Tag: News

Posted on

U.S. Asks Court Not to Block Vaccine Requirement, Urges Workers to Get Vaccinated | Health News

States difficult the Biden administration’s vaccine need are envisioned to file their response to the White Dwelling on Tuesday just after the federal governing administration instructed the courtroom Monday that it has the authority to need big, personal companies to mandate coronavirus vaccinations for workers or to accomplish common tests.

The filings come just after the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued a stay on the rule more than the weekend, quickly blocking the requirement for non-public staff of massive companies. The court observed “trigger to believe that there are grave statutory and constitutional troubles with the Mandate,” and the Justice Office filed a 28-web page response echoing the Occupational Basic safety and Health and fitness Administration’s judgment that “these steps are needed to mitigate COVID transmission in the course of America’s workplaces.”

But opponents have criticized OSHA’s role in the vaccine prerequisite, arguing that necessitating coronavirus vaccinations or tests is a general public health and fitness measure and unrelated to place of work protection. In its submitting, the Justice Section rebuked the notion, citing tuberculosis and smallpox outbreaks in factories as examples of how place of work risks “have very long been recognized to consist of the risks of contracting communicable disorders as a end result of currently being in shut proximity to other personnel.”

The 7 days in Cartoons Nov. 8-12

The short term block in opposition to the rule came Saturday after Texas Attorney Common Ken Paxton filed a problem together with leaders from Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah and some personal corporations, calling it a “amazing abuse of federal electricity.” In most conditions, these kinds of stays implement only within the cluster of states that comprise the circuit that has jurisdiction. But in this case, the judges utilized the ruling nationwide mainly because of the rule’s broad-ranging effects. The continue to be has small tangible effects at current, given that the requirement is slated to take effect in early January.

The remain arrived just days soon after the Biden administration declared new particulars about its vaccine mandate or weekly testing solution for workforce of significant companies, which includes the timeline and that the rule carries the probability of office inspections and rigid financial penalties for noncompliance. The rule is envisioned to include much more than 80 million employees.

Inspite of ongoing authorized worries, the Biden administration on Monday urged American staff to get vaccinated as quickly as doable.

“The administration plainly has the authority to defend staff, and steps introduced by the president are developed to conserve lives and prevent the distribute of COVID-19,” principal deputy push secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained for the duration of the White Household briefing Monday. “This is about trying to keep people today protected in the place of work.”

The Justice Division also argued that due to the fact the rule does not have an imminent outcome on People in america, slated to start in early January, “no purpose exists to rule on petitioners’ stay motions promptly.”

In a different letter Monday, the Justice Section asked that the multiple challenges in opposition to the administration’s rule be combined into a person scenario and by random variety be taken up by a single federal appeals court. The administration pretty much undoubtedly would like to see the circumstance taken out of the 5th Circuit, which is centered in Louisiana and has emerged as possibly the most politically conservative circuit in the country. The section claimed the lottery court docket selection should take location about Nov. 16.

Opposition to the president’s announcement last week was just about quick, with more than a dozen state leaders suing the administration around the rule.

And opposition to the requirement had been gearing up for months. Two dozen Republican state lawyers common in a letter right after the rule’s initial announcement in September urged the president to rethink his final decision to demand businesses with more than 100 workforce to mandate vaccinations or repeated coronavirus testing for workers, calling the program “disastrous and counterproductive.”

GOP governors were being brief to answer at the onset of the rule’s announcement as very well. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott named the necessity an “assault on personal businesses,” while Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts known as it a “gorgeous violation of personalized independence and abuse of the federal government’s electrical power.” And South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted that her point out will “stand up to protect freedom,” telling Biden, “See you in court docket.”

But modern polls have revealed that the vast majority of workforce help vaccine mandates. In accordance to a new Gallup poll, 56{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of staff members would aid their employer imposing a vaccine mandate in the workplace, up from 46{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} in May perhaps.

Posted on

Anchor Brian Williams is leaving MSNBC and NBC News

“This is the end of a chapter and the commencing of an additional,” Williams claimed in a statement. “There are a lot of matters I want to do, and I’ll pop up again someplace.”

Williams expressed deep gratitude to NBC, indicating the network “is a portion of me and often will be.”

He is about to turn into a cost-free agent for the to start with time in many years.

For the earlier 5 years, Williams has anchored “The 11th Hour,” an conclude-of-the-day newscast and political discuss program. CNN Company claimed in August that his contract was expiring in the up coming six months and that he wished to go off the late-night time hour.

Now he is executing it. But he included in Tuesday’s statement, “I request all individuals who are a aspect of our faithful viewing viewers to remain loyal. The 11th Hour will continue being in excellent fingers, manufactured by the ideal crew in cable information.”

Williams’ exit from NBC has an stop-of-an-period experience. He was a key player in the launch of the MSNBC news channel in 1996, manning breaking news protection and a key time recap of the working day. Then he grew to become a person of America’s best-identified newsmen during his ten years at the helm of the “NBC Nightly News,” 1 of the most-viewed news programs in the US.

His “Nightly” tenure was lower shorter in 2015 when he was uncovered to have exaggerated some stories in interviews. He was suspended for 6 months and was changed by Lester Holt on the “Nightly News.” But he embraced his new assignment on MSNBC and was ready to basically reinvent himself.
Brian Williams, anchor of "The 11th Hour with Brian Williams" and Rachel Maddow, host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" on Tuesday, November 8, 2016 in New York.
“Most broadcasters would have been cooked if they experienced been through the type of scandal that Williams confronted in 2015,” Self-importance Reasonable explained in 2017. “But a slow-and-regular revival — a mixture of dutiful penance, clever planning, and a extraordinary transform in the media — has Williams turning 11 p.m. into the new primetime.”

On cable, Williams was cost-free to share much more of his individuality and viewpoint. He was also at the desk for most of the largest times of the Trump presidency.

In his statement, Williams boiled down his time at NBC this way: “28 several years, 38 countries, 8 Olympic video games, 7 Presidential elections, half a dozen Presidents, a couple of wars, and a single SNL.”

His impending departure will come immediately after a period of executive turnover at NBC Information. His longtime ally Andy Absence exited previous calendar year.

“Excellent mates had been in terrific offer at NBC,” Williams explained Tuesday. “I was fortuitous that everybody I labored with created me much better at my career. I’ve experienced the very best colleagues imaginable. That incorporates wonderful bosses.”

A source shut to Williams mentioned NBC did make Williams a new agreement provide and declined to share the motives why he passed on it. Williams framed the condition this way: “Subsequent considerably reflection, and immediately after 28 a long time with the business, I have made a decision to depart NBC on the completion of my present contract in December.”

The resource reported there will be no imminent announcement about a new function at an additional media firm. (Information reviews this fall have speculated about him jumping to a new network.)

Williams has not held any formal conversations about a new placement but, the source extra.

Right after indicating he’ll “pop up yet again somewhere,” Williams indicated that he will be savoring some downtime very first: “For the up coming couple of months, I’ll be with my family, the persons I love most and the men and women who enabled my profession to occur,” he mentioned. “I will replicate on the kindness people have proven me, and I will spend it ahead.”

Posted on

Today’s coronavirus news: Health Canada authorizes the use of the Pfizer vaccine as a booster shot; Ontario reporting 441 new COVID-19 cases

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Tuesday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

4:10 p.m.: Ontario will “stay the course” with its less restrictive COVID-19 measures despite a 41 per cent increase in infections over the last 10 days, and leave local health units to deal with flare-ups for now, says Health Minister Christine Elliott.

“We know that the numbers have gone up somewhat. We anticipated that would happen,” Elliott told reporters Tuesday as the seven-day average of new cases rose for the tenth day in a row and the province reported 441 more people testing positive for the virus.

“So what we’re seeing right now are largely regional outbreaks which we’re going to be dealing with regionally.”

Read the full story here: Ontario will ‘stay the course’ with current COVID-19 restrictions despite surge in new cases, Christine Elliott says

3:45 p.m.: Health officials in Nova Scotia are reporting one new COVID-19-related death as an outbreak of the disease in a long-term care home continues to grow in another part of the province.

