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U.S. President Joe Biden is announcing Tuesday that every adult in the country will be eligible by April 19 to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, about two weeks earlier than his original May 1 date.
 
As the available supply of three vaccines expands in the U.S., Biden last week said that about 90% of U.S. adults would be eligible by the April 19 date, but he now is expanding that to all adults who want a shot in the arm.
 
National polls in the U.S., however, show that about 20% of adults say that for various reasons they will refuse to get vaccinated. Some have said they think it is unnecessary or that the injections could prove to be harmful, while other have expressed distrust in a government-run program.  
 
The percentage opposed to the inoculations has declined over the last several months, as most people vaccinated have reported no or only temporary medical reactions lasting a day or so.
 
Biden, who was inoculated before taking office in January, is making the announcement at the White House after visiting a vaccination site in suburban Virginia outside Washington.
 
He is expected to make remarks on the “state of vaccinations” in the country.  WATCH LIVE
 The latest government figures show that more than 62 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, about 23% of the country’s adult population 18 and older. More than 107 million people have received at least one shot of the two-shot regimen required with either the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, or a smaller group of people with the single-shot doses produced by drug-maker Johnson & Johnson.
 
Originally, the U.S. made the vaccines available to older people and essential, front-line workers. The new eligibility date in two weeks will give all adults a chance then to schedule appointments for their shots at community health centers, pharmacies, drive-through vaccination sites in parking lots and elsewhere.
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Search and rescue efforts are underway for at least 72 people missing on several remote islands across eastern Indonesia in the wake of a tropical cyclone that struck the region last week.  The torrential rains produced by Tropical Cyclone Seroja triggered flash floods and landslides that washed out bridges, downed trees and left roads thick with mud, which has complicated efforts by rescue crews to reach remote villages. At least 128 people have been killed, with thousands more displaced after their homes were damaged or destroyed. One of the worst incidents happened on Lembata island, where scores of homes were destroyed when the rains dislodged hardened lava sitting along the slopes of Mount Ili Lewotolok volcano.   Tropical Cyclone Seroja also left a similar trail of destruction in neighboring East Timor, killing 27 people on the outskirts of the capital, Dili.   Seasonal flash floods and landslides kill dozens annually in Indonesia. Two landslides in West Java province back in January killed 40 people. About half of the Pacific archipelago’s population, nearly 25 million people, live in areas where landslides are high-risk, according to the country’s disaster relief agency.  
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Steam and lava spurted Monday from a new fissure at an Icelandic volcano that began erupting last month, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of hikers who had come to see the spectacle. The new fissure, first spotted by a sightseeing helicopter, was about 500 meters (550 yards) long and about a kilometer (around a half-mile) from the original eruption site in the Geldinga Valley.  The Icelandic Department of Emergency Management announced an immediate evacuation of the area. It said there was no imminent danger to life because of the site’s distance from popular hiking paths. The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the new volcanic activity wasn’t expected to affect traffic at nearby Keflavik Airport. The long-dormant volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland flared to life March 20 after tens of thousands of earthquakes were recorded in the area in the past three weeks. It was the area’s first volcanic eruption in nearly 800 years.People watch as lava flows from an eruption of a volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern Iceland late on March 24, 2021.The volcano’s proximity to Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, about 32 kilometers (20 miles) away, has brought a steady stream of tourists to the area, even with the country in partial lockdown to combat the coronavirus. Around 30,000 people have visited the area since the eruption began, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board. Live footage from the area showed small spouts of lava coming from the new fissure. Geophysicist Magnus Gudmundsson said the volcanic eruption could be moving north from its original location. “We now see less lava coming from the two original craters,” he told The Associated Press. “This could be the beginning of second stage.” Iceland, which sits above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, averages one volcanic eruption every four to five years. The last one was at Holuhraun in 2014, when a fissure eruption spread lava the size of Manhattan over the interior highland region.  In 2010, ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano shut down much international air travel for several days. 
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Emergency crews labored around the clock Monday to prevent the collapse of a wastewater reservoir’s leaky containment wall near Tampa Bay, Florida, making steady progress after officials warned of an imminent threat of flooding over the weekend. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worked with local public safety teams to drain the Piney Point reservoir, which has a capacity of about 480 million gallons, in a bid to prevent a major breach that could unleash a cascade of wastewater into the surrounding area, officials said. While the pumping operation appeared to diminish the immediate threat to hundreds of homes near Piney Point, a former phosphate plant, the wastewater drainage was being discharged to a nearby Gulf Coast seaport, posing environmental concerns there. The crisis began over the weekend when a worsening week-old leak in the containment wall prompted authorities to order the evacuation of more than 300 dwellings, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declaring a local state of emergency Saturday. Authorities said they were particularly concerned that tall stacks of phosphogypsum waste, an industrial byproduct from fertilizer manufacturing, might suddenly collapse and be swept into adjacent communities. Crews from the state Environmental Protection Department and Army Corps of Engineers teamed up Monday to “reassess the stability of that wall and a second breach that we might have found,” Jacob Saur, director of public safety for Manatee County, said in a video statement. Nevertheless, he and acting county administrator Scott Hopes said the imminent flood threat had eased Monday as expanded pumping operations lowered the volume of the reservoir, reducing stress on the containment structure holding back the wastewater. “By the end of the day today when the additional pumps come online, we will more than double the volume of water that we’re pulling out of that retention pool,” Hopes said at a news conference. Just less than 300 million gallons remained as of midday Monday, he said, adding that crews were looking to drain an additional “75 to 100 million gallons a day.” Tampa Bay fearsWastewater from the property, owned by a company called HRK Holdings, was being pumped into Port Manatee at the mouth of Tampa Bay, raising concerns that the nutrient-dense discharge could spawn algal blooms toxic to marine life in the estuary. “The biggest concern from our standpoint right now is the amount of nutrients being loaded into the lower Tampa Bay,” Ed Sherwood, executive director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, told radio station WMNF on Sunday. “This event, in probably five to 10 days, is introducing the amount of nutrients into the bay that we would want to see over an entire year.” U.S. Representative Vern Buchanan, a Republican who represents Florida’s 16th district, told reporters on Monday that reducing possible ecological harm from the draining was a top priority and that the Environmental Protection Agency was working with local agencies to monitor and mitigate the situation. “Just the fact that we’re running water into the Tampa Bay is not a great thing,” Buchanan said. “But the reality of it is, it seems like it’s the right thing to do right now.” Representatives for HRK Holdings could not immediately be reached for comment.  
 
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The officer who Cassandra Quinto-Collins says kneeled on her son’s neck for over four minutes assured her it was standard protocol for sedating a person experiencing a mental breakdown. “I was there watching it the whole time,” Quinto-Collins told The Associated Press. “I just trusted that they knew what they were doing.”  Angelo Quinto’s sister had called 911 for help calming him down during an episode of paranoia on Dec. 23. His family says Quinto did not resist the Antioch, California, officers — one who pushed his knee on the back of his neck, and another who restrained his legs — and the only noise he made was when he twice cried out, “Please don’t kill me.”  The officers replied, “We’re not going to kill you,” the family said. Police deny putting pressure on his neck. Three days later, the 30-year-old Navy veteran and Filipino immigrant died at a hospital.  It is the latest stark example of the perils of policing people with mental health issues. In response to several high-profile deaths of people with mental health issues in police custody, lawmakers in at least eight states are introducing legislation to change how law enforcement agencies respond to those in crisis.  The proposals lean heavily on additional training for officers on how to interact with people with mental health problems. It is a common response when lawmakers face widespread outcry over police brutality like the U.S. saw last year following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But none of the proposals appear to address the root question: Should police be the ones responding when someone is mentally ill?A passerby stops to take a photo of a George Floyd picture hanging on the fence surrounding the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis where the trial for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin continues on April 2, 2021.In California, lawmakers introduced legislation on Feb. 11 that, among other things, would require prospective officers to complete college courses that address mental health, social services and psychology, without requiring a degree.  In New York, lawmakers in January proposed an effort to require law enforcement to complete a minimum of 32 credit hours of training that would include techniques on de-escalation and interacting with people who have mental health issues. The proposal came nearly a year after Rochester, New York, officers put a spit hood over Daniel Prude’s head and pressed his naked body against the street until he stopped breathing. The victim’s family, like Quinto’s, said they had called 911 for help after Prude, who is Black, began having a mental health episode.  Similarly, in Utah, the mother of 13-year-old Linden Cameron called 911 in September because he was having a breakdown and she needed help from a crisis intervention officer. Salt Lake City police ended up shooting him multiple times as he ran away because they believed he made threats involving a weapon.  He was hospitalized, and no weapon was found. The officers were not crisis intervention specialists but had some mental health training.  Last month, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation that will create a council to standardize training for police crisis intervention teams statewide. At least 34 states already require officers to have training or other education on interacting with people who have physical or mental health conditions. But law enforcement experts say updated training is needed and agencies are far behind.  “The training that police have received for the past I’d say 25 years has not changed significantly, and it’s out of date, and it doesn’t meet today’s realities,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank. “I mean the last thing a mother wants when they call the police is for an officer to use force. Especially in a situation that didn’t call for it because the officers weren’t trained in how to recognize a crisis.” Some of the new legislation looks to strengthen or improve standards. But because mental health training is a mandate in a majority of states, some advocates and experts believe it may never fully prepare officers on how to respond. The Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit dedicated to getting treatment for the mentally ill, concluded in a 2015 report those with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than others.  “The solution that would have the most impact on the problem is to prevent people with mental illness from encountering law enforcement in the first place,” said Elizabeth Sinclair Hancq, co-author of the report. Since that is not always possible, she said, another solution is to create co-responder programs where a social worker or other mental health professional assists officers on such calls. That is what Philadelphia introduced in October, weeks before officers fatally shot Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man, within a minute of arriving at his address for the third time in a day while he was having a mental health crisis. Police said Wallace ignored commands to drop a knife. Other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, have similar programs. For families of victims, who now say they regret calling 911 for help, required training and legislative reform are long overdue.  “In retrospect, it wasn’t the smartest idea to call the police,” said Isabella Collins, the 18-year-old sister of Quinto, who died in California. “But I just wanted him to be able to calm down, and I thought that they could help with that.” Antioch police did not release details of Quinto’s death for more than a month. Police Chief Tammany Brooks has denied that officers used a knee or anything else to put pressure on Quinto’s head, neck, or throat. An investigation and autopsy are underway. The department did not respond to a request for comment. Quinto’s family filed a wrongful-death claim against the city in February, claiming he “died as a direct consequence of the unreasonable force used against him.” “I guess it was really naive of me to think that he wouldn’t get hurt,” Collins said.  
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The death toll from the natural disasters spawned by torrential rains across eastern Indonesia has risen to 55, according to new figures issued Monday by the country’s disaster relief agency. Landslides wiped out dozens of homes in Lamenele village on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara province shortly after midnight Saturday, with flash flooding striking other parts of the province, including nearby Lembata island. A spokesperson for the Natural Disaster Mitigation Agency said at least 42 people are missing, with hundreds of people forced to evacuate their homes.People carry a man injured during a flood in Ile Ape, on Lembata Island, East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia, April 4, 2021.The rains, landslides and floods have washed away bridges, downed trees and left roads thick with mud, complicating search and rescue efforts.  In neighboring East Timor, 21 people have died after the heavy rains triggered flash flooding and landslides on the outskirts of the capital, Dili, according to officials who spoke to news agencies. Seasonal flash floods and landslides kill dozens annually in Indonesia. 40 people died in two landslides in West Java province in January.  About half of the country’s population, nearly 25 million people, live in areas where landslides are high-risk, according to the country’s disaster relief agency. 
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NASA’s Ingenuity mini-helicopter has been dropped on the surface of Mars in preparation for its first flight, the U.S. space agency said.The ultra-light aircraft had been fixed to the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18.”Mars Helicopter touchdown confirmed!” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted Saturday.”Its 293 million mile (471 million kilometer) journey aboard @NASAPersevere ended with the final drop of 4 inches (10 centimeter) from the rover’s belly to the surface of Mars today. Next milestone? Survive the night.”Swing low, sweet helicopter…@NASAPersevere is slowly and carefully deploying the #MarsHelicopter, Ingenuity. The tech demo is currently unfolding from its stowed position and readying to safely touch down on the Martian surface. See upcoming milestones: https://t.co/TNCdXWcKWEpic.twitter.com/3AyaiHOH2k
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) March 30, 2021A photograph accompanying the tweet showed Perseverance had driven clear of the helicopter and its “airfield” after dropping to the surface.Ingenuity had been feeding off the Perseverance’s power system but will now have to use its own battery to run a vital heater to protect its unshielded electrical components from freezing and cracking during the bitter Martian night.”This heater keeps the interior at about 45° F (7° C) through the bitter cold of the Martian night, where temperatures can drop to as low as -130° F (-90° C),” Bob Balaram, Mars Helicopter Project chief engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in an update on Friday. “That comfortably protects key components such as the battery and some of the sensitive electronics from harm at very cold temperatures.”Over the next couple of days, the Ingenuity team will check that the helicopter’s solar panels are working properly and recharging its battery before testing its motors and sensors ahead of its first flight, Balaram said.Ingenuity is expected to make its first flight attempt no earlier than April 11, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted.Ingenuity will be attempting to fly in an atmosphere that is one percent the density of Earth’s, which makes achieving lift harder — but will be assisted by gravity that is one-third of our planet’s.The first flight will involve climbing at a rate of about three feet (one meter) per second to a height of 10 feet (three meters), hovering there for 30 seconds, then descending back to the surface.Ingenuity will be taking high-resolution photography as it flies.Up to five flights of gradual difficulty are planned over the month.The four-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft cost NASA around $85 million to develop and is considered a proof of concept that could revolutionize space exploration.Future aircraft could cover ground much quicker than rovers, and explore more rugged terrain. 
