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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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The new federal vaccine requirement announced by President Joe Biden has created another worry for large businesses: With help wanted signs up almost everywhere, some could lose valuable employees or won’t be able to find new ones.
General Motors Co. shares jumped Friday after the company said it expects to be reimbursed for battery recall costs from its supplier and sees a “more stable year” for chip supply in 2022. GM is in talks with battery supplier LG Chem over the costs of its Bolt electric vehicle battery recall, which has resulted in a $1.8 billion charge. The company expects to get reimbursement from LG, Jacobson said, although it was unclear if that would be full or partial. The easing of the chip supply crunch, meanwhile, will likely come only after a further deterioration this year that has led to the idling of key truck plants. GM now expects the shortage to cut wholesale volume by about 200,000 cars in North America during the second half of the year, double the units it had expected earlier, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said Friday during a conference call held by RBC Capital Markets.
A federal judge ordered Apple to dismantle a lucrative part of the competitive barricade guarding its closely run iPhone app store, but rejected allegations that the company has been running an illegal monopoly that stifles competition and innovation. The ruling issued Friday continues to chip away at the so-called “walled garden” that Apple has built around its crown jewel, the iPhone, and its app store, without toppling it completely. The 185-page decision from U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers also provided Apple with some vindication. The judge didn’t brand Apple as a monopolist or require it to allow competing stores to offer apps for iPhones, iPads and iPods.
U.S. producer prices jump an unprecedented 8.3% in August
Inflation at the wholesale level climbed 8.3% last month from August 2020, the biggest annual gain since the Labor Department started calculating the 12-month number in 2010. The Labor Department reported Friday that its producer price index — which measures inflationary pressures before they reach consumers — rose 0.7% last month from July after increasing 1% in both June and July.
A new White House council on U.S. economic conditions held its first meeting Friday, with participants highlighting at least 18 actions taken to help consumers and potentially lower prices. The council, an outgrowth of a July executive order by President Joe Biden, is aimed at refocusing the U.S. economy around the interests of consumers, workers and entrepreneurs.
On Page 29 of the report issued by a commission at Gonzaga University charged with delving into the role of the university in the long-standing, but now ended, practice of sending retired Jesuit priests accused of sexual abuse to live at GU, there is an important question: “WHO KNEW WHAT WHEN?” Some words follow that question – many, many words – but nothing like an answer. It surely does not plumb, even the tiniest bit, the degree to which GU President Thayne McCulloh or other university leaders were aware that the Society of Jesus had been putting sexual abusers out to pasture at GU since the 1970s.
Denise Caruzzi: Suspension of ban on evictions magnifies importance of emergency rent relief funding
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal moratorium – or ban – on evictions. That leaves an estimated 20,000 Idahoans at risk of eviction or homelessness. For the stability of all our communities, it is more important than ever that our Idaho Legislature act to approve funds so that all eligible Idaho families have access to the emergency rent and utility assistance they need to remain stably housed. This year, the U.S. Congress approved emergency rental assistance that worked hand-in-hand with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium. The funds ensured renters impacted by the pandemic remained safely housed, while their landlords remained financially whole. We know from the research that the moratoriums – and the greater housing stability – also reduced the spread of COVID-19 and saved lives. Families with their own housing were more likely and more able to self-isolate, practice good hygiene and avoid overcrowded living environments.
Summer brought with it a double-edged threat to the lungs: not only the continuation of the pandemic but another wildfire smoke season. A new study from Harvard University found that wildfires, which produce particulate matter, were associated with an increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths on the West Coast. “Our research suggests that people breathing smoke from wildfires are more vulnerable to coming down with COVID-19,” said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist and research scientist who was one of the researchers on the study. And while the study did not show that wildfire smoke containing fine particulate matter – called PM 2.5 – actually caused an increase in COVID-19 cases, there was strong enough data to show the relationship between the two.
While Spokane County isn’t in the COVID-19 crisis mode of North Idaho, health officials warn their strapped facilities are facing increasingly dire situations. With the fifth wave of COVID-19 pushing weary health care providers to their limits, health officials asked community members to mask up everywhere they go and to get vaccinated. Spokane hospitals are not rationing critical care, but providers are stretched to their limits taking care of a record number of COVID patients.
