Guess who pays for all those millions of COVID-19 vaccines

Then there's the matter of what the obligations these companies have when it comes to providing vaccines not only to U.S. citizens but to the rest of the world. Note that the fight against COVID-19 also entails tests and medicine, but I'm just going to focus on vaccines, as it's a critical and deep topic that also happens to be rich with drama. First you should know that the U.S. government has been in the business of funding vaccines long before COVID-19.

Epstein houseman describes ‘degrading’ regimen imposed by Ghislaine Maxwell at mansion

Ghislaine Maxwell was a boss who made almost impossible demands. No detail was too small — from ensuring that every tissue box was full to checking for holes in Epstein's fence so that Maxwell's Yorkie, “Max,” wouldn't escape. Maxwell — Epstein's former girlfriend — was Epstein's “number 2” and managed Epstein's households, doing most of the hiring and firing of the staff for his homes in Palm Beach, New Mexico, New York and on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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  Ex-Epstein staffer testifies accusers visited mansion

  Associated Press Videos
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  ‘$100 Bills in Every Car’: Ex-Epstein Employee Details Ghislaine Maxwell’s Demands

  Rolling Stone

Watch mountain lion stare down pup through glass door of Colorado home. ‘Really scary’

When Sarah Bole got home from work one evening this week, she was greeted by a mountain lion on her patio. Her 13-year-old Shih-Poo was in a stare-down with the cougar from the comfort of its home in Grand Lake, Colorado, Bole told Storyful. The mountain lion stared back, video recorded by Bole shows.

Sanders to Biden: Cut back looming Medicare premium hike

Sen. Bernie Sanders is asking the White House to cut back a big Medicare premium hike set to take effect in weeks and tied to a pricey Alzheimer's drug whose benefits have been widely questioned. In a letter Friday to President Joe Biden, the Vermont Independent called on the president to act immediately to prevent the portion of an “outrageous increase” in Medicare premiums that's attributable to Aduhelm, a newly approved Alzheimer's medicine from drugmaker Biogen, priced at $56,000 a year. If Biden agreed and found a way to do it, a planned January increase of $21.60 a month to Medicare's “Part B” premium for outpatient care would be slashed closer to $10.

Plumber finds cash, checks behind loose toilet in wall at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church

Envelopes full of cash and checks were found behind a loose toilet by a plumber doing repairs at celebrity televangelist Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Texas, according to church officials. The plumber detailed the bizarre discovery, made on Nov. 10 at the Houston megachurch, on the morning show of 100.3 The Bull, a country music radio station in the city. There was a loose toilet in the wall, and we removed the tile,” the caller said, NBC affiliate KPRC reported.

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  Plumber's find possibly tied to 2014 Texas megachurch theft

  Associated Press
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  Plumber finds 500 envelopes full of checks, cash inside church bathroom

  The Hill

Creatures in Wisconsin river are ‘pushing the limits’ at 100 years old, state says

The spectaclecase mussel is known for having a lengthy lifespan, but the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says it has found a bunch above the St. Croix Falls dam that are at least a century old. That means they were born around the time Warren G. Harding was president of the 48 United States of America, Amelia Earhart bought her first plane and Albert Einstein got a Nobel Prize in Physics. Native mussels can live a long time, but these mussels were pushing the limits,” Wisconsin DNR biologist Lisie Kitchel said in a news release.

MH370: Could missing Malaysian Airlines plane finally be found?

He combined different data sets that were previously kept in separate domains, to align to this new location in the Southern Indian Ocean. Mr Godfrey said it was a "complicated exercise", but previously there was simply a lack of lateral thinking, across multiple disciplines, to bring this together. "No one had the idea before to combine Inmarsat satellite data, with Boeing performance data, with Oceanographic floating debris drift data, with WSPR net data," he said.

Kamala Harris' staffers leaving White House in part because they fear being labeled 'Harris person': report

A new report revealed that departing staffers for Vice President Harris are leaving their White House posts in part due to concerns of being forever labeled a "Harris person." A growing list of Harris staffers are heading out the door amid internal chaos and disastrous poll numbers. The concern of being labeled a "Harris person," as well as burnout and desire for greener pastures, are driving the exodus from the vice president's office, sources familiar with the chaos in the VP's office told Axios.

