Biden’s healthcare orders - Cancel culture’s legitimacy - New vaccine addresses mutations

About 15 million Americans are uninsured and are eligible for marketplace coverage, according to a recent analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has also estimated that as many as three million people have lost employer-based coverage during the pandemic. About four million could sign up for Affordable Care Act plans that would cost them nothing in premiums [… but] would come with high deductibles.
...
Thursday’s orders took aim at Trump-era restrictions on Medicaid, especially on work requirements imposed by some states on poor people trying to obtain coverage. Separately, Mr. Biden moved toward overturning his predecessor’s restrictions on the use of taxpayer dollars for clinics that counsel patients on abortion, both in the United States and overseas.
...
The White House had no estimate for how many people might sign up for coverage during the new enrollment period. Republican opponents of the health care law opposed the move and cited rising premiums to argue that the law should be scrapped.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable sharing your opinion on politics — whether online or with friends? If so, you’re not alone. Americans are becoming increasingly cautious about sharing their political opinions. In a recent survey, 62 percent of Americans described today’s political climate as one that “prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive." This sentiment, which has risen amongst liberal and conservatives in recent years, mirrors the rising debate over so-called “cancