White House
US unveils strategy for global vaccine sharing with Bangladesh, India on list
The US Administration has unveiled its strategy for global vaccine sharing through COVAX, keeping Bangladesh and India on the list.
The Biden-Harris Administration on Thursday announced an allocation plan for the first 25 million doses to be shared globally.
Approximately 7 million doses will be shared in Asia covering countries and entities, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Maldives, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and the Pacific Islands, according to White House.
As they continue to fight the Covid-19 pandemic at home and work to end the pandemic worldwide, US President Joe Biden has promised that the United States will be an arsenal of vaccines for the world.
Also read: COVAX Facility: Japan to provide 30mn vaccine doses to other countries
To do that, the administration will pursue several additional measures beyond their robust funding for COVAX: Donating from the US vaccine supply to the world and encouraging other nations to do the same, working with US manufacturers to increase vaccine production for the rest of the world, and help more countries expand their own capacity to produce vaccines, including through support for global supply chains.
This vaccine strategy is a vital component of our overall global strategy to lead the world in the fight to defeat Covid-19, including emergency public health assistance and aid to stop the spread and building global public health capacity and readiness to beat not just this pandemic, but the next one.
The administration announced its framework for sharing at least 80 million US vaccine doses globally by the end of June and the plan for the first 25 million doses.
The United States will share vaccines in service of ending the pandemic globally.
Also read: Vaccine maker Serum seeks indemnity protection in India
The administration announced its framework for sharing these 80 million US vaccine doses worldwide.
Biden directs US to mitigate financial risk from climate
President Joe Biden is directing federal agencies to develop a comprehensive strategy to identify and manage financial risks to government and the private sector posed by climate change.
An executive order Biden issued Thursday calls for concrete steps to mitigate climate risks, while protecting workers’ life savings, spurring job creation and helping the United States lower greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
New regulations could be issued on the banking, housing and agriculture sectors, among others.
“Extreme weather related to climate change can disrupt entire supply chains and deprive communities of food, water or emergency supplies,″ the White House said in a statement Thursday.
Snowstorms can knock power grids offline, while floods made worse by rising sea levels can destroy homes and businesses.
Read: Biden hails Israel-Hamas cease-fire, sees ‘opportunity’
The new strategy is intended to identify public and private financing needed to mitigate such risks and help safeguard Americans’ financial security, the White House said.
Biden has made slowing climate change a top priority and has set a target to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by up to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. He also has said he expects to adopt a clean energy standard that would make electricity carbon-free by 2035, along with the wider goal of net-zero carbon emissions economywide by 2050.
The executive order directs White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy and economic adviser Brian Deese to develop a government-wide strategy within four months to identify and disclose climate-related financial risks. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the White House Office of Management and Budget also would be involved, while the Labor Department will analyze how to protect pensions from climate-related risk.
Yellen also will be directed to share climate-related financial risk data and issue a separate report within six months.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has already begun work on potential regulations that would require companies to disclose risks related to global warming, while Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said his agency has begun taking steps to assess climate change-related risks to the banking system.
Whether through rising seas or extreme weather, climate change “already presents increasing risks to infrastructure, investments and businesses. Yet, these risks are often hidden,” the White House said.
“From signing a loan for a new home or small business to managing life savings or a retirement fund, it is important for the American people to have access to the information needed to understand the potential risks associated with these significant financial decisions,” the administration explained.
The new executive order “ensures that the right rules are in place to properly analyze and mitigate these risks″ and disclose them to the public, “empowering the American people to make informed financial decisions,″ the White House said.
Read: US civil rights leader urges Biden To give 60 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to India
Environmental groups hailed the executive order, saying Biden recognizes the enormous risks posed by climate change.
“The Biden administration affirmed today it recognizes that corporate disclosure and voluntary commitments alone are not sufficient for addressing systemic climate risks and that regulators must act,″ said Ben Cushing, a financial advocacy campaign manager for the Sierra Club.
Twelve Republican senators wrote a letter to Powell earlier this year accusing the central bank of moving “beyond the scope of the Federal Reserve’s mission” by increasing scrutiny of climate threats.
