioning of Donald Williams, one of the most vocal bystanders, sparked a backlash on social media. Users accused Nelson, who pressed Williams on whether he was angry and repeated his profanities in court, of perpetuating an “angry Black man” trope.

Some jurors might have felt the same, Schultz said.

“You as the attorney have to sell yourself to the jury,” Schultz said. “And an attorney who risks pushing too far risks being disliked by the jury, and that’s damaging to the case, too.”

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/11/derek-chauvin-trial-attorney-480896

Iran on Sunday described a blackout at its underground Natanz atomic facility an act of “nuclear terrorism,” raising regional tensions.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, stopped short of directly blaming anyone for the incident. Details remained few about what happened early Sunday morning at the facility, which initially was described as a blackout caused by the electrical grid feeding the site.

Many Israeli media outlets offered the same assessment that a cyberattack darkened Natanz and damaged a facility that is home to sensitive centrifuges. While the reports offered no sourcing for the evaluation, Israeli media maintains a close relationship with the country’s military and intelligence agencies.

If Israel caused the blackout, it further heightens tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East.

IRAN’S NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY SUFFERS ELECTRICAL PROBLEM: STATE TV

It also complicates efforts by the U.S., Israel’s main security partner, to re-enter the atomic accord aimed at limiting Tehran’s program so it can’t pursue a nuclear weapon. As news of the blackout emerged, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin landed Sunday in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Power at Natanz had been cut across the facility comprised of above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls, civilian nuclear program spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told Iranian state television.

“We still do not know the reason for this electricity outage and have to look into it further,” Kamalvandi said. “Fortunately, there was no casualty or damage and there is no particular contamination or problem.”

Asked if it was a “technical defect or sabotage,” Kamalvandi declined to comment.

REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS SLAM CLUBHOUSE FOR ALLOWING IRAN’S FOREIGN MINISTER TO PROMOTE ‘PROPAGANDA

Malek Shariati Niasar, a Tehran-based lawmaker who serves as spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s energy committee, wrote on Twitter that the incident was “very suspicious,” raising concerns about possible “sabotage and infiltration.” He said lawmakers were pursuing details of the incident as well.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s program, said it was “aware of the media reports,” but declined to comment.

Natanz was largely built underground to withstand enemy airstrikes. It became a flashpoint for Western fears about Iran’s nuclear program in 2002, when satellite photos showed Iran building its underground centrifuges facility at the site, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.

Natanz suffered a mysterious explosion at its advanced centrifuge assembly plant in July that authorities later described as sabotage. Iran now is rebuilding that facility deep inside a nearby mountain.

Israel, Iran’s regional archenemy, has been suspected of carrying out that attack as well as launching other assaults, as world powers now negotiate with Tehran in Vienna over its nuclear deal.

IRAN FREE SOUTH KOREAN SHIP IT HELD AMID DISPUTE OVER FUNDS

Iran also blamed Israel for the killing of a scientist who began the country’s military nuclear program decades earlier. The Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010 and widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, once disrupted and destroyed Iranian centrifuges at Natanz.

“It’s hard for me to believe it’s a coincidence,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, of Sunday’s blackout. “If it’s not a coincidence, and that’s a big if, someone is trying to send a message that ‘we can limit Iran’s advance and we have red lines.'”

Israel has not claimed any of the attacks, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has described Iran as the major threat faced by his country in recent weeks.

Meeting with Austin on Sunday, Gantz said Israel viewed America as an ally against all threats, including Iran.

“The Tehran of today poses a strategic threat to international security, to the entire Middle East and to the state of Israel,” Gantz said. “And we will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new agreement with Iran will secure the vital interests of the world, of the United States, prevent a dangerous arms race in our region, and protect the state of Israel.”

The Israeli army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, also appeared to reference Iran.

The Israeli military’s “operations in the Middle East are not hidden from the eyes of the enemy,” Kochavi said. “They are watching us, seeing (our) abilities and weighing their steps with caution.”

