House Democrats push Biden to build a better midterm message
Speaker Nancy Pelosi got to the business at hand at a White House meeting last month on the midterm elections. Democrats, Pelosi told President Joe Biden, need a more succinct and consistent message. The speaker offered a suggestion: Democrats deliver. What she did not say is that some of the party’s most imperiled lawmakers are revolting against Biden’s preferred slogan, “Build back better.” No new campaign message was agreed to that day — or since — and Democrats are pleading with Biden to come up with a sharper message as inflation hits another 40-year high and gas prices spike.
ueasy ambivalence.
McDonald’s ice cream woes have inspired memes, mockery and now a federal lawsuit
It is a perennial lament of McDonald’s loyalists: Why are the ice cream machines always down? In 2018, two friends in California, Melissa Nelson and Jeremy O’Sullivan, created an app they said would help restaurant owners fix the glitches in the machines without having to call a technician. Their company, Kytch, sold the program to hundreds of franchisees. But in 2021, McDonald’s began sending notices to the franchisees warning them the technology could lead to worker injuries. The company is now suing McDonald’s, accusing the chain of working with the Taylor Co. — the manufacturer of its ice cream machines — to libel Kytch while simultaneously trying to copy its technology.
The FDA has extended the shelf life of J&J’s COVID-19 shot by 3 months
The Food and Drug Administration authorized an extension this month to the shelf life of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, shifting it to nine months from six months. Ease of storage is one of the vaccine’s main selling points. It retains its potency when refrigerated at temperatures of 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, while the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna must be kept in ultracold refrigeration. (Johnson & Johnson’s website noted that the vaccine could be stored frozen for 24 months.) The FDA previously extended the Johnson & Johnson vaccine’s initial three-month shelf life to 4 1/2 months in June and then to six months in July.
On Pacific islands COVID-19 once spared, an outbreak accentuates inequality
For a year and a half, New Caledonia, a French territory of about 270,000 people in the South Pacific, had escaped the coronavirus pandemic. Quarantines and border controls kept the virus out. But by mid-September, the delta variant was racing across the territory. Of nearly 13,300 people who tested positive within the span of a few weeks, more than 280 people died, a higher mortality rate than what the United States or France experienced last year. And serious coronavirus infections have disproportionately affected New Caledonians of Pacific Island descent, highlighting social inequalities in a territory that is agonizing over whether to break free of France.
India accidentally fires a missile at Pakistan. Calm ensues.
A nuclear-armed state fired a cruise missile at another nuclear-armed state this past week. They were not at war, and it did not start one. On Friday, India acknowledged that one of its missiles had mistakenly been fired into Pakistan two days earlier. Pakistan criticized India’s “callousness and ineptitude” in a “nuclear environment.” And that, so far, has been the end of the matter. Analysts in India commended the Pakistani military, the country’s most powerful institution, for its reserved response to the missile firing, which apparently caused no casualties. That muted reaction seems to have headed off what could have become a disastrous escalation.
Hundreds of planes are stranded in Russia
Hope has faded for a handful of Western companies eager to recover planes leased to airlines in Russia, with authorities there intent on keeping foreign-registered aircraft within the country and President Vladimir Putin discussing nationalizing the assets of foreign businesses. As of Thursday, there were 523 aircraft leased to Russian carriers by companies outside the country, according to IBA, a consulting firm. The planes are of little use to their owners without the maintenance records that accompany every aircraft, experts said. And the longer a plane is stuck in Russia, the greater the concern that work on the jets may not be logged.
US pays $2M a month to protect Pompeo, aide from Iran threat
The State Department says it’s paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a former top aide, both of whom face “serious and credible” threats from Iran. The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million. The report, dated Feb. 14 and marked “sensitive but unclassified,” was obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday. Pompeo and Hook led the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and the report says U.S. intelligence assesses that the threats to them have remained constant since they left government and could intensify.
By wire sources