Among the many societal shortcomings the pandemic has laid bare, the failure to get drugs and vaccines to many people who need them is one of the most painful and urgent. For many people around the world, the shots that arrived so expeditiously to those in the rich countries are still out of reach. “It’s an outrage that billions of people have no access to the new vaccines,” says human rights lawyer Jaykumar Menon....
The Tantilla oolitica, also known as the rim rock crowned snake, was found in the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo. This was the first time the snake has been seen for four years, the Florida Museum of Natural History said in a press release. The snake was dead, with a giant centipede locked halfway through its mouth. The snake was found by a hiker, who alerted park staff....
As the AP reports, Landis never served overseas but enlisted during wartime in 1918, training as a recruit for 60 days before the armistice came. Here he recalls his unit’s final march as the war ended: Landis tried to sign-up for service in WWII at the age of 42, but was denied for being too old to fight. Of the roughly 4.7-million Americans who served during WWI, the Veterans Administration told the St....
Tarus Woelk said she was not allowed to wear the mask on her American Airlines flight out of North Carolina’s Charlotte Douglas Airport to Richmond, Virginia, because a gate agent told her that her mouth was visible through the mask. “‘You can’t wear that, you have to wear a different mask.’ I said, ‘Well why?’” Woelk told FOX46 in recalling the exchange. “‘Well, I can see your mouth,’” she said the agent replied....
WE MUST BE fat. After all, Katie Couric did a two-hour special on it on Friday night. And even Dr. Phil, who previously spent his time shrinking heads, has moved on to shrinking bodies. That’s why I was so happy to see that my favorite academic publication, the American Journal of Public Health, had devoted its entire September issue to why Americans are so freakin’ fat. If you guessed, “Because we eat so freakin’ much,” guess again: The supersized portions are only the half of it....
But no, the news from the airline industry is getting better all the time–that is, if you’re a man who thinks the golden age of air travel ended when “Coffee, tea or me?” was purged from the flight attendant vocabulary. You may have missed the big news because it was announced the day after Christmas, but Hooters–the restaurant chain that not only offers legs, breasts and thighs on the menu but also spilling out of the waitresses’ uniforms–actually bought North Carolina-based Pace Airlines with the intention of turning it into a flying frat party....
Until now, American Samoans were deemed “non-citizen nationals,” and therefore denied the right to vote, run for office, work in certain jobs, sponsor family members for immigration, get federal student aid and other rights reserved for U.S. citizens. American Samoa was the last territory to win citizenship after a hard-fought legal battle spanning decades, according to the court decision, joining Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. John Fitisemanu, Pale Tuli and Rosavita Tuli, who were born in the territory but currently live in Utah, sued the federal government in March of last year on the grounds that they’re owed citizenship status under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution....
Much has already been said and written about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago that precipitated those sirens: “outrageous,” “unprecedented,” a “crossing of the Rubicon” moment. Regrettably, all of that is true. The siccing of the national law enforcement apparatus to execute a pre-dawn raid on a top partisan rival—especially when that rival is the head of state’s predecessor and perhaps-likely future opponent—is a contemptible act of raw political bloodlust. It is an act far more befitting a crumbling hellhole like Venezuela, or a third-world country in sub-Saharan Africa, than it is the land that was to be, per Benjamin Franklin’s alleged quip, “a republic, if you can keep it....
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, it turns out that voter turn-out is not in decline at all. In fact, a new study says the idea that voters are increasingly apathetic is a myth. Did this news explode across the front page? Shake foundations to their foundation? Not exactly. In December, two political scientists, Michael P. McDonald of the University of Illinois, Springfield, and Samuel Popkin of the University of California, San Diego published a landmark article in the American Political Science Review entitled “The Myth of the Vanishing Voter....
The flight, offered by Qatar Airways and headed for Doha, was the first sizable evacuation effort from the country since the U.S. and NATO allies completed their withdrawal at the end of August. While the Taliban pledged to permit Afghans and foreigners to leave Afghanistan since assuming control of the country, some began to doubt the group’s word when charter planes meant to transport evacuees out of another airport weren’t given permission to leave, the AP reported....
Between mid-February and mid-March, use of anti-anxiety medications increased by 34.1 percent, according to a report that pharmacy benefit management company Express Scripts released on Thursday. The report found that use of benzodiazepine anti-anxiety medications peaked on the week ending March 15, spiking by almost 18 percent. “It’s hard to imagine we don’t have a lot of our fellow Americans under incredible stress right now, either from getting sick or being afraid of being sick or losing their jobs,” Dr....
The Italian court ruled that Finnegan Elder will serve 24 years in prison, while Gabriel Natale-Hjorth will serve 22. They were originally handed life sentences for their roles in the killing of Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Rega in 2019. Elder and Natale-Hjorth were found guilty of stabbing the officer 11 times and attempted extortion. They sought lesser sentences due to their age—Elder is now 22, while Natale-Hjorth is 21....
While those earners would save under the revised code, those making more than $200,000 would pay thousands more in taxes. Ultimately, the revenue generated through this new program would raise more than $2 trillion over the next decade, the report estimates. This new proposal comes as House Democrats seek ways to finance the Biden administration’s $3.5 trillion proposed social investment plan, a move that would see billions of dollars invested toward universal pre-K, two years of free community college, prescription drug financing, and expanded Medicare....
Mustafa Amini and Chris Ikonomidis of AGF will be hoping to overcome Awer Mabil and Brent McGrath’s Esbjerg in a two-legged play-off, with the winning club set to take a step towards securing their spot in the Superliga for 2017-18. Amini and Mabil are likely to start for their respective clubs, while Ikonomidis will probably have to accept a place on the bench for AGF and McGrath appears unlikely to be included in Esbjerg’s squad at all....
The London-based human rights organization derided the Saudi Arabian Public Prosecutor’s Monday announcement they would be executing five individuals for “directly participating” in the October 2018 murder of Khashoggi. Saudi Deputy Public Prosecutor Shaalan al-Shaalan sentenced three additional men to prison time but ultimately cleared the three top advisers under bin Salman. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018....
Sources say that at a meeting in Washington three weeks ago, the Clinton adviser told Andreas van Agt, the ambassador from the 12-nation European Community (EC), that a trade deal would help Bush and would be viewed by Clinton as interference in U.S. polities. The adviser said, according to the sources, that although Clinton supports free trade in principle, important elements of the deal unacceptable. Van Agt passed the warning along to Jacques Delors, president of the EC Commission in Brussels....