FILE – In this Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. Israel’s prime minister heads to Washington this week for a high-profile meeting with President Donald Trump that is suddenly clouded in uncertainty. After embracing Israel’s hard-line nationalist right throughout his presidential campaign, Trump appears to have softened some of his positions on key issues since taking office. (Gali Tibbon, Pool via AP, File)
(The Associated Press)

OVER 300 IRANIAN ACTIVISTS URGE BIDEN TO BACK DEMOCRATIC IRAN, HUMAN RIGHTS AS NUCLEAR TALKS BEGIN

Multiple Israeli media outlets reported Sunday that a cyberattack caused the blackout in Natanz. Public broadcaster Kan said Israel was likely behind the attack, citing Israel’s alleged responsibility for the Stuxnet attacks a decade ago. Channel 12 TV cited “experts” as estimating the attack shut down entire sections of the facility. None of the reports included sources or explanations on how the outlets came to that assessment.

In Tehran, Iranian officials meanwhile awaited the arrival of South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, the first visit by a premier from Seoul since before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran on Friday released a South Korean oil tanker held since January amid a dispute with Seoul over billions of dollars of its assets frozen there.

On Saturday, Iran announced it had launched a chain of 164 IR-6 centrifuges at the plant. Officials also began testing the IR-9 centrifuge, which they say will enrich uranium 50 times faster than Iran’s first-generation centrifuges, the IR-1. The nuclear deal limited Iran to using only IR-1s for enrichment.

Since then-President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran has abandoned all the limits of its uranium stockpile. It now enriches up to 20% purity, a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran maintains its atomic program is for peaceful purposes.

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On Tuesday, an Iranian cargo ship said to serve as a floating base for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard forces off the coast of Yemen was struck by an explosion, likely from a limpet mine. Iran has blamed Israel for the blast. That attack escalated a long-running shadow war in Mideast waterways targeting shipping in the region.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-natanz-atomic-site-blackout-nuclear-terrorism

Northam (D) said the incident — in which body-camera footage shows police pepper-spraying, striking and handcuffing Caron Nazario — “is disturbing and angered me.” Nazario, 27, who is Black and Latino, filed a lawsuit this month against Windsor officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker that alleges excessive force due to racial profiling.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/northam-nazario-windsor-police/2021/04/11/fb147f88-9b05-11eb-9d05-ae06f4529ece_story.html

BEIJING — In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to get a boost.

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses abroad while trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine made using the previously experimental messenger RNA, or mRNA, process.

“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

Officials at a news conference Sunday didn’t respond directly to questions about Gao’s comment or possible changes in official plans. But another CDC official said developers are working on mRNA-based vaccines.

Gao did not respond to a phone call requesting further comment.

A National People’s Congress (NPC) delegate disseminates information about vaccination against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Chongqing, China April 8, 2021. Photo by China Daily/Reuters.

“The mRNA vaccines developed in our country have also entered the clinical trial stage,” said the official, Wang Huaqing. He gave no timeline for possible use.

Experts say mixing vaccines, or sequential immunization, might boost effectiveness. Researchers in Britain are studying a possible combination of Pfizer-BioNTech and the traditional AstraZeneca vaccine.

The coronavirus pandemic, which began in central China in late 2019, marks the first time the Chinese drug industry has played a role in responding to a global health emergency.

Vaccines made by Sinovac, a private company, and Sinopharm, a state-owned firm, have made up the majority of Chinese vaccines distributed to several dozen countries including Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary, Brazil and Turkey.

The effectiveness of a Sinovac vaccine at preventing symptomatic infections was found to be as low as 50.4% by researchers in Brazil, near the 50% threshold at which health experts say a vaccine is useful. By comparison, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been found to be 97% effective.

Workers transport boxes of vaccines against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) developed by Beijing Institute of Biological Products under Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG), from a truck to a cold storage facility of Guangdong Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China April 8, 2021. Picture taken April 8, 2021. CNSphoto/Reuters.

Health experts say Chinese vaccines are unlikely to be sold to the United States, Western Europe and Japan due to the complexity of the approval process.

