AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
US awaits word on 2nd vaccine as COVID-19 outbreak worsens
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. stood on the verge of adding a second COVID-19 vaccine to its arsenal Friday as the outbreak passes through its most lethal phase yet, with the nation regularly recording over 3,000 deaths per day.
The Food and Drug Administration was evaluating a shot developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health and was expected to give it the green light soon, clearing the way for its use to begin as early as Monday.
That would give the U.S. a critical new weapon against the coronavirus in addition to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine now being dispensed to millions of health care workers and nursing home patients as part of the biggest vaccination drive in American history.
The go-ahead from the FDA would mark the world’s first authorization of Moderna’s shots. Large but unfinished studies show that both vaccines appear safe and strongly protective, though Moderna's is easier to handle, since it does not need to be kept at ultra-frozen temperatures. Both require two doses for full protection.
A second vaccine represents a ray of hope amid despair as the virus continues to spread unabated even before holiday gatherings that are certain to fuel the outbreak.
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Shutdown deadline looms over COVID-19 relief talks
WASHINGTON (AP) — With a key issue proving difficult to resolve, a midnight government shutdown loomed ominously closer Friday though congressional negotiators seemed tantalizingly close to agreement on an almost $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package. An air of exhausted frustration infused the Capitol.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said early in the day he was “even more optimistic now than I was last night," but Democrats launched a concerted campaign to block an effort by Republicans to rein in emergency Federal Reserve lending powers. They said the GOP proposal would deprive President-elect Joe Biden of crucial tools to manage the economy.
Believing a deal could be reached Friday "would be a triumph of hope over experience," said a downbeat No. 2 Senate Republican, John Thune of South Dakota.
Government funding lapses at midnight, and a partial, low-impact shutdown would ensue if Congress failed to pass a stopgap spending bill before then. House leaders hoped to pass a two-day stopgap spending bill before then, said an Appropriations Committee spokesman, but Senate passage was by no means certain.
Senators including Josh Hawley, R-Mo., were demanding to see what's in the bigger COVID-19 package before they would agree to the stopgap bill, keeping the pressure on if the COVID-19 talks haven't borne fruit by the deadline.
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With Trump silent, reprisals for hacks may fall to Biden
WASHINGTON (AP) — All fingers are pointing to Russia as the source of the worst-ever hack of U.S. government agencies. But President Donald Trump, long wary of blaming Moscow for cyberattacks, has been silent.
The lack of any statement seeking to hold Russia responsible casts doubt on the likelihood of a swift response and suggests any retaliation — whether through sanctions, criminal charges or cyber actions — will be left in the hands of President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.
“I would imagine that the incoming administration wants a menu of what the options are and then is going to choose,” said Sarah Mendelson, a Carnegie Mellon University public policy professor and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council. “Is there a graduated assault? Is there an all-out assault? How much out of the gate do you want to do?”
To be sure, it's not uncommon for administrations to refrain from leveling public accusations of blame for hacks until they've accumulated enough evidence. Here, U.S. officials say they only recently became aware of devastating breaches at multiple government agencies in which foreign intelligence agents rooted around undetected for as much as nine months.
But Trump's response, or lack thereof, is being closely watched because of his preoccupation with a fruitless effort to overturn the results of last month's election and because of his reluctance to consistently acknowledge that Russian hackers interfered in the 2016 presidential election in his favor.
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1 in 5 prisoners in the US has had COVID-19, 1,700 have died
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — One in every five state and federal prisoners in the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus, a rate more than four times as high as the general population. In some states, more than half of prisoners have been infected, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project.
As the pandemic enters its 10th month — and as the first Americans begin to receive a long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine — at least 275,000 prisoners have been infected, more than 1,700 have died and the spread of the virus behind bars shows no sign of slowing. New cases in prisons this week reached their highest level since testing began in the spring, far outstripping previous peaks in April and August.
“That number is a vast undercount,” said Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Venters has conducted more than a dozen court-ordered COVID-19 prison inspections around the country. “I still encounter prisons and jails where, when people get sick, not only are they not tested but they don’t receive care. So they get much sicker than need be,” he said.
Now the rollout of vaccines poses difficult decisions for politicians and policymakers. As the virus spreads largely unchecked behind bars, prisoners can’t social distance and are dependent on the state for their safety and well-being.
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Myon Burrell enjoys 1st days of freedom after prison release
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — For nearly two decades, Myon Burrell had nothing but time.
Locked up for life at 16 for a high-profile murder he swore he had nothing to do with, he was stuck in a tiny cell without even a window to watch the seasons change. The years dragged on slowly, and he saw the bodies of once-robust men age and decay.
Still, he couldn’t help wishing that the outside world would slow down. In the Stillwater prison visiting room and in family photographs, his own son seemed to grow overnight from toddler to teen to man.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, everything changed. In the wake of an investigation by The Associated Press and APM Reports that raised grave doubts about his conviction, the Minnesota Board of Pardons said Burrell could go home.
With no opportunity for real goodbyes, men in his unit rattled their bars or reached out their hands, wishing him well as he passed. Within hours, he walked out the prison’s front door into the frigid air, relatives and supporters swarming around him and chanting “Myon’s free! Myon’s free!”
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Biden may time confirmation votes to protect House majority
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to tap several House Democrats for administrative positions is putting Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a politically tough spot, having chiseled away at the party’s already slimming majority and leaving her potentially without enough votes to pass his legislative agenda.