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  Top aide to Kamala Harris expected to leave White House in second high-level departure from VP's office

  NBC News
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  Burnout, money, fear drive turnover in Harris's office

  Axios

Montana inmate confesses to 1968 slaying, dismemberment

A Montana prison inmate serving a 100-year sentence for killing his wife in 1983 has confessed to strangling, sexually assaulting and dismembering a 19-year-old Helena woman 15 years earlier, authorities said Friday. Courtney Brooke Atlas, 79, confessed to killing Pamela Ann Dorrington, who disappeared in 1968. Part of her torso was found near the boat dock at Gates of the Mountains Marina on Holter Lake four months later.

An Italian man tried to trick a nurse into injecting the COVID-19 vaccine in a rubber foam arm he was wearing under a theater corset to finesse a vaccine pass

A man in Italy tried to trick a nurse into injecting the COVID-19 vaccine into a rubber foam arm, according to The New York Times. The nurse caught him, because she saw it peering under the theater corset he wore to hide it. The man was trying to score a vaccine pass without actually getting a shot amid new rules in Italy.

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  Italian dentist presents fake arm for vaccine to get pass

  Associated Press
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  Italian anti-vaxxer tried to trick nurse with fake arm to get Covid pass without a jab

  The Telegraph

Can you spot the rattlesnake in this photo? Many missed it hiding in an Arizona yard

A 3-foot rattlesnake would seem unmissable in a yard, but a photo taken by an Arizona snake wrangler shows how easily they can blend into landscaping. The image, taken in the backyard of a Tuscon home, features a western diamondback that is tough to see at first glance. It was shared on Facebook by Rattlesnake Solutions, a snake relocation service that invited viewers to find the snake.

Omicron variant may have picked up a piece of common-cold virus

The Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 likely acquired at least one of its mutations by picking up a snippet of genetic material from another virus - possibly one that causes the common cold - present in the same infected cells, according to researchers. This genetic sequence does not appear in any earlier versions of the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, but is ubiquitous in many other viruses including those that cause the common cold, and also in the human genome, researchers said. By inserting this particular snippet into itself, Omicron might be making itself look "more human," which would help it evade attack by the human immune system, said Venky Soundararajan of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based data analytics firm nference, who led the study https://osf.io/f7txy posted on Thursday on the website OSF Preprints.

Elderly Asian man who was kicked while in his walker at the beginning of COVID faces attacker in court

Nearly two years after an attack that required multiple stitches to his head, an 84-year-old Asian man reportedly met his alleged attacker for the first time in court on Thursday. The event: Rong Xin Liao was waiting for a bus near Eddy and Leavenworth Streets in Tenderloin, San Francisco on Feb. 20, 2020, when a man darted out and kicked him on his seated walker. Eric Ramos Hernandez, 24, was eventually arrested and charged in connection with the incident.

Disney fires beloved performer and dog after nearly two decades on Hilton Head resort

“We became like family to each other, and they really meant it,” Ayres said. Ayres, known as B'Lou Crabbe to his loyal fans, and his dog, Shadow, a golden retriever, have been fixtures at Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort for nearly two decades. Ayres declined to reveal Shadow's age because “the last time I asked a girl how old she was, I nearly got bit,” he said.

Tori Spelling shares her plastic surgery plans so she can 'dress sexy'

Tori Spelling is going back under the knife to have her "expired" and "recalled" breast implants removed. During a recent appearance on "Jeff Lewis Live" on SiriusXM's Radio Andy, the 48-year-old revealed her she plans to undergo surgery in February 2022 and have her current breast implants removed. The "Beverly Hills 90210" alum said she will have them replaced with bigger ones that will actually "look smaller" due to their new and improved shape.

‘I was terrified.’ Hunter shoots deer, watches as bears pounce on it in Pennsylvania

A moment of triumph turned frightening for one Pennsylvania hunter, when she downed her first deer and watched as a group of bears surrounded it and started eating. It happened Sunday, Nov. 28, when Jordan Zabinski was hunting with her husband, Mark Zabinski, in the La Jose area, about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Closer inspection of one video shows there may have been as many as five bears, including two cubs, she says.