A Sinovac spokesman, Liu Peicheng, acknowledged varying levels of effectiveness have been found but said that can be due to the age of people in a study, the strain of virus and other factors.

Beijing has yet to approve any foreign vaccines for use in China.

Gao gave no details of possible changes in strategy but cited mRNA as a possibility.

“Everyone should consider the benefits mRNA vaccines can bring for humanity,” Gao said. “We must follow it carefully and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines already.”

Gao previously questioned the safety of mRNA vaccines. He was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying in December he couldn’t rule out negative side effects because they were being used for the first time on healthy people.

Chinese state media and popular health and science blogs also have questioned the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

As of April 2, some 34 million people in China have received both of the two doses required for Chinese vaccines and about 65 million received one, according to Gao.

The Sinovac spokesman, Liu, said studies find protection “may be better” if time between vaccinations is longer than the current 14 days but gave no indication that might be made standard practice.

Source Article from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/official-chinese-vaccines-effectiveness-low

At another moment in the trial, Eric Nelson asked a paramedic if he had responded to “other” overdose calls before quickly correcting himself to say “overdose calls” — perhaps a simple mistake, or an attempt to plant the idea that Floyd’s death was an overdose.

Expert witnesses for the prosecution have asserted drugs did not kill Floyd.

Nelson has repeatedly called the bystanders at Floyd’s arrest a “crowd” and “unruly” and suggested there were more people present than seen on camera. He drilled a fire department captain on taking 17 minutes to reach the scene when an ambulance called first arrived much sooner. And he persistently suggested Chauvin’s knee wasn’t on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds as prosecutors have argued — suggesting instead it was across Floyd’s back, shoulder blades and arm.

“Many times as an attorney, you’ve got some facts that are just … bad for you. But you either want to downplay them or create another narrative,” said Mike Brandt, a Minneapolis defense attorney who is closely watching the case.

Any good defense attorney has to try and “take what you can get,” Brandt said. “Sometimes we say in a trial, you want to throw as much mud on the wall as you can and hope some of it sticks.”

Nelson, 46, handles cases ranging from drunken driving arrests to homicides, and is one of a dozen attorneys who take turns working with a police union legal defense fund to represent officers charged with crimes. One of his bigger cases involved Amy Senser, the wife of Joe Senser, a former Minnesota Vikings tight end, who was convicted in a 2011 hit-and-run death.

Nelson has joked with witnesses at times and, perhaps to connect with the jury, made light of his occasional fumbles with technology or mispronunciations of words. He’s a Minnesota native who, during a break in the trial, chatted up Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, asking whether he remembered the fight song for Minneapolis Roosevelt — the high school both attended.

Away from the lighter moments, Nelson has appeared well-prepared even as he goes up against a prosecution team many times larger. He has gone hard and consistently at his chief message: that Floyd’s consumption of illegal drugs is to blame for his death, rather than something Chauvin did. An autopsy found fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd’s system.

In the trial’s second week, Nelson played a snippet of officer body-camera video and asked two witnesses whether they could hear Floyd say, “I ate too many drugs.” The audio was hard to make out, but Nelson got a state investigator to agree with his version of the quote. Prosecutors later played a fuller clip and the investigator backtracked, saying he believed Floyd said “I ain’t do no drugs.”

As the state paraded medical experts to testify that Floyd died because his oxygen was cut off, not because of drugs, Nelson challenged the substance of their findings that the amounts detected in Floyd either were small or that people had survived significantly higher levels. But he also frequently framed questions to include the phrase “illicit drugs,” pointed out there’s no legal reason for a person to have methamphetamine in their system, and asked one witness whether he agreed that the number of deaths of people mixing meth and fentanyl had risen.

“This is a typical tactic that we’d say good defense attorneys do,” David Schultz, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who is watching the trial closely, said. “Not all of them are as subtle or gifted as Eric Nelson.”

