(NEW YORK) — New boosters for 5- to 11-year-olds are just weeks away from authorization, the vaccine chief at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Peter Marks, said Tuesday.
While primary vaccines are already authorized for children 6 months and older, the FDA has yet to authorize the newly updated booster shots — designed specifically to combat currently circulating omicron subvariants — for the youngest Americans.
Those boosters, which were authorized at the beginning of the month for everyone 12 and older, will next be authorized for children in the elementary school age range, and then later be authorized for kids under 5.
“I’m confident that we’re only a matter of weeks away” from authorizing the 5-11 age range, Marks said during an event with the COVID-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project. Marks said that the youngest age group, kids under 5, was still “a few months away” from authorization.
“Tailoring a vaccine against the most widely circulating variant is a similar approach used against the influenza virus, and I would not be surprised if this is an approach we see, seasonally, with COVID-19,” said Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Children’s Health and an ABC News medical contributor.
But kids under 5 were just recently authorized for primary vaccines, Marks said, so many are still in the process of getting their first doses and not yet in need of boosters.
Fewer than 40% of 5- to 11-year-olds and 10% of younger children 6 months to 4 years old have started their primary COVID-19 vaccination series, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Marks urged parents to generally get their kids vaccinated because the updated boosters cannot be given to people who haven’t yet received a primary series.
“There are a lot of kids ages 5 to 11 out there who haven’t had their primary series, so you can’t get the updated booster until you’ve had the primary series. So it’s a good idea to think about getting your child vaccinated against COVID-19,” Marks said.
“It’s critical parents not only get their children vaccinated but stay up to date about news on upcoming boosters,” Patel said. “While data and information becomes available regarding the omicron-specific booster for kids, I would encourage parents to make sure their kids have completed their primary vaccine series to prevent any delays.”
(NEW YORK) — As Ukrainian forces continue to mount a counteroffensive against the Russian Army and reclaim the country’s invaded land in the northeast, Russian President Vladimir Putin has upped his military mobilization and rhetoric against Ukrainian officials.
ABC News Foreign Correspondent Tom Soufi Burridge, who is in Kharkiv, spoke to ABC News’ “Start Here,” Wednesday about the latest developments.
START HERE: Ukraine’s continuing to push Russia out of some of its strongholds…and we’re just beginning to see what life was like for residents there, right?
TOM SOUFI BURRIDGE:Yeah, exactly. We’ve been into areas of the newly liberated territory. It took us about three hours to drive down there from Kharkiv City to the southeast of here. And we went to a city called Izyum, and it might be a name that’s beginning to register with people right now. In the forest, by the city, we visited what is a newly discovered mass burial site and what the Ukrainian authorities have now been doing over the last few days, and we witnessed them working [with] these forensic teams in their white overalls. I mean, really digging with care down into the ground, into kind of sandy ground below this pine forest to dig up these bodies, remove them from the ground, [and] exhume them so that they can really identify the victims.
Now, I think what people might not realize about this when they’ve watched this on the kind of news headlines is that some of the people in this forest have died of natural causes. Now, they might have died prematurely because of lack of food, lack of water [and] lack of medicine in these Russian-occupied territories during the war. And more disturbingly, I think, some of the victims being pulled out of the ground, according to Ukrainian officials, are showing signs of torture.
We also met a guy called Sergei living still in Izyum. We met him by his apartment block, which was wrecked in a Russian missile strike. More than 40 of his friends and neighbors were killed during that attack and most of them are now buried in that burial site in the forest.
We met relatives going up to those graves. They’re going there to try and find relatives to try and identify where their relatives are. And we actually met one lady who had a piece of paper and she had the number of the grave of her husband. She knew where he was. He was killed in a Russian airstrike or shelling, but she had two numbers for her mother-in-law. And she had no idea which of the two graves, that were numbered, was the correct grave for her mother-in-law.
START HERE: Well, so then you think about these towns that have been under Russian control for several months now, not weeks, but months. And does that help us explain what’s happened in the last 24 hours? Because I heard Russia is now organizing referendums in some of the pockets of Ukraine where they do control. And these referendums would be like a vote, like do you want to be part of Russia? To which I would have said, like, duh, these can be sham elections. I’m sure Russia is going to say, “Yep, everyone wants to be Russian now” – it doesn’t mean it’s true. So like, why was that announcement such a big deal?
