Here are the headlines you Need2Know for Monday, May 3, 2021:
COVID-19: LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
More than 100 million Americans are now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, close to 40 percent of the adult population. The 7-day average of daily cases is below 50,000 and falling, and hospitalizations and deaths are going down, too. (L.A. just recorded zero new deaths!) One of the biggest wild cards is India, where the outbreak is so out of control that officials are worried about the possibility of variants that will mutate to evade vaccines. That’s part of the reason why the White House will ban non-citizens in India from entering the U.S. as of tomorrow. Australia is going one step further, banning its own citizens and residents in India from coming home. GUARDIAN
SUNNIER DAYS
Americans are more optimistic about the direction of the country than they have been in at least 15 years. The new ABC News/Ipsos poll has 64 percent of respondents saying they feel good about the coming year; the last time that number came close to the two-thirds mark was in December 2006. With President Biden’s first 100 days in the can, his approval rating is at 54 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of recent polling. That puts Biden higher than Trump after the same time period, but lower than Obama and on about the same level as Bush. ABC NEWS
BORDER SURGE
At least three people are dead and more than 20 are in the hospital after a boat capsized and broke apart off the coast of San Diego. Officials say they believe the vessel was smuggling migrants into the country illegally. President Biden said in an interview that “we’ve now gotten control” of the migrant surge at the border and blamed the Trump administration for the crisis. It is true that the number of migrant kids in Border Patrol custody is down more than 80 percent in the last month. NEWSWEEK
AFGHAN PULLOUT
As the U.S. has started the process of withdrawing its remaining troops from Afghanistan, violence in that country has been getting worse. The Afghan government blamed a deadly truck bomb that exploded outside Kabul on the Taliban, which has been getting more brazen in its attacks since President Biden announced the withdrawal. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters over the weekend that the Afghan government and military face a range of “bad possible outcomes” without American troops on the ground to cover them. CNN
RETURN TO OFFICE
CEOs around the country are paying close attention to what happens in NYC today, where Mayor Bill de Blasio has told the city’s 80,000 municipal employees that they must come back to their offices after working remotely for more than a year. Many are not happy with the decision, saying they’ve been left in the dark about what safety protocols are in place. Public and private employers are struggling with if, when, and how to bring their workers back to the office as the pandemic recedes. In cities, retailers are begging for the return of office workers, but polling shows the vast majority of them don’t ever want to go back full-time. FOX NY
VERIZON OUT OF MEDIA BIZ
Verizon is expected to announce today that it is selling AOL and Yahoo to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management for something in the neighborhood of $5 billion. Verizon bought the remnants of AOL in 2015, then Yahoo in 2017, for $9 billion total and combined them into the Verizon Media Group. The sale signals that Verizon is giving up on the digital media space, which has come to be dominated by Facebook and Google. BLOOMBERG
UPSET ALERT
Medina Spirit overcame 12-1 odds to win the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, holding off the favorite Essential Quality. It was a record 7th Derby win for a horse trained by Hall of Famer Bob Baffert. He has not decided whether Medina will run in the Preakness in two weeks. THE LINES
MUSK SNL WEEK
Elon Musk spent the weekend overseeing the successful nighttime landing of NASA astronauts in a SpaceX capsule -- and also soliciting ideas on Twitter for SNL sketches ahead of his hosting debut next weekend. Some of the show’s cast members are none too thrilled about Musk hosting the show, judging by their snarky social media comments: SEE THEM
SPOTTED...
…Billie Eilish, on the cover of British Vogue debuting an entirely new -- and stunning -- look: SEE IT
...Ben Affleck, getting into an SUV owned by his ex, Jennifer Lopez, and setting the internet on fire: SEE PICS
LEFTOVERS: ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
Pretty soon, you’ll be able to stand where the gladiators once stood in Rome’s Colosseum and imagine the roaring crowds looking down from the stands. Italy’s Culture Ministry has approved a plan to build a new floor for the famous arena that will let tourists roam the “court” for the first time in 2,000 years. The winning design includes wooden slats that can be rotated to expose the subterranean corridors that make up the bowels of the Colosseum. The work is scheduled to be completed by 2023: SEE IT
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