Local teens testing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine; early results met with excitement

Local teens testing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine; early results met with excitement

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  • U.S. FDA to scrutinize vaccine design behind COVID-19 shots linked to blood clots

    With two COVID-19 vaccines now under scrutiny for possible links to very rare cases of blood clots in the brain, U.S. government scientists are focusing on whether the specific technology behind the shots may be contributing to the risk. In Europe, health regulators said last week there was a possible link between the AstraZeneca Plc vaccine and 169 cases of a rare brain blood clot known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), accompanied by a low blood platelet count, out of 34 million shots administered in the European Economic Area. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday recommended temporarily halting use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after reports of six cases of CVST in women under age 50 among some 7 million people who received the shot in the United States.

  • Former 'Bachelor' lead Nick Viall met his new girlfriend after she slid into his DMs on Instagram

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  • Kate could act as peacemaker between William and Harry on day of Prince Philip's funeral

    The Duke of Cambridge will not be reunited with Prince Harry until the day of their grandfather's funeral, when the Duchess of Cambridge is expected to act as peacemaker between the royal brothers. The siblings are understood to have spoken on the telephone since Harry landed in the UK on Sunday, and hope to finally see each other in the flesh on Saturday morning, ahead of the 3pm ceremony at Windsor Castle. It will be their first face-to-face meeting in more than a year and comes after Harry and Meghan gave an interview to the US chat show host Oprah Winfrey suggesting an unnamed royal had queried Archie's skin tone and describing William as "trapped" in the monarchy. Sources close to both couples insist that they will be putting their differences aside for the sake of the Queen as the family gathers at St George’s Chapel to remember the Duke of Edinburgh, who died on Friday, aged 99.

  • Trump caught on audio mocking Michelle Obama’s looks to giggling GOP hierarchy at Mar-a-Lago

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  • Fact check: Viral image does not show President Joe Biden apologizing to George Floyd's child

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  • Daunte Wright news – latest: Kim Potter flees home as unrest expected ahead of charging decision Wednesday

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  • Queen will have to sit alone at Prince Philip's funeral because of strict Covid rules

    The Queen faces the prospect of having to sit on her own during the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral because of strict Covid rules, it has emerged. The law states that anyone attending a funeral must stay at least two metres apart from anyone who is not part of their household, meaning all members of the Royal family will have to spread out in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. The Queen is not eligible to be in a support bubble because she does not live on her own, meaning the only person who could sit with her during the service would be a member of her Windsor Castle staff. The Duke’s private secretary, Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell, is expected to be one of the 30 mourners allowed at the ceremony, and as a member of “HMS Bubble” at Windsor may be the only attendee eligible by law to sit with the Queen.

  • The US is sending 500 extra troops to Germany, Defense Secretary Austin says, as Russia amasses troops at Ukraine's border

    Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made the announcement in Berlin on Tuesday, saying it would strengthen defense in Europe.

  • Russia says troop buildup near Ukraine is a response to NATO

    Russia's defense minister said Tuesday that the country's massive military buildup in the west was part of readiness drills amid what he described as threats from NATO. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the maneuvers in western Russia that have worried neighboring Ukraine and brought warnings from NATO would last for another two weeks. Speaking at a meeting with the top military brass, Shoigu said the ongoing exercise was a response to what he claimed were continuous efforts by the United States and its NATO allies to beef up their forces near Russia's borders.

  • Pfizer is ramping up vaccine production and will meet its goal of 300 million doses 2 weeks early, its CEO says

    Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Twitter that his company was ramping up production of its COVID-19 vaccine.

  • Companies that have containers on the Ever Given could have to help pay the up to $1 billion Egyptian authorities are demanding before the ship leaves the Suez Canal

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  • A venomous snake — with no known antivenom — bites San Diego Zoo employee

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  • St. Vincent seeks water, funds as volcano keeps erupting

    Leaders of volcano-wracked St. Vincent said Tuesday that water is running short as heavy ash contaminates supplies, and they estimated that the eastern Caribbean island will need hundreds of millions of dollars to recover from the eruption of La Soufriere. Between 16,000 to 20,000 people have been evacuated from the island’s northern region, where the exploding volcano is located, with more than 3,000 of them staying at more than 80 government shelters. “The volcano caught us with our pants down, and it’s very devastating,” he said.

  • Top Kremlin Mouthpiece Warns of ‘Inevitable’ War With U.S. Over Another Ukraine Land Grab