BURRIDGE:I think it’s a massive deal because…I’m pretty confident they will not be free and fair. This will not be a vote that will be recognized internationally. In the White House and the Pentagon [they] are saying it’s a sham. And I think most people around the Western world would agree with that.
And now we’re effectively seeing Russia saying, “OK, we’re going to say that all of that territory in our command in the south and the east is actually Russian property. We’re going to officially recognize that that is Russian land.” And the reason this matters is because in the war going forward, it raises the stakes a bit and it raises the possibility that if Ukraine with Western-supplied weapons is attacking those territories, Russia might try and claim that that is a direct attack on Russia and you get more.
START HERE:So now all of a sudden the response is as if they attacked St. Petersburg or if they attack some border town in Russia. That’s how they’re going to react.
BURRIDGE:Now, that’s, I think that’s the principle they’re laying down in their rhetoric. Now, obviously, I think some analysts are already saying, well, wait a minute. And actually you hear this from U.S. officials already. They’re saying, “This is grandstanding by the Russians. This is part of their information game.”
They’re trying to raise the stakes. Putin’s on the ropes. He’s massively weakened after he lost huge amounts of territory in northeastern Ukraine, up around Kharkiv, where we are. And he’s in trouble. He’s being increasingly isolated internationally. In recent days it’s been really interesting at home. It’s hard to read right back in Russia. We don’t know what public opinion’s like.
The media is very controlled. There’s no freedom of expression, etc. For example, a megastar Russian singer came out recently on Instagram and basically, and really came out for the first time against the war. And that is a figure that really is massively popular among the generations, like someone who really stretches back to the older generations as well, who are traditionally quite a sort of fans of Putin. So Putin’s in trouble and he’s in a corner and now he’s coming out with these kinds of tactics to raise the stakes on the battlefield. And it feels like a slightly dangerous moment.
(NEW YORK) — NASA released new images of Neptune from the James Webb Space Telescope on Wednesday, showing off some of the planet’s rings.
This is the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in over 30 years since NASA’s Voyager 2 photographically captured the rings during a flyby in 1989, the agency said.
NASA said that the telescope’s advanced technology captures some of Neptune’s usually hard-to-see rings.
“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist for the James Webb Telescope Project, said in a statement.
Neptune, the furthest planet in the solar system, is known as an “ice giant” alongside Uranus because the interior consists of denser chemicals than the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, according to NASA.
Usually appearing blue in images from the Hubble Space Telescope, Neptune appears more visible with the Webb telescope because it uses infrared technology that makes it easier to identify objects in space.
The James Webb Space Telescope also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 moons, with its largest moon Triton, which orbits the planet backward, appearing with diffraction spikes, which are seen in many pictures from Webb, NASA said.
According to the agency, the “ice giant” is located about 30 times farther from the sun than Earth, orbiting a remote dark region of the solar system. Neptune is so far from the sun that noon on the planet is like a dim twilight on Earth, NASA said in the press release.
First launched in December, the Webb telescope has been releasing pictures of deep space since July, offering millions of people a better look at galaxies and planets.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — A former Minneapolis police officer who pleaded guilty to his role in the 2020 death of George Floyd was sentenced Wednesday to three years in state prison.
Thomas Lane, 39, learned his fate over closed circuit television from a federal prison in Colorado, where he is already serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for violating the 46-year-old Black man’s civil rights.
Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill imposed the sentence on Lane Wednesday after defense attorneys and state prosecutors reached a plea agreement earlier this year in which they jointly recommended Lane receive a sentence of 36 months in prison. State Attorney General Keith Ellison said at the time that the plea agreement is an “important step toward healing the wounds of the Floyd family, our community, and the nation.”
Upon sentencing Lane, Cahill said he will receive 31 days credit for time he has already served. He will be allowed to serve his state prison time concurrently with his federal sentence.
Lane did not speak during the hearing.
He pleaded guilty in May to a state charge of aiding and abetting in second-degree manslaughter. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder.
“I now make no claim that I am innocent,” Lane said during his plea hearing in May.
