(NEW YORK) — Blue Origin revealed Thursday that the fourth member of its first crewed flight will be the youngest person ever to fly to space.
Oliver Daemen, 18, will join Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos (Jeff’s brother) and 82-year-old Wally Funk on a spaceflight set to launch next Tuesday from west Texas. Funk, a pioneering pilot who dreamed of being an astronaut in the 1960s, will become the oldest person to travel to space.
Blue Origin auctioned the final seat on its inaugural crewed flight for a whopping $28 million.
In a surprise announcement Thursday, however, the company said the anonymous auction winner will not be able to join the historic spaceflight due to “scheduling conflicts.” The bidder, who seeks to remain anonymous, will join a future mission, the company said.
Daemen will now earn the tile of the first paying customer to board the space tourism firm’s New Shepard spacecraft. The company did not reveal how much Daemen paid for his seat.
“This marks the beginning of commercial operations for New Shepard, and Oliver represents a new generation of people who will help us build a road to space,” Bob Smith, the CEO of Blue Origin, said in a statement Thursday.
Daemen, who graduated from high school in 2020, has been besotted by space travel since he was four. He will attend the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands starting this September, and is set to study “physics and innovation management,” Blue Origin said.
The inaugural crewed flight for Blue Origin is scheduled for July 20. In total, the flight is only about 11 minutes, and approximately four minutes will be spent above the so-called Karman line that is defined as the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
It comes on the heels of a brief, successful spaceflight from Sir Richard Branson’s firm Virgin Galactic last weekend. The back-to-back missions are seen as ushering in a new era of space tourism that has been propelled by an emerging, billionaire-backed commercial space industry.
(MIAMI) — Two men were found dead at the former Versace mansion in Miami just one day before the 24th anniversary of the death of fashion designer Gianni Versace there.
A member of the housekeeping staff at The Villa Casa Casuarina found the two men in a room Wednesday afternoon, and police and fire rescue arrived on scene around 1:30 p.m.
The victims were identified as Adam Rashap, 31, of New Jersey, and Alexander Gross, 30, of Pennsylvania, according to police.
Both had gunshot wounds to the head, and a preliminary investigation points to the incident being an “apparent double suicide,” Ernesto Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the Miami Beach Police Department, told ABC News.
The scene was contained to the hotel room, and detectives have launched a full investigation, Miami Beach police said in a statement on Wednesday.
The hotel did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Versace, the iconic Italian fashion designer, purchased the mansion in 1992, and today the Spanish-style villa operates as a restaurant and boutique hotel.
Thursday marks the 24th anniversary of Versace’s death. He was returning home to the mansion on his usual morning walk from the nearby News Cafe when he was shot in the head on the front steps of the home by Andrew Cunanan.
Cunanan went on a violent killing spree in which he killed four other men before targeting Versace, investigators said at the time. He died by suicide eight days after Versace’s shooting.
(NEW YORK) — Approximately 500,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Haiti on Wednesday, meaning it no longer was the only country in the Americas without any. But vaccine hesitancy, to say nothing of the recent violence and political unrest, could delay distribution for weeks.
Both U.S. and Haiti military forces helped UNICEF transport the doses in a mostly clandestine effort necessitated by the surrounding violence. The Moderna vaccines, which will be stored in hundreds of solar-power refrigerators throughout Haiti, were donated by the U.S. government through COVAX and delivered to Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital.
Though grateful, UNICEF representatives said they’ll require many more — and not just in Haiti.
“We hope this first donation of doses will be followed by others,” UNICEF said in a statement. “More donations from well-supplied countries will be needed for Haiti and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to reach those most vulnerable to COVID-19 infection.”
Distribution is expected to start later this week as local health authorities and aid groups are battling vaccine misinformation that’s apparently spreading throughout the country.
Only 22% of all Haitians said they would get vaccinated, according to preliminary results of a UNICEF-supported study conducted by the University of Haiti in June. There’s also the ongoing gang violence and political uncertainty following the assassination of Haiti’s president.
Violence in June among armed groups escalated in several areas of Port-Au-Prince during a spike of COVID-19 cases. Over 15,000 women and children have been forced to flee their homes.
“Rising insecurity and clashes between gangs,” a UNICEF spokesperson said, “have seriously hindered humanitarian operations in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.”