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Nine-year-old Nadja Pivoff from Boston, Massachusetts, has been drawing since she could hold a pencil.  It’s been especially important to her during the COVID lockdown, as Genia Dulot reports from Boston.
Camera: Genia Dulot
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North Atlantic right whales gave birth over the winter in greater numbers than scientists have seen since 2015, an encouraging sign for researchers who became alarmed three years ago when the critically endangered species produced no known offspring at all.Survey teams spotted 17 newborn right whale calves swimming with their mothers offshore between Florida and North Carolina from December through March. One of those calves soon died after being hit by a boat, a reminder of the high death rate for right whales that experts fear is outpacing births.The overall calf count equals the combined total for the previous three years. That includes the dismal 2018 calving season, when scientists saw zero right whale births for the first time in three decades. Still, researchers say greater numbers are needed in the coming years for North Atlantic right whales to rebound from an estimated population that’s dwindled to about 360.”What we are seeing is what we hope will be the beginning of an upward climb in calving that’s going to continue for the next few years,” said Clay George, a wildlife biologist who oversees right whale surveys for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “They need to be producing about two dozen calves per year for the population to stabilize and continue to grow again.”Warmer waters for reproducingRight whales migrate each winter to the warmer Atlantic waters off the Southeastern U.S. to give birth. Trained spotters fly over the coastline almost daily during the calving season, scanning the water for mothers with newborns.Survey flights over Georgia and Florida ended Wednesday, the last day of March, typically the season’s end. Spotters will monitor waters off the Carolinas through April 15, hoping to pick up any overlooked newborns as the whales head north to their feeding grounds.This season’s calf count matches the 17 births recorded in 2015. Right whale experts consider that number fairly average, considering the record is 39 births confirmed in 2009.FILE – This Georgia Department of Natural Resources photo shows a North Atlantic right whale mother and calf in waters near Cumberland Island, Ga., March 11, 2021.Scientists suspect a calving slump in recent years may have been caused by a shortage of zooplankton to feed right whales in the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy off Nova Scotia. They say the uptick in births this season could be a result of whales being healthier after shifting to waters with more abundant food sources.”It’s a somewhat hopeful sign that they are starting to adjust to this new regime where females are in good enough condition to give birth,” said Philip Hamilton, a right whale researcher at the New England Aquarium in Boston.Regardless, conservationists worry that right whales are dying — largely from manmade causes — at a faster rate than they can reproduce.Since 2017, scientists have confirmed 34 right whale deaths in waters off the U.S. and Canada — with the leading causes being entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with boats and ships. Considering additional whales were documented in the same period with serious injuries they were unlikely to survive, researchers fear the real death toll could be at least 49.That would exceed the 39 right whale births recorded since 2017.”If we reduced or eliminated the human-caused death rate, their birth rate would be fine,” Hamilton said. “The onus should not be on them to reproduce at a rate that can sustain the rate at which we kill them. The onus should be on us to stop killing.”New rulesThe federal government is expected to finalize new rules soon aimed at decreasing the number of right whales tangled up in fishing gear used to catch lobster and crabs in the Northeast. Proposals to reduce vertical fishing lines in the water and modify seasonal restricted areas have been met with heated debate. Fishermen say the proposed rules could put them out of businesses, while conservation groups insist they aren’t strict enough.Allison Garrett, a spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the agency is also considering adjustments to federal rules that since 2008 have imposed speed limits on larger vessels in certain Atlantic waters during seasonal periods when right whales are frequently seen. An agency report in January found mariners’ compliance with the speed rules have improved overall, but still lagged below 25% for large commercial vessels at four ports in the Southeast. 
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While it may not yet be planting season outside, inside some New Jersey shipping containers, it’s always spring. Vladimir Lenski has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.Producer: Marcus Harton.Cameras: Max Avloshenko, Dmitrii Vershinin.   
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A retired Iraqi judge who presided over the trial of Iraq’s late dictator Saddam Hussein has died after battling COVID-19, the country’s top judicial body said Friday.According to Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, 52, died in a hospital in Baghdad where he was being treated for complications from the coronavirus.Oreibi graduated from the Faculty of Law at Baghdad university in 1992 and was appointed a judge in 2000 by a presidential decree.He shot to fame after he was named an investigative judge in the trial of Saddam and his regime in August 2004. He later took over as the lead judge in Saddam’s trial for genocide, which also included Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and five other defendants on charges related to their roles in the bloody 1987-88 crackdown against Kurdish rebels, known as the Anfal campaign.The prosecution alleged that around 180,000 people died, many of them civilians killed by poison gas. Saddam was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death; he was executed on Dec. 30, 2006.Oreibi, a Shiite, replaced Judge Abdullah al-Amiri, who was removed amid accusations he was too soft on Saddam during the trial. Oreibi tolerated very few disruptions from Saddam and his co-defendants during the trial — even throwing the deposed Iraqi leader out of the courtroom several times amid fiery exchanges between them.In one session, after a shouting match between them, he ordered Saddam held in solitary confinement for several days.The statement from the judicial council lauded Oreibi for his what it said was courage in handling the trial of Saddam and the former regime.”He remains immortal in the hearts of Iraqis in general and the judges in particular,” it said.
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The Biden administration, which had set a goal of 100 million shots in President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office, hit another milestone Friday. The U.S. became the first nation to vaccinate 100 million people.However, cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, remain on the rise in some regions of the United States.”I plead with you, don’t give back the progress we’ve all fought so hard to achieve,” Biden said Friday. “We need every American to buckle down and keep their guard up in this homestretch.”Earlier this week, Biden also said with the increased push to roll out the vaccine “at least 90% of all adults in this country will be eligible to be vaccinated by April the 19th, just three weeks from now, because we have the vaccines. For the vast, vast majority of adults, you won’t have to wait until May 1.”However, during a White House health briefing earlier this week, both Biden and the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, voiced dire warnings that too many Americans were easing COVID-19 protocols.Biden said if that continued, the U.S. could see a “fourth surge” of COVID-19.  Walensky said she had a feeling of “impending doom” at the rising cases of COVID-19.Worldwide, there have been 130 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 2.8 million deaths. The U.S. leads all nations with 30.6 million cases of the virus, and 554,069 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center on Friday.Compared with the U.S., European nations are struggling to get vaccination programs up to speed.The World Health Organization said only 10% of Europe’s total population has received one vaccine dose, and just 4% have received two doses.One reason for the lag among European nations is their reliance on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine. There have been reports of blood clotting in some people given the shot. The Netherlands on Friday followed Germany, which halted use of the vaccine for people younger than 60.Incidents of people developing blood clots are rare. The European Medicines Agency has said the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe.”We must err on the side of caution, which is why it is wise to press the pause button now as a precaution,” Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said, according to Reuters.France announced on Thursday plans for a third national lockdown to counter rising COVID-19 cases.Also Friday, the CDC updated guidance to say that fully vaccinated people can travel without observing quarantines, although they should still wear masks, practice social distancing and wash their hands frequently.It also issued guidance to the cruise ship industry, saying COVID-19 vaccinations were necessary before they could resume passenger voyages.”COVID-19 vaccination efforts will be critical in the safe resumption of passenger operations,” the CDC said.The CDC said it would issue additional guidance before it would allow cruises to resume, according to Reuters.The Cruise Lines International Association, which represents Carnival Corp., Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean Cruises and others had pushed the CDC to issue new guidance. In a March 24 statement, the industry said the “lack of any action by the CDC has effectively banned all sailings in the largest cruise market in the world.” It did not immediately comment on Friday, according to Reuters.
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