The Health Department says a man in his 80s in the province’s eastern zone has died and 56 new cases of the disease have been identified since Monday.

Officials have also noted community spread of the disease in the northern and western regions of the province, largely related to transmission of the virus during a multi-day faith gathering.

The gathering has been directly connected to the ongoing outbreak at East Cumberland Lodge, a long-term care home in Pugwash, as well as transmission at other faith services and in workplaces.

Thirteen more residents at the home and a second staff member have tested positive for the disease, bringing the total case count at the residence to 19.

The province now has 281 active cases of COVID-19, with 10 people in hospital and two in ICU.

3:30 p.m.: Quebec is expanding eligibility for COVID-19 vaccine booster doses to the general population aged 70 and older, Health Minister Christian Dubé said Tuesday.

Third doses of mRNA vaccines will also be available by the end of the month to residents who received two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Dubé added. Those residents will need to wait six months from their second doses for a third shot.

“I want to reassure the population, it’s not because we are worried about AstraZeneca, it’s because we want to make sure there’s an extra protection — especially after six months,” Dubé told reporters.

The government made the decision following recommendations by Quebec’s immunization committee. Despite Health Canada announcing on Tuesday it authorized boosters for all adults, Quebec said it would stick to its plan. Public health director Dr. Horacio Arruda told reporters the government preferred to follow the recommendations of its vaccine committee.

“Even if there is a recommendation from Canada, we refer almost all the time to our own committee because they are aware of our own epidemiology,” Arruda said.

Starting Nov. 16, people aged 80 and older will be able to book an appointment for a third dose, followed by people 75 and up two days later and then residents 70 and older on Nov. 23. Residents of any age who received the AstraZeneca vaccine can start booking third doses on Nov. 25. All groups must wait six months since their second doses to book a third shot.

In late September, the province announced it would offer people in long-term care homes and seniors residences booster shots to prevent outbreaks among vulnerable residents. Since August, Quebec has offered a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to people who are severely immunocompromised.

For the general population, protection from two doses after six months remains high — especially against severe infection and death, according to Dr. André Veillette, an immunologist at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute. Veillette, however, said protection will inevitably start to decline.

“Some people will say it’s not a problem, because of what we call memory cells,” Veillette said in an interview on Monday. “That’s when your antibodies are low, then the memory cells are activated if you get infected, and then a week later, they will make a lot of antibodies.”

The problem, he said, is that for some people — and maybe eventually for everybody — a week of infection is too long to wait for the antibodies to kick in.

Veillette said the government’s immediate priority should be identifying high-risk groups and giving them third doses. He also said he believes boosters will eventually be available for all Quebecers, even for young people.

“We have billions of doses in Ottawa waiting on shelves, and tens of millions more have been bought for next year by the government,” Veillette said. “The vaccines are available.”

Arruda, however, said there is no need yet to offer a third dose to people under 70 years old.

“For the others that are healthy, and under 70, there are no recommendations for a third dose,” Arruda said. “Two doses are still a good thing.”

Meanwhile, Quebec reported 545 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday and six more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus. Health officials said COVID-19-related hospitalizations dropped by six, to 219, and there were 45 people in intensive care, a drop of three.

The Health Department said 9,406 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. Quebec’s public health institute said about 90.8 per cent of residents aged 12 and older have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 88.2 per cent are considered adequately vaccinated.

Quebec has 5,219 active reported cases of COVID-19.

2 p.m. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers remains upset with the public’s reception to his admission that he is not vaccinated against COVID-19, according to People.

Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 last week before missing Green Bay’s loss to the Chiefs on Sunday. Rodgers previously indicated he was vaccinated in an August press conference, telling the media when asked about his status, “I’m immunized.”

Green Bay’s signal-caller made an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Friday to address the apparent obfuscation, a segment that featured misinformation on both COVID-19 and vaccines. Rodgers now feels as though he’s “being crucified” for his remarks, per People.

1:34 p.m. Canadians are scrambling to get mortgage pre-approvals and rate holds as economists predict the pandemic-long stretch of low interest rates will soon end.

Estée Zacks says she recently noticed a surge in requests for rate holds, which freeze mortgage rates for up to 130 days.

The owner of Strategic Mortgage Solutions Inc. says her clients see the holds as a way to get a leg up on hot markets like Toronto that are favouring sellers.

CIBC Capital Markets analyst Benjamin Tal says even a one per cent increase in mortgage rates from current levels will cost an average new buyer $230 or 12 per cent more in additional monthly interest payments.

BMO Capital Markets senior economist Robert Kavcic says five-year fixed mortgage rates are already creeping higher, but people with pre-approvals in hand probably have another month or two to buy a home.

1:20 p.m. Quebec needs to quickly provide a coherent plan on how it intends to offer third doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the general population, Dr. André Veillette, an immunologist at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute, said Monday.

The province announced in late September it would offer people in long-term care homes and seniors residences booster shots to prevent outbreaks among vulnerable residents. Since August, Quebec has offered a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to people who are severely immunocompromised.

While boosters for the general population weren’t part of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization’s recommendations at the end of October, provinces such as Ontario and British Columbia have already announced plans to expand eligibility for third shots.

1 p.m. Ontario plans to spend $12.4 million on more mental health and addictions supports for front-line health-care workers.

The province says $5.9 million will go to services offered through hospitals such as self-referral and intake services, online discussion groups and confidential clinician support.

There is also $1.9 million allocated for psychologist services specializing in trauma, anxiety and other conditions and $4.6 million for workplace mental health training.

12:45 p.m. Ontario’s health minister says the government isn’t changing course on its reopening plan despite a recent rise in COVID-19 infections.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says a bump in cases was anticipated during the colder weather as people move indoors, and that was factored into the province’s plans.

Experts told The Canadian Press this week that cold weather and the lifting of provincial crowd restrictions on some venues like stadiums and restaurants might be behind the growth in cases.

Tuesday saw 441 new cases reported in the province and seven-day average of 492 daily infections, up from 371 a week ago.

11:35 a.m. (updated) Health Canada has approved a booster of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for people over the age of 18.

The booster is designed to help people with their first two COVID-19 vaccine doses maintain their protection against the virus over time.

The booster is identical to the regular Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and is to be administered at least six months after the first two vaccine doses.

Different provinces have employed different rollout strategies for booster doses, and mRNA vaccines like Pfizer-BioNTech have already been used to offer longer-lasting protection to high-risk people in several parts of the country.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization says there is no evidence of waning protection against over time against severe COVID-19 in the general vaccinated population.

11:22 a.m. Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu is apologizing for sharing misinformation about the severity of COVID-19 and the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

In a statement Tuesday, Gladu called her remarks “inappropriate.”

“Upon reflection, I recognize how dangerous it is to share misinformation about the severity of COVID-19 and the safety and efficacy of vaccines,” she said.

“I retract these comments in full.”

Read the full story from the Star’s Stephanie Levitz

11 a.m. India’s coronavirus crisis, which was killing thousands of people a day just seven months ago, has eased after the nation’s leaders revamped their policies and dramatically ramped up their vaccination drive.

Now, as India celebrates the delivery of its 1 billionth dose, a feat that until recently seemed improbable, public health experts are sounding a new warning: The turnaround is losing steam.

Vaccinations are slowing down. As the temperature dips amid India’s most important festival season, people are crowding markets and hosting unmasked friends and family indoors. And the government is telling vaccination campaign volunteers like Namanjaya Khobragade that they are no longer needed.

“Now is not the time to let our guard down,” said Khobragade, a coordinator for a health nonprofit in the eastern state of Jharkhand. “Many people have taken just the first vaccine. We cannot leave them like this. We need to increase the intensity.”

10:15 a.m. (updated) Ontario is reporting another 441 COVID-19 cases and three more deaths, according to its latest report released Tuesday morning.

Ontario has administered 13,049 vaccine doses since its last daily update, with 22,637,009 vaccines given in total as of 8 p.m. the previous night.