Lane and two other former Minneapolis police officers, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, were convicted in February by a federal jury on charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene or provide medical aid as their senior officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the back of Floyd’s neck, while he was handcuffed, for more than nine minutes in the May 25, 2020, incident.
Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
The 46-year-old Chauvin also pleaded guilty in December to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced in July to 21 years in federal prison.
(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Reserve instituted a dramatic interest rate hike on Wednesday, the latest in a series of borrowing cost increases, as the central bank tries to dial back near-historic inflation while avoiding an economic downturn.
The Fed raised the benchmark interest rate by 0.75%, repeating the same hike it imposed at each of the last two meetings. Prior to this year, the Fed last matched a hike of this magnitude in 1994.
The move arrives a little more than a week after a higher-than-expected inflation report revealed that prices rose slightly in August, worsening the cost woes for U.S. households and sending the S&P 500 tumbling for its worst day of 2022.
The Fed has put forward a string of aggressive interest rate hikes in recent months as it tries to slash price increases by slowing the economy and choking off demand. But the approach risks tipping the U.S. into a recession and putting millions out of work.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday reasserted the central bank’s commitment to bring inflation down to a target rate of 2%, saying the Fed expects to put forward “ongoing increases” to its benchmark interest rate.
“We have both the tools we need and the resolve it will take to restore price stability on behalf of American families and businesses,” Powell said.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve depicted the U.S. economy as one struggling with high prices.
“Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures,” the Federal Reserve said.
“Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production. Job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low,” the statement added.
Hours before the rate hike announcement, chief executives at some of the largest U.S. banks sounded the alarm over sky-high inflation in testimony before Congress, warning that price hikes would require further borrowing cost increases from the Federal Reserve that will slow the economy and impose widespread financial pain.
Speaking at a conference held by the conservative-leaning Cato Institute, Powell said earlier this month that the central bank must act “forthrightly, strongly” to dial back inflation.
The rate hikes have yielded mixed results, however. On an annual basis, consumer prices have moderated slightly but remain highly elevated.
The consumer price index rose 8.3% over the past year as of August, a slight slowdown from 8.5% in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some prices have already fallen significantly, though. Gas prices dropped 10.6% in August, the bureau said.
Meanwhile, rate increases appear to have slowed key sectors of the economy, sending mortgage rates higher and slowing the construction of new homes, for instance.
Still, other indicators suggest the U.S. economy continues to hum.
U.S. hiring fell from its breakneck pace but remained robust in August, with the economy adding 315,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rising to 3.7% as more people sought work, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in early September.
On Wednesday afternoon, immediately after the rate hike announcement, each of the major stock indexes had fallen slightly.
Miranda Lambert’s MuttNation Foundation, an organization that supports shelter pets in need, is focusing on keeping families together with its newest charitable initiative.
In partnership with Greater Good Charities’ GOODS program, MuttNation is helping to provide two million pet meals to help families facing economic setbacks stay together with their pets.
“During times of crisis, it’s important to keep families and their pets together,” Miranda explains. “We are proud to partner with Greater Good Charities and hope our GOODS program donation will help families and their pets stay united in their homes during these challenging times.”
Miranda — an avid pet lover who founded MuttNation with her mom, Beverly, in 2009 — has several rescue pets of her own, some of whom will be joining her in Las Vegas for her upcoming Velvet Rodeo residency.
The singer recently posted a photo to her social media which shows three of her rescue dogs — Cher, Bellamy and Delta Dawn — on the road with her as she heads to Vegas.
When fans finally get their ears on Subject to Change, Kelsea Ballerini hopes it’ll take them on a whirlwind of emotions.
“I loved the idea of having a record that takes you through a roller coaster — of growing up, and love, and a lot of inward conversation and maturity,” the singer tells ABC Audio. “Just airing all that out there in a way that feels witty and poetic and honest.”
As the title suggests there’s a major theme of change on the record — good change, bad change and all the growing pains that make us who we are.
“I never really have a start and stop date for writing [for my albums],” Kelsea explains. “When it’s time to make an album, I listen through to the demos that I’ve written over the last year and a half, and I see what they say.”
