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.

A veteran Taco Bell worker of 20 years says he quit because customers have gotten so 'unreasonable' and hard to deal with

A Taco Bell manager is leaving after 20 years for a non-food service job. Workers are also burnt out and pushed to their limits, he says. After 20 years of working at Taco Bell, a worker told Insider that he's leaving because customers have gotten too difficult in the past year.

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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  Scenes from Week 1 of Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-abuse trial

  Associated Press

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Trump-loving former KKK leader who was jailed for beating a Black man is running for office as a Republican in Georgia, report says

Chester Doles is running as a Republican for a spot on the Lumpkin County Board of Commissioners. Doles was jailed in 1993 after being convicted of beating a Black man in Maryland. Chester Doles, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance, is running for office as a Republican in Georgia, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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.

White House blames Republicans for prolonging the pandemic

With the Omicron variant of the coronavirus having made landfall in the United States and with public discontent with the economy on the rise, the White House blamed Republicans for its woes. “There are some forces against us,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki conceded at a Friday afternoon press briefing, which followed a lackluster November jobs report, as well as the fact that coronavirus infection rates are rising across much of the country. With only 60 percent of Americans vaccinated and Omicron likely able to break through natural immunity from a previous coronavirus infection, those rates could rise ever higher.

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

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.

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.

Elon Musk suggests that anyone over the age of 70 should be barred from running for political office

Elon Musk suggested that an age limit should be set for running for political office. The Tesla CEO tweeted on Thursday, calling for those over the age of 70 to be barred. Elon Musk recently suggested that anyone over 70 years old should be barred from running for political office.

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  Elon Musk says the first Tesla Cybertruck will be a four-motor variant

  Engadget
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  Elon Musk says the first Tesla Cybertrucks will have 4 motors and be able to 'drive diagonally like a crab'

  Business Insider

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.

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.

Hawaii under blizzard warning as 12 inches of snow and winds up to 100 mph expected

The National Weather Service has issued a blizzard warning until Sunday morning on the Big Island of Hawaii. NWS also warns residents to stay indoors as forecasters predict winds gusting over 100 mph. Aside from the blizzard warning, a Kona low is expected near the islands starting on Saturday night.

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  Watch snow fall on Hawaii's dormant volcano

  Reuters Videos
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  Forecasters predicting snow in Hawaii

  NBC News

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.

‘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.

Suze Orman says this is the only asset class with a track record for 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.”

'I relive it daily': Woman describes trauma of being taken off a plane in Qatar and internally examined after authorities found an abandoned newborn baby

One of those women told Insider of the experience and said she relives the trauma daily. On October 2, 2020, Mandy was sitting on a plane in Doha, Qatar, to Jakarta when she was asked to get off, escorted by armed guards into an ambulance on the tarmac, and given an invasive gynecological search against her will — all without being told what was happening. She's now one of multiple women preparing to take legal action against Qatar Airways, Doha's Hamad International Airport, and the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority.

U.S. House panel postpones Trump official's deposition on medical grounds

The U.S. congressional committee probing the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol said the deposition of Jeffrey Clark, a senior Justice Department official under former President Donald Trump, has been postponed due to a medical condition. "Through his attorney, Mr. Clark has informed the Select Committee of a medical condition that precludes his participation in tomorrow's meeting and he has provided ample evidence of his claim," the House of Representatives Select Committee said on Friday, adding it had agreed to postpone the deposition until Dec. 16. The panel had been expected to ask Clark about allegations that he tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election.

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  House select committee investigating Jan. 6 votes to hold former DOJ official in contempt

  Yahoo News Video
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  Jan. 6 panel postpones deposition with former DOJ official

  Associated Press