Nation & World Glance
With OK from experts, some states resume use of J&J vaccine
NEW YORK – With a green light from federal health officials, many states resumed use of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine on Saturday. Among the venues where it was being deployed: the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Among the other states ordering or recommending a resumption, along with Indiana, were Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
Those moves came swiftly after U.S. health officials said Friday evening that they were lifting an 11-day pause on vaccinations using the J&J vaccine. During the pause, scientific advisers decided the vaccine’s benefits outweigh a rare risk of blood clot.
“The state of New York will resume administration of this vaccine at all of our state-run sites effective immediately,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement Saturday morning.
Sheriff to seek release of body cam video of fatal shooting
A North Carolina sheriff whose deputies shot and killed a Black man while serving warrants said Saturday that he will ask a court to release body camera video as soon as he’s confident it won’t compromise an investigation into how the shooting happened.
The statement comes as the sheriff faces sharp criticism and calls for transparency.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II said in a recorded video statement that he would ask a local judge as early as Monday to allow the release of deputy body camera footage of Wednesday’s shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr. Wooten said that he would first check with the State Bureau of Investigation, which is probing the shooting, to make sure that releasing the video would not hamper their efforts.
“Only a judge can release the video. That’s why I’ve asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to confirm for me that the releasing of the video will not undermine their investigation. Once I get that confirmation, our county will file a motion in court, hopefully Monday, to have the footage released,” he said.
Indonesia navy declares lost sub with 53 aboard sunk
BANYUWANGI, Indonesia — Indonesia’s navy on Saturday declared its missing submarine had sunk and cracked open after finding items from the vessel over the past two days, apparently ending hope of finding any of the 53 crew members alive.
Military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said the presence of an oil slick as well as debris near the site where the submarine last dove Wednesday off the island of Bali were clear proof the KRI Nanggala 402 had sunk. Indonesian officials earlier considered the vessel to be only missing, but said the submarine’s oxygen supply would have run out early Saturday.
Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Yudo Margono said at a press conference in Bali, “If it’s an explosion, it will be in pieces. The cracks happened gradually in some parts when it went down from 300 meters to 400 meters to 500 meters . ... If there was an explosion, it would be heard by the sonar.”
The navy previously said it believes the submarine sank to a depth of 2,000-2,300 feet, much deeper than its collapse depth of 655 feet, at which point water pressure would be greater than the hull could withstand.
“With the authentic evidence we found believed to be from the submarine, we have now moved from the ‘sub miss’ phase to ‘sub sunk,’” Margono said at the press conference, in which the found items were displayed.
The cause of the disappearance was still uncertain. The navy had previously said an electrical failure could have left the submarine unable to execute emergency procedures to resurface.
India virus patients suffocate amid oxygen shortage in surge
SRINAGAR, India — Indian authorities scrambled Saturday to get oxygen tanks to hospitals where COVID-19 patients were suffocating amid the world’s worst coronavirus surge, as the government came under increasing criticism for what doctors said was its negligence in the face of a foreseeable public health disaster.
For the third day in a row, India set a global daily record of new infections. The 346,786 confirmed cases over the past day brought India’s total to more than 16 million, behind only the United States. The Health Ministry reported another 2,624 deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing India’s COVID-19 fatalities to 189,544. Experts say even those figures are likely an undercount.
The government ramped up its efforts to get medical oxygen to hospitals using special Oxygen Express trains, air force planes and trucks to transport tankers, and took measures to exempt critical oxygen supplies from customs taxes. But the crisis in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people was only deepening as overburdened hospitals shut admissions and ran out of beds and oxygen supplies.