US death toll from COVID-19 hits 900,000, sped by omicron
Propelled in part by the wildly contagious omicron variant, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000.
The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Indianapolis, San Francisco, or Charlotte, North Carolina.
The milestone comes more than 13 months into a vaccination drive that has been beset by misinformation and political and legal strife, though the shots have proved safe and highly effective at preventing serious illness and death.
“It is an astronomically high number. If you had told most Americans two years ago as this pandemic was getting going that 900,000 Americans would die over the next few years, I think most people would not have believed it,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
He lamented that most of the deaths happened after the vaccine gained authorization.
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Emboldened China opens Olympics, with lockdown and boycotts
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the Winter Olympics open Friday night, inviting the world back — sort of — for the pandemic era’s second Games, this time as an emboldened and more powerful nation whose government’s authoritarian turn provoked some countries’ leaders to stay home.
China used its first Olympics in 2008 to amplify its international aspirations. This time, in a ceremony held in the same lattice-encased Bird’s Nest stadium that hosted the inaugural event of that year’s summer Games, it presented a more confident, and defiant, face to the world.
Athletes Zhao Jiawen and Dinigeer Yilamujiang delivered the Olympic flame. The choice of Yilamujiang, a member of the country’s Uyghur Muslim minority, was steeped in symbolism: Western governments and human rights groups say the Beijing government has oppressed Uyghurs on a massive scale.
With the flame lit, Beijing became the first city to host both winter and summer Games. And while some are staying away from the second pandemic Olympics in six months, many other world leaders attended the opening ceremony. Most notable: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met privately with Xi earlier in the day as a dangerous standoff unfolded at Russia’s border with Ukraine.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach addressed assembled athletes: “Dear fellow Olympians: Your Olympic stage is set.”
Olympic Updates: Xi to meet with leaders of Serbia, Egypt
BEIJING (AP) — The Latest on the Beijing Winter Olympics:
Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet with his counterparts from Egypt and Serbia on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic are among more than a dozen world leaders who attended the opening ceremony Friday night.
Xi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the opening.
Pence: Trump is ‘wrong’ to say election could be overturned
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday directly rebutted Donald Trump’s false claims that he somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply “wrong.”
In a speech to a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump’s intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that, as vice president, he had the unilateral power to prevent President Joe Biden from taking office.
“President Trump is wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election.”
Pence’s declaration marked his most forceful response yet to Trump, who has spent his post-presidency fueling the lie that the 2020 campaign was stolen from him. And it comes as Pence begins laying the groundwork for a potential run for president in 2024, which could put him in direct competition with his former boss, who is also teasing a comeback run.
The already strained relationship between the two men further deteriorated this week as Trump escalated his attacks on Pence.
Parents: Amir Locke ‘executed’; mayor halts no-knock entries
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis mayor imposed a moratorium on no-knock warrants Friday, two days after a SWAT team entered a downtown apartment and killed Amir Locke, a 22-year-old Black man who his parents said was “executed” after he was startled from a deep sleep and reached for a legal firearm to protect himself.
Mayor Jacob Frey said while the moratorium is in place, he and police leadership will review and revise department policy with the help of two experts who helped shape Breonna’s Law, the ban on no-knock warrants that was imposed in Louisville, Kentucky, following the death of Breonna Taylor in a botched raid at her home in 2020.
“No matter what information comes to light, it won’t change the fact that Amir Locke’s life was cut short,” Frey said in a statement.
Locke’s parents, Andre Locke and Karen Wells, described him Friday as respectful, including to police, and said some of their relatives work in law enforcement. Wells said the couple coached their son on how to act and do “what they needed to do whenever they encountered police officers” because of the danger to “unarmed Black males.”
“My son was executed on 2/2 of 22,” Wells said. “And now his dreams have been destroyed.”
GOP censures Cheney, Kinzinger as it assails Jan. 6 probe
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Republican National Committee censured two GOP lawmakers on Friday for participating on the committee investigating the violent Jan. 6 insurrection and assailed the panel for leading a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
GOP officials took a voice vote to approve censuring Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at the party’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City. The censure was approved a day after an RNC subcommittee watered down a resolution that had recommended expelling the pair from the party.
The censure accuses Cheney and Kinzinger of “participating in a Democrat-led persecution.”
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel denied that the “legitimate political discourse” wording in the censure was referring to the violent attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and said it had to do with other actions taken by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. But the resolution drew no such distinction.
