NY will vet any virus vaccine approved by US, governor says
NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that New York would review coronavirus vaccines that are approved by the federal government, giving the state a potentially contentious new role in the process a day after President Donald Trump raised doubts about tougher Food and Drug Administration guidelines.
“Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion, and I wouldn’t recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government’s opinion,” Cuomo said at a news briefing.
As Cuomo spoke, one of the blue slides characteristic of his pandemic news conferences broadcast his message in plain terms: “Unfortunately, we can no longer trust the federal government.”
New York officials do not play a role in the approval process for a possible vaccine, but under the current plan they would help determine how it would be distributed throughout the state. In theory, officials could delay such distribution if they believed the vaccine was not safe.
Cuomo said that he was alarmed when, on Wednesday, Trump suggested that the White House might reject new FDA guidelines that would toughen the process for approving a coronavirus vaccine.
To vet a vaccine, Cuomo said that he would assemble a panel of scientists, doctors and public health experts who would review its safety and effectiveness after the federal government approves it.
Meatpacker fined: Iowa regulators have issued their first citation to a meatpacking plant with a large coronavirus outbreak that sickened its workforce — a $957 fine for a minor record-keeping violation.
The outbreak at the Iowa Premium Beef Plant in Tama in April resulted in 338 of the plant’s 850 workers testing positive for the virus, 80 more than the state previously acknowledged, according to inspection records released Thursday.
The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration said on June 1 that it had launched inspections at the Tama plant and four other meatpacking plants where thousands of workers had tested positive.
Records show that the inspections did not lead to any citations at the other four plants, where at least nine workers have died after contracting the COVID-19 virus.
The agency cited Iowa Premium Beef in August for failing to keep a required log of workplace-related injuries and illnesses, and for failing to provide the document within four hours after inspectors requested it.
Niece sues Trumps: President Donald Trump’s niece followed up her best-selling, tell-all book with a lawsuit Thursday alleging that her famous uncle and two of his siblings cheated her out of millions of dollars over several decades while squeezing her out of the family business.
Mary Trump sought unspecified damages in the lawsuit, filed in a state court in New York City.
The lawsuit alleged the president, his brother Robert, and a sister, the former federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, portrayed themselves as Mary Trump’s protectors while secretly taking her share of minority interests in the family’s extensive real estate holdings. Robert Trump died last month.
Mary Trump and her brother, Fred Trump III, inherited various real estate business interests when their father, Fred Trump Jr., died in 1981 at 42 after a struggle with alcoholism. Mary Trump was 16 at the time.
According to the lawsuit, Donald Trump and his siblings devalued Mary Trump’s interests, which included a share of hundreds of New York City apartments, by millions of dollars even before Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr., died in 1999.
Vatican official resigns: The powerful head of the Vatican’s saint-making office, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, resigned suddenly Thursday and renounced his rights as a cardinal amid a financial scandal that has reportedly implicated him indirectly.
The Vatican provided no details on why Pope Francis accepted Becciu’s resignation in a statement late Thursday. In the one-sentence announcement, the Holy See said only that Francis had accepted Becciu’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints “and his rights connected to the cardinalate.”
Becciu, the former No. 2 in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, has been reportedly implicated in a financial scandal involving the Vatican’s investment in a London real estate deal that has lost the Holy See millions of dollars in fees paid to middlemen.
The Vatican prosecutor has placed several Vatican officials under investigation, as well as the middlemen, but not Becciu.
Becciu has defended the soundness of the original investment and denied any wrongdoing, and it’s not clear whether the scandal itself was behind his resignation or possibly sparked a separate line of inquiry.
U.S.-Iraq: The United States has extended a sanctions waiver that enables Iraq to continue importing gas from Iran but this time granting a significantly shorter waiver period, Iraqi officials and the U.S. State Department said Thursday.
The development is a sign of unease in U.S.-Iraq relations amid near-daily attacks targeting the American presence in the Mideast country and underscores the standing U.S. demand that Baghdad wean itself of dependence on Iranian oil.
Washington informed Iraq’s leadership this week of its decision to grant a 60-day sanctions waiver, instead of the 120-day waiver issued over the summer, three Iraqi officials said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The State Department confirmed the development.
Forbidden dance: With bars and nightclubs limiting capacity and closing early in the St. Louis area due to the coronavirus pandemic, neighboring establishments in St. Charles, Missouri, are seeing so many large and unruly crowds that the city is taking a cue from the 1984 movie “Footloose” and banning dancing.
City leaders met this week with restaurant, bar and club operators and then announced a temporary ban on “music activities” after 11 p.m., starting Friday.
The city ban includes dancing and the DJ music that accompanies it.
“I feel a little bit like the movie ‘Footloose’ but that’s not what this is about,” Mayor Dan Borgmeyer told KTVI-TV.
“Footloose” starred Kevin Bacon as a big-city teenager who moved to a small town that banned dancing, at least until he turned things around.
The temporary suspension of late-night dancing and DJ music in St. Charles is in response to rowdy crowds that have been spilling into the streets, resulting in fights and creating enough concern that the police presence downtown at night has tripled during the past five months.