President Joe Biden will urge Americans to get vaccinated and receive a booster shot as he seeks to quell concerns Monday over the new COVID-19 variant omicron, but won’t immediately push for more restrictions to stop its spread, his chief medical adviser said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and Biden’s leading COVID-19 adviser, said Monday that there were as yet still no cases of the variant identified in the U.S. but that it was “inevitable” that it would make its way into the country eventually.
Speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Fauci said scientists hope to know in the next week or two how well the existing COVID-19 vaccines protect against the variant, and how dangerous it is compared to earlier strains.
“We really don’t know,” Fauci said, calling speculation “premature.”
Police in a Minneapolis suburb fatally shot an armed carjacking suspect after the man confronted them in a liquor store, officials said.
According to authorities, police responded to a call of shots fired in Mounds View Sunday about 7:15 p.m. While responding to that call, officers got another call about an armed robbery in the parking lot of a nearby Aldi store.
Officers found a victim who said a man pointed a gun at him and forced him to drive to a liquor store, police said. The armed man ran inside the store and the employees ran outside, according to officials.
Officers from Mound View and New Brighton entered the store where they were confronted by the armed man, the Star Tribune reports.
Several officers fired their weapons striking the man who was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center where he died later Sunday night, police said.
The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating.
Two years after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide behind bars, a jury was selected Monday in New York City to determine a central question in the long-running sex trafficking case: Was his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s puppet or accomplice?
Twelve jurors and six alternates will hear Maxwell’s case, starting with opening statements expected later in the day. They were picked from a pool of 40 to 60 potential jurors who made it through initial questioning.
Epstein killed himself at a Manhattan federal lockup in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. Authorities charged Maxwell in July 2020, arresting her after tracking her to a $1 million New Hampshire estate where she had been holed up during the coronavirus pandemic.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denies wrongdoing. The 59-year-old British socialite, jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest, has called the claims against her “absolute rubbish.” Maxwell’s lawyers and family say she was Epstein’s pawn, now paying “a blood price” to satisfy public desire to see someone held accountable for his crimes.
Emily Rudie can be reached at emily.rudie@stthomas.edu.