One-third of US troops have declined COVID-19 vaccine, Pentagon says
About one-third of U.S. troops who have been offered a COVID-19 vaccine have declined the inoculation, initial Pentagon data show. The choice still allows personnel to deploy.
Pentagon officials told a House panel Wednesday that vaccination is still voluntary for service members because the vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. so far are approved by the Food and Drug Administration on an emergency-use basis. That would change with full approval by the FDA as many other vaccinations are mandatory for troops.
Early data show nearly 1 million people in the Defense Department have received some combination of one or both doses of the vaccine, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Taliaferro, vice director for operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the House Armed Services Committee.
Only 147,000 have been fully vaccinated, according to Robert Salesses, a Pentagon official performing the duties of an assistant secretary of Defense for homeland defense and global security.
Pentagon officials said they aim to have most troops inoculated for COVID-19 by the end of August.
— Bloomberg News
Deadly 133-car pileup in Fort Worth is now being investigated by NTSB
FORT WORTH, Texas — The NTSB says it has launched a probe into ice prevention methods on the Interstate 35W TEXPress lanes in Fort Worth, where six people were killed after a 133-car pileup.
"NTSB investigation will focus on snow/ice treatment procedures," the federal agency posted on its Twitter account.
The National Transportation Safety Board is an autonomous federal agency that often recommends safety actions to the U.S. Transportation Department and to Congress.
The pileup began just after 6 a.m. Feb. 11, after when what appeared to be a brief freezing rain shower left a thin layer of black ice covering the TEXPress toll lanes that run in the I-35W median. The toll lanes, which are separated from the nontoll I-35W main lanes by concrete barriers, opened in 2018 — essentially providing motorists with the option of paying their way out of congestion on the rest of the freeway.
Video shot by passers-by and shared on social media showed numerous cars, SUVs and 18-wheelers losing control as they came over a small hill on the southbound lanes of I-35W just past the 28th Street exit, then smashing into each other with sickening sounds of crunching metal and glass.
I-35W is owned and operated by the Texas Department of Transportation, which is one of the core agencies of state government. However, the agency in recent years has hired a private consortium known as North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners to build and maintain Tarrant County highways with the TEXPress toll lanes.
NTE Mobility Partners officials have said they are responsible for ice prevention and removal on the I-35W corridor, and that before the pileup they had been "spot treating" the highway for ice. However, it hasn't yet been disclosed whether deicing crews were aware that ice was building at the site of the eventual deadly pileup, or whether crews attempted to prevent that ice from forming.
— Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Professor accused of mocking Trayvon Martin at historically Black university in Georgia
A historically Black college in Georgia is investigating after students say a professor trivialized the death of Trayvon Martin.
A student at Fort Valley State University posted Tuesday on Twitter, saying a business professor told students to remove their hoodies and that they weren’t “going for Skittles and sweet tea.” The tweet has been shared more than 20,000 times.
University officials said “a thorough investigation” is underway into the reported remarks students say mock the Black teenager’s death.
“Because we take our students’ experience very seriously and want to promote the highest level of student success in a positive environment — in following the University’s protocols, we immediately opened an investigation into this complaint to clearly understand what occurred,” a spokesperson for the university told McClatchy News in a statement.
The controversy unfolded online Tuesday after a student took to Twitter to share her outrage over the quip allegedly made by a professor, who was not identified.
“My professor just said ‘Take your hoodie off ... you’re not going for skittles and sweet tea’ ... I’m speechless,” the student wrote in the tweet.
In an email to university President Paul A. Jones, student Janei Dortilus described the moment her professor asked a student to remove his hood before proceeding to “hint at the humorless murder of Trayvon Martin,” screenshots show.
Martin, 17, was fatally shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, on Feb. 26, 2012. Zimmerman called 911 to report a “suspicious person.” Despite being told not to approach the person, Zimmerman did and shot Martin, claiming it was in self-defense.
Martin was unarmed when he was killed, wearing a hoodie and carrying a bag of Skittles and can of sweet tea.
Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder but was ultimately acquitted by a jury in July 2013, a decision that sparked nationwide protests and served as a catalyst for social justice groups including Black Lives Matter.
— Miami Herald