    ALEXEY NIKOLSKYAll-out cyberwarfare, nation-wide forced blackouts, and the targeted disruption of internet services—for one of the Kremlin’s top propagandists, all of those tactics are fair game in what she describes as a fated war-to-come against the U.S.“War [with the U.S.] is inevitable,” declared Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the state-funded Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik, who believes the conflict will break out when, not if, Vladimir Putin moves to seize more territory from Ukraine.As Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s doorstep mounts, Kremlin loyalists have been urging for even more overt aggression and bloodshed in the campaign to annex Ukraine’s Donbas region. The only thing standing in the way, they say, is U.S. support for their beleaguered neighbor.NATO issued a statement on Wednesday demanding an end to Russia’s troop movements on the border with the disputed territory of Donbas in eastern Ukraine. It is the largest buildup of Russian troops since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The U.S. underlined the statement this week by deploying two warships to the Black Sea.On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened retaliation. “We warn the United States that it will be better for them to stay far away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast. It will be for their own good,” he said.The escalation was foreshadowed on state television’s Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev over the weekend. Simonyan explained that it was time for Russia to gear up for a showdown against the U.S., and prophesized a kind of war driven by hacking, the forced disruption of internet access, the shutting down of power supplies, and an all-out offensive on U.S. infrastructure.“I do not believe that this will be a large-scale hot war, like World War II, and I do not believe that there will be a long Cold War. It will be a war of the third type: the cyberwar,” said Simonyan.She warned that—in this theoretical battle—the U.S. would plot to cut off the electricity of entire Russian cities. In turn, she speculated, Moscow would be able to force a blackout in Florida or New York’s Harlem at the flip of a switch.“In conventional war, we could defeat Ukraine in two days,” Simonyan said, “but it will be another kind of war. We’ll do it, and then [the U.S.] will respond by turning off power to [the Russian city] Voronezh,” she said.The top RT editor asserted that “[Russia] needs to be ready for this war, which is unavoidable, and of course it will start in Ukraine,” arguing that the Kremlin is “invincible where conventional war is concerned, but forget about conventional war... it will be a war of infrastructures, and here we have many vulnerabilities.”Her solution consists of Stalin-type measures to eliminate “vulnerabilities” in the run-up to another escalation, emphasizing the need for a hack-proof, government-controlled internet. “We still don’t have a sovereign internet, but God willing, we will,” she said.She wholeheartedly endorsed a suggestion from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, who argued that all of Russia’s opposition must be eliminated by May 1, 2021. With imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on a hunger strike—and suffering from severe health ailments after being denied appropriate medical treatment—the Kremlin seems to be firmly set on that course.Simonyan argued that once Russia minimizes its vulnerabilities and renders Putin’s opposition powerless—which she argued could happen in a matter of months—the Kremlin will finally be ready to annex Ukraine’s eastern region.“I’ve been agitating and even demanding that we take Donbas. We need to patch up our vulnerabilities as fast as we can, and then we can do whatever we want,” she boldly proclaimed. The host, Vladimir Soloviev, wholeheartedly agreed: “We only lose if we do nothing.” He argued that by absorbing parts of Ukraine—or the entire country—Russia would be able to remove the zone of American influence further away from its borders.As one of the Kremlin’s most valued propagandists, Margarita Simonyan is notoriously close to the Russian president and has received multiple awards directly from Putin. After accepting one such award in 2019, Simonyan thanked Putin “for the most important reward in life… this honor to serve one’s Motherland.”Her “service” has involved RT and Sputnik-driven disinformation operations aimed at influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which she often boasts about by pointing to the inclusion of her name in various U.S. intelligence reports.Russia’s recent cyberspace activities seem to serve as good practice for the “inevitable war” foreshadowed by Simonyan.Last year, six Russian intelligence officers were criminally charged by the U.S. for using the world’s most destructive malware to force blackouts in Ukraine and damage the critical infrastructure of multiple countries, which caused nearly $1 billion in losses. On Monday, hackers operating from Russia targeted France’s homeschooling platform.The Kremlin is prepared to intensify its offensive against the West but fears the retaliation that would follow. The idea of a bulletproof “sovereign internet”—completely under government control within Russian borders—is already on the books, with Moscow having introduced the idea as a preventive measure against retaliatory hacking attempts from other nations.Simonyan argued that Russia will surely be able to exploit the U.S.’s “catastrophic” educational standards, and referred to American military analysts and specialists as incompetent and stupid. She heartily laughed about news that more than 200,000 U.S. service members experienced hearing loss due to defective earplugs.“We can never come to any agreements with [Americans],” Simonyan said, arguing that instead, Russia can just as easily defeat the U.S. in a cyberspace war.She added, mockingly, “We don’t even need the nukes.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • People who got blood clots after a Johnson & Johnson vaccine got them within two weeks of their COVID-19 shot

    Of the 6.8 million people who've received a Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, six people subsequently developed CVST blood clots.

  • Fox News Host Tries and Fails to Bait Jon Stewart Into Attacking Biden

    After decades of mercilessly “eviscerating” Fox News during his time as host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart has made a surprising number of appearances on that network in years, almost exclusively to promote his activism around issues like medical benefits for 9/11 first responders and now veterans who were exposed to “burn pits” in Iraq and Afghanistan.The comedian remained dead serious on Tuesday when he joined Fox host Martha MacCallum to explain why he was in Washington lobbying for a bill that would provide aid to veterans affected by that toxic exposure.“If a senator or a representative is unsure of the science, let’s go dig a 10-acre burn pit in their town, light it on fire with jet fuel and see how quickly the health effects come to the forefront,” Stewart said at one point, as the Fox host nodded along sympathetically.But before their time was up, MacCallum just couldn’t help but try to goad Stewart into playing into the Fox News narrative about the Biden administration’s proposed spending. “You know, you see the trillions that we’re talking about spending for a lot of different things right now, for COVID, for infrastructure,” she said. “How does that make you feel about what you’re pushing for here?”Instead of taking the bait, Stewart completely turned the argument back around, pointing out that the money it would take to handle the burn pit problem is “dwarfed” by these other concerns, essentially making it a no-brainer.“Listen, just even at the Pentagon, you’re talking about $750 billion, $800 billion a year,” he explained, adding that what he and his fellow advocates are asking for is a “fraction of that to implement the card and benefits that these folks have already earned.”“Very true,” MacCallum, replied before thanking Stewart for his work and inviting him to come back on Fox News when the time comes to promote his upcoming AppleTV+ show The Problem with Jon Stewart. He didn’t make any promises.Lewis Black Sounds Off on Trump, Jon Stewart, and Almost Getting Pushed Out of ‘The Daily Show’Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Why younger women have a higher risk of blood clots, whether or not they're vaccinated

    J&J's COVID-19 vaccine is linked to rare, serious blood clots. All occurred in women under 48, who are more likely to experience clots anyway.

  • 'Big Bang Theory' star Mayim Bialik says she's 'tried very hard' to be in a superhero movie or TV show

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  • Blue Jays OF Teoscar Hernández tests positive for virus.

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