Oxford-AstraZeneca trial shows its vaccine is 79% effective
Oxford-AstraZeneca’s new trial data shows high efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19.
Oxford-AstraZeneca’s new trial data shows high efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19.
Deadly and damaging storms moved through the South over the weekend from Texas to North Carolina producing 14 reported tornadoes and hundreds of damaging storm reports. Two people are also dead due to the storm over the weekend including one man in Palmetto, Louisiana, where an EF-3 tornado with winds of 140 mph destroyed his home. A 17-year-old girl in the Tampa Bay area also died after being electrocuted from a downed wire from a storm.
A police officer shot and killed a driver during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on Sunday afternoon, authorities said. The incident unfolded around 2 p.m. local time, when officers initiated a stop for a traffic violation in the city in Minnesota's Hennepin County, about 10 miles northwest of Minneapolis. During that time, the officers determined the driver of the vehicle had an outstanding warrant, according to Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon.
As more Americans get vaccinated, the urgency to get a COVID-19 test is steadily declining despite the Biden administration promising there would be a "wartime undertaking" to increase access, with billions of dollars in investment from U.S. manufacturing companies to develop new COVID-19 tests. The U.S. has continued a downward trend, with a 30% decrease in the number of daily COVID-19 tests, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. The U.S. now conducts just over 1 million tests a day after hitting its peak for the year so far on Jan. 15 with 2.3 million tests.
The U.K.’s cautious approach to returning life to normal entered a new phase on Monday with non-essential shops and outdoor seating for restaurants and bars in England opening for the first time in over three months of lockdown. Vaccine passports, or “COVID Status Certificates” as they are officially known, are being trialed at major sporting events this month, with the hope that mass events can open as safely as possible, and could provide a model for the future. Similar schemes are being piloted in countries around the world with private companies in the U.S. now piloting schemes in several areas.
A man who barricaded himself in a Honolulu hotel room after allegedly firing multiple shots has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said. Honolulu Police Department Capt. Brian Lynch said authorities responded to a 911 call that multiple shots had been fired at the Kahala Hotel & Resort, according to ABC News’ Honolulu affiliate KITV. According to KITV, Lynch said about five shots were fired from a guest’s room on the fourth floor of the hotel and that hotel security responded as the suspect reportedly shot through the room's door.
New York federal judge Sandra Feuerstein was killed when she was struck while walking on a sidewalk in Boca Raton, Florida, by an alleged hit-and-run driver, who also ran over a 6-year-old boy, leaving him seriously injured, according to police. Feuerstein, 75, who was apparently vacationing in Florida, was walking on a sidewalk near the beach just after 10 a.m. on Friday when the operator of a red two-door sedan drove around stopped traffic and jumped the curb, hitting Feuerstein on the sidewalk, according to a police report of the incident obtained by ABC News. The driver kept going for another five miles before crashing in the neighboring city of Delray Beach, police said.
Gun violence in Philadelphia continued over the weekend after 11 people were shot in a 24-hour period, according to police. A 10-year-old was among those wounded, ABC Philadelphia station WPVI reported. One of the victims was a 34-year-old man who was shot in the back of the head three times and once in the chest on Saturday around 7:30 p.m. in Philadelphia's West Oak Lane neighborhood.
The hikers set out around 4 p.m. Friday to climb the Scott Room route on Little Cottonwood Canyon, located in the Salt Lake Valley, about 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, according to the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue team. After the climbers completed the five-pitch route late in the evening, they could not find the rappel stations to get off the route, authorities said.
Despite many Republicans signaling they do not support President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said on ABC's "This Week" that the GOP is willing to negotiate on a smaller package. "I'm meeting with the president tomorrow," the senator told "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, referring to Biden's meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Wicker's comments to Stephanopoulos echo the sentiment of 10 moderate Senate GOP lawmakers who signed a joint statement on Thursday, accusing Biden of "roundly dismissing" bipartisan talks during his last bipartisan meeting on the COVID relief bill.
President Joe Biden could alter some terms of his $2 trillion infrastructure proposal and may be open to breaking it up into several smaller packages, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "The president is willing to negotiate what this looks like," Granhom told "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos. Given the bipartisan interest in adopting new infrastructure and updating old technology, Granholm said Biden wants to achieve bipartisan support.
With her state battling the biggest surge of new COVID-19 cases in the nation, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she will not issue new mandates to blunt the outbreak, relying instead on the common sense of a citizenry now experienced in struggling with the deadly virus for over a year. Data from state health officials shows Michigan has surpassed 100,000 active COVID-19 cases in the last week, the highest number since mid-November. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks the Wolverine State's COVID-19 infection rate as No. 1 in the country with 492.1 positive infections per 100,000 people.
Developmental child psychologist Tia Kim considers her 13-year-old son to be very mature for his age. "I would think this is a conversation that's happening right now and it's not an easy one," Erin Wilkey Oh, content director for family and community engagement at Common Sense Media, told ABC News.
Electric vehicles are transforming how Americans "refuel." Automakers are making EVs incredibly austere and geared toward motorists who are accustomed to doing just about everything on their mobile phones. "A lot of it is playing 'follow the leader,'" explained Ed Kim, vice president at AutoPacific.
The United Arab Emirates named mechanical engineering graduate Nora AlMatrooshi as the first Arab female astronaut, a selection that she described as an "unforgettable moment." AlMatrooshi was picked from more than 4,000 candidates to be part of the UAE's ambitious space program, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the country's prime minister, said on Twitter. "We announce the first Arab female astronaut, among two new astronauts … to be trained with NASA for future space exploration missions," he said.
Since Friday, there have been at least 350 reports of severe weather across the southern U.S. This includes five reported tornadoes -- one in Louisiana, two in Mississippi, one in Florida and one in Georgia. In Louisiana, a confirmed EF-3 tornado with winds up to 140 mph touched down near Palmetto.
Honeybees can find their way back to their queen using a sophisticated form of the telephone game. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder used artificial intelligence and computer vision to trace both the position and travel direction of worker bees as they found their way home. The best way to understand what the researchers found is to think of the famous St. Crispin's Day speech ("We band of brothers") Henry V makes to his troops at Agincourt in Shakespeare's play.
Despite locking down in March 2020 and enacting strict social-distancing measures, Toronto is seeing hospitals and intensive care units near capacity as the city battles its worse COVID-19 wave yet. "Sick Kids, our main children's hospital, has had to open up ICU beds for adults," said Toronto physician Dr. Kayla Wolofsky. This third surge is likely due to new virus variants, pandemic fatigue, community spread as schools and stores reopen, as well as a comparatively slower vaccine rollout because of a lack of manufacturing capacity.
Authorities and volunteers are searching for a missing Louisiana State University student whose car was found abandoned on a Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge earlier this week. Kori Gauthier, a freshman at LSU, was last seen Tuesday, her family said. Search efforts have been underway in the days since her car was found, including local authorities, the United Cajun Navy and volunteers.
A man was arrested for allegedly threatening to stab an Asian undercover police officer in the face at Penn Station in New York City. On Friday, Juvian Rodriguez, 35, approached a New York Police Department officer who was undercover as they were both on an escalator near 7th Avenue and 32nd Street entering the station, and started shouting anti-Asian statements, police said. Rodriguez allegedly told the officer to "go back to China before you end up in the graveyard," according to local ABC station WABC.
Two deputies are injured and a suspect is dead following a shooting outside a sheriff's office in South Salt Lake, Utah, authorities said. The shooting occurred around 10:30 a.m. local time Saturday, on the north side of the property's parking lot near a bus stop, Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said during a press briefing. Two deputies on the campus security team were shot and are currently hospitalized, she said.