When the paramedics first to the scene testified, Nelson’s questions included asking them why they did a “load and go” — that is, putting Floyd in their ambulance and moving a few blocks away before beginning treatment. It implied a delay in potentially life-saving treatment, but also fed into another recurring Nelson theme that prosecutors reject: the officers were distracted from caring for Floyd by a threatening crowd.

Video of the scene worked against the argument, showing about 15 people watching as Floyd was restrained, including several teens and girls, though several were shouting at the officers to get off Floyd and check him for a pulse.

Nelson has at times taken aim at the mountain of bystander, surveillance and body-camera video offered by police, suggesting it only tells part of the story and can be misleading. At one point, Nelson used the phrase “camera perspective bias” to suggest that Chauvin’s knee was not where the camera appeared to show it.

He has also argued that Chauvin was merely following the training he’d received throughout a 19-year career, even as several police supervisors — including Arradondo — testified otherwise. Nelson showed jurors an image from department training materials of a trainer with a knee on the neck of an instructor playing a suspect, and got some witnesses to agree generally that use of force may look bad but still be lawful.

Brandt said anything Nelson can do now – while the state is presenting its case – is huge, and will only serve as building blocks that he can use when he starts presenting his own case.

Schultz said attorneys have to be careful. He noted how Nelson’s questioning of Donald Williams, one of the most vocal bystanders, sparked a backlash on social media. Users accused Nelson, who pressed Williams on whether he was angry and repeated his profanities in court, of perpetuating an “angry Black man” trope.

Some jurors might have felt the same, Schultz said.

“You as the attorney have to sell yourself to the jury,” Schultz said. “And an attorney who risks pushing too far risks being disliked by the jury, and that’s damaging to the case, too.”

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/11/derek-chauvin-trial-attorney-480896

With her state battling the biggest surge of new COVID-19 cases in the nation, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she will not issue new mandates to blunt the outbreak, relying instead on the common sense of a citizenry now experienced in struggling with the deadly virus for over a year.

Data from state health officials shows Michigan has surpassed 100,000 active COVID-19 cases in the last week, the highest number since mid-November. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks the Wolverine State’s COVID-19 infection rate as No. 1 in the country with 492.1 positive infections per 100,000 people.

The disturbing rise in cases appears to stem from the spread of the B-117 variant, also known as the U.K. variant, a more deadly and transmissible mutant comprising 70% of new coronavirus cases in Michigan, according to state and CDC data. The state has the highest number of U.K. variant cases in the nation, according to the CDC.

Hospitals throughout Michigan are also reporting a 30% increase in hospital admissions over the past week.

“We really have a race between the vaccination, which is coming and we’re getting a lot more of it, and the infections which are right now … in a fourth surge,” Dr. Ora Pescovitz, a pediatrician and the president of Oakland University, told ABC affiliate station WXYZ in Detroit.

Despite the startling stats, Whitmer, who has previously come under attack for her stringent stay-at-home orders and was even the target of a foiled kidnapping plot, says she is not planning to roll back already loosened regulations for reopening the state, which now allows for 50% in-door dining at restaurants and public schools to reopen for in-class learning.

During a news conference on Friday, Whitmer urged residents to avoid indoor dining for two weeks and for high schools to consider going back to virtual learning for two weeks. She also wants to hit pause on organized youth sports.

“To be very clear, these are not orders, mandates, or requirements. A year in, we all know what works and this has to be a team effort. We have to do this together. Lives depend on it,” Whitmer said. “There’s light at the end of this tunnel, but the recent rise in cases is a reminder that we are still in the tunnel. That’s the nature of this virus, the second we let our guard down it comes roaring back.”

Whitmer said she asked President Joe Biden on Thursday to ramp up the supply of Michigan’s COVID-19 vaccine allocations, specifically, the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot, saying it’s essential to efforts to combat the outbreak hitting her state.

White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said at a news conference on Friday that the Biden administration has no plans to redirect vaccine doses from other states to ones like hard-hit Michigan, saying, “There are tens of millions of people across the country in each and every state and county who have not yet been vaccinated.”