Kid reporter who interviewed Obama at White House dies at 23
The student reporter who gained national acclaim when he interviewed President Barack Obama at the White House in 2009 has died of natural causes, his family says.
Damon Weaver was 23 when he died May 1, his sister, Candace Hardy, told the Palm Beach Post. Further details were not released. He had been studying communications at Albany State University in Georgia.
Weaver was 11 when he interviewed Obama for 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Room on Aug. 13, 2009, asking questions that focused primarily on education. He covered school lunches, bullying, conflict resolution and how to succeed.
Weaver then asked Obama to be his “homeboy,” saying then-Vice President Joe Biden had already accepted.
“Absolutely,” a smiling Obama said, shaking the boy’s hand.
Read:Biden opens 'Obamacare' window for uninsured as Covid-19 rages
He used that meeting to later interview Oprah Winfrey and athletes like Dwyane Wade.
“He was just a nice person, genuine, very intelligent,” Hardy said. “Very outspoken, outgoing. He never said no to anybody.”
Weaver got his start in fifth grade when he volunteered for the school newscast at K.E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary in a farm community on the shores of Lake Okeechobee.
“Damon was the kid who ran after me in the hall to tell me he was interested,” his teacher, Brian Zimmerman, told the Post in 2016. “And right away, I just saw the potential for the way he was on camera. You could see his personality come through. He wasn’t nervous being on camera.”
Prospects dim for passage of LGBTQ rights bill in Senate
Controlling Congress and the White House for the first time in a decade, Democrats were hopeful that this would be the year they finally secured civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans.
Then came a new debate over women’s and girls sports.
Legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is running aground in the Senate, partly knocked off course by the nationwide conservative push against transgender participation in girls and women’s athletics that has swept state legislatures and now spilled into the halls of Congress.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the House-passed legislation would “in effect repeal Title IX” by making it easier for transgender women to play on girls teams. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., said that allowing “male-bodied athletes” to compete against females would “totally undermine” girls basketball. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., said the bill would “decimate” female athletic competition.
Also read: LGBTQ Catholics stung by Vatican rebuff of same-sex unions
Democrats are frustrated by the shift in the debate, saying there’s ample evidence that the Republican claims are false and overblown.
The International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to compete for years under specific parameters, and, to date, there have been no known transgender women compete in the Olympics. Only one known transgender woman has competed at the Division I level in the NCAA. And though legislators in around 30 states have introduced legislation to ban or limit transgender athletes from competing on teams that align with their gender identity, few lawmakers have been able to cite specific cases in their home states where it became an issue.
“We are waiting for this avalanche of problems,” said the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, characterizing the Republicans’ argument. “They haven’t really surfaced.”
But Republicans are unyielding in their opposition to the legislation, spurred on by conservative groups who are pushing anti-transgender laws nationwide. With no Republicans signed on, for now, Democrats are unlikely to win the 60 votes needed to pass the Equality Act, potentially putting the issue in limbo indefinitely.
“It’s very discouraging, but in many ways not surprising, that Republicans are so focused on the trans community to build up opposition,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I. He called the GOP arguments over sports a solution in search of a problem.
Also read: In blue and red states, milestone wins for LGBTQ candidates
Sports are just the latest front in the decadeslong GOP culture war over LGBTQ rights that has focused increasingly on transgender Americans since 2015, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Conservative groups including The Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance and the Christian legal network Alliance Defending Freedom have been engaged for much of the past two decades in advocacy against the LGBTQ rights movement. An earlier push by those groups to enact laws requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate sputtered amid backlash.
Republicans contend the Equality Act would open the floodgates for transgender girls and women to play on female sports teams and hurt others’ chances to compete. While the bill does not explicitly mention sports or touch Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination, they say extending the protections to gender identity would eliminate “private spaces” for cisgender women, including sports teams.
They have repeatedly pointed to one example in Connecticut, where two transgender high school runners in Connecticut won several championships. A lawsuit filed by the runners’ teammates was recently thrown out.
“I have to say, as the father of two young girls, that girls sports has had a profound impact in their lives,” Cruz said at a hearing on the bill.