RNC members take issue with what they see as the overly broad subpoenas, including one for Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward. Ward, an osteopathic doctor, sued to block the subpoena and argues that providing her phone records would compromise patients’ privacy.
Biden sees US economy as powering past the pandemic
WASHINGTON (AP) — That bleak jobs report the White House had been bracing for never arrived Friday.
Instead, President Joe Biden got the pleasant surprise that the U.S. economy had powered through the omicron wave of the coronavirus and posted 467,000 new jobs in January — along with strong revisions to job gains in the two prior months. It showed just how much the pandemic’s grip on the economy has faded, though the nation is still grappling with high inflation.
“Our country is taking everything that COVID has to throw at us, and we’ve come back stronger,” Biden declared at the White House.
The jobs report suggested the United States has entered a new phase in its recovery from the pandemic. And it capped something of a comeback week for the president.
Also on Friday, the House passed a bill to jumpstart computer chip production and development, a key step for reconciling differences with an earlier measure approved by the Senate. And a day earlier, outside the economy, the administration announced that U.S. forces had raided the home of the Islamic State leader, leading Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi to blow himself up.
In opening of Winter Olympics, chances at politicking abound
BEIJING (AP) — For all the talk of a diplomatic boycott, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has managed to attract a globe-spanning roster of presidents, royals and other dignitaries to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
The fact that most of them represent countries that are unlikely to win any medals — if they’re even competing at all — doesn’t seem to matter.
What does, from Beijing’s perspective, is presenting an image that China has emerged as a global power whose authoritarian style of government can go head-to-head with a world dominated by the U.S. and its fellow democracies.
“There is a strong authoritarian tilt among the list of leaders attending,” said Andrew Yeo, a politics professor at The Catholic University of America and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It’s a much different list of global leaders when compared with the attendees of Biden’s Summit for Democracy last December.”
The guest list for Friday includes Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose tens of thousands of troops are poised for a possible invasion of Ukraine. Also here: the heads of a good chunk of the rest of the former Soviet Union and the unelected rulers of several energy-rich Gulf Arab states. That leaves plenty of room for diplomatic intrigue and backroom deal-making for those making the trip.
Venezuela upholds long jail sentences for US oil executives
MIAMI (AP) — A court in Venezuela has upheld long prison sentences for six American oil executives detained in the South American country on corruption charges for more than four years.
Venezuela’s supreme court announced the ruling late Friday, disappointing family members who had hoped the surprise decision last fall to hear the appeal, and a recent jailhouse visit by a top State Department official, signified President Nicolás Maduro’s government was looking to release the men as part of a gesture to engage the Biden administration in talks over U.S. sanctions.
The court didn’t provide any information on its decision, and the order itself was not immediately available. Venezuela’s judicial system is stacked with pro-Maduro officials who routinely issue decrees in accordance with the president’s viewpoints.
The men known as the Citgo 6 — for the Houston oil company where they worked — were lured to Caracas around Thanksgiving in 2017 to attend a meeting at the headquarters of Citgo’s parent, state-run oil giant PDVSA. Once there, heavily armed masked security officers stormed the conference room where they were gathered and hauled them away. Later they were charged with corruption in connection to a never-executed plan to refinance billions in bonds.
The executives appeared in November before a three-judge appeals panel in the same week as the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention took up the case of Tomeu Vadell, one of the six detainees. Five of the men are dual Venezuelan-American nationals who had lived in the U.S. for many years, while one, former Citgo president Jose Pereira, is a permanent U.S. resident.
Waffle House shooter found guilty on 4 counts of murder
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A man who shot and killed four people at a Nashville Waffle House in 2018 was found guilty on four counts of first-degree murder Friday by a jury that rejected his insanity defense.
Travis Reinking, 33, did not dispute the details of the shooting, which was caught on surveillance video and witnessed by numerous people.
Naked save for a green jacket, Reinking opened fire inside the restaurant just after 3:20 a.m. on April 22, 2018, killing Taurean Sanderlin, 29; Joey Perez, 20; Akilah Dasilva, 23; and DeEbony Groves, 21. He fled after restaurant patron James Shaw Jr. wrestled his assault-style rifle away from him, triggering a manhunt.
Reinking looked in the direction of his parents, sitting in the gallery, after the jury read the first of 16 guilty verdicts, but otherwise showed minimal reaction. Meanwhile, survivors of the shooting and family members sitting across the aisle audibly gasped, crying and hugging as they left the courtroom.
“True justice is having my son here,” Dasilva’s mother, Shaundelle Brooks, told reporters after the verdict. “This is the closest (thing) to true justice.”
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