(NEW YORK) — Johnson & Johnson has issued a voluntary recall of several sunscreen products after finding they contain trace amounts of a cancer-causing chemical.
The recalled products include five Neutrogena and Aveeno aerosol sunscreens, according to a statement released Wednesday by the company.
Some samples of the affected products, all spray-on sunscreens, were found to contain low levels of benzene, according to Johnson & Johnson, the parent company.
Johnson & Johnson said it recalled the products out of an “abundance of caution,” noting the low levels of benzene found in the samples would not be expected to impact people’s health.
“Based on exposure modeling and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) framework, daily exposure to benzene in these aerosol sunscreen products at the levels detected in our testing would not be expected to cause adverse health consequences,” the company said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we are recalling all lots of these specific aerosol sunscreen products.”
Benzene is a colorless chemical that can cause complications like cancer, anemia and immune system damage, as well as irregular menstrual periods and a decrease in ovary size in women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The most severe health complications typically come after long term exposure to benzene, which the CDC defines as exposure of one year or more.
The five sunscreen products impacted by the voluntary recall are:
Johnson & Johnson is advising consumers to stop using these products and discard them.
“Consumers may contact the JJCI Consumer Care Center 24/7 with questions or to request a refund by calling 1-800-458-1673. Consumers should contact their physician or healthcare provider if they have any questions, concerns or have experienced any problems related to using these aerosol sunscreen products,” the company said in a statement. “JJCI is also notifying its distributors and retailers by letter and is arranging for returns of all recalled products.”
(NEW YORK) — Days after an avid long-distance runner mysteriously vanished in Northern California, police are “further scaling down operations” to find him, they announced Wednesday evening.
Philip Kreycik, 37, drove to the Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park at about 11 a.m. Saturday, parking at the Moller Trail staging area, to go for an 8-mile run, according to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
The Berkeley resident told his wife he’d be gone for an hour, police said. He has been missing ever since.
“Philip is an endurance athlete and is in top physical condition. He is also well versed on rural terrain and outdoor environments,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly said in a statement Tuesday. “Temperatures that day on the ridge were about 106 degrees but were not a deterrent for Phillip who thrives in extreme environments.”
“This is a very bright man who went to Harvard and MIT, a man that’s analytical in his thinking, a guy that runs ultramarathons,” Kelly told ABC San Francisco station KGO-TV.
Wednesday marked “the last fully operational day” of the “exhaustive” five-day search, Pleasanton Police Department said, announcing that the department and aiding agencies are “further scaling down operations” to find him.
The search included more than a dozen agencies from across the state and nearly 300 volunteers, police said. Dogs, drones, helicopters and an airplane with advanced thermal imagery were also deployed, the sheriff’s office said.
Kreycik is the father of a 3-year-old and 10-month-old with his wife, Jen Yao.
“I know in my heart of hearts he’s out there,” Yao told KGO. “He’s out there and he’s alive and he’s waiting for us. And maybe he’s dehydrated, maybe injured, delirious.”
Police said Kreycik is described as white with a thin build, brown hair and brown eyes. He has no known health conditions.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Pleasanton Police Department at (925) 931-5107.
(NEW YORK) — A 23-year-old Wisconsin man is being held by authorities for allegedly shooting and dismembering his father, before hiding his remains.
Chandler Halderson reported his parents, Bart and Krista Halderson, missing last week, but was arrested a day later for providing false information to police, investigators said.
Human remains belonging to Bart Halderson, 50, have since been found.
Authorities confirmed the son is now being held on new tentative charges: mutilating and hiding a corpse and first-degree intentional homicide.
Krista Halderson, 53, is still missing.
The new accusations, listed on the Dane County Jail’s inmate roster, came as the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office released a statement following an autopsy of the remains. It revealed that Bart died from “homicidal violence including firearm injury.”
The Dane County District Attorney’s office have not yet brought formal charges against Chandler Halderson in the death of his father. However, according to a probable cause statement released by the county, witnesses placed Chandler at an acquaintance’s address in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, on July 5, when he was seen “reversing his vehicle with the rear hatch open in a field near a wooded area.” A human torso identified as Bart was found nearby.
The suspect told police his parents had spent July Fourth weekend at their cabin in White Lake, Langlade County, with an unknown couple, and they never returned. But when authorities searched the lake house, they found no evidence that anyone had been there.
“Halderson reported that his parents, Krista and Bart Halderson, were picked up by an unknown acquaintance in the early hours of July 1, 2021, to travel to the family’s cabin in White Lake, Wisconsin,” the probable cause statement said. “Halderson reported that his mother Krista had sent him a text message on July 4, 2021, stating that they had arrived and were in White Lake, and were planning on attending a parade that day. Investigation revealed that where was no parade and that Krista and Bart Halderson did not travel to their cabin in White Lake.”
Once investigators discovered Bart Halderson’s remains, Chandler Halderson was arrested.
“Chandler Halderson did know that his parents didn’t travel to the cabin, and intentionally made false statements to law enforcement regarding his parent’s whereabouts,” the statement concluded.
Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The surgeon general is warning Americans about the “urgent threat of health misinformation” amid the government’s current push to boost stalling vaccination rates.
Dr. Vivek Murthy’s advisory — the first under the Biden administration — addresses an epidemic of misinformation and disinformation, and its pernicious impact on public health — specifically threatening the U.S. response to COVID-19. It frames misinformation as having hindered vaccination efforts, sown mistrust, caused people to reject public health measures, use unproven treatments, prolonged the pandemic and put lives at risk.
The advisory says combatting misinformation is a “moral and civic responsibility” on an individual and institutional level.
The decision to elevate this issue in his first official advisory comes as some Republicans have used the government’s coronavirus response and vaccine messaging as a political wedge.
While Murthy doesn’t call out by name any of the Republican elected officials who have criticized a distorted interpretation of the Biden administration’s vaccine push, he does suggest accountable “stakeholders” in the fight against misinformation include public officeholders as important public messengers.
“Misinformation tends to flourish in environments of significant societal division, animosity, and distrust,” the advisory says. “Distrust of the health care system due to experiences with racism and other inequities may make it easier for misinformation to spread in some communities. Growing polarization, including in the political sphere, may also contribute to the spread of misinformation.”
The advisory also digs into social media platforms as having greatly contributed to the “unprecedented speed and scale” of misinformation’s spread and Murthy calls on technology and social media companies to “take more responsibility to stop online spread of health misinformation.”
“Health misinformation is an urgent threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, and undermine public health efforts, including our ongoing work to end the COVID-19 pandemic,” Murthy said in a statement. “As Surgeon General, my job is to help people stay safe and healthy, and without limiting the spread of health misinformation, American lives are at risk … tackling this challenge will require an all-of-society approach, but it is critical for the long-term health of our nation.”
The advisory lays out how to better identify and avoid sharing health misinformation, engage with the community on the issue and develop local strategies against misinformation:
Health professionals and health organizations can proactively engage with patients and the public by listening with empathy and correcting misinformation in personalized ways. The advisory suggests using social media and partnering with community groups to get out accurate information.
Governments can prevent and address misinformation by finding “common ground on difficult questions,” increasing investment in research, fact checking and engaging in rumor control. Murthy advised partnering with trusted messengers, using proactive messaging and community engagement strategies. Health teams should identify local misinformation patterns and train public health misinformation researchers.
Technology platforms can assess benefits and harms of how their products are built and “take responsibility for addressing the harms;” strengthen their monitoring of misinformation and improve transparency; and proactively address information deficits. The companies could also prioritize early detection of misinformation “super-spreaders” or repeat offenders, and amplify trusted messenger, prioritizing protecting health professionals, journalists and others from online harassment.
Journalists and media organizations can make sure their teams are trained in recognizing, debunking and avoiding amplification of misinformation by carefully reviewing materials that have not been peer reviewed.
Educators and schools can shore up evidence-based programs that build a “resilience” to misinformation by teaching people how to be more discerning about it and talk to friends and family who are sharing misinformation.
Foundations can provide training and resources for grantees working in communities that are disproportionately affected by misinformation, including areas with lower vaccine confidence, and monitoring health misinformation across multiple languages.
Researchers and research institutions can strengthen their monitoring of health questions and concerns, assess the impact that misinformation might be having and tailor interventions to the needs of specific populations, with an understanding of how people are exposed to and affected by misinformation.
