Vaccinations continue at Riviera Beach pod as eligibility expands next week

People who made appointments at the Wells H. Recreation Center today received the Moderna vaccine.

Recommended Stories

  • White nationalist website calls Tucker Carlson’s ‘replacement’ rant ‘one of the best things Fox News has ever aired’

    The Fox News host has won the praise of an officially designated hate group after appearing to endorse the racist ‘replacement’ theory

  • Internet freaks out over NYPD ‘black mirror’ robot dog, but should we be worried?

    ‘Get ready for terminators soon,’ was one reaction to a Facebook post of Digidog in action

  • Everything we know about six cases that paused the Johnson & Johnson rollout

    Decision comes ‘out of an abundance of caution’, the Food and Drug Administration says

  • Photo of dad sleeping on hospital floor goes viral

    ‘Kudos to single moms. I have a husband who cooks, cleans, does diapers and baths, and I’m still exhausted’

  • Costco has COVID vaccines — but only one South Florida store has appointments available

    Costco announced Monday that it has “a limited number” of COVID-19 vaccines and, in South Florida, that’s apparently very limited.

  • Joe Biden to 'withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11'

    The Biden administration plans to withdraw the last US troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks later this year, ending American involvement in its longest war. President Joe Biden is expected on Wednesday to announce that he will keep thousands of forces beyond the May 1 deadline that was negotiated last year with the Taliban, but will promise to be out by September 11, according to several reports. The US invaded the country shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings, marking the start of a decades-long “war on terror”. His predecessor, Donald Trump, had promised a swift drawdown but was urged by military advisers not to withdraw too quickly from the messy and intractable conflict.

  • Bunny snatched: Record-holding giant rabbit stolen in UK

    Darius, a Continental Giant rabbit, disappeared from his enclosure in a backyard in the village of Stoulton over the weekend, the West Mercia Police force said. The force appealed for any information about or sightings of Darius, who is gray-brown and 129 centimeters (4 feet, 3 inches) long at full stretch. Owner Annette Edwards, a large-rabbit breeder and model, urged the culprit or culprits to return Darius to his home 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of London, saying it was a “very sad day.”

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

    Follow live updates from Minnesota following protests overnight

  • Ted Cruz gets more than $5m in donations despite Cancun scandal

    Senator from Texas hauled in more than $5.3 million in 2021 first quarter

  • Climate change could cause a french fry shortage

    Researchers are attempting to breed a hybrid potato that is more resistant to climate change

  • Love Island: Could Tinder find the show's first gay couple?

    The ITV show has hooked up with the dating app to find this summer's hopeful singletons.

  • Lachlan Murdoch backs Tucker Carlson as host doubles down amid calls for his firing

    Fox News host under fire for defending white nationalist conspiracy theory

  • Court to rule on whether golf course can be booted off America’s Stonehenge

    Octagon Earthworks created to track lunar cycle by Native Americans 2,000 years ago

  • Daunte Wright: Obamas say police killing reveals ‘how badly we need to reimagine policing and public safety’

    Following ‘another senseless tragedy’, former first family stresses urgency for ‘nationwide changes that are long overdue’ to address racial inequities

  • Prince Harry remembers grandpa Philip as mischievous, unpredictable character

    WINDSOR, England (Reuters) -Prince Harry praised Prince Philip on Monday for his devotion to "granny" Queen Elizabeth, and described the late duke as a mischievous host who could captivate his guests with unpredictable remarks. Philip, husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth who had been at her side throughout her 69-year reign, died at Windsor Castle on Friday, aged 99. "Grandpa, thank you for your service, your dedication to Granny, and for always being yourself," Harry, who returned to the United Kingdom from Los Angeles for Philip's Saturday funeral, said in a statement.