“The discipline, the teamwork, the camaraderie, the competitiveness, that girls sports teaches, is effectively destroyed from this bill.”
Christiana Holcomb, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, contends that the Equality Act would supersede Title IX “and force vulnerable girls to share intimate spaces with men who identify as female.”
GOP opposition to the bill goes beyond sports, however. Republicans have stalled earlier iterations of the legislation while making different arguments, including that it would infringe on religious freedom.
Also read: LGBTQI facing discrimination, harassment amid Covid-19 lockdown in Myanmar: UN
Democrats say that none of those objections hold weight and that it’s long past time to make clear that the nation’s civil rights laws explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identification. Passage of the law would outlaw discrimination in employment, housing, loan applications, education, public accommodations and other areas, as it did for women and racial minorities in an earlier era.
President Joe Biden pushed for the bill in his address to Congress last month, speaking directly to transgender Americans “watching at home, especially young people, who are so brave. I want you to know, your president has your back.”
The lead sponsors of the bill, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Cicilline, say they know they have work to do. Merkley says he is working with Republicans and civil rights organizations “to find a path forward that will bring senators together behind a vision of full equality for LGBTQ Americans.”
The legislation has support from the Women’s Sports Foundation, a group that has advocated for women’s and girls sports for more than 40 years. The group says the GOP narrative on transgender athletes is a distraction from more important issues, including pay inequity and the harassment and abuse of female athletes.
“Let us be clear, there are many real threats to girls’ and women’s access and opportunity in sports,” the group said. “However, transgender inclusion is not one of them.”
Many of the state legislators who have pushed the bills to ban transgender girls from competing on girls sports teams couldn’t cite any local examples, according to a review by The Associated Press in March. The AP reached out to two dozen state lawmakers sponsoring such measures as well as the conservative groups supporting them and found only a few times it’s been an issue among the hundreds of thousands of American teenagers who play high school sports.
Stella Keating, a 16-year-old transgender girl from Washington state, testified to the Senate that she wanted to join her school’s bowling team because her friends were on it.
“I can tell you that the majority of transgender people who join sports just want to hang out with their friends,” Keating said. “And that’s basically it.”
White House offers new tax credit to help spur vaccinations
President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced new employer tax credits and other steps to encourage people reluctant to be inoculated to get the COVID-19 vaccine as his administration tries to overcome diminishing demand for the shots. The moves came as Biden celebrated reaching his latest goal of administering 200 million coronavirus doses in his first 100 days in office.
With more than 50% of adults at least partially vaccinated and roughly 28 million vaccine doses being delivered each week, demand has eclipsed supply as the constraining factor to vaccinations in much of the country.
In a White House speech on Wednesday, Biden acknowledged entering a “new phase” in the federal vaccination effort that relies on increased outreach to Americans to get their shots, both to protect them and their communities.
“Vaccines can save your own life, but they can also save your grandmother’s life, your co-worker’s life, the grocery store clerk or the delivery person helping you and your neighbors get through the crisis,” Biden said. “That’s why you should get vaccinated.”
Also read: At ‘moment of peril,’ Biden opens global summit on climate
Over the past week, the pace of inoculation in the U.S. has slowed slightly. That is partly a reflection of disruptions from the “pause” in administration of the Johnson & Johnson shot for a safety review, but also of softening interest for vaccines in many places even as eligibility has been opened to all those older than 16.
As the vaccination program progresses, the administration believes it will only get more difficult to sustain the current pace of about 3 million shots per day. Roughly 130 million Americans have yet to receive one dose.
Surveys have shown that vaccine hesitancy has declined since the rollout of the shots, but administration officials believe they have to make getting vaccinated easier and more appealing, particularly for younger Americans who are less at risk from the virus and do not feel the same urgency to get a shot. That means providing incentives and encouragement to get vaccinated, as well as reducing the friction surrounding the vaccination process.
Biden announced a tax credit for small businesses to provide paid leave for those getting vaccinated or potentially needing to take time off to recover from side effects. Paid for through the $1.9 trillion virus relief package passed last month, the tax change would provide a credit of up to $511 per day, per employee for businesses with fewer than 500 workers to ensure that those workers or businesses don’t suffer a penalty by getting vaccinated.