According to the Star’s vaccine tracker, 11,539,002 people in Ontario have received at least one shot. That works out to approximately 88.5 per cent of the eligible population 12 years and older, and the equivalent of 77.6 per cent of the total population, including those not yet eligible for the vaccine.

Read the full story from the Star’s Urbi Khan

10 a.m. A giant gap exists in Waterloo Region’s defences against COVID-19. About 126,000 residents are not yet vaccinated, giving the virus plenty of opportunity to spread through the community.

“This is equivalent to an entire mid-sized city such as Cambridge or Waterloo not being immunized,” medical officer of health Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang told regional council at Tuesday’s meeting.

Almost 44,000 people over 12 are not immunized. Almost 82,000 children under 12 are not yet eligible to get the vaccine.

9:45 a.m. The vast majority of staff members at Waterloo Region’s and Guelph-Wellington’s long-term- care homes are vaccinated, with the average staff vaccination rate in the neighbouring public health units sitting at 89.8 per cent, according to Ministry of Ontario data, last updated on Oct. 1.

The Ontario Ministry of Long-Term Care updates data on a monthly basis, typically in the middle of the month.

But with the provincial government issuing a vaccine mandate that takes place Nov. 15 and third-dose booster shots now available for all long-term care workers, almost all long-term care homes in the region will need to work on getting their staff 100 per cent vaccinated.

9:30 a.m. The health board governing Quebec’s Nunavik region says the COVID-19 situation in the northern territory is worse than it’s ever been.

Health officials reported 30 new cases Monday across the region, which is home to 14 Inuit communities.

The territory has 259 active reported cases.

Quebec’s public health institute says Nunavik is the most affected part of the province, with about 1,450 active COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people.

9:13 a.m. Book sales have thrived during the pandemic after initial concerns that it might hurt the publishing business. Come the holidays, some new nonfiction might hit your gifting sweet spots.

9 a.m. Hospitals in the southern Dutch province of Limburg warned the government Tuesday that they can no longer cope with new COVID-19 patients amid soaring rates of coronavirus infections.

Five hospitals in the province that borders both Belgium and Germany raised the alarm in a statement that said: “We are heading straight for a healthcare blockage and the entire system is grinding to a standstill.”

They added that, “we are convinced that other parts of the Netherlands will soon follow.”

Amid an autumn surge across much of Europe, the seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in the Netherlands has almost doubled over the past two weeks from 30.88 to 61.12 new cases per 100,000 people despite more than 80 per cent of the adult population being fully vaccinated.

8:45 a.m. The morgue in Romania’s main hospital has no space for the dead any more. In a stark illustration of the human cost of the coronavirus surge sweeping the nation, bodies of COVID-19 victims, wrapped in black plastic bags, line a hallway of the hospital in the capital, Bucharest.

Hundreds of people have been dying each day for the past two months in Romania which has been among the hardest-hit in the current virus onslaught raging through Central and Eastern European nations, where far fewer people have been vaccinated than in Western Europe.

A country of 19 million people, Romania currently has among the highest death rates in Europe. Last month the World Health Organization sent a team to help with the nation’s pandemic response.

8:30 a.m. A player on Germany’s national soccer team has tested positive for the coronavirus and four more are in quarantine as a precaution ahead of World Cup qualifying games against Liechtenstein and Armenia.

The German soccer federation said Tuesday that the unnamed player was fully vaccinated and does not have any symptoms. The other four tested negative for the virus but have been instructed by the local health authority in Wolfsburg to isolate because of their proximity to the infected player.

Germany has already qualified for next year’s World Cup ahead of its final qualifiers. The team hosts Liechtenstein in Wolfsburg on Thursday and then plays Armenia in Yerevan on Sunday.

8 a.m. Peel Public Health has confirmed seven schools in the region have active COVID-19 outbreaks. From Sept. 1 to Nov. 2, there have been a total of 31 outbreaks at schools in Peel region.

An outbreak is declared if the facility has two or more COVID-19 cases with an epidemiological link, which means at least one of the patients could have acquired the infection in the school.

7:46 a.m. Peel’s health agency is advising residents who attended a recent wedding event in Mississauga to get tested for COVID-19.

In a media release, Peel Public Health said those who attended an Oct. 29 wedding event at the Apollo Convention Centre in Mississauga were exposed to COVID-19 and should “seek immediate testing” whether they’ve been vaccinated or not.

Those who attended the event and are not fully vaccinated should isolate while waiting for test results, the release said

7:21 a.m. Wage growth, higher costs, supply chain issues, inflation — all of these issues are driving expectations of lower corporate earnings at the end of 2021 for everyone. Dennis Mitchell, CEO and chief investment officer at Starlight Capital, isn’t surprised by that. Nor does he believe the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed major trends in business like the rise of e-commerce or the oversupply of physical retail space.

Shying away from shiny investments in favour of long-term stakes in great businesses, regardless of where they happen to be, is part of Starlight Capital’s strategy. In an interview with the Star, Mitchell unpacks his firm’s philosophy on great businesses, creating a diverse team, and where he sees the office real estate market going.

6:32 a.m.: Nobody wants to say here we go again, but here we are. Ontario has lived a relatively charmed pandemic life since the summer, and it appears to be over. The province’s seven-day case average has risen approximately 30 per cent in a week; vaccination efforts are stalling as we go. One rule of the virus is that unchecked, it will spread exponentially. We’re back there.

“Do you remember where we were immediately before Thanksgiving? That’s the behaviour and the extent of restrictions that is compatible with control of the pandemic,” says Dr. Peter Juni, the scientific director of Ontario’s independent volunteer science table. “So think how it was before Thanksgiving, and think about how much you were inside with other people. You shouldn’t do it more than you did then.”

If it sounds like going backwards, it is, in the province where the premier keeps saying he never wants to go back. A return to pre-Thanksgiving restrictions would mean a return of capacity limits in restaurants, bars, gyms, theatres and at sporting events, for a start. A return to pre-Thanksgiving social patterns should be achievable, if we just keep a bigger picture in mind. This can be done.

Read the full column from the Star’s Bruce Arthur.

6:20 a.m.: The pandemic’s effects on mortality have been uneven. Life expectancy dipped in most places last year, shaving 28.1 million years off the cumulative longevity in 31 countries. But residents of a handful of places that successfully kept COVID-19 at bay — including New Zealand and Taiwan — actually lived longer.

Life expectancy is an indication of how long on average people will live once their age is taken into account, provided that there aren’t any big shifts in the number of people dying in each age bracket over time. Another measure — excess years of life lost — quantifies the impact when those changes do occur, and gives greater weight to deaths that occur at younger ages.

A study of 37 countries and territories in the journal BMJ found the pandemic was a killing field in most places. More than 28 million years of life were lost in 2020 across 31 of them, with Russia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the U.S., and Poland recording the heaviest toll, the study led by Nazrul Islam, a physician-epidemiologist and medical statistician at the University of Oxford, found.

Years of life lost in 2020 were higher than expected everywhere except Taiwan, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and South Korea.

The number of years of life lost due to Covid-19 was more than five times greater than those lost from influenza in 2015, during the worst seasonal flu epidemic since the turn of the century.

6:20 a.m.: People who are fully vaccinated are 16 times less likely to end up in intensive care wards or to die from COVID-19, an Australian study found, adding to a growing body of evidence that may bolster the case for countries to treat the disease as endemic.

6:20 a.m.: The three parties in talks to form the next German government agreed on a package of measures to tackle the latest surge in cases, seeking to avoid sweeping restrictions like school closures and curfews.

6:20 a.m.: Hong Kong needs at least six months before reopening to the world, a government adviser said. The territory must finish negotiating open borders with the mainland and boost the vaccination rate, with Hong Kong and China the only places still pursuing a “Covid Zero” strategy.

6:17 a.m.: Denmark wants to again consider COVID-19 as “a socially critical disease,” paving the way for the reintroduction of a digital pass months after the label was removed and restrictions were phased out.