(NEW YORK) — After more than two months of trying to woo hesitant Americans to get COVID-19 vaccines with cash, free beer and other prizes, health data and experts suggest those incentives failed to move the needle forward appreciably in many cases, and in some had no impact at all.
“A small proportion responds to the incentives, but they are definitely not a panacea,” Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and economics at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and Graduate School of Business, told ABC News of the national vaccine situation.
There was some initial thought that lotteries, in particular, would be effective given their appeal to some people who were also hesitant to get vaccines, experts told ABC News. But since incentives started widely being offered beginning on May 12, the number of first does given in the U.S. briefly increased but then tailed off.
The country did not meet President Joe Biden’s goal of 70% of Americans getting one dose by July 4 and only 48% of the entire population has been fully vaccinated as of July 13, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The situation is more urgent in some states, like Arkansas and Louisiana, where vaccinations levels are below 50% despite well-funded incentive programs.
Schulman and health experts are recommending governors and health officials refocus their efforts on outreach rather than incentivizing if they want to avoid another wave of cases, hospitalization and deaths brought upon by low vaccination numbers.
Ohio’s ‘Vax-a-Million’ — an outlier?
Ohio, the first state to offer a lottery to vaccinated residents, was seen as an early test case. Gov. Mike DeWine used federal stimulus money to offer a $1 million prize and one full college scholarship to teen entrants once a week for five weeks.
One week after the “Vax-a-Million” sweepstakes was announced, an additional 113,000 Ohio residents had received their first dose, according to the state’s health department. That increase represented a week to week 53% jump, the state’s health officials said.
“This exceeded the governor’s expectations,” Dan Tierney, a spokesman for DeWine, told ABC News.
While the state credited the lottery for the jump, there has been no direct study or data to show it was the impetus, aside from some anecdotal evidence, according to the state’s health officials. The data did show that the increase was short-lived.
Since May 12, the number of residents who received their first shot increased by 770,000, according to the Ohio Health Department.
While this represents 13.5% of the 5.7 million Ohio residents who have received their first shot as of July 13, the state only has 48.8% of its population with one dose.
Roughly 55.6% of the total U.S. population has received one dose as of July 13, according to the CDC.
John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said Ohio’s case demonstrated that vaccine health incentives are really just a stop-gap and true solutions lie in increasing access to a vaccine center and education about efficacy.
“The incentives only really worked for people who were on the fence,” Brownstein said of the Ohio lottery program. “You saw that slight bump, but there are still thousands of people who aren’t signing up and the incentives didn’t work on them.”
Tierney said the Ohio lottery campaign organizers acknowledged that the campaign was most effective at convincing residents who were planning on getting vaccinated but held out due to scheduling time around school, work or vacations.
But Tierney also maintained that those hundreds of thousands of newly vaccinated residents still make a difference in the state’s goal.
“I think Vax-a-Million forced a lot of people to think about their calculations about when they wanted to get the vaccine,” he said.
Others lagging behind
Brownstein and health experts warned that Ohio’s increase following its lottery was an outlier.
Eighteen other states, including Maryland and New York, came up with their own vaccine lotteries or cash giveaways following Ohio, according to the National Governor’s Association. Their combined efforts appeared to only make a small and short-lived dent in vaccination numbers.
The seven-day average of new first doses given initially climbed from 1.79 million on May 12 after the states offered their programs to 1.88 million a week later but has steadily declined to 421,000 on July 7, according to the data. The average peaked at 3.4 million doses on April 11, according to the CDC.
Several states with already lagging vaccine numbers saw no jump after their programs were announced, according to health data.
In Louisiana, where only 39% of the entire population has one dose of the vaccine, the seven-day average of new daily doses administered has remained level at around 10,000 for the last month, according to Louisiana Health Department. A lottery for vaccinated residents was announced on June 17.
In Arkansas, the seven-day average of new vaccine shots administered declined by over 3,500 after the state announced its scratch-off game incentive for vaccinated residents on May 25, according to the Arkansas Health Department.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to buy our way out of this,” Col. Robert Ator, the program director of the Arkansas vaccine incentive program, told ABC affiliate KATV on June 28.
A representative for the Arkansas Health Department told ABC News the state is looking at other options including a request to businesses to offer incentives to people.
