Here are the headlines you Need2Know for Friday, May 7, 2021:
COVID-19: LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
The U.S. is now at the best place it’s been since October in terms of new cases, with daily infections continuing to fall below 50,000 on the 7-day average. Hospitalizations are down to about 40,000 and deaths are hovering around 700 a day. The FDA’s emergency approval for the Pfizer vaccine in kids as young as 12 could come as soon as today. Overseas, India is still in the midst of the most severe wave yet, shattering daily records for cases and deaths. WASH POST
VOTING RESTRICTIONS
Florida is the latest state to enact controversial new voting restrictions. In an unusual move, Gov. DeSantis gave Fox News exclusive access to the bill-signing ceremony and barred other outlets from covering the event. Florida’s law makes it much more difficult to cast mail-in ballots by severely limiting drop boxes, among other things. At the same time, lawmakers in Texas approved new voting restrictions that go even further, banning election officials from mailing out absentee ballot applications and giving partisan poll watchers more power. NY TIMES
SCHOOL SHOOTING
A sixth-grade girl brought a handgun to her middle school in Idaho and shot two students and a janitor before she was disarmed by a teacher. The three victims are expected to survive their injuries. The shooting happened at Rigby Middle School in a small town outside Yellowstone. One sixth grader told the local newspaper that when the school went into lockdown for an active shooter, she immediately took out her phone and pressed record so police would have a record of what happened if the shooter came in. IDAHO STATE JOURNAL
POST-BREXIT BRITAIN
Scotland is counting the ballots from its parliamentary elections, the first big vote in the UK since 2019. The Scottish National Party is expected to win, but if the margins are big enough the party is planning to call for another independence referendum. Scots had one of those in 2014 and voted to remain in the UK, but public sentiment has shifted since then and a new vote would be close. Meanwhile, a naval standoff in the English Channel between Britain and France over post-Brexit fishing rights has been resolved after a brief flare-up in tensions between the stalwart allies. AXIOS
LABOR MARKET
The highly-anticipated April jobs report, that was expected to top a million jobs added was a big bust. The number actually came in at just a quarter of that, and the March report was also revised down significantly. Still, the number of Americans seeking unemployment fell below 500,000 last week for the first time since last March, an encouraging sign that the labor market continues to find its footing. The rate of 498,000 new jobless claims is still much higher than the pre-COVID level of about 230,000, but it’s been falling fast since the peak in January. YAHOO FINANCE
TOO HIGH TO HANDLE
If you’re a Berkshire Hathaway investor and you’ve tried to check the stock price this week, you may have noticed it doesn’t show up on many of the usual finance sites. That’s because the price of one Class A share of Berkshire, the holding company controlled by Warren Buffett, is trading above the top price that some exchanges like Nasdaq were built to handle. The biggest number the Nasdaq systems can compute is $429,496.7295. Berkshire is currently above $435,000. Nasdaq says it hopes to have a fix for the bug soon. INSIDER
GOOGLE 2FA
Google is flipping the switch on two-factor authentication as the default setting for all Google accounts soon. That means if you’re one of the 1.8 billion Gmail users, you’ll either need to configure 2FA if you haven’t already, or you can opt out. Google says the extra step, in which a code is sent to your phone before you log in, is critical given how many people use the same passwords for everything. The announcement came on World Password Day as part of Google’s plans for “a future where one day you won’t need a password at all.” THE VERGE
COMEBACK KID
John Mulaney quietly announced his first post-rehab comedy shows, and tickets are already sold out. The comedian will take the stage for four nights next week in NYC after a two-month stay at a Pennsylvania rehab facility for alcohol and cocaine addiction. Mulaney, known for his work on SNL and his Netflix comedy specials, has been working as a staff writer for Seth Meyers on the advice of a therapist, as a way to give his recovery some structure. LA TIMES
SPOTTED...
...the lineup for Summerfest, the second big music festival to announce plans to come back in September. Miley Cyrus, Chance the Rapper and Chris Stapleton are among the headliners over the three-weekend event: SEE IT
…Baby Archie, now Toddler Archie, in a rare photo posted by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on the occasion of his second birthday: SEE IT
...Floyd Mayweather and Jake Paul, going face-to-face for the first time ahead of their boxing match next month. Paul stole Mayweather’s hat off his head, leading Mayweather to tell the YouTube star, “I’ll kill you”: WATCH
LEFTOVERS: WHAT GOES UP...
When you’re out and about enjoying the spring weather this weekend, keep an eye on the sky. The largest part of a Chinese rocket that launched that country’s first space station last week is expected to plunge to Earth -- probably some time tomorrow, maybe Sunday -- and no one really knows where. U.S. Space Command is tracking the discarded rocket as it makes its reentry and the Pentagon has said it’ll have a better idea where it’s going to land a few hours before, assuming the debris doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere first. Usually this happens soon after the launch, but this rocket accidentally got pulled into the Earth’s orbit. CHEDDAR
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