The move, which still needs approval in parliament, will also allow Denmark to reintroduce other restrictions if deemed necessary. A majority seems to be backing the suggestion of the minority Social Democratic government.

The pass was introduced on July 1 but removed on Sept. 10, when Denmark declared that the outbreak no longer was to be considered “a socially critical disease,” citing the high rate of vaccination.

However, Denmark has like many other countries seen an uptick in cases, with health authorities saying the number of infections and hospitalizations has risen faster than expected.

On Monday, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said the COVID pass must apply to nightclubs, cafes, party buses and indoor restaurants but also outdoor events where the number of people exceeds 2,000.

The Danish pass app shows a QR code with a green banner if the holder is fully vaccinated or received a first dose at least two weeks ago, has recently recovered from COVID-19 or has had a negative test in the past 72 hours. A paper version is also available.

The call to reintroduce the pass was immediately welcomed by the industry.

6:15 a.m.: Residents of a New York border town say they’re eager to welcome Canadians now that the United States has eased land border restrictions, but they worry that costly COVID-19 testing rules will keep many travellers away.

On Monday, Christmas music floated down the halls of the Champlain Centre mall in Plattsburgh, N.Y., about an hour south of Montreal, where some retailers dreamt of the return of tourist dollars — perhaps in time for the holidays.

“We cannot wait to have Canadian shoppers come back,” Emily Moosmann, the mall’s marketing director, said in an interview. “We miss hearing French in the hallway; we miss seeing their faces.”

To lure shoppers back, the mall created a web page — headed by a large maple leaf — highlighting new stores that have opened, local COVID-19 test sites and special discounts for Canadian residents.

“About 30 per cent of our traffic is Canadian, so, not seeing them here, we definitely feel the impact,” she said. While there were only a few cars with Quebec licence plates in the parking lot on Monday, Moosmann said retailers were optimistic things would pick up on the weekend.

Read the full story from the Canadian Press.

6:15 a.m.: The Yukon government has declared a state of emergency and announced a series of public health rules aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, including a proof-of-vaccination requirement that’s set to take effect this Saturday.

The territory says it is “moving rapidly” to implement a proof-of-vaccination system for a range of settings, including restaurants, ticketed events, fitness facilities and personal services businesses, as well as faith-based and cultural gatherings.

It says the new measures also include mandatory masks in all indoor public settings and outdoor public settings where physical distancing isn’t possible, as well as capacity limits on different types of indoor and outdoor gatherings.

While the rules will be enforced starting Nov. 13, the territory says in a statement that Yukoners are “strongly encouraged” to adopt the measures immediately.

Posted on

Bills self-destruct, lose in humiliating fashion | News, Sports, Jobs

&#13
&#13

&#13

AP Image
Jacksonville Jaguars defensive tackle Taven Bryan (93) and defensive end Dawuane Smoot (91) sack Buffalo Charges quarterback Josh Allen (17) during the next fifty percent Sunday in Jacksonville, Fla.

&#13

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Buffalo Expenses had 12 penalties, which includes five personalized fouls, and a few turnovers — and nonetheless experienced prospects to win.

Buffalo even so sent a stinker at Jacksonville on Sunday, a 9-6 shocker that must aid refocus a team that experienced been the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl.

This result for the Charges (5-3) was humiliating, humbling and ideally a wake-up get in touch with.

“You can’t beat you. Let’s commence there,” mentor Sean McDermott stated. “Whether it is penalties, turnovers, fundamentals. Yeah, way as well (a lot of) penalties, self-inflicted. Obtained to continue to keep our poise.”

Buffalo’s principal worry was on the offensive aspect, wherever it gave up 4 sacks and even far more hurries. Quarterback Josh Allen was harassed early and often. He completed 31 of 47 passes for 264 yards, with two interceptions and a fumble.

Allen hadn’t dedicated a next-half turnover all period right up until Sunday.

Then he coughed up three towards the Jaguars (2-6) and would have had a fourth if officials hadn’t ruled his ahead development had been stopped.

“Played like (crap), excuse my language, but that begins with me,” Allen stated. “I’ve obtained to be superior for this crew. But, again, those people fellas on defense get paid out, much too. They had a great recreation plan.”

Allen also led the way on the floor, a further situation for Buffalo versus one particular of the league’s worst defenses. He scrambled 5 times for 50 yards. Devin Singletary and Zack Moss mixed to operate 9 periods for 22 yards. Moss remaining the match late with a concussion.

“That’s a large situation right now for us,” McDermott explained. “Got to be in a position to operate the football when it is handed off. … That’s not good ample.”

With no managing activity to get worried about, the Jaguars could concentrate on receiving to Allen. And they did that routinely down the stretch.

The game’s most decisive times arrived on Buffalo’s ultimate two drives: Allen fumbled on a third-and-2 participate in at the Jaguars 37 with a small extra than 5 minutes remaining. Allen fumbled following obtaining pressured by Dawuane Smoot. Jacksonville’s linebacker Josh Allen – the league’s other Josh Allen – recovered.

Buffalo received the ball back in the waning minutes and advanced to the Jaguars 39. But Smoot sacked Allen on third down. It was Jacksonville’s fourth sack of the working day.

Allen’s sack produced NFL heritage. It was the first time a player sacked a quarterback with the very same identify due to the fact the league started out counting sacks in 1982.

McDermott was peppered with queries about slow starts, foolish penalties and probable variations together the offensive line. He also defended declining an offensive keeping call against Jacksonville just after a 3rd-and-5 engage in from the Buffalo 37.

Matt Wright manufactured a 55-lawn subject objective on the future play. McDermott could have approved the penalty, which would have taken the Jaguars out of discipline-target vary.

“We weren’t participating in great at that place,” he mentioned. “And felt like he hadn’t had a whole lot of subject goals. I’m not certain if he experienced any at that distance at this issue in the time. But that’s one particular I want again, yeah, definitely with the result the way it was.”

The complete match will be a person Buffalo could seem back again on the rest of the period. The Costs were being 14 1/2-point favorites, in accordance to FanDuel Sportsbook, and they looked unprepared — and possibly even unmotivated — from the start out.

“I was just searching on their sideline and just one factor I know is I was like, ‘They never have the similar power as us,’” Jaguars cornerback Shaquill Griffin mentioned. “If you truly feel like a person crew deserved this get, it is us, but you have got to feel that.

“That’s a person issue I saved preaching at everyone else. Look on the sidelines, looking at them strolling close to, it’s like they never care. They don’t are entitled to this. Let’s display them why.”

Included Buffalo’s Allen: “It’s really hard to acquire soccer games no subject who you perform. We’re all developed males. We all get paid to engage in this match. They came out. They wanted it extra.”

&#13 &#13
&#13

&#13
&#13

Present day breaking information and much more in your inbox

&#13
&#13

&#13
&#13
&#13
&#13

Posted on

Today’s Business and Markets News: Live Updates

ImageRandal K. Quarles

Randal K. Quarles, a Federal Reserve governor who spent four years overseeing bank supervision, will step down from the Fed in December — opening an additional seat that will allow the Biden administration to reshape the central bank’s leadership.

Mr. Quarles’ role as vice chair for supervision expired in October, but his term as governor was set to last until early 2032. The Trump appointee was widely expected to stay on until his time as head of the Financial Stability Board, a global monitoring and standard-setting body, ended in December. It was an open question whether he would stay after that.

“I intend to resign my position as a governor of the Federal Reserve during or around the last week of December of this year,” Mr. Quarles wrote in a letter the Fed released on Monday.

The announcement that he will step down is likely to be greeted warmly by Democrats, many of whom have been critical of Mr. Quarles’s push to relax some post-crisis financial regulations. Many Democrats have been calling for the administration to nominate a diverse set of leaders to the central bank.

President Biden already has one open spot on the central bank’s seven-person Board of Governors to fill, and will have another when Richard H. Clarida, the Fed’s vice chair, sees his term as governor expire early next year. This will give the administration at least three open spots. Jerome H. Powell’s term as the Fed’s chair is also scheduled to expire early next year.

It is not clear when Mr. Biden will announce his central bank nominees, including whether he plans to reappoint Mr. Powell. He last week said that the decision would come “fairly quickly.”

Credit…Punit Paranjpe/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

With stocks on a tear in India, the parent company of Paytm, a leading digital payments app, went public on Monday with hopes of becoming the country’s largest initial public offering.

The company, One97 Communications, aims to raise about $2.5 billion in a three-day offer that ends on Wednesday. It has already drawn huge institutional investors like Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, the Texas teachers’ pension fund and the University of Cambridge, which have invested more than $1 billion.

Founded in 2010, Paytm started as a payments transfer business. It now allows users to send money to friends, buy small items like coffee or clothing, and finance big-ticket items like cars.

All but ubiquitous in India’s biggest cities, Paytm now commands more than 40 percent of India’s digital payments market. The company has yet to turn a profit, but it is benefiting from a surge of interest from foreign and Indian investors looking for a stake in India’s surging internet economy. The I.P.O. could value the company at $20 billion.

“Paytm is evolving into a marketplace in itself,” said Amit Khurana, an analyst with Dolat Capital in Mumbai.

“There is a lot of appetite to allocate money to this kind of model because it’s seen as the business of the future.”

Investors, in general, have been increasingly bullish on the Indian economy’s recovery from the devastating impacts of the pandemic and a series of lockdowns that slashed industrial activity and consumer spending sharply.

India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has steadily cut interest rates, encouraging banks to lend more and consumers — particularly young, savvy online shoppers — to spend more.

“We are now in a sweet spot, where the bank recovery is coinciding with the demographic transition, which in turn is coinciding with the digital revolution,” said Madhavan Narayanan, an economist in India. “All these three are making the sun and the moon and the stars align for young India.”

With coronavirus infections in India low and foot traffic returning to brick-and-mortar stores, newly sanitation-sensitized shoppers may prefer to scan QR codes rather than handle cash.

The pandemic has helped a trend in India toward a cashless economy that began with the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sudden demonetization in 2016. The policy, meant to tamp down on money laundering, involved banning the most widely circulated currency notes, wiping out families’ savings and shuttering businesses overnight. But five years later, it appears to have also created some winners, digital payments companies like Paytm among them.

Competition is heating up. Google offers Google Pay. India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, began a joint venture with Facebook last year to offer digital payments over WhatsApp, India’s most popular messaging service.

Paytm’s share offering is the latest in a series of oversubscribed I.P.O.s in recent months, among a bevy of so-called unicorns backed by e-commerce giants like China’s Alibaba and its financial affiliate, Ant.

Institutional and foreign investors also flocked to the initial public offering of India’s food delivery app, Zomato, in July, which was oversubscribed by 38 times the available shares.

In an August report, the Reserve Bank of India predicted that 2021 “could well turn out to be India’s year of the initial public offering.”

Paytm’s push to become India’s biggest initial public offering has overshadowed another sizable offering. The parent company of online beauty products retailer Nykaa was publicly listed on Monday, seeking a $7.4 billion valuation.

Sameer Yasir contributed reporting.

The United States reopened its borders for fully vaccinated travelers from dozens of countries on Monday, ending more than 18 months of restrictions on international travel that left families separated from loved ones and cost the global travel industry hundreds of billions of dollars in tourism revenue.

Under the new rules, fully vaccinated travelers will be allowed to enter the U.S. if they can show proof of vaccination and a negative coronavirus test taken within three calendar days of travel. Unvaccinated Americans and children under the age of 18 are exempt from the requirement, but must take a test within one day of travel.

The shift has come in time for the holiday season, when the beleaguered tourism industry is eagerly awaiting an influx in international visitors, especially in popular big-city destinations like New York, Los Angeles and Miami. The extended ban on travel from 33 countries — including European Union members, China, India and Iran — devastated the sector and resulted in losses of nearly $300 billion in visitor spending and more than one million American jobs, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

“It is a monumental day for travelers, for the communities and businesses that rely on international visitation, and for the U.S. economy overall,” said Roger Dow, the association’s president and chief executive officer.

At Miami International Airport, a major hub for travel to and from South and Central America, Natalia Vitorini, a 28-year-old student living in Miami, waited for her parents to get off the morning’s first arriving flight from São Paulo, Brazil, with her 3-week-old son.

Her mother, Debora Vitorini, and her husband, Sergio, arrived a little after 6 a.m. The last time they had seen each other was in March 2020. “I was waiting for the border to open so my mom can come to see my baby,” Natalia Vitorini said.

And thousands of Canadians — “snowbirds,” typically retirees — are already on their way to Florida, Arizona and California, among other warm destinations, with campers and boats in tow.

“We’re ready to enjoy what the United States has to offer,” said Wayne Peters of Kelowna, British Columbia, who is about to embark on a 1,520-mile journey south to Yuma, Ariz., with his wife for five months of hiking, golfing and playing pickle ball.

Delta Air Lines said that many of its international flights on Monday were fully booked. The carrier’s first flight into the United States under the looser restrictions, DL106, arrived from São Paulo, Brazil in Atlanta on Monday, just before 10 a.m. Eastern time. By the end of Monday, Delta expects to fly 139 mostly full planes from 38 countries into the U.S.

Hotels across the country, particularly those in cities, also felt the impact of the reopening announcement, with increased bookings and interest over the holiday season. Hyatt, the hotel group, said that approximately 50 percent of its bookings by international travelers to the U.S. for the week of Nov. 8 came after the date was announced in mid-October, with travelers flocking to top cities.

The chef Daniel Boulud, who owns several restaurants in New York City, said that customers from overseas had already started to call for reservations or to go on a waiting list.

He added that while his restaurants were already “quite busy,” buoyed by domestic tourism and a trickle of international visitors, “the faucet was not open for tourism yet.” International tourists, he said, will bring necessary foot traffic, in particular to his restaurants near the Theater District.

Video

Video player loading
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic celebrated the re-opening of the United States border for fully vaccinated international travelers, by taking off simultaneously from Heathrow Airport in London.CreditCredit…Alex Ingram for The New York Times

Many of the airplanes departing for the United States over the coming weeks will be full of travelers reuniting with family and friends after more than a year apart. Felicity Fowler, a retired homeopath from London, missed the birth of her grandson. He was born in New York in April; she hasn’t seen her daughter, his mother, since February 2020.

“It’s been emotional torture to be so far away from my girl at a time when she has needed me the most,” she said in an interview. “We need to make up for lost time.”

Credit…Annice Lyn/Getty Images

Shares of several drug makers in Asia fell sharply on Monday in response to Pfizer’s announcement that its antiviral drug was highly effective in treating Covid-19.

CanSino Biologics, the Chinese maker of a Covid-19 vaccine, dropped by 17 percent during trading in Hong Kong. Shanghai Fosun, which has marketing rights in greater China for the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, saw its Hong Kong shares drop by 7 percent before rebounding somewhat to end 2 percent lower.

WuXi Biologics of China, which is developing Covid vaccines and antibodies, fell by 9 percent in Hong Kong. And shares of Japanese pharmaceutical firm Shionogi & Co., which is also developing a Covid treatment drug, dropped 6 percent in Tokyo.

Pfizer said Friday that when its new pill was given within three days of the start of Covid symptoms, hospitalizations and deaths were reduced by 89 percent. The company said it planned to submit the drug for Food and Drug Administration approval as soon as possible. A panel of experts had recommended not enrolling any more candidates in the trial because it had already shown such effectiveness, the company said.

Credit…Jan Haas/Picture-Alliance/DPA, via Associated Press

Deep Nishar, a former top investor at SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, is joining General Catalyst, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm known for its successful bets on start-ups including Airbnb and Snap.

Mr. Nishar said last month that he would leave SoftBank by the end of 2021, ending a six-year stint at the Japanese tech conglomerate. He is the latest senior executive to leave the Vision Fund, which struggled after soured bets on WeWork and other companies; at least four others have left in the past two years.