The White House is urging larger employers, which have more resources, to provide the same benefits to their workers, and educate them about the shots and encourage them to get vaccinated.
“We’re calling on every employer, large and small, in every state, give employees the time off they need with pay to get vaccinated,” Biden said.
Also read: Hitting latest vaccine milestone, Biden pushes shots for all
According to the White House, just 43% of working adults have received at least one shot.
As Biden celebrated the vaccine milestone, there is a different reality in the states.
In Iowa, nearly half of the counties are not accepting new doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from the state’s allotment because demand has fallen off. In Florida, Palm Beach County plans to close mass vaccination clinics at the end of May with thousands of available vaccine slots unclaimed. In rural West Virginia, a vaccine clinic at a casino/race track parking garage is opening shots to out-of-state residents to address lagging demand. The hope is that people from Washington, D.C., make the hour’s drive to get vaccinated. In Arizona, a plan collapsed that would have opened a federally run vaccine site in Tucson; demand is slipping and county officials preferred more targeted, mobile locations.
Asked about the dip in vaccinations, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said “fluctuation is not uncommon” and that “what we want to do is continue to encourage Americans to continue to get vaccinated.”
“The pace of vaccination isn’t linear,” Becerra said, adding that “we are on a pretty good pace.”
Through its partnership with more than 40,000 retail pharmacies, the White House says more than 90% of Americans now live within 5 miles of a vaccination site. The administration is encouraging state and local efforts to bring vaccines directly to people, whether through initiatives reaching the homebound or clinics at large employment sites.
Many states have also begun to open up vaccination sites to walk-in appointments, reducing reliance on often-cumbersome reservation systems.
Maximizing the number of Americans vaccinated in the coming months is critical for the White House, which is aiming to restore a semblance of normalcy around the July Fourth holiday and even more so by the beginning of the next school year.
Administration officials have been careful to avoid predicting when the country will have vaccinated enough people to reach herd immunity — when enough people become immune to a disease to make its spread unlikely. The U.S. is on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult by the end of May and for every American by July, but administering the shots will be another matter.
With its stockpile secure and demand dropping at home, the president spoke again of sharing excess doses with allies.
Biden said he talked with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for about 30 minutes on Wednesday. “We helped a little bit there, we’re going to try to help some more,” Biden said, referring to his decision last month to share about 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada. “But there’s other countries as well that I’m confident we can help, including in Central America. But it’s in process.”
Also read: Biden to America after Floyd verdict: ‘We can’t stop here’
He added. “We don’t have enough to be confident to send it abroad now. But I expect we’re going to be able to do that.”
Biden set his goal of 200 million shots last month after meeting his 100 million-in-100 days goal just over a month ago. That original benchmark was announced Dec. 8, days before the U.S. had even one authorized vaccine, let alone the three that have now received emergency authorization. Still, it was generally seen within reach, if optimistic.
By the time Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, the U.S. had already administered 20 million shots at a rate of about 1 million per day, bringing complaints at the time that Biden’s goal was not ambitious enough. Biden quickly revised it upward to 150 million doses in his first 100 days.
Biden, Harris and others to promote relief plan's benefits
Let the sales push begin.
Microsoft server hack has victims hustling to stop intruders
Victims of a massive global hack of Microsoft email server software — estimated in the tens of thousands by cybersecurity responders — hustled Monday to shore up infected systems and try to diminish chances that intruders might steal data or hobble their networks.
Officers maced, trampled: Docs expose depth of Jan. 6 chaos
Two firefighters loaned to Washington for the day were the only medics on the Capitol steps Jan. 6, trying to triage injured officers as they watched the angry mob swell and attack police working to protect Congress.
Will Trump run for U.S. president in 2024?
Former U.S. President Donald Trump over the weekend hinted at a possible 2024 White House run. But with four years until the elections, it remains unclear whether that will occur.
Dhaka conveys coolness towards security sphere cooperation with Washington
Bangladesh has conveyed to the United States that it is giving much focus on infrastructure development for overall economic growth of the country and showed no interest towards security aspects of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS).