National News - Page 168

Pfizer, Moderna Show Strong COVID-19 Vaccine Results in Kids

By Susannah Cullinane, As the number of new daily cases of Covid-19 continues to fall in the US, the country awaits a major milestone that could provide another critical tool in the fight against the pandemic — the first vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. And Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner and current Pfizer board member, said the company is ready to ship out doses for children as soon as the agency signs off. The FDA’s independent vaccine advisory board plans to meet Tuesday to discuss whether the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine should be authorized

DOJ: Utah School District Ignored Years of Racial Harassment

By Nicole Chavez, Black and Asian American students were harassed at a school district in Utah for years and officials deliberately ignored complaints from parents and students, a federal civil rights investigation found. The Justice Department detailed the disturbing pattern at the Davis School District in Farmington, Utah in a report and settlement agreement released this week. The agency had been investigating the school district since July 2019. Black students were called the n-word, told “you are my slave” by other students and told their skin was dirty or “looked like feces” numerous times. Meanwhile, Asian American students were called slurs and told to “go back to China,”

Florida DOE Warns Centner Academy Over Vaccine Quarantine Rule

By Rebekah Riess and Gregory Lemos, The Florida Department of Education on Thursday sent a letter to the Centner Academy, a Miami private school with a controversial policy for students who get vaccine shots. Centner Academy has asked parents to keep their children home for 30 days if their child has received a Covid-19 vaccine dose, according to a letter sent to parents and obtained by CNN affiliate WSVN. The letter cites false and disproved claims about the impact of the inoculation. The school had previously made unsubstantiated claims about adverse reactions non-vaccinated people could have by “interacting with people who have

Neera Tanden Named White House Staff Secretary After OMB Bid

By Kevin Liptak and Jeremy Diamond, Neera Tanden was named White House staff secretary on a morning staff call on Friday, a person familiar with the matter and a senior White House official said, after her nomination to be President Joe Biden’s budget chief was pulled earlier this year when key senators balked at some of her past tweets. Since her nomination was pulled, Tanden has worked in the White House on communications efforts surrounding Biden’s economic agenda. The White House staff secretary is a behind-the-scenes but critical role in the West Wing, responsible for managing paper flow to the President from other areas

CDC Approves Moderna, J&J Boosters and Mix-and-Match Option

By Maggie Fox, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky endorsed recommendations for booster doses for Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccines Thursday, allowing millions more Americans to begin getting booster shots. Walensky also endorsed the mix-and-match approach to boosters, saying eligible people could choose whichever vaccine they wished as a booster. The CDC re-aligned its recommendation for the existing recommendation for Pfizer boosters, placing Moderna’s and Pfizer’s boosters in the same category. “For individuals who received a Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the following groups are eligible for a booster shot at 6 months

Pfizer Booster Shows 95.6% Efficacy in Phase 3 Covid Trial

By Jacqueline Howard, A booster dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine was found to have a high efficacy — 95.6% — against Covid-19 in a Phase 3 trial, the companies announced on Thursday. They noted that “efficacy was consistent irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity or comorbid conditions.” The trial included more than 10,000 fully vaccinated people, age 16 and older, who randomly received either the 30-microgram booster dose of vaccine or a placebo. The median time between completing their initial second dose of vaccine and receiving a booster or placebo was about 11 months, the companies said. Pfizer and BioNTech reported

Biden Urges Americans to Seek Mental Health Support Amid Covid

By Kate Sullivan, President Joe Biden said Thursday a lot of Americans are feeling “down” because of the pandemic and anxious about the future — particularly heading into the holiday season — and urged those struggling with mental health issues to seek help if they need it. “How many people do you know — and maybe some in this audience — who because of what you’ve been through, a loss of a husband, wife, brother, mother, father, son, whatever, or you’ve had something that’s really impacted you with Covid, that you really find yourself just down?” Biden told Anderson Cooper at a CNN Town Hall. The President said: “There’s a lot

ACLU Demands Action After Arrest of 10-Year-Old Black Girl

By Jenn Selva, Joe Sutton and Nicole Chavez, The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii is demanding policy changes after a 10-year-old Black girl was arrested at school over a drawing linked to a “run of the mill” dispute among children. In response to the incident, the ACLU sent a letter Monday to the Honolulu Police Department, the state Department of Education and the state attorney general’s office asking them to adopt policy changes, expunge all records of the arrest, and to pay $500,000 in damages for “harm and suffering” caused by their agencies. In January 2020, a parent called the Honowai Elementary School

Black Borrowers Urge Full Student Loan Debt Cancellation

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By Nicquel Terry Ellis, Black borrowers say policymakers have ignored the racial and economic evidence of inequality in student loan debt with the majority insisting that canceling all student debt is the best solution to the crisis, according to a new report released Wednesday by The Education Trust. The report, which focuses on the perspectives and life experiences of nearly 1,300 Black borrowers, likened the disparities to “Jim Crow.” Many respondents believed student loans were not set up to give Black Americans financial freedom and they disrupt their quality of life and mental health, according to the findings. Some of the key findings

Biden Plans Covid-19 Vaccines for Kids Ages 5 to 11

By Jeremy Diamond, Kaitlan Collins and Kate Sullivan, The White House on Wednesday unveiled its plans to roll out Covid-19 vaccines for children ages 5 to 11, pending US Food and Drug Administration authorization. The Biden administration has secured enough vaccine supply to vaccinate the 28 million children ages 5 to 11 who would become eligible for vaccination if the vaccine is authorized for that age group and will help equip more than 25,000 pediatric and primary care offices, hundreds of community health centers and rural health clinics as well as tens of thousands of pharmacies to administer the shots, according to

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