SoftBank’s founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son, hired Mr. Nishar to rebuild the firm’s presence in the United States after it was forced to scale back when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Mr. Nishar, who previously worked at Google and LinkedIn, made successful investments in companies such as Guardant Health, which uses big data to detect and treat cancer early. Shares of Guardant, which went public in 2018, now trade at more than five times their initial price.

In an interview, Mr. Nishar, 52, said he was proud of what he has helped build at the SoftBank fund. “Four years ago, no one believed you could build a $100 billion investment platform,” he said. Mr. Nishar and Mr. Son remain close, he added, saying the two men “continue to talk every day.”

At General Catalyst, which was founded in Massachusetts and has been building its Silicon Valley presence, Mr. Nishar will both invest in start-ups and help the firm build its own companies. In addition to Airbnb, General Catalyst was an early investor in Warby Parker and helped build the travel search engine Kayak. The firm was also one of the earliest investors in Stripe, the financial technology firm that raised private funding earlier this year at a $95 billion valuation. Stripe’s I.P.O. is widely expected to be among the largest in history.

Hemant Taneja, General Catalyst’s managing partner who is based in San Francisco, said he had tried to recruit Mr. Nishar in 2015, before Mr. Nishar joined SoftBank. Mr. Taneja said he wanted to bring Mr. Nishar on board to help the firm go after big, broad ideas that cut across fields, including those at the intersection of technology, health care and life sciences.

Over years of long walks around Silicon Valley, Mr. Taneja finally succeeded in wooing Mr. Nishar, who will start his new job in January.

Credit…Tristan Spinski for The New York Times

Last winter was warmer than average, which led to relatively low residential energy bills. Even if the coming winter is not severe, heating costs could rise to levels not seen a decade.

Several factors — lower global fuel inventories, incentives for producers to let prices rise and a mismatch between supply and demand as economies emerge from the pandemic — may combine to push bills higher, The New York Times’s Talmon Joseph Smith reports.

After plunging during the pandemic as the global economy slowed, energy prices have been climbing. Natural gas, used to heat almost half of U.S. households, has roughly doubled in price since this time last year. The price of crude oil — which strongly affects the 10 percent of households that rely on heating oil and propane during the winter — has soared by similarly eye-popping levels.

And those costs are being quickly passed through to consumers, who have become accustomed to cheaper energy prices in recent years and find themselves with growing concerns about inflation this year.

Credit…Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel, via Associated Press

Monday

  • Facebook whistle-blower: Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager, will testify at a European Parliament hearing. In previous appearances before American and British lawmakers, Haugen called for stronger regulations for Facebook, which recently renamed itself Meta.

  • Roblox earnings: The popular online gaming platform, which went public in March, recently suffered an outage that lasted several days.

  • AMC earnings: The world’s largest movie theater chain could be the latest business to report rising fortunes as Americans return to prepandemic life. In a sign that movie theaters may be on the rebound, the sci-fi film “Dune” recently surpassed $300 million at the worldwide box office.

Tuesday

  • Rivian I.P.O. pricing: The electric truck maker backed by Amazon and Ford Motor is closer to pricing an initial public offering that could value it at more than $60 billion. If Rivian prices its I.P.O. on Tuesday, it would begin trading Wednesday.

Wednesday

  • Consumer Price Index: The Labor Department will release inflation data for October. Costs for everything from food to furniture have been climbing fast as strong demand and supply chain snarls have pushed prices higher.

  • Disney earnings: The Walt Disney Company, the world’s largest entertainment company, will report its fiscal full year and fourth quarter earnings after the market closes.

Thursday

  • Singles Day: The online shopping event created by the e-commerce giant Alibaba kicks off. China reported slower economic growth last month, though retail sales have been a bright spot.

Friday

  • Warby Parker earnings: The direct-to-consumer eyewear company will announce earnings for its third quarter, the company’s first report since it went public in September.

The Biden administration last week set Jan. 4 as the deadline for companies with 100 or more employees to mandate Covid vaccinations or enact weekly testing of workers. The mandate, in the works for some time, quickly faced legal challenges, and on Saturday, a federal appeals panel temporarily blocked the measure.

The court, in a two-page order, directed the Biden administration to respond by 5 p.m. Monday to a request for a permanent injunction.

The administration is “prepared to defend” the rules, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, said on Sunday. “The president and the administration wouldn’t have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think that they were appropriate and necessary,” Dr. Murthy said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Dr. Murthy pointed to the nation’s history as precedent: George Washington required troops to be inoculated against smallpox in 1777. The mandate would allow for medical or religious exemptions, and companies that fail to comply may be fined.

One coalition of businesses, religious groups, advocacy organizations and several states filed a petition on Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana, arguing that the administration overstepped its authority.

On Saturday, a panel of the court temporarily blocked the new mandate, writing “the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate.”

The stay does not have immediate impact, as the first major deadline in the rule is Dec. 5, when companies with at least 100 employees must require unvaccinated employees to wear masks indoors.

Credit…Sarah Rice for The New York Times

In Indianapolis, eviction courts are packed as judges make their way through a monthslong backlog of cases. In Detroit, advocates are rushing to knock on the doors of tenants facing possible eviction. In Gainesville, Fla., landlords are filing evictions at a rapid pace as displaced tenants resort to relatives’ couches for places to sleep or seek cheaper rents outside the city.

It is not the sudden surge of evictions that tenants and advocates feared after the Supreme Court ruled in August that President Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium was unconstitutional.

Instead, what’s emerging is a more gradual eviction crisis that is increasingly hitting communities across the country, especially those where the distribution of federal rental assistance has been slow, and where tenants have few protections.

While the number of eviction filings remained at nearly half of prepandemic averages during the first two weeks of October, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, in the 31 cities and six states it tracks, the filings are also increasing.

In the first two weeks of September, just after the moratorium ended, eviction filings increased by 10 percent from the first two weeks of August. In the first two weeks of October, evictions increased by nearly 14 percent from the first two weeks of the previous month.

“In places that don’t have protections, these numbers are increasing pretty quickly,” said Peter Hepburn, a researcher at the Eviction Lab. “And we don’t know where the ceiling is.”

Gene Sperling, the economist overseeing the Biden administration’s pandemic relief programs, credited the $46.5 billion in federal rental assistance set aside by Congress last winter with mitigating the problem. More than two million payments have been made — nearly a million in August and September alone.

Some jurisdictions have used part of the money to introduce programs that provide alternatives to eviction or legal assistance for tenants. Just over 37 percent of all renters in the country live in places that still have local eviction bans or are postponing eviction judgments pending rental assistance, according to the Urban Institute.

But elsewhere, limited renter protections and limits in the distribution of rental assistance are spurring the increase in evictions.

“No one should be sleeping well at night when there are still way too many painful, avoidable evictions,” said Mr. Sperling.

The true extent of the crisis facing tenants is understated by the available numbers on eviction, housing advocates and experts say. “The eviction avalanche is absolutely here across the country,” said Katie Goldstein, a housing justice campaign director with the Center for Popular Democracy.

  • SoftBank on Monday reported a net loss of $3.5 billion in the last quarter, reflecting the impact of China’s regulatory crackdown on its investments. The Japanese tech conglomerate recorded a $10 billion hit to its Vision Fund caused by declines in the share prices of its portfolio companies.

  • Elon Musk polled his Twitter followers over the weekend about whether he should sell 10 percent of his stake in Tesla, his electric car company, with a majority voting “yes.” Mr. Musk may have already been compelled to sell a sizable portion of his Tesla shares: He holds nearly 23 million stock options awarded in 2012 that have since vested and will expire in August. And it’s likely that much of his 2012 options don’t qualify for a preferential tax treatment. Tesla shares were down about 4 percent in premarket trading on Monday.

  • Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate run by Warren Buffett, on Saturday reported a sharp decrease in earnings in the third quarter, reflecting the turmoil in financial markets and the broader slowdown in U.S. economic growth. Profits fell by two-thirds to $10 billion, down from $30 billion in the same three months of 2020, when the economy was still in the process of reopening from pandemic shutdowns.

