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In the Northeast, where case counts are on the rise, adults will be able to register for appointments starting April 1 in Connecticut and April 2 in New Hampshire. On the opposite coast, California announced Thursday that adults ages 50 and older will be eligible for appointments starting April 1, with individuals 16 and older to follow on April 15.Other states are moving to make more groups eligible ahead of schedule, based on age or underlying conditions.

More states will join that list in the coming days. Starting March 29, for example, eligibility will expand to all adults in places like North Dakota, Louisiana, Ohio and Texas. Minnesota and Indiana will similarly expand access before the end of the month.

Alaska became the first state to make vaccinations available to all adults over the age of 16 earlier this month, followed by Mississippi. Several others have since followed suit, including Arizona, Utah, Indiana, Georgia and West Virginia.

New Jersey's governor said on Friday that people ages 55 and older, individuals over the age of 16 with intellectual and developmental disabilities, higher education employees and other essential workers will qualify starting April 5. Floridians ages 40 and older will be eligible beginning March 29, officials announced Thursday.

According to a map released by the White House COVID-19 Response Team on Friday, four states have yet to confirm plans to expand eligibility ahead of the May 1 deadline: New York, Wyoming, Arkansas and South Carolina, where officials have said they are not on track to hit that threshold until May 3.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the briefing that the country has seen an uptick in case counts and hospital admissions, with the most recent 7-day averages showing about 57,000 cases and 4,700 hospitalizations per day, and hospitalizations hovering around 1,000.

Noting the trajectory with concern, she implored listeners to "take this moment very seriously" and continue following public health guidance.

Friday's announcement comes a day after Biden declared a new goal of getting 200 million shots in arms by his 100th day in office, or the end of April. Federal officials said the country hit his initial target of 100 million doses last Friday, which was his 58th day in office.

The U.S. is administering 2.5 million shots a day at its current pace, Zients said, adding that vaccine makers are "setting and hitting targets." Some 27 million doses went to states, tribes and territories this week.

Johnson & Johnson has accelerated production of its single-shot vaccine and is on track to deliver 11 million doses next week. Zients expressed confidence that it will, and, in doing so, meet its goal of 20 million doses for the month of March.

“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic and it’s an international embarrassment,” Biden said last week

Biden’s recently unveiled executive actions include efforts to restrict weapons known as “ghost guns” that can be built using parts and instructions purchased online.

His announcement came after several high-profile mass shootings rocked the nation, including one at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, that killed 10 people and a shooting rampage in the Atlanta, Georgia, area that killed eight people.

Additionally, Sunday's incident follows a nationwide spike in fatal shootings. Last week, nine people were killed after a gunman opened fire at a rail yard in San Jose, Calif. The shooter was also reported dead.

he program began in 2007 and was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time. It was officially shut down in 2012, when the money dried up, according to the Pentagon. But Luis Elizondo, who ran the program at the time, said that he continued it until 2017. After the publication of a New York Times article later that year about the program and criticism from program officials that the government was not forthcoming about reports on aerial phenomena, the Pentagon restarted the program last summer as the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.

Officials briefed on the report said it also examined video that shows a whitish oval object described as a giant Tic Tac, about the size of a commercial plane, encountered by two Navy fighter jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

“We need vaccinators, people who put the shots in people’s arms.”

The White House says options to find vaccines nearby, both online and by phone, will launch by May 1 to make it easier for individuals to make vaccine appointments.

On April 13 the FDA and CDC recommended pausing use of the J&J vaccine "out of an abundance of caution" due to reports of a rare combination of blood clots and low platelet counts in some people who received the vaccine

which use a different vaccine technology.

“I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent,

Biden suggested that by July 4,

 New strains of the virus could emerge or become dominant, reducing efficacy of the vaccines

The CDC said the number of people missing doses — 5 million — may not be exact. If a person got the two doses from different reporting entities — for example, first from a state-run clinic and then from a local health clinic — the two doses may not have been linked by databases, a CDC spokeswoman said.

Several people have reported that they got their second shot at a different place than their first, and administrators at the first site contacted them repeatedly about making an appointment for a second shot, which had already been administered elsewhere.