“The fair and equitable way to distribute the vaccine is based on the adult population by state, tribe and territory,” Zients said. “That’s how it’s been done, and we will continue to do so. The virus is unpredictable. We don’t know where the next increase in cases could occur.”

As of April 7, roughly 39% of Michigan residents age 16 and older have received at least one dose of vaccine and about 24.4% are fully vaccinated, according to the state’s coronavirus dashboard.

Regardless of its efforts to inoculate its residents, the state has seen its daily confirmed COVID cases dramatically rise by 415% since Feb. 19 among people 20 to 29 years old, according to Michigan Medicine, formerly known as the University of Michigan Health System.

The state recently announced it is teaming up with 26 colleges and universities in an effort to vaccinate students before they head home for summer break. On Thursday, the state said nearly 16,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses are being shipped to the health departments of those colleges and universities to administer.

“Vaccinating this group of the population right now makes a lot of sense as thousands of college and university students near the end of their academic year and are preparing to travel back home, start new jobs, take summer vacations, and interact with their family and friends,” Northern Michigan University President Fritz Erickson said in a statement.

“We appreciate this initiative by the state to keep college students safe,” Erickson added. “This effort will protect not only the age group that is now seeing a higher rate of infection than before, but it protects communities and families across the state from the spread of the virus due to the mass movement of college students that takes place over the next few weeks.”

Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said the state’s immediate goal is “vaccinating at least 70% of Michiganders age 16 and up as quickly as possible.”

Dr. Aimee Gordon, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, told WXYZ that while the U.K. variant appears to be raging across the state, it is not the only reason the contagion is out of control. She said COVID-19 fatigue has also set in across the state, prompting residents, particularly younger people, to let down their guard when it comes to mask-wearing and social distancing.

“I think in general people are getting exhausted,” Gordon said.

What to know about the coronavirus:

  • How it started and how to protect yourself: Coronavirus explained
  • What to do if you have symptoms: Coronavirus symptoms
  • Tracking the spread in the U.S. and worldwide: Coronavirus map
  • Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/US/michigans-covid-cases-surge-alarming-levels-gov-gretchen/story?id=77003950

    • John Boehner made some revealing statements about his former GOP counterpart, Mitch McConnell.
    • Boehner said that “bystanders are struck silent” when McConnell shows visible feelings or emotions.
    • In a USA Today interview, the former speaker’s penchant for tears was still evident.
    • See more stories on Insider’s business page.

    When former GOP House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio served in leadership, he often worked with his Senate counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

    Both men were from the same political party and even hailed from adjoining states — Boehner was a conservative Midwestern Republican, while McConnell the face of the South’s dominant influence within the party.

    However, while promoting his new memoir, “On the House: A Washington Memoir,” Boehner made some revealing observations about McConnell.

    During an interview with USA Today, the former speaker highlighted McConnell’s intellect and penchant to play the long game, which the minority leader wholly adhered to when installing conservative jurists to the federal bench.

    Boehner also said that the Kentucky Republican “holds his feelings, thoughts, and emotions in a lockbox closed so tightly that whenever one of them seeps out, bystanders are struck silent.”

    For Boehner, a jovial, backslapping politician who still smokes Camel cigarettes and is known to publicly cry during emotional moments, McConnell’s steely and to-the-point demeanor is quite a contrast.

    Even in retirement, Boehner’s sentimental side has not dissipated.

    When the former speaker was asked what makes him cry, he was prepared with a response.

    “I can get a little teary-eyed,” he said. “Over what? There’s a pretty long list.”

    He spoke up a treasured television advertisement for the US Golf Association.

    “They had some kid playing by himself, gets a hole-in-one and he’s all upset because there’s nobody there to see it,” he said. “Except the greens superintendent saw it!”

    When Boehner began to think about how someone actually did see the young man’s brilliant golf shot, it was enough to set him over the edge.

    He had to take out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

    Boehner’s memoir is set to be released on April 13.

    Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/john-boehner-mitch-mcconnell-emotions-feelings-lockbox-2021-4