Posted on

Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reports 508 new cases, three more deaths; expands eligibility for booster shots; U.S. COP26 delegate tests positive

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Saturday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

5:45 p.m.: In a gathering with more than 20,000 people from nearly every country in the world, one of the biggest major international summits since the pandemic began, a COVID-19 outbreak was always going to be a danger. So far, organizers have not revealed the number of positive COVID-19 …

GLASGOW, Scotland — In a gathering with more than 20,000 people from nearly every country in the world, one of the biggest major international summits since the pandemic began, a COVID-19 outbreak was always going to be a danger.

So far, organizers have not revealed the number of positive COVID-19 test results. But on Saturday, the State Department confirmed that a member of the U.S. delegation had tested positive. Earlier, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles tested positive days after arriving in Scotland.

The State Department statement Saturday declined to identify the person but said the official had been fully vaccinated and was quarantining. The statement also said John Kerry, the U.S. presidential envoy for climate change who is leading the negotiations at the summit, had received several negative COVID-19 results, including daily lateral flow tests and a PCR test, since the delegate tested positive.

Asked this week about the number of positive tests at the conference, Alok Sharma, the British president of the talks, said the numbers were lower than in the rest of Scotland. “At this point, we’re comfortable where we are,” he said.

5:23 p.m.: Winter is coming, COVID-19 is accelerating at an alarming pace in Colorado and the state’s 43 rural hospitals continue to struggle through debilitating staff shortages.

Employees have left small-town health care facilities complaining of burnout, and now that vaccine mandates are in place, some have quit over being forced to receive the shot.

In one rural hospital, a pharmacist and a business office employee died of COVID-19 within a week of one another, leaving co-workers at Holyoke’s Melissa Memorial Hospital grief stricken and overworked as those positions remain unfilled.

“They died very tragically,” said MMH CEO Cathy Harshbarger. “Both required a lot of support and medical care. We had to ship them out to other hospitals for care. We’re stretched to the max.”

Holyoke, about three hours northeast of Denver, has a population of 2,200 people.

MMH has run a help wanted ad in the Holyoke Enterprise for 10 openings including a dietary cook, a paramedic and an EMT. The hospital has a separate ad for an executive director to lead its hospital foundation.

“More and more my employees are asking, ‘Why am I in health care?’ ” said Harshbarger.

5:20 p.m.: A month ago the coronavirus seemed headed for a long winter’s nap in masked and well-vaccinated California. Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted that the Golden State “continues to lead the nation” as the only state to reach the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s yellow “moderate” tier of community virus transmission.

But COVID-19 cases aren’t falling in California anymore. They have climbed back up to the CDC’s blood-red “high” level of virus transmission as the highly contagious delta variant continues to wreak havoc.

Meanwhile, the virus has gone quiet in Deep South states that abandoned mask orders, opposed vaccine mandates, posted lower vaccination rates and saw larger outbreaks over the summer. California’s case rate is now well above Texas’ and double Florida’s, which along with the rest of the Gulf Coast are down to the CDC’s orange “substantial” transmission level.

“There are early indications that the decline in the delta surge at the national level in the U.S. has ended,” said Ali H. Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, which runs a widely followed model projecting the course of the pandemic. Currently, 19 states have increasing transmission, including several like California “that had previously appeared to have been declining.”

And while much of the Golden State’s current coronavirus woes are driven by virus spread in the less-vaccinated and restricted inland counties, the Bay Area hasn’t been immune. Most Bay Area counties that hoped to reach the yellow moderate level by now remain stubbornly stuck in orange. Marin and Santa Cruz counties, which had reached the yellow level, are back up to orange. San Francisco is the only county in yellow.

4:20 p.m.: A federal appeals panel in Louisiana has temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s new safety regulations directing businesses with more than 100 workers to require their employees to get vaccinations against the coronavirus by early January.

The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit granted a temporary stay to a group of businesses, religious groups, advocacy organizations and several Republican-led states that had filed a joint petition in court, arguing the administration had overstepped its authority.

Numerous Republican-led states have filed legal challenges against the new rule, among them Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah.

4:04 p.m.: A Rhode Island man who federal prosecutors said used stolen identities to obtain more than $450,000 in pandemic-related unemployment assistance was arrested in Michigan, authorities said.

Dquintz Alexander, 34, of Cranston, Rhode Island, was indicted and charged in federal court in Boston on five counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

As the coronavirus pandemic devastated the economy in March 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which among other things created a temporary federal unemployment insurance program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. The program granted unemployment insurance benefits to people who lost their jobs or were unable to work because of the coronavirus.

The pandemic unemployment program, which is administered by each state, lowered the barriers to collecting benefits, and the usual security methods intended to prevent fraud were not able to keep up with security breaches. Last year in California, an underground internet bazaar that specialized in selling stolen accounts and data had for-sale ads for filched unemployment insurance claims in the state that had been approved and offered benefits worth $17,550.

2:31 p.m.: New Brunswick is reporting 50 new cases of COVID-19 and 51 recoveries.

The active confirmed case count now sits at 476 across the province.

Health officials say 13 people are currently in hospital, with eight in intensive care.

Twenty-two of the new cases were identified in the Moncton region.

Sixty per cent of the new cases are in people who are unvaccinated against the disease.

Officials also say nearly 86 per cent of eligible New Brunswickers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 92.8 per cent have received their first dose of a vaccine.

1:30 p.m.: Quebec is reporting 688 new cases of COVID-19 today and four deaths attributed to the virus.

Health officials say COVID-19-related hospitalizations dropped by 11 to 229, while the number of people in intensive care declined by six to 51.

The seven-day average for new cases stands at 561.

Of the latest reported infections, 409 were among people who were either unvaccinated or who had only received a first dose within the past two weeks.

Quebec says another 6,869 vaccine doses have been administered, most of which were given in the past 24 hours.

The province’s public health institute says about 91 per cent of Quebecers aged 12 and older have received at least one dose, while 87 per cent are considered fully vaccinated with two shots.

12 p.m.: Ukraine’s health ministry on Saturday reported a one-day record of 793 deaths from COVID-19.

Ukraine has been inundated by coronavirus infections in recent weeks, putting the country’s underfunded medical system under severe strain.

The ministry said 25,063 new infections had been tallied over the past day; a record 27,377 were reported on Thursday.

Although four different coronavirus vaccines are available in Ukraine, only 17.9 per cent of the country’s 41 million people have been fully vaccinated, the second-lowest rate in Europe after Armenia.

11:25 a.m.: Nearly two years of being caged in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic has some snowbirds anxiously waiting in their motorhomes and trailers in southern Alberta.

The Eight Flags Campground in the small windswept town of Milk River, 18 kilometres from the Canada-United States border crossing at Coutts, is full of shiny, large RVs.

It’s in anticipation of land and sea border crossings reopening Monday for fully vaccinated Canadians. Such crossings were closed to non-essential travel at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

10:45 a.m.: An Independent member of Ontario’s legislature has apologized for a post in which he used names and photos of people who had died to suggest without evidence that they had died due to COVID-19 vaccination.

Randy Hillier, who represents Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, has frequently posted COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories throughout the pandemic.

In one recent social media post, he used an array of photos from news articles about what he believed to be the sudden and unexplained deaths of young people and called on police to investigate links to vaccines.

Family members of some of those people told various media outlets that they were angered by Hillier’s post and denied his allegations, while the legislature unanimously passed a motion last month condemning him.

Hillier shared an apology Friday night saying he has removed that post and offering sincere regrets for further distress his actions caused the grieving families.

Public Health Ontario says all deaths following vaccination that are reported to public health units are thoroughly investigated, and it has so far determined in one case that vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia was a cause of death in someone who received the AstraZeneca vaccine.

There are seven other reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination that meet the provincial surveillance definition. In four, the adverse events were found to have possibly contributed to the death but were not the underlying cause, and in the remaining three the vaccine was not a cause of death.

Public Health Ontario says another 30 deaths following COVID-19 vaccination that have been reported to public health units are “persons under investigation.” They don’t meet the provincial surveillance definition, but investigations are underway.

