Gazette Daily News Briefing, December 18th
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, December 18th.
Say goodbye to a lot of that snow... with a small chance it gets replaced later on. According to the National Weather Service, the high temperature should reach 40 in the Cedar Rapids area on Friday. With this warm air will come a more active wind, blowing at 10 to 15 mph and gusting as high as 25 mph. There will be a slight chance of rain and snow before 10 p.m., then a slight chance of snow after that. Otherwise it will be mostly cloudy, with a low of around 27 degrees.
COVID-19 vaccine news has been largely positive this week, but it hasn’t been without setbacks. Iowa is among the states saying their allocations of the game-changing COVID-19 vaccinations in the coming weeks will be less than projected — prompting worries about potential delays for inoculating thousands of health care workers and nursing home residents. The first U.S. doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were administered Monday nationwide, including at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. The pace is expected to increase next week, assuming Moderna gets federal authorization for its vaccine as a panel recommended Thursday.
Iowa public health officials said they initially were told to expect a total of 172,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines within the first three weeks of availability this month. But in a statement Thursday, Iowa officials say that now has been lowered to 138,300 doses — a nearly 20 percent reduction.
100 more deaths from COVID-19 were reported in Iowa, bringing the state’s death toll to 3,451.
Google has engaged in monopolistic practices that allow it to collect vast amounts of personal data from consumers, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and attorneys general from 37 other states and territories asserted in a lawsuit Thursday, the latest in a bipartisan effort of government officials to take on Big Tech.
The lawsuit, led by Democratic Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and Republican Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, contends Google has “methodically undertaken actions to entrench and reinforce its general search services and search-related advertising monopolies by stifling competition.”
It comes just a week after Iowa joined the federal government and 47 other states in an antitrust lawsuit against another technology behemoth — Facebook — alleging it also illegally vanquished competitors and left the public with fewer options for protecting personal privacy.
Not all of Iowa’s congressional delegation is ready to call Joe Biden the president elect. Congressman-elect Randy Feenstra said Thursday to do so, given the historic number of early and absentee ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election and President Donald Trump’s legal challenges to the election’s outcome. Feenstra is replacing Rep. Steve King in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, by far the most conservative district in a state that voted handily to re-elect President Trump. Feenstra said he is looking forward to Jan. 6, when Congress will receive the Electoral College results.
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