Don’t focus on incentives: Experts
Schulman co-authored a report in the New England Journal of Medicine in January arguing that the best ways to promote the COVID-19 vaccination among the populace is for state leaders to rethink their approaches and focus on marketing rather than rewards
Specifically, Schulman said states should prepare and launch marketing and advertising campaigns aimed at Americans who think it’s OK not to get a shot because hospitalizations and deaths are down from the winter and they’ll be fine.
“They are a really important group to address now. They’re more likely to respond to a good marketing campaign,” he said.
Informing those unvaccinated members about the dangers of the virus, particularly the growing threat of variants, and the effects on their families and businesses will go a longer way than a cash prize, Schulman argued.
“I would go back to those lottery states and ask how much did you spend on the lottery and how much could you have spent on Facebook ads that could appeal to those populations,” he said.
Tierney noted that the Vax-a-Million sweepstakes generated a form of publicity for the vaccine because of news articles, social media posts and word of mouth. His office has estimated that the coverage was the equivalent of $50 million in advertising.
“We could not have bought this word of mouth,” he said.
Schulman said it is promising that state leaders are working to close the vaccination gap, but reiterated that they’ll need more precise targeting to pick up the pace.
“The fact that these governors sounded the alarm early and said, ‘We have a problem,’ is encouraging,” he said. “They must not give up.”
(NEW YORK) — “Sicker, younger, quicker” is how hospital executive Steve Edwards explained a sudden explosion this month in COVID patients in Springfield, Missouri.
It’s against this backdrop — rising COVID cases due to an aggressive new variant and lagging vaccination numbers — that the nation’s estimated 56 million students grades K-12 return to the classroom full-time in the coming weeks, many of them for the first time since the pandemic shuttered schools in March 2020.
Here’s what to know about schools reopening:
Only of a quarter of children ages 12-15 are fully immunized
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lowered the age of people eligible to receive the vaccine from 16 to 12 in May, citing evidence from clinical trials that the two doses were safe and effective in kids in preventing the symptoms caused by COVID-19. Studies also have shown that vaccination prevents the chances a teen could spread the virus.
But U.S. teens have been slow on the uptake.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 86% of people over age 75 are fully vaccinated. That’s compared to nearly 25% of children ages 12-15 and 37% of young people 16-17 who are fully vaccinated.
That leaves large populations of high schools and middle schools — which are often overcrowded, making social distancing difficult — unprotected against the virus, particularly as daily COVID cases have jumped 86% in the last three weeks.
For younger children, ages 5-11, Pfizer said its clinical trials are under way now to see if a smaller dose of the vaccine would be as effective. Company officials said they plan to seek authorization for kids younger than 12 in September or October, paving the way for elementary-age children to be fully immunized by the end of the year.
Several states are prohibiting schools from requiring masks
Last year, schools were found not to be super-spreaders so long as students and staff consistently wore masks and took other steps to prevent transmission.
The CDC now says vaccinated students and staff can forgo masks unless they are riding a school bus or if their school tells them otherwise. But verifying who is vaccinated will be up to schools and local officials — and many states don’t appear to be eager to mandate proof of vaccination.
According to the school tracker Burbio, seven states are prohibiting schools from mandating masks. Schools in Utah, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Vermont and South Carolina can only recommend masks to unvaccinated staff and students.
In Arizona, Chandler Unified School District, which welcomes back students July 21 — one of the earliest start dates in the nation — already decided masks would be voluntary when Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law that prohibits local counties and school districts from requiring students or staff to wear face coverings.
In most states though, including Missouri, school districts have the option of requiring masks come fall — a decision that could change as COVID case numbers fluctuate.
In Springfield, Missouri, for example, the city had lifted the mask mandate in schools only to reinstate it for its July summer program when COVID case numbers climbed. The superintendent there has yet to say whether masks will be required when the district reopens full-time on Aug. 23, welcoming back more than 23,000 students into its classrooms.
Biden designated $10B for testing in schools, but not every state wants it
President Joe Biden has designated $10 billion in federal money as part of his $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan so schools can test students and staff. Under the program, states are required to report back how many tests are used and how many turn up positive.
Several of the nation’s largest school districts — Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago — plan to reopen with routine surveillance testing for students. Colorado’s health department also announced it wants to use federal dollars to implement a routine testing program.