  • Taliban Boycotts Key Peace Talks After U.S. Pull-Out Delay

    Andrew Renneisen/GettyHours after the Biden administration announced that the remaining 3,500 American troops will return from Afghanistan by the twentieth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Taliban spokesperson announced a refusal to join U.S.-facilitated peace talks between the Islamic group and the Afghan government.“Until all foreign forces completely withdraw from our homeland, the Islamic Emirate will not participate in any conference that shall make decisions about Afghanistan,” Mohammed Naeem, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s political arm, said on Tuesday.The boycott marks the latest blow to U.S. efforts to strike a deal between the militant group and the government ahead of a scheduled April conference in Istanbul that was viewed as pivotal to Washington’s residual vision for Kabul.Biden About to Make Huge, Last-Second Gamble on AfghanistanA formal Taliban response to the prospective U.S. pullout was not expected until Wednesday, when President Joe Biden is slated to formally announce the withdrawal in a speech. Aides said that, following a policy review, Biden decided to zero out forces several months after the original May 1 deadline that resulted from last year’s accord with the Taliban.A crucial unknown in the U.S. withdrawal plan was whether the Taliban will consider Biden to have broken that deal by staying beyond the agreed-upon May 1 date. Biden is gambling that a four-month unilateral delay will not prompt the Taliban into a return to violence against departing U.S. forces.Chris Kolenda, a retired Army colonel who has personally negotiated with the Taliban, cautioned that the Taliban have heard promises of U.S. withdrawal before. He expected the Taliban to require some form of additional material concession to accept a summertime withdrawal.“What happens if four months becomes six, and six becomes eight?” Kolenda asked.An ex-Taliban minister told The Daily Beast that the “Taliban is seriously disappointed with the U.S. for not obeying the historical Feb. 29, 2020 [deal] in which the U.S. made a clear commitment to pull out U.S. troops by the end of April 2021.” He explained that “by prolonging its presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. has shattered the Taliban’s trust.”The ex-minister, who currently serves as a member of the Taliban military commission, asserted that “[The Taliban] is not tired of war. We have time. The U.S. should leave Afghanistan to Afghans.”But Laurel Miller, a former State Department special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had expected the Taliban to accept the delay, provided they see real evidence of U.S. withdrawal coalesce imminently.“If it really looks certain that the U.S. is leaving by September, and the wheels will have to be in motion quickly—it will be in the interests of the Taliban to facilitate that, and that means not attacking U.S. forces on their way out,” Miller told The Daily Beast. “It’s also in their interest to preserve some possibility of good-enough relations with the U.S. and the rest of the world if and when they come to power.”Shortly after the U.S. withdrawal announcement, the United Nations, Turkey and Qatar announced that they will hold a long-anticipated conference on Afghanistan peace in Istanbul from April 24 to May 4, beyond the timeframe of the 2020 U.S.-Taliban accord. That conference is crucial to the Biden administration’s hopes of reaching a power-sharing deal between the government of Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban and staving off an outright battlefield victory and regime change by the Taliban.Yet it is that conference that Naeem said the Taliban will not attend.Biden has sought to end the U.S.’ longest overseas war, a war that he treated with skepticism and antipathy as vice president due to the U.S. inability to triumph. Last month he told ABC News it would be “tough” to withdraw by the negotiated May 1 deadline and criticized the U.S.-Taliban peace deal, brokered by the Trump administration.Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are scheduled to be in Brussels on Wednesday for discussions with NATO allies. They are expected to brief coalition partners on U.S. plans to withdraw.It remains to be seen whether Republicans and hawkish Democrats on Capitol Hill will resist the withdrawal. Public opinion supports ending the war. Think tanks influential in Washington largely do not. Fears of a post-American collapse of the Afghan government and security forces, justified by Taliban military advances even after the deal and persistent security-force weaknesses, have driven elite discussion of Afghanistan since Biden took office.Sen. Jim Inhofe, the senior Republican on the armed-services committee, objected to the withdrawal and called the peg to the 9/11 anniversary “not conditions based.” A senior administration official told reporters that was correct. “A conditions-based approach, which has been the approach of the past two decades, is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever,” the official said.Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), the only legislator to vote against the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, the legal wellspring of the Afghanistan war and other aspects of the post-9/11 “forever wars,” praised the apparent pullout. “This is the result of decades of hard work by activists, advocates, and members of Congress committed to ending our forever wars,” she said in a statement.Miller said that while the U.S., the United Nations and its allies will work diplomatically to sustain a peace effort with the objective of a power-sharing deal, “as soon as the words leave President Biden’s mouth and the effort turns to managing the withdrawal, the oxygen is going to be sucked out of the peace process. That probably suits the Taliban reasonably well at this stage.”The senior administration official also said that al-Qaeda currently lacks “an external plotting capability that can threaten the homeland.” Representatives from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA did not substantively respond to a query about whether they concur with that assessment. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director Bill Burns are set to testify on Wednesday before the Senate intelligence committee—which will become the first forum for legislators to stake out their positions on Biden’s withdrawal.Restraining any residual al-Qaeda presence on Afghan soil is the primary obligation on the Taliban under the 2020 accord. But the senior official indicated to reporters that while Afghanistan may soon no longer be a theater of the Forever War, Biden accepts that some version of the Forever War will continue. How much Biden will retain is the subject of a review currently underway by Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser.“In 2021, the terrorist threat that we face is real and it emanates from a number of countries—indeed a number of continents—from Yemen, from Syria, from Somalia, from other parts of Africa,” the official said. “And we have to focus on those aspects of a dispersed and distributed terrorist threat, even as we keep our eye on the ball to prevent the reemergence of a significant terrorist threat from Afghanistan through these repositioned counterterrorism capabilities.”Miller said that while the U.S., the United Nations and its allies will work diplomatically to sustain a peace effort with the objective of a power-sharing deal, “as soon as the words leave President Biden’s mouth and the effort turns to managing the withdrawal, the oxygen is going to be sucked out of the peace process. That probably suits the Taliban reasonably well at this stage.”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.