“Preliminary information suggests that these events occurred in individuals with multiple co-morbidities which may be related to the cause of death,” a recent Public Health Ontario report said. “There has been no association with the vaccine identified at this time.”

Health officials say the approved vaccines are effective and safe.

10:20 a.m. (updated): Ontario is reporting 508 new COVID-19 cases and three additional deaths in the province in its latest daily count.

In Ontario, 203 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 — 151 are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 52 are fully vaccinated.

The province also says due to data cleanup, three deaths were removed from the overall count.

10 a.m.: Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers will miss Sunday’s game at Kansas City after being placed in the NFL’s COVID-19 protocol. Because he is considered unvaccinated, he must stay isolated for at least 10 days.

Here’s an explanation of the NFL’s protocols and a breakdown of Rodgers’ case.

9:20 a.m.: I live in a world where Mike McCarthy kept his job as my boss for 13 years. I don’t trust authority.

If Aaron Rodgers had just said that, maybe the rest would have been an easier ride. But then again, he may be the greatest quarterback in the biggest pro sports league of a country where at least 775,000 people have died during the pandemic, and Friday he spent 45 minutes pumping out the kind of misinformation that can get people killed. You know what that means? Rodgers could be president, one day.

All grim, tight-faced jokes aside, the Green Bay Packers great has had himself a week. Rodgers contracted COVID, it turned out he wasn’t vaccinated, and Friday he went on former punter and current shouty bro Pat McAfee’s Sirius XM show and delivered almost every anti-vaccine talking point you can imagine.

Read the column from the Star’s Bruce Arthur.

8:40 a.m. Unvaccinated people in Austria who also haven’t had COVID-19 will no longer be allowed to enter restaurants, hotels and hair salons or attend public events larger than 25 people under new rules that take effect Monday, the government said.

Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg outlined the rules Friday night after a meeting with state-level leaders to discuss the country’s response to rapidly rising coronavirus cases.

“It is simply our responsibility to protect the people in our country,” Schallenberg told reporters, noting the case numbers and increasingly full hospital intensive care units.

7:30 a.m.: You can almost forget about the ongoing collective nightmare of the pandemic when you’re sipping a mojito in the pink twilight on the edge of the undulating Atlantic, and a long arc of surf foams over the distant reef, and a soft breeze rustles the palm fronds and laps against your sun-tender skin.

But you can’t.

For despite having to navigate a whole bureaucracy of attestations and electronic paperwork to embark abroad these days, there’s no guarantee the people around you are COVID-free. You hope everyone is vaccinated. But you can’t be sure. And even then, it’s still possible to get infected.

Yet after almost two years living with the coronavirus, we are experiencing a cautious re-emergence. And the door is open to vacation again.

Travel is back, but is pandemic tourism fun? Read the story by the Star’s Alex Ballingall.

7:15 a.m. Russia’s COVID-19 cases hit another one-day record as the country struggles to contain a wave of infections that has persisted for more than a month.

The national coronavirus task force on Saturday reported 41,335 new cases since the previous day, exceeding the previous daily record of 40,993 from Oct. 31. The task force said 1,188 people with COVID-19 died, just seven fewer than the daily death record reported Thursday.

Officials cite Russia’s low vaccination rate as a major factor in the sharp rise in cases that began in mid-September. The task force reported about 57.2 million full-course vaccinations, or less than 40{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the country’s 146 million people.

7 a.m. Several groups of high-risk Ontarians will be eligible to book COVID-19 booster shots starting this morning at 8 a.m.

An additional 2.75 million people become eligible for boosters today, following the quarter of a million people already eligible who include certain immunocompromised individuals and residents of long-term care and retirement homes.

Starting today, people can book an appointment for a booster dose if they are aged 70 and older, health-care workers or essential caregivers in congregate settings, people who received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine or one dose of Janssen, and First Nations, Inuit and Metis adults and their non-Indigenous household members.

They can make appointments that are at least six months after their second dose. Ontario’s chief medical officer of health says evidence suggests that’s when immunity starts to wane.

Dr. Kieran Moore says those groups of people are at an increased risk of waning immunity and greater risk of exposure and serious illness.

Ontario officials say the protection from two doses is still very high for the general population after six months, especially against severe illness and death, so a booster dose would provide additional protection against more mild illness.

The province is planning to eventually offer booster doses to everyone, and is eyeing early 2022 to start the broader rollout.

6:45 a.m.: The United States is steadily chipping away at vaccine hesitancy and driving down COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations to the point that schools, governments and corporations are lifting mask restrictions yet again.

Nearly 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated and the nation’s over-65 population, which bore the brunt of the pandemic when it started nearly two years ago, is enthusiastically embracing vaccines.

Nearly 98{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the over-65 population has received at least one COVID-19 shot and more than 25{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of them have gotten boosters, just weeks after they were authorized. The improving metrics could get a boost from President Joe Biden’s workplace mandate unveiled Thursday and the launch of COVID-19 shots in elementary-age students.

6:30 a.m. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said Friday he sought alternative treatments instead of the NFL-endorsed COVID-19 vaccinations because he is allergic to an ingredient in two of the FDA-approved shots.

Speaking on SiriusXM’s “Pat McAfee Show,” Rodgers said: “I’m not an anti-vax, flat-earther. I have an allergy to an ingredient that’s in the mRNA vaccines. I found a long-term immunization protocol to protect myself and I’m very proud of the research that went into that.”

Rodgers, who turns 38 on Dec. 2, did not say what ingredient he was allergic to, or how he knows he is allergic.

Rodgers, who has been tested daily as part of NFL protocols for the unvaccinated, found out he contracted COVID-19 on Wednesday. The reigning NFL MVP said he didn’t feel well on Thursday but was much better on Friday.

6 a.m. Monday’s reopening of the Canada-U.S. land border is sparking a mixed reaction among Canadian business leaders: They’re excited that people and not just goods will be crossing the border again but are wary of remaining red tape.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council of Canada say the Canadian requirement for returning travellers to provide a recent, negative molecular test is an unnecessary obstacle to kick-starting business travel and tourism.

They say proof of vaccination is all that should be needed and the test requirement should be scrapped.

They argue that the continued testing requirement is too cumbersome for Canadian business travellers wanting a quick visit to an American destination, and too expensive for families who want a vacation or reunion with loved ones.

“If we believe, as we should, that being fully vaccinated is the best way of minimizing risk, we should be trusting the vaccination systems. We should be monitoring what’s taking place in terms of outbreaks in the two countries,” chamber president Perrin Beatty said in an interview.

5:45 a.m. As Ontario slowly creeps toward the goal of having 90 per cent of the eligible population vaccinated against COVID-19, new data shows vaccine rates are stubbornly lagging in some neighbourhoods and among groups of people across the province.

The latest numbers from non-profit research group ICES, formerly known as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, out Friday, show there are still stark differences hiding behind the overall vaccination rate.

“There is a huge range, with some areas hovering around 50 per cent of the population fully vaccinated and some areas as high as 90 per cent,” said Dr. Jeff Kwong, lead of the Populations and Public Health Research Program at ICES.

“The risk of outbreaks in these areas with low vaccination coverage is worrisome. It means there is a lot of fuel for a fire to burn.”

Read the full story from the Star’s Megan Ogilvie and May Warren here.

5:30 a.m. Eleven patients died Saturday after a fire broke out in a hospital’s COVID-19 ward in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, police said.

An official told New Delhi Television that around 17 patients were in the ward when the fire broke out. The remaining patients have been moved to a COVID-19 ward in another hospital, district collector Rajendra Bhosle said.

While the fire has since been brought under control, the cause was not immediately clear, he added, saying officials will carry out an investigation.

The former chief minister of the state, Devendra Fadnavis, took to Twitter to express his condolences and called for “strict action” against those responsible.

Such incidents are not uncommon in India. In May, when the country was battling a devastating surge in coronavirus cases, a fire in a COVID-19 ward in western India killed at least 18 patients.

Poor maintenance and lack of proper firefighting equipment often cause deaths in India.