But some people are certainly missing their second dose

When Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, got his second shot, "it was on a day that was horribly inconvenient, and I tried to move it around. They're like: You got to show up on this day at this time," he said.

The authors analyzed results from a survey of 1,027 US adults taken between February 11 and 15 through a panel created by the National Opinion Research Center.

Within the St. Luke's University Hospital Network in Pennsylvania, the success rate in getting people fully vaccinated is at 99%, said Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, an infectious diseases expert there, in part because the network made it easy to get the second appointment, assigning it when the first shot was given.

The network then followed up with multiple reminders of the appointment -- five days out, three days out and then the day before -- and those who were unable to keep that appointment were "given an easy methodology of changing it," Jahre said.

More than 43% of the US population has had at least one shot of a vaccine, and 30% are fully vaccinated,

But another reason people may be skipping the second dose is not understanding the importance of it or being misinformed. And that may be harder to fix.

Some people skip the second shot because they think the first one offers them sufficient protection

"My sense is, a lot of this is, it's hard to get. People miss appointments, people miss doctor's appointments," Jha said on a teleconference with reporters Tuesday.

About 20% of those surveyed believed the vaccines gave recipients strong protection after the first dose, and another 36% were unsure.Just 44% of vaccinated people reported that the vaccines conferred "strong protection" one to two weeks after the second dose, as the CDC guidelines state.

Earlier this year, there was a public debate among health officials about delaying second doses to focus on building partial immunity to a larger swath of the population before giving everyone the second dose.

In fact, the first dose just "primes the immune system, then the second shot sort of boosts it. This makes it a better option for obtaining immunity,"

"There's a 36-fold difference of getting fully vaccinated versus partially," Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a news briefing Friday.

And then there's the question of whether the country can obtain herd immunity -- meaning 70% to 85% of the population is immune -- if the number of people who don't get a second vaccine dose keeps rising.

People also need to know, according to Wen and others, is that if you are among the 8% who have gotten only one shot of Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, it may not be too late to get that second shot.

Many of Mr. Biden’s proposed tax increases should be defended, and even lauded, for they will promote greater fairness and curb inequality somewhat, but it must be recognized that they will do relatively little to offset spending pressures.

This “buy American” philosophy is well intentioned but could lead to counterproductive trouble, particularly since the president has promised that “no one making under $400,000 will see their federal taxes go up” — a pledge that takes raising taxes on the middle class, which has a higher marginal propensity to spend, off the table as a potential inflation offset.

President-elect Biden’s inclusion of policies to shore up the health law in his first major legislative package has raised those hopes further.

“We’re talking about improving affordability after not being able to have that conversation for years.”

One conducted in 2018 shows that 42 percent of those who shopped for individual market coverage found it “very difficult or impossible to find an affordable plan.”

The Biden plan would create a new cap — 8.5 percent of an individual or family’s income on premium contributions — for midlevel health plans, something the president-elect had also proposed during the campaign. This policy would mostly affect higher-earning Americans who do not currently qualify for subsidies.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that a family of four earning $110,000 would see monthly premiums for a midlevel health plan fall to $779 from $1,529.

These are low-income Americans, who make up the majority of those who still lack coverage in the United States. These people already receive help buying coverage, but are still left with paying a monthly premium share that can be unaffordable.

Numerous academic studies show that premium subsidies are the strongest driver of health law enrollment. Experts say this type of large increase, directed toward low-income Americans, could drive millions more to sign up.

“It’s important both in terms of helping people through this crisis, and as a sign of the seriousness with which he is considering the future of improvements to the Affordable Care Act,” she said. “This is a step in the right direction, and it’s certainly consistent with the bigger vision he campaigned on.”

One dynamic that really stood out to me today was Republicans being unwilling to abandon Donald Trump, even after he incited an attack on the Capitol. In the House, there’s a big reluctance to let go of Trump. Their voters are Trump voters. House districts are different than the whole states that senators represent. And I don’t think that these House Republicans are necessarily frightened of Trump; I just think they agree with him.