Democrats already were heading into the new Congress with a razor-thin margin over Republicans. But Biden’s overture to a third lawmaker, Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., as the history-making first Native American interior secretary, set off a fresh round of pained conversations on what to do. Pelosi will start the Biden era with a narrow majority, 222-211, with a few races still undecided.
But Pelosi's leadership team has a plan.
“We need to manage something like this,” Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democratic whip and a top Biden ally, said in an interview with The Associated Press this week.
According to Clyburn, an emerging strategy is to stagger the confirmations: Biden would hold off on formally submitting the nominations all at once so the House numbers don't immediately drop.
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Watchdog: Floyd protests overwhelmed NYPD, sparking conflict
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department was caught off guard by the size of the spring protests after the killing of George Floyd and resorted to aggressive disorder control methods that stoked tensions and stifled free speech, the city's inspector general said in a report released Friday.
The Department of Investigation report followed a six-month probe that focused on the NYPD’s institutional planning and response to the May and June protests after Floyd's killing by police in Minneapolis, rather than on the actions of individual officers.
It criticized tactics that included trapping demonstrators with a technique called kettling, making mass arrests, using pepper spray and batons, and detaining protesters for hours. Too few officers were deployed early in the demonstrations, the report said.
The report also found that Mayor Bill de Blasio's decision to impose a nightly curfew after two days of looting exacerbated conflicts between demonstrators and police officers, who were given mixed messages on how it was to be enforced.
De Blasio's executive order said the curfew applied to everyone, with exceptions for essential workers. In subsequent public statements, he said the curfew wouldn't apply to “peaceful protesters."
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College students recruited as teachers to keep schools open
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — As the coronavirus sidelines huge numbers of educators, school districts around the country are aggressively recruiting substitute teachers, offering bonuses and waiving certification requirements in order to keep classrooms open.
Coming to the rescue in many cases are college students who are themselves learning online or home for extended winter breaks.
In Indiana, the 4,400-student Greenfield-Central school district about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Indianapolis made a plea for help as its substitute pool shrank. “I said, ’If you’ve got a student who’s in college, maybe they’d like to work even a two-month thing for us - which would be a stopgap, no doubt - but it will help us a whole, whole bunch,” said Scott Kern, the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation director of human resources.
Over a dozen college students answered the call including his own daughter, 19-year-old Grace Kern, who is studying medical imaging technology at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. She has been working in elementary school classrooms, helping students as teachers offer instruction remotely via a screen inside the room.
“My dad told me that a bunch of teachers are out and they’re struggling to get substitutes in. And I was like, ‘Well, all my classes are online, except for one, so I have the time to do it.’ And I would hate for the schools and the students to struggle,” she said.
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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week
Here's a look at false and misleading claims circulating as the United States rolled out the newly authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to some health care workers and others. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
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Alabama nurse did not die as a result of receiving COVID-19 vaccine
CLAIM: A 42-year-old nurse in Alabama died after she received the COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday.
THE FACTS: No health care workers died after Alabama began administering COVID-19 vaccines to them on Tuesday. Yet posts online began falsely claiming that a nurse had died after receiving the vaccine. The posts circulated on Facebook and Twitter, with some users suggesting it was their aunt who had died or they had received the information from a close friend. Social media users shared screenshots of text messages that said, “omg just found out my aunt dead,” and also said that the woman’s family did not want her name revealed. Some online posts suggested a nurse who died of COVID-19 had instead died after receiving the vaccine. The posts were shared by accounts that had previously shared anti-vaccine misinformation. “And so it starts... A 42 y/o nurse in Alabama found dead 8-10 hours after the va((ine,” one post on Facebook said. After being contacted by the AP, Alabama Department of Public Health officials checked with the hospitals that administered the COVID-19 vaccine to confirm that the information being shared online was false. The department released a statement on social media to combat the misinformation. “The posts are untrue,” the department said. “No persons who received a COVID-19 vaccine in Alabama have died.” The posts online claimed that the nurse had died from a severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis. Those with a history of allergic reactions are being told to not get the vaccine after two health care workers in England suffered reactions. Those two people have since recovered. Pfizer, whose vaccine was granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 11, has reported no serious adverse effects from its clinical trials. The AP reported Tuesday that Alabama received nearly 41,000 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine in its initial round of shipments, which were delivered to 15 hospitals that could store that vaccine at the necessary temperature. More than 4,254 people have died from the virus in the state, and more than 305,640 have tested positive for COVID-19, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins.
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Visit by COVID-infected official closes Washington Monument
The Trump administration abruptly closed the Washington Monument over exposure concerns from a recent visit by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who tested positive this week for the coronavirus.
Interior spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said Friday “a couple” of employees have quarantined since Bernhardt's visit, “resulting in a temporary workforce reduction at the monument and its temporary closure." The park service posted a brief notice of the closure on its website sometime Thursday.
An official with an independent advocacy group for national parks and park workers on Friday criticized Bernhardt, saying the interior secretary had failed to protect health and safety overall during the pandemic .
Bernhardt had been slow to allow closing of national parks to limit infection among park employees, visitors and local residents, said Kristen Brengel, a vice president of the National Parks Conservation Association. National park employees also have expressed concern at he and other Interior officials continuing to visit national parks and other federal sites during the pandemic, Brengel said.
“It really is putting your own interest over the health and safety of park staff, is what it comes down to,” she said.