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 Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that he no longer supports the Democrats' $2T "Build Back Better" social spending bill. The announcement marks a major setback for President Biden and Democrats in Congress, who had worked for months to win Manchin's vote for the expansive legislative package. More: - Manchin submitted conditions for supporting a reduced version of the bill to Biden and other top Democrats last week, but over the weekend he said he would vote against it.
- He said the bill would fuel inflation and increase the federal debt. A higher debt burden could hinder efforts to raise capital "to quickly and effectively" respond to potential threats from China or Russia, he said.
- Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki said Manchin's statements "represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the president and the senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate."
- Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Manchin, "doesn't have the guts to stand up to powerful special interests."
- Sanders suggested that Democrats bring the bill to a vote on the Senate floor so that Manchin can "vote 'no' in front of the whole world."
- Because the Democrats only have 50 seats in the 100-seat Senate, they need to secure support from every single Democratic senator to pass the "Build Back Better" reconciliation budget.
- Manchin made the announcement on Fox News and in a written statement.
- Sources indicated that he had not told the White House or the Democratic leadership in Congress of his announcement in advance.
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Moderna said that its COVID-19 vaccine booster appeared to be protective against the new Omicron variant in laboratory testing. The company's Chief Medical Officer said the Moderna vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, is "highly effective" and "extremely safe" for treating the Omicron variant, More: - The company said the two-dose vaccine course produced a low number of antibodies against the Omicron variant, but that its 50-microgram booster increased antibody production 37 fold.
- Moderna's 100-microgram booster led to antibody production 80 times greater than pre-boosted levels.
- This booster, which has not yet been approved by the FDA, has the same dosage as the first two Moderna shots.
- Moderna suggested that governments and regulators may want to use the more powerful 100-microgram dose, but warned that the stronger booster may produce more side effects.
- The Moderna vaccine has been linked to rare cases of heart inflammation.
- The data, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was found by testing blood from people who had received the different shots against a "pseudovirus" designed to imitate Omicron.
- Moderna's stock was up ~6.5% in pre-market trading.
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 A message from KETCH Everything you need to know to navigate California’s privacy laws There’s no getting around it; Data Privacy is a complex topic that can overwhelm business leaders searching for the ideal and responsible path forward. With new privacy legislation in California, and consumer awareness around privacy and use of their data growing, it can seem impossible to stay ahead of the curve. Overcome the core challenges to making compliance and growth compatible with the Ketch Compliance Guide for the California Consumer Privacy Act... You’ll learn: - The differences between CCPA & CPRA and how to comply with both.
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 Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai said in a video that she never accused anyone of sexual assault. After accusing a senior Chinese Communist Party official of sexual assault on a social media post on Nov. 2, Peng disappeared for over a month. More: - Peng's disappearance led to public statements from fellow tennis stars and international organizations.
- In mid-November, an email purportedly written by Peng was sent to Steve Simon, the head of the Women's Tennis Association.
- In the email, Peng denied the allegation she had made weeks earlier. Simon said he did not believe Peng actually wrote the email.
- The WTA ended all tournament play in China after Peng's disappearance.
- After the video was posted by a Chinese newspaper yesterday, Peng was seen at a promotional event for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which are set to begin on Feb. 4.
- The U.S., Australia, and the U.K. are staging a "diplomatic boycott" of the Beijing Games due to ongoing human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government.
- The reporter who interviewed Peng in the video did not ask about the Nov. 2 social media post made from Peng's account.
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GOOD NEWS: New research indicates that seaweed can make cows less gassy, limiting methane emissions. Joe Dorgan, a Canadian seaweed aficionado and the founder of North Atlantics Organics, sent samples of seaweed grown at his family farm to researchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. More: - Researchers found that the nutrient and mineral-rich seaweed helped cows produce more milk.
- They also found that seaweed made the cows emit less methane.
- Methane emissions are responsible for about 30% of the temperature increases that our planet has seen in recent decades.
- Livestock accounts for about 1/3 of total methane emissions, the rest comes from other agricultural activities, fossil fuel production, and landfills.
- There are roughly 1.5 billion cows on Earth.
- Researchers are looking into whether other species of seaweed may help reduce methane emissions by an even greater degree.
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 A message from CLEANMYMAC X CleanMyMac X - Make sure you can trust your Mac Macs are powerful and sophisticated computers. But sometimes, the number of processes and tasks we try to perform is too overwhelming, even for the best of machines. Slow performance, spinning wheels, apps crashing, or freezing are the few things you may encounter. With CleanMyMac X, you can optimize your Mac for your daily tasks and free up space for the things that matter. So what exactly is CleanMyMac X? - A Mac cleaning app - CleanMyMac X combines 49 tools to find and delete all types of system junk on your Mac.
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 Leftist candidate Gabriel Boric is set to become Chile's next president after defeating far-right legislator Jose Antonio Kast in a run-off vote. Boric won ~56% of the vote to Kast's ~44%, and Kast congratulated Boric for his victory on Twitter last night. More: - During his campaign, Boric promised to block a proposed private copper mining project and to end Chile's private pension system.
- The campaign focused on the legacy of far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled the country for much of the 1970s and 1980s.
- Boric and his supporters claim that the model of economic privatization and free-market policies first instituted under Pinochet led to wealth inequality.
- Kast argued for an embrace of those policies and the social traditionalism that characterized the Pinochet era.
- Boric, 35, first came to prominence as a leader of student protests in 2011.
- In an open letter, he said his government would make changes that Chileans had asked for in these and the more-recent 2019 protests.
- When Boric's four-year term begins on March 11, he will become Chile's youngest-ever president.
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Typhoon Rai has killed more than 200 people in the Philippines. Humanitarian workers described some coastal areas as "complete carnage." More: - More than 208 people were confirmed dead and 52 were still missing after the typhoon tore through parts of the Philippines late last week.
- More than 490,000 people were displaced by the storm.
- President Rodrigo Duterte has committed $40M in funds to help typhoon-ravaged provinces with their recovery, and thousands of military, police, and firemen were deployed to hard-hit areas.
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- Facebook paid $229,643 in fines to Russia for failing to delete content deemed illegal by the Russian government. Facebook and Google will face a court case regarding alleged violations of Russian legislation on social media content next week and could be fined if they lose.
- 19-year-old tennis star Emma Raducanu was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Raducanu won the women's Grand Slam singles title in NYC at the age of 18.
- One person was killed and more than a hundred were injured in anti-coup protests in Khartoum this weekend. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in the Sudanese capital to protest against the military-led government. Security forces used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters, but demonstrators allege that soldiers also fired live bullets.
- A BBC investigation found that soldiers serving Myanmar's military junta government killed forty civilians in a village in July, torturing many people before burying them in a mass grave.
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UPCOMING EVENTS - December 21 - Growth in Crypto Security with AJ Yawn (ByteChek) (Register Here)
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- February 24 - Alternative Investments (Register Here)
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 |  | Daniel Smith is an Inside Analyst who currently resides in Miami, Florida. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Daniel spent the last four years as a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He is fascinated by tech, business, politics, venture capital, and everything in between. When he’s not writing for Inside he can be found kicking a ball on the nearest rugby pitch. Follow him on Twitter @DanSmithInside. | | | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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