"I would like to thank President López Obrador of Mexico for the great cooperation we are receiving, and for right now putting 27,000 troops on our southern border," Trump told the United Nations General Assembly last month. "Mexico is showing us great respect, and I respect them in return."A few days later, Trump told reporters he was "using Mexico to protect our border" because Democrats weren't doing enough to fix the immigration system.

López Obrador has said he had no choice but to negotiate. "We represent our country with dignity, and we have nothing to be ashamed of," he said in September. "The sovereignty of Mexico is defended. At the same time, we do not want confrontation. We have a frank, open hand extended to all the governments of the world, and we embrace all the peoples of the world, and we are especially interested in a good relationship with the United States."

Nearly 15,000 troops are deployed to Mexico's northern border, where they've set up 20 checkpoints, Mexican Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said last week at a press briefing on the country's security strategy. At the southern border, 12,000 troops are deployed and have set up 21 checkpoints. Military helicopters regularly conduct aerial reconnaissance in both border regions, he said. So far, Cresencio said, more than 60,000 migrants have been intercepted as part of the effort.

“The Amazon is already 17% deforested, so when you calculate at the current rate of deforestation, this 20% to 25% is reached in 15 to 20 years,” he said. “I hope she is wrong. If she is right, it is the end of the world.”

Lovejoy, a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, said that de Bolle’s projection could come true because global heating, soaring deforestation and an increase in Amazon fires have created a “negative synergy” that is accelerating its destruction

The first woman to conduct a spacewalk was Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya in 1984, followed closely by NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan.

"The job that you do is incredible," President Donald Trump told them. "I'm thrilled to be speaking with two brave American astronauts making history

This is the first time for a woman outside of the space station

Koch and Meir spoke about women working in human spaceflight during a recent news conference.

"I think it's important because of the historical nature of what we're doing and that in the past, women haven't always been at the table,"

"There are a lot of people that derive motivation from inspiring stories from people that look like them and I think it's an important aspect of the story to tell,

Fellow NASA astronaut Drew Morgan, also currently on the station, tweeted in support of Koch and Meir during the walk. "So proud of my astrosisters @Astro_Christina and @Astro_Jessica! We've been training together since our selection in 2013, and now they're out on a history-making spacewalk! #AllWomanSpacewalk"

Koch and Meir replaced a faulty battery charge/discharge unit that failed to activate after a spacewalk on October 11, according to the agency.

The space station is powered by solar arrays and four sets of batteries

Luckily, the faulty unit hasn't changed anything for the astronauts or experiments on board.

Although floating in space looks easy, astronauts say that spacewalks are one of the most physically challenging things they can do, according to NASA.

For the intended spacewalk in March, Koch was going to be paired with astronaut Anne McClain

"However, individuals' sizing needs may change when they are on orbit, in response to the changes living in microgravity can bring about in a body," Dean said.

She and Koch have trained together for the past six years because they're members of the same astronaut class. Meir is set to spend more than six months on board the station.

The upcoming spacewalks will help replace solar array batteries and upgrade them to lithium-ion batteries, as well as refurbish the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a scientific instrument "that explores the fundamental nature of the universe," according to NASA.

“Trump is using the same approach he did to subvert the Mueller report: undermining the legitimacy of the messenger, assigning political motives to those who testify and relying on the Fox News firewall to serve up propaganda to his base,”

Earlier in the week Republicans attempted to censure Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, for his handling of the impeachment inquiry, only for the Democratic majority to set the resolution aside. On Thursday Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee and a Trump loyalist, introduced a resolution condemning the inquiry as an unfair, secretive and designed to embarrass the president.

Taylor, a respected Vietnam war veteran with half a century of public service, also described an “irregular, informal policy channel” by which the Trump administration was pursuing objectives in Ukraine “running contrary to the goals of longstanding US policy”

about 30 House Republicans barged into the secure facility where the impeachment depositions are being taken and ordered pizza. The testimony of a Pentagon official was postponed by more than five hours. The members complained about lack of transparency as evidence is being given behind closed doors.

