Too soon to know if omicron will bring pandemic to an end, Fauci says
Even if enough people build natural immunity to COVID-19 by catching the omicron variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci said it is too soon to say if this will spell an end to the pandemic. On Monday, Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser for COVID, was asked at the online World Economic Forum if this may be the year that the virus becomes endemic, meaning it is still circulating but does not disrupt society. Although omicron seems to cause less severe disease than other variants, Fauci said the sheer volume of cases could have a meaningful effect on collective immunity.
Russia thins out its embassy in Ukraine
The week before intensive diplomatic meetings began over the buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, U.S. and Ukrainian officials watched from afar as Russia began emptying out its embassy in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. How to interpret the evacuation has become part of the mystery of divining the next play by President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Thinning out the Russian Embassy may be part propaganda, part preparation for a looming conflict or part feint, Ukrainian and U.S. officials say. It could be all three. The departures have become part of the puzzle of what happens next.
36% of Americans say pandemic response is
‘going well’
As the anniversary of President Joe Biden’s inauguration approaches this week, opinion of his efforts to contain the pandemic is lower than ever, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll. The poll found just 36% of respondents believed efforts to deal with the coronavirus were “going well.” Just 49% of Americans approved of Biden’s management of the pandemic, compared with 66% of Americans who gave the same response in July. The poll, of 2,094 respondents surveyed Jan. 12-14, found 35% of Americans believed the administration’s policies were improving the pandemic, compared with 40% who believed the policies made the situation worse.
China’s births
hit historic low
China announced Monday that its birthrate plummeted for a fifth straight year in 2021, moving the world’s most populous country closer to the potentially seismic moment when its population will begin to shrink, and hastening a demographic crisis that could undermine its economy and even its political stability. The falling birthrate, coupled with the increased life expectancy that has accompanied China’s economic transformation over the past four decades, means the number of people of working age, relative to the growing number of people too old to work, has continued to decline.
Officials investigating synagogue
attacker’s link to 2010 terror case
The tabloids called her Lady Qaida. A neuroscientist who was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was accused of trying to kill U.S. soldiers and plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Since then, Aafia Siddiqui has spent almost 12 years in a federal prison in Texas. Now, investigators are looking into whether her story may have motivated the British attacker who took four people hostage at a Texas synagogue on Saturday. Since Siddiqui’s conviction in 2010 for “terroristic events” in Afghanistan, her name has become a rallying cry among Islamists in her native Pakistan.
By wire sources
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