Today's News: September 01, 2021

The Kabul airlift has ended, but a US operation to get 14,000 people off a base in Germany is far from over

As of Wednesday morning, almost 12,000 evacuees had left the airbase, while another 14,900 remained. The number of evacuees to have arrived at Ramstein so far is nearly triple the population of the German municipality that hosts the base.

Afghanistan: UK embassy told Afghans to go to Abbey Gate before suicide attack

UK officials instructed Afghans to go to the Abbey Gate entrance to Kabul airport hours before Thursday’s suicide bombing there, the BBC has learned.

Emails seen by Newsnight show that even though the UK and US deemed a threat to the airport to be imminent, the British embassy told people to “use the Abbey Gate [near] to the Baron Hotel”.

Forever Wars: Just Days After Withdrawal, UK Ready to Bomb Afghanistan… Again

Now Britain is apparently at peace with the Taliban, attention has rapidly shifted to Afghan Taliban splinter group ‘ISIS-K’, which claimed responsibility for last week’s massive suicide bombing at Kabul airport.

The professional head of Britain’s Royal Air Force — the world’s first air force, founded in 1918 — has warned of the apparent inevitability of more civilian casualties to come with continuing Western airstrikes in Afghanistan as he vowed his force was ready to attack the nation again.

German companies cannot ask about employees’ Covid vaccination status – labor minister

Germany’s labor minister has said companies will not have the right to ask staff to reveal their Covid vaccination status, though “pragmatic solutions” may be required for sectors deemed a higher risk for transmitting the virus.

Speaking to broadcaster ARD on Wednesday, German Labor Minister Hubertus Heil shared that there will be no general right for employers to access information that discloses staff members’ Covid vaccination status.

2 top FDA officials resigned over the Biden administration’s booster-shot plan, saying it insisted on the policy before the agency approved it, reports say

The US Food and Drug Administration announced the resignations of two top vaccine officials on Tuesday, and reports said the two were leaving in anger over the Biden administration’s plan to roll out COVID-19 booster shots before officials had a chance to approve it.

Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, plan to leave the FDA in October and November. BioCentury first reported the news on Tuesday.

In a letter announcing the resignations obtained by the biotech-industry publication Endpoints, Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, praised the pair for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. He didn’t give a reason for their departures.

But sources told Endpoints and Politico that Gruber and Krause were upset with Biden administration’s booster-shot plan. The administration announced last month that most people would be offered a COVID-19 booster shot about eight months after vaccination.

One former senior FDA leader told Endpoints that Gruber and Krause were leaving because they felt that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was making vaccine decisions that should have been left to the FDA and were upset with Marks, the leader of their division, for not insisting on the agency’s oversight.

WHO monitoring new coronavirus variant named Mu

The World Health Organization has added another version of coronavirus to its list of “variants of interest” amid concerns that it may partially evade the immunity people have developed from past infection or vaccination.

The Mu variant, also known as B.1.621, was added to the WHO’s watchlist on 30 August after it was detected in 39 countries and found to possess a cluster of mutations that may make it less susceptible to the immune protection many have acquired.

Gov. Greg Abbott signs into law one of nation’s strictest abortion measures, banning procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy

The signing of the bill opens a new frontier in the battle over abortion restrictions as first-of-its-kind legal provisions intended to make the law harder to challenge are poised to be tested in the courts.

Hurricane Ida may cause $18 billion in insured losses, industry experts say

The damage caused by powerful storm surges triggered by Hurricane Ida is expected to amount to about $18 billion in insurance payments in the US and the Caribbean, according to catastrophe modeling company Karen Clark & Co.

The figure is close to the lower end of early calculations revealed by insurance experts while the cyclone was still roaring earlier this week, and represents the first estimate from one of the majors in the risk-modeling sector.

According to the firm, some $40 million worth of the insured loss would be in the Caribbean and the rest from wind and storm surge losses in the United States.

Stanford Study: More Businesses Have Already Fled California This Year Than in All of 2020

California is in decline. The Golden State lost population in 2020 for the first time in decades, and the exodus included celebrity entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. A long list of businesses, some as well known as Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle, and Toyota, have either relocated or sent some jobs outside of the state in recent years.

UK Children Being Given Antidepressants in Record Numbers, Up 22 Per Cent in Five Years

The effects of the pandemic have been blamed for exasperating the mental health problems being faced by children, with the National Health Service (NHS) giving a record number of youngsters antidepressants.

Pro-Trump lawyers who pushed fraud cases face serious consequences

The “Kraken” lawsuits, named after a mythical giant sea creature, pushed baseless claims of voter fraud in an effort to overturn 2020 presidential election results in four key states. All were quickly rejected by courts.

Now the pro-Trump lawyers who filed them following November’s vote are starting to face legal consequences for their actions. Last week, a federal judge in Michigan ordered sanctions against Sidney Powell, L. Lin Wood, and seven other attorneys for what she called an “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”

A New Report Says The COVID Recession Has Pushed Social Security Insolvency Up A Year

The sharp shock of the coronavirus recession pushed Social Security a year closer to insolvency but left Medicare’s exhaustion date unchanged, the government reported Tuesday in a counterintuitive assessment that deepens the uncertainty around the nation’s bedrock retirement programs.