Arlington man gets 23 years for killing his wife who asked for divorce day after wedding

A Tarrant County jury on Friday convicted an Arlington man of murder for strangling his wife in their apartment in 2019 just days after she arrived in Texas. Hours later, jurors sentenced 39-year-old Tareq Alkayyali to 23 years for the murder of his wife, who had asked for a divorce a day after their wedding in 2018, prosecutors told the jury. Alkayyali was found guilty of murder Friday morning in Criminal District Court No. 396 in Fort Worth.

Deal reached to reduce Yellowstone's bison herd by 600-900

Officials have agreed to allow as many as 900 bison from Yellowstone National Park to be shot by hunters, sent to slaughter or placed in quarantine this winter in a program that seeks to prevent the animals from spreading a disease to cattle. An additional 200 bison among the park's more than 5,000 bison could be captured or hunted in the late winter if those numbers are met, federal, tribal and state officials agreed in a meeting Wednesday. Bison routinely leave Yellowstone and head north into Montana each winter, raising concerns that the animals could spread brucellosis to cattle.

Candace Owens Dubbed the Mouthpiece for Right Wing Agenda After Making Claims About the ‘Most Murderous’ Group In America: ‘That’s Why They Bring Out Candace’

Candace Owens' data regarding which racial group is the most violent in America has landed her in hot water following an appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” The network's go-to Black conservative claimed that Black people “are the most murderous group” in the nation. The FBI has been warning about the danger of white supremacy groups for over a decade.

Suze Orman Says This Is the Only Asset Class That Has a Track Record of Beating Inflation — So Don't Give Up on It Just Yet

With soaring inflation no longer "transitory," according to the Fed, Americans are preparing for their purchasing power to take another hit. “Over the long-term stocks have produced the best gains after factoring in inflation,” wrote Orman in a blog post this past summer. “Bonds and cash struggle to keep pace with inflation; only stocks have a track record of earning more than inflation.”

Boy who survived gondola crash returns to Italy after custody battle

A six-year-old boy, the sole survivor of an Italian cable car disaster who was kidnapped and taken to Israel by his grandfather, flew back to Italy on Friday night following a nearly three-month custody battle, the boy's aunt said. Israel's Supreme Court this week rejected a request by Eitan Biran's maternal grandfather to appeal previous court rulings which said the boy must be sent back to his paternal aunt in Italy. It ordered him returned by Dec. 12.

Michigan Burger Restaurant Sued for Looking Too Similar to In-N-Out

The Southern California-based burger chain is beloved by many, but is also no stranger to controversy. Beyond suing other burger restaurants, they've also gotten embroiled with delivery services and even a dry cleaners to protect their brand identity. Michigan's Doll n' Burgers — which launched in May of last year and operates two locations, one in Tecumseh and one in Jackson — has been sued by In-N-Out due to its overall look, according to The Daily Telegram.

Fact-check: Are vaccinated people dying at a faster rate than unvaccinated people?

Viral Facebook post: COVID-19 death rates in England are higher among vaccinated people than unvaccinated. PolitiFact's ruling: False Here's why: Referencing one chart in a 30-page report while omitting important context, bloggers falsely claimed in an article that COVID-19 death rates in England are much higher among vaccinated people than unvaccinated. The article included the headline, "COVID death rates 4 to 1, vaccinated to unvaxxed."

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  Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines safe for children, not linked to deaths

  USA TODAY
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  Germany announces lockdown for unvaccinated people

  KCPQ

Sri Lankan manager killed by mob of workers at Pakistan factory

A mob of factory employees in eastern Pakistan tortured and burned a Sri Lankan manager on Friday over apparent blasphemy in a "horrific" attack that Prime Minister Imran Khan said brought shame on the country. A police official in the eastern town of Sialkot, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said investigators believed the attackers had accused the manager of blasphemy for tearing down a poster with Islamic holy verses. "The factory workers tortured the manager," said provincial government spokesman Hassan Khawar.

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  Pakistan police: Mob kills Sri Lankan over alleged blasphemy

  Associated Press
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  Police: Pakistan detains scores in lynching of Sri Lankan

  Associated Press