House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is a month old. Unlike Mueller it has moved at warp speed, subpoenaing witnesses, gathering testimony and building evidence against the president some say makes it inevitable he will be impeached by the House and put on trial by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Public opinion does not favour removing Trump from office, Ruddy argued, so the White House should avoid a politically costly battle.

.

Chief strategist Steve Bannon is long gone. Press secretary Stephanie Grisham has never given a formal briefing to reporters in the west wing. Trump does not have a permanent chief of staff, only Mick Mulvaney in an acting capacity. Earlier this month Mulvaney held a disastrous briefing in which he blurted out a confession of a quid pro quo with Ukraine, only to issue a retraction later.

“We’re in a political payback system where everyone is trying to out up each other. If you look at the poll numbers, he’s actually holding up, although there’s a hardening of people who favour impeachment and removal. He’s not actually in a bad situation.”

Trump has openly encouraged Ukraine – and China – to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. With Taylor’s compelling evidence, it appears to be case closed. Some problems are unspinnable.

Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and Trump critic, said the president’s exertion of pressure on the leader of Ukraine had been tantamount to blackmail and extortion.

It was such an abuse of power. I can’t think of a president who’s done anything more impeachable or worse than that. It’s indefensible and anyone who defends it is going to face some liabilities because it’s so egregious.”

He described the Republican fightback as “lawlessness, disorder and chaos. Undermining the process and smearing the witnesses and engaging in ‘whataboutism’ is the main strategy.

Republicans said little about the substance of the allegations.

Democrats are gearing up for televised hearings that could begin next month and feature dramatic and damaging testimony from the likes of former national security adviser John Bolton. Republicans are hamstrung by a torrent of revelations that makes today’s deniable rumour tomorrow’s smoking gun.

Trump retains two not so secret weapons to amplify his message: fiery rallies, which he is holding with greater frequency, and conservative media

More than half of Republicans whose primary news source is Fox said almost nothing could change their approval of Trump. For Republicans who get their news elsewhere, the figure is considerably lower.

The latest controversy over the Soleimani attack began after Trump told Laura Ingraham on Fox News on Friday night that "I can reveal that I believe it probably would've been four embassies." The Trump administration had previously said that Soleimani was planning "imminent" attacks on US targets before he was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad, but could not say when and where they might occur.

"I didn't see one with regard to four embassies," Esper said. "What I'm saying is, I share the President's view that probably -- my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies."But in a later Sunday interview with CNN's "State of the Union," Esper said he would not talk about intelligence, possibly in an attempt to avoid coming across as seriously at odds with the President on the question of Soleimani.On "Fox News Sunday" O'Brien also struggled to reconcile Trump's words with intelligence made available to members of Congress.

Democrats are seizing on the confusion and conflicting statements to accuse the President of misleading Americans.House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday he could not recall any mention of purported attacks being planned on four US embassies during a briefing for the select "Gang of Eight" congressional leaders last week.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal told CNN's John Berman on "New Day" Monday that the administration has not offered "a shred of information that there was an imminent threat.""And that's important, John, because imminent threats justify the use of force in a way that 'probably' or 'could have' does not," the Connecticut Democrat said.

"It's not to say that the government is always lying or that the people who run it are inherently evil. It's just that they're human. And these things do happen. And so that's important to ask these questions, to make sure that we know the details."

The effective barring of Roth from entering Hong Kong is not an isolated incident, happening days after a U.S. photographer covering the pro-democracy protests was also banned from entering the financial hub.

“I think it’s worth stressing that what happened to me pales in comparison to what is happening to the pro-democracy protesters on the streets of Hong Kong. They’re the ones who are facing tear gas, beatings and arrest, and I just had another 16 hour flight [back to New York],” Roth says. “But what it does reflect is a real worsening of the human rights situation in Hong Kong.”

At a press briefing on Monday after the incident involving Roth, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that “allowing or not allowing someone’s entry is China’s sovereign right,” adding that foreign NGOs were supporting “Hong Kong independence separatist activities.”

“The justification they put forward was laughable, and insulting to the people of Hong Kong,” says Roth. “They don’t need me to tell them to take to the streets — they are looking to defend their own human rights, their own political freedoms and their own rule of law.”