  • George Floyd’s Brother Breaks Down on the Stand: He ‘Was the Leader in Our House’

    Brandon Bell/GettyGeorge Floyd’s younger brother broke down in tears on the stand Monday as he recalled seeing his sibling for the last time at their mother’s funeral in 2018.“George just sat there at the casket... He would just say ‘mama, mama,’ over and over again,” Philonise Floyd, 39, told jurors in Hennepin County court on Monday. “And I didn’t know what to tell him, because I was in pain, too. We all were hurting. And he was just kissing her, and just kissing her. He didn’t want to leave the casket.”Two years later, his older brother died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes as he pleaded he couldn’t breathe and bystanders begged for mercy.Chauvin, 45, is now on trial for second and third-degree murder as well as second-degree manslaughter. Three other officers—Tou Thao, Thomas K. Lane, and J. Alexander Kueng—will face trial in August on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder while committing a felony, and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter with culpable negligence.Pulmonologist: Chauvin’s Knee on Floyd Was Akin to Having ‘a Lung Removed’Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s defense lawyer, has argued that Floyd’s death was partially a result of health issues and drugs—and that his client was simply doing what “he was trained to do throughout his 19-year career.” Several current and former Minneapolis police officials, as well as use-of-force experts, all testified on behalf of the government that not only did Chauvin not follow protocol during the May 25 arrest but his actions were “totally unnecessary.”As one of the final witnesses for the prosecution, Floyd’s brother’s gut-wrenching testimony gave jurors a sense of who Floyd was as a person. Breaking down at times, Philonise said his older brother loved to play Double Dribble on Nintendo and was “the leader in our household”—but a terrible cook.“He would always make sure that we had our clothes for school,” Philonise said. “He made sure that we all were going to be to school on time. And like I told you, George couldn’t cook. But he will make sure you have a snack or something to get in the morning. But he—he was one of those people in the community that when they had church outside, people would attend church just because he was there. Nobody would go out there until they seen him. And he just was like a person that everybody loved around the community.”“He just knew how to make people feel better,” he added.But after their mother died in 2018, Floyd had a hard time moving on, his brother said. Philonise said the “big mama’s boy” shared a special bond with their mother and taught his family to treat her with respect.That bond was apparent on May 25, when Floyd called out for his mother several times as Chauvin restrained him on the ground outside CupFoods. Over the last two weeks, several bystanders emotionally described to jurors how they repeatedly asked Chauvin to remove his knee and to check Floyd’s pulse during the arrest. Those witnesses included an off-duty Minneapolis firefighter and EMT—who said she was ignored after repeatedly offering her assistance—as well as an MMA fighter who tried to explain that Chauvin’s chokehold was cutting off Floyd’s circulation.Several teenagers also testified how they begged the officers to stop as Floyd was “gasping for air.”Chauvin ‘Absolutely’ Violated Policy When He Knelt on Floyd: Police ChiefHennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker, who wrote the controversial report on Floyd’s death, testified on Friday that the cops’ restraint “was just more than” Floyd could take. Baker, however, wouldn’t rule out the role of drugs and heart issues in Floyd’s death, providing a small glimmer of hope for Chauvin’s defense team after a devastating week of evidence in which the Minneapolis police chief said the former officer “absolutely” violated protocol, and three renowned medical experts said Floyd died of low oxygen caused by the cops’ actions alone.Cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Rich on Monday testified that Floyd died of “cardiopulmonary arrest” due low oxygen levels after being restrained. He said that while Floyd suffered from anxiety, substance abuse, and high blood pressure, he had an “exceptionally strong” heart and had no threatening conditions.“I can say to a high degree of medical certainty that George Floyd did not die from a primary heart event and he did not die from a drug overdose,” he said, later adding that he saw no evidence “to suggest that a fentanyl overdose caused Mr. Floyd’s death.”“I feel that Mr. Floyd’s death absolutely was preventable,” Rich said.During cross-examination, Nelson questioned Floyd’s high blood pressure—and whether he thought Floyd would have survived the arrest if he “had simply gotten in the back of the squad car?”“Had he not been restrained in the way in which he was, I think he would’ve survived that day,” Rich replied.The Hennepin County Medical Examiner previously concluded Floyd died of cardiac arrest from the restraint and neck compression, also noting that Floyd had heart disease and fentanyl in his system. An independent report commissioned by Floyd’s family, which will not be shown at trial, concluded that he died of strangulation from the pressure to his back and neck. Both reports determined Floyd’s death was a homicide.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.

  • Will Smith ‘Emancipation’ film heads to New Orleans, ditching Georgia over voting law

    The move was announced Tuesday afternoon.

  • As some NC schools seek to start earlier in August, tourism industry vows to fight

    On one side, schools have “ground to pick up.” On the other, “it should be labeled child abuse to send anybody back to school before Labor Day.”

  • Biden tells Putin to de-escalate troop build-up on Ukraine border and invites him to summit

    US president tells Russian counterpart he will not tolerate cyber-incursions or further election interference