But other parts of the country — including Idaho and Iowa — plan to forgo entirely their share of federal funding to test students for COVID-19.
Last April, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds announced that she would reject the $95 million in federal funds offered to the state for in-school coronavirus testing.
“I think he (Biden) thinks that COVID just started,” Reynolds said in a Fox News interview. “I just returned $95 million because they sent an additional $95 million to the state of Iowa to get our kids back in the classroom by doing surveillance testing. And I said we’ve been in the classroom since August. Here’s your $95 million back.”
The CDC and Biden’s top health officials are still suggesting schools embrace the idea of routine testing, particularly if they want schools to stay open.
“Our nation’s top public health scientists are recommending that school districts consider adding screening programs into their overall strategy for protecting their kids and their staff from outbreaks of COVID and the administration is supporting that recommendation with this testing program,” said Tom Inglesby, a senior COVID-19 response adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services.
(WASHINGTON) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to visit the White House Thursday for talks with President Joe Biden.
After deciding not to seek another term in office, her trip will likely mark a farewell to Biden. It’s a chance for the longtime acquaintances and partners to reaffirm the strong U.S.-Germany bond in the face of global challenges, such as the coronavirus pandemic and rising autocratic influences.
“Chancellor Merkel has been a true friend to the United States, a strong advocate for the transatlantic partnership for multilateral cooperation, as well as for our shared priorities,” a senior administration official said ahead of the meeting. “In their meeting, I expect that President Biden will convey gratitude for her leadership role, in Europe and around the world, as she prepares to depart the German political stage, following their elections this September.”
The visit with also be an opportunity for the pair to hash out some areas of concern ahead of the end of Merkel’s tenure.
Merkel kicks off her visit having breakfast with Vice President Kamala Harris. In the afternoon, Merkel attends both a one-on-one and a larger group meeting at the White House with Biden. Merkel and Biden hold a press conference in the late afternoon and then in the evening, Biden will host a dinner for her and “a range of individuals who have long been strong supporters of Germany and the bilateral relationship, which will further demonstrate the close and continuing ties between our countries,” a senior administration official said.
Despite the warm welcome, challenges remain.
One sticking point between the two countries is Nord Stream 2, a pipeline to move gas directly from Russia, under the Baltic Sea and into Germany. Biden is opposed to the pipeline, as are many Republicans in Congress, because it could give Russia increased influence in Europe and more control over energy reserves. The pipeline will likely deprive other countries, such as Ukraine, of badly-needed oil revenues and some experts fear Russia could shut off the gas supply to certain countries in retaliatory moves.
Biden lifted U.S. sanctions on companies helping to build the pipeline in May as a goodwill gesture to European allies, as he worked to get them on board with his tough-on-Russia policies and in a tacit admission that U.S. sanctions ultimately failed to halt construction. That was a move some Republicans, including Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, criticized.
“Instead of treating Putin like a gangster who fears his own people, we’re giving him his treasured Nord Stream 2 pipeline and legitimizing his actions with a summit,” Sasse said.
It’s a topic Biden is expected to bring up with Merkel on Thursday.
“I do expect that President Biden will raise his long-standing concerns with Chancellor Merkel during their meeting about Russia’s geopolitical project and about the importance of developing concrete mechanisms to ensure that energy is not used as a coercive tool against Ukraine, our eastern flank allies or any other country. We believe that the sanctions waivers that we announced in May have given us diplomatic space to be able to work with Germany to have these conversations to try and find ways to address the negative impacts of the pipeline,” the official said.
However, the official did not anticipate any formal announcement on Nord Stream out of the meeting.
The official did preview that Biden and Merkel will release a so-called Washington Declaration, “which will outline their common vision for cooperation to confront policy challenges,” and provide guiding principles for years ahead, even as Merkel’s successor takes the helm. The official also anticipated a climate and energy partnership to be announced, though they provided no further details on what that will look like.
Another area of difference between the two leaders is China’s rising global influence. While Biden has seen China as a competitor that must be curtailed, Merkel is friendlier towards a rising China, believing their success and a balanced trade relationship between the two countries will benefit Germany.
Other agenda items include the pandemic and security challenges in Afghanistan.