Roth says Beijing’s explanation for barring him shows how fearful the authorities are of demonstrations in the city, and is an attempt to persuade those in the mainland not to emulate the pro-democracy protests. “They simply cannot admit to people on the mainland that hundreds of thousands Chinese citizens would take to the street in opposition to the increasingly dictatorial rule that is coming from Beijing.”

The Chinese government has attempted to deter, track and deport journalists and foreign investigators from reporting on forced indoctrination and detention of at least a million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in China’s western province of Xinjiang, highlighted in Roth’s lead essay in the HRW report.

On Monday, Chinese state media reported that the semi-autonomous region of Tibet would introduce forthcoming regulations to “strengthen ethnic unity;” echoing language used in regulations introduced in Xinjiang four years ago.

Beyond the worrying crackdown within China’s own borders, HRW’s report highlights Beijing’s efforts to deter the international community from scrutinizing its human rights abuses, taking “full advantage of the corporate quest for profit to extend its censorship to critics abroad.”

And at the individual level, the export of censorship is reaching dissidents and even universities in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.; the report notes that students from China who wanted to join campus debates felt unable to do so for fear of being monitored or reported to Chinese authorities.

The export of the Chinese censorship system also permeates governments and international institutions, and has “transformed into an active assault on the international human rights system,”

China has also consistently worked with Russia at the U.N. Security Council to block efforts to investigate human rights abuses in Syria, Myanmar and Venezuela. “China worries that even enforcement of human rights standards someplace else will have a boomerang effect that will come back to haunt it,” says Roth.

Aside from China, the report also looks at several other concerning situations around around the world, including civilians at risk from indiscriminate bombing in Idlib province in Syria, the desperate humanitarian crisis resulting from Saudi-led coalition’s actions in Yemen, the refugee crisis emerging from Maduro’s grip on power in Venezuela, and Myanmar’s denial of the genocide of the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice. And while Roth is encouraged by a growing international response to China’s actions in Xinjiang, particularly from Muslim majority nations, there remains much more to be done. From a U.S. perspective, the report notes that strong rhetoric from officials condemning human rights violations in China is “often undercut by Trump’s praise of Xi Jinping and other friendly autocrats,” as well as the Trump-administration’s own policies in violation of human rights, including forced separation at the U.S.-Mexican border.

The official was among four officials briefed on Wednesday’s incident who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation publicly.

“He kept assuring me he had it under control — they knew what they were doing,” she said. “Either he’s incompetent, or he was lying or he was complicit.”

The department’s leaders were also scattered during the riots. The chief of police was with Vice President Mike Pence in a secure location, and other high-ranking officials had been dispatched to the scene of bombs found outside the nearby headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees.

“They had apparently more bear spray and pepper spray and chemical munitions than we did,” Benedict said. “We’re coming up with plans to counteract their chemical munitions with some of our own less-than-lethal devices, so these conversations are going on as this chaos is unfolding in front of my eyes.”

One officer died in the riot and at least a dozen were injured. The officials wouldn’t reveal the specific number of officers on-duty over concerns about disclosing operational details, but confirmed that the numbers were on par with a routine protest and day where lawmakers would be present.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Our government provides critical social services to people in need, including through partnerships with private secular and religious organizations,” Cooper said. “Discrimination has no place there.

Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice has not shied away from weighing in on LGBTQ rights cases at the Supreme Court. I

the Constitution does not establish it.

It also depends on whether future presidents and Congresses choose to accept judicial supremacy.

“the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

The Republican Party, despite having lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, may use the judiciary to dictate policy on climate change, voting rights, economic inequality and more, for decades to come.

Democrats could also pass a law restricting the court from reviewing some areas of the law — a power that the Constitution explicitly gives Congress.

On the other hand, the acceptance of judicial supremacy brings big downsides, as well. It may be tantamount to forfeiting political power for the majority of Americans.

“If protecting the right of the people to govern for themselves means curbing judicial power and the Supreme Court’s claim to judicial supremacy, then Democrats should act without hesitation,”