 The number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the U.S. is up by 52% over the last two months, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. The rise is concerning to health professionals given that adult hospitalizations are up only 29% in the same time period. The data is limited, however, in that it covers all children under 18; children are vaccinated at a lower rate than adults and those under 5 cannot yet receive a COVID-19 shot. More: - 1,933 children were hospitalized with COVID-19 nationwide as of Sunday, up from a low of 1,270 on Nov. 29.
- Pediatric hospitalizations are up the most in Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio. In New York, the number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 has jumped by 395% since the week ending Dec. 11 as the omicron variant spreads.
- Officials said that none of the children between 5 and 11 hospitalized in New York City have been fully vaccinated.
- Dr. Paul Offit of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said some of the increase is attributable to testing of all hospitalized patients, regardless of why they were admitted. An unknown percentage of the hospitalized children are testing positive while already in the hospital even though they are not showing symptoms of COVID-19.
- Though children typically recover quickly from COVID-19, a small number develop the inflammatory syndrome MIS-C. This is most common in children between 5 and 11.
- As of Dec. 5, only 16.7% of children in that age group had received at least one vaccine dose, according to KFF.
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 The House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 has come to an agreement with the White House to shield some documents it had initially requested from the National Archives and Records Administration. Though the Biden administration rejected former President Donald Trump's assertion that all related documents should be blocked due to executive privilege, it also believes releasing some of the documents could compromise national security and asked the committee to defer its request. More: - The agreement primarily protects records not related to Jan. 6 but that were requested as part of a trove of documents from the Trump administration.
- White House lawyers argued that the decision will not prevent the committee from further investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection since the shielded documents do not pertain to plans to obstruct Congress or overturn the results of the 2020 election.
- Biden's team was reportedly concerned that turning over all documents from that day involving the National Security Council could threaten executive privilege for him and future presidents.
- Trump has asked the Supreme Court to block the release of documents from the National Archives, including presidential diaries, drafts of speeches, notes by former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and a draft of an Executive Order pertaining to "election integrity."
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 The Los Angeles Police Department released body camera footage Monday in the fatal shooting of two people at a Burlington clothing store in North Hollywood. Police were responding to reports of a man threatening people in the store with either a bicycle lock or a gun; an officer fired as he approached the man, 24-year-old Daniel Elena-Lopez, killing him as well as 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta, who was in a nearby dressing room. Activists say the LAPD did not do enough to determine if the suspect had a gun and questioned so-called "shoot first" policing. More: - In a Tuesday press conference, Orellana-Peralta's parents mourned their daughter and called for transparency from the LAPD.
- Surveillance video from the store showed Elena-Lopez attacking a woman with a bike lock before the shooting. No firearm was recovered from the scene.
- A number of current and former law enforcement officials said that officers are trained to take out potential active shooters before tending to wounded victims, assuming that targeting the assailant first could help save more lives.
- The LAPD and California Department of Justice say they are investigating the shooting and have not yet determined if protocols were followed.
- LAPD officers have shot 38 people in 2021, 18 of whom died.
- About one-third of the people shot by the LAPD this year were exhibiting signs of mental illness at the time, according to an estimate by the Los Angeles Times.
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 GOOD NEWS: An international team of scientists has discovered antibodies that neutralize the omicron variant and should continue to target the virus even as it mutates. They believe the discovery should allow for the development of vaccines and antibody treatments that can be effective against future variants. The antibodies identified specifically target the spike protein that has made the coronavirus so successful at reproducing in human cells. More: - In their published study, the researchers say that targeting the spike protein could even help prevent pandemics from "future zoonotic spillovers."
- The researchers theorize that omicron's 37 spike protein mutations – an unusually high number – either developed during a long infection in a person with a weakened immune system, or by jumping to an animal host and back to humans.
- The study also looked at the antibodies produced by prior infections and vaccines. The authors found that omicron had increased ability to infect than earlier variants, but that individuals who had received three doses of an mRNA vaccine had better protection at preventing omicron infection than those who had received only two doses, or had previously been infected.
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 Home prices jumped nearly 20% from October 2020 to October 2021. Despite nearly all major cities seeing housing prices increase by double-digit percentages in the 12-month period, there may be signs the housing market is starting to cool off, as the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index rose 19.1% year-over-year in October, compared to 19.7% the month before. The median existing-home price in November was $353,900, according to the National Associate of Realtors, up 13.9% from the same month in 2020. More: - Of all the metro areas analyzed by the Case-Shiller index, Phoenix (32.3%), Tampa (28.1%), and Miami (25.7%) saw the greatest increases in home price.
- The 2021 surge in home prices is due to low mortgage rates and more buyers than sellers.
- Realtor.com's chief economist Danielle Hale says home price growth will likely slow in 2022, though sale prices will still be increasing. More buyers, she says, may move to suburban areas where home prices are more affordable.
- Though October saw a deceleration in the growth rate of home prices, 19.1% was still the fourth-highest reading in the Case-Shiller index in the last 34 years. (The top three were the previous three months.)
- Phoenix home prices had the fastest growth rate of all U.S. cities for the 29th consecutive month.
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 Four people were killed and four others were injured on Monday night after a suspect opened fire in multiple locations in the Denver, Colorado metro area. The suspect, who was not been named, was also shot and killed by police after he opened fire from his car at five different locations around the city. Investigators have not yet identified a motive in the shooting spree. More: - At least three of the shootings took place at or near tattoo shops, according to police.
- Police said the suspect fatally shot two women and a man at the first location, and then shot and killed a man at the second. At a third location, he opened fire but nobody was injured.
- The suspect was killed following a chase in nearby Lakewood, where a police officer was also injured.
- According to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines "mass shootings" as any single incident where four or more people are shot, there have been 687 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2021.
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QUICK HITS - The CDC has lowered its estimate of the prevalence of the omicron variant among the nation's COVID-19 cases. The agency now says the variant accounts for about 59% of all cases, down from its estimate of 73% last week.
- President Biden has revoked the travel restrictions on South Africa and other southern African nations, given the fast spread of the omicron variant around the world. The ban will be lifted at 12:01 a.m. ET on Dec. 31.
- The collapse of a closed gold mine in Sudan killed 38 people on Tuesday, according to Sudanese officials.
- Wednesday's Powerball jackpot will be an estimated $441M after no tickets had the winning numbers in Monday's $416M drawing.
- Two women are facing federal assault charges for separate incidents of alleged unruly behavior on an airplane. One woman is accused of assaulting two flight attendants on a Spirit Airlines flight in November; another allegedly hit and spit on a passenger on a flight from Tampa to Atlanta last week.
- Amazon says it has updated Alexa after the voice assistant instructed a 10-year-old girl to "plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs."
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 |  | Jonathan Harris is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. |  | | 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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