Rural Idaho hospitals are beginning to face potentially devastating decisions as COVID patients fill up hospital beds in the north and central parts of the state. The current COVID surge is hitting rural hospitals in Idaho just as hard as in Coeur d’Alene or Boise, just at a different scale. If a region confirms about 100 new cases, that could translate to a handful of hospitalizations. The difference in rural hospitals is that 10 more patients might be more than half of a hospital’s staffed bed capacity.
Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Friday said the state is “exploring legal action” against Democratic President Joe Biden’s plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccines or routine testing for employees of large businesses. Biden on Thursday announced a plan to require businesses with more than 100 employees to either mandate COVID-19 vaccines or require weekly testing. Federal contractors will also be required to be vaccinated, Biden said, with no option to test out. The president has directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to draft the rule.
COVID-19 followed more than 160 students and staff back to dozens of schools during the first days of classes this year across Spokane County. In its first report of the new year issued Friday, Spokane Public Schools recorded 50 positive cases of coronavirus, resulting in the quarantining of 296 students and staff. None of the cases was the result of in-school contact, Superintendent Adam Swinyard said during a Zoom news conference Friday afternoon.
President Joe Biden’s sweeping new vaccine requirements have Republican governors threatening lawsuits. His unapologetic response: “Have at it.” The administration is gearing up for another major clash between federal and state rule. But while many details about the rules remain unknown, Biden appears to be on firm legal ground to issue the directive in the name of protecting employee safety, according to several experts interviewed by The Associated Press.
New U.S. studies released Friday show the COVID-19 vaccines remain highly effective against hospitalizations and death even as the extra-contagious delta variant swept the country. One study tracked over 600,000 COVID-19 cases in 13 states from April through mid-July. As delta surged in early summer, those who were unvaccinated were 4.5 times more likely than the fully vaccinated to get infected, over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
President Joe Biden’s aggressive push to require millions of U.S. workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus is running into a wall of resistance from Republican leaders threatening everything from lawsuits to civil disobedience, plunging the country deeper into culture wars that have festered since the onset of the pandemic.
The Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief said Friday the agency will rapidly evaluate COVID-19 vaccinations for younger children as soon as it gets the needed data — and won’t cut corners. Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press he is “very, very hopeful” that vaccinations for 5- to 11-year-olds will be underway by year’s end. Maybe sooner: One company, Pfizer, is expected to turn over its study results by the end of September, and Marks say the agency hopefully could analyze them “in a matter of weeks.”
The U.S. on Friday halted U.S.-bound flights of Afghan evacuees, pulling some off planes, after discovering a few cases of measles among new arrivals in the United States. A U.S. government document viewed by The Associated Press warned the development would have a severe impact on an evacuation that since Aug. 15 has moved many thousands of people out of Taliban-held Afghanistan, but also been grindingly drawn out for Afghan evacuees and Americans alike, and was plagued by attacks and other deadly violence. The decision was made by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The largest state employee’s union has agreed to a deal with Gov. Jay Inslee’s office to require vaccinations of its members. The Washington Federation of State Employees approved an agreement to get workers vaccinated by Oct. 18 but gives them some flexibility and guidance on exemptions.
With a combination of rain, smoke and a resurgent COVID-19 wave sweeping across Spokane, the 2021 Spokane County Interstate Fair still roared open on Friday. Despite the circumstances, opening day brought a surge of nostalgia and happiness from an event that recalled those simpler times before 2020.
In recent years, small towns, like Malden, Washington, have become victim to catastrophic fires that burned around them. As more people move into high-risk areas, the threat only increases. Climate change has made fire season longer and fires burn more quickly in the Western U.S., leaving many to wonder how these communities can protect themselves. Experts say it will take local communities being proactive and state and federal governments investing more money into community resilience. Most importantly, it will take learning to live with fire.
The United Nations on Friday sounded the alarm over Taliban crackdowns on peaceful protests, many of them by women demanding equal rights, and journalists covering such events.
The world’s top Christian leaders — Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians — on Tuesday issued a joint appeal for delegates at the upcoming U.N. climate summit to “listen to the cry of the Earth” and make sacrifices to save the planet. In their first-ever joint statement, the three Christian clerics said the coronavirus pandemic gave political leaders an unprecedented opportunity to rethink the global economy and make it more sustainable and socially just for the poor. “We must decide what kind of world we want to leave to future generations,” said the statement from Francis, Archbishop Justin Welby of the Anglican Communion and the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. But in the statement, they also noted that the threat is no longer far off.
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