In the case of the “80 songs” that Kelsea wrote during the Subject to Change era, the songs were talking about different kinds of change. “I was noticing a lot of contrast and a lot of juxtaposition and a lot of change,” she notes.
Any artist would hope that each record sharpens and matures their sound, and Kelsea says that’s the case for Subject to Change, too.
“I’m really proud of what this record says about me in the last couple of years,” she notes. “Because I feel like it’s really honest. And also I feel like, sonically, it is so heavily ‘90s-influenced, and I hope it brings people nostalgia, too.”
Subject to Change arrives on Friday. Kelsea previewed the new album, which features lead single “Heartfirst,” before releasing it in full.
Red Hot Chili Peppers are teasing another preview of their upcoming album, Return of the Dream Canteen.
The “Californication” rockers will drop a new track from the record, titled “Eddie,” this Friday, September 23.
Along with the announcement, the Peppers have shared a minute-long clip of “Eddie,” which begins with a very “By the Way”-esque guitar riff and includes the lyric “They say I’m from Amsterdam/Does that make me Dutch?” — proving that Anthony Kiedis doesn’t just sing about California.
Return of the Dream Canteen, which also features the previously released single “Tippa My Tongue,” is due out October 14. It’s the second RHCP album of 2022, following April’s Unlimited Love.
Last week, Red Hot Chili Peppers wrapped their U.S. summer headlining tour. They’ll play the Louder than Life and Austin City Limits festivals this fall.
The Kinks‘ Dave Davies recently released a solo compilation called Living on a Thin Line, a musical companion to his new memoir of the same name.
The 13-track collection features previously released solo studio recordings and live performances, as well as new mixes of two of Dave’s songs created by his son Simon.
One of the new mixes is of a 1999 live version of the classic Dave-penned 1971 Kinks song “Strangers,” recorded at a concert at Wisconsin’s Marian College.
“I have always thought [that rendition] was my favorite … recorded version of [‘Strangers.’]” Davies tells ABC Audio. “So we messed around with that [recording] a bit. Simon Davies added some bits of keyboards. He added some little audio improvements … And I’m very happy with it.”
The other new mix is of “This Is the Time,” a tune that appeared on Davies’ 2007 album Fractured Mindz, the first record Dave released after suffering a debilitating stroke in 2004.
Dave explains that the song is about embracing a youthful attitude about looking toward the future.
“‘This Is the Time’ is my heartfelt optimism about what we’re capable of, and maybe where we’re going,” he says. “[M]aybe this is the time to really make things happen. You know, like they thought in the [days] … before the Vietnam War … All the youth were in uproar, and the ‘Flower Power’ thing.”
The compilation also features select songs from 1998’s Kinked; 2002’s Bug; the 2000 concert album Rock Bottom: Live from The Bottom Line; and 2018’s Decade, a collection of unreleased tracks Dave recorded during the 1970s.
Meet Titania! She’s the villain on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which drops a new episode today on Disney+.
Jameela Jamil plays the baddie, known as Titania, and Jamil shared her character’s back story with ABC Audio.
“In the comics, she’s bullied really badly as a kid, and that’s where all of her desperation for attention and power comes from,” she explains. “And so we don’t get to tell that story here, but maybe one day in the Marvel Universe, I’ll be able to. But I think it’s an important part of her, and I think it’s a part that probably exists in a lot of very insecure, vain narcissists.”
Titania, originally a wrestler in the comics, is now a social media influencer, which the 36-year-old British actress believes is appropriate for a supervillain here in 2022.
“I feel as though they are the modern day supervillain, some of them, of the world. And the fact that she sells products that are, you know, false and dangerous and [Titania’s] so fraudulent, I think resonates around certain influencers that we have in the world,” she shares.
While other actors of color have experienced bullying online after taking roles in comic-book and fantasy based shows and movies, Jamil says she’s “deeply relieved” that she hasn’t experienced any of it for this role.
“I’m horrified to see the hard time that other people have gotten. And it’s so unjustified and it’s so bad for the mental health of these quite young people who are entering the MCU,” she adds.
As for why that might be, Jameela figures, “This is not my first rodeo man. And so I think people also know that I just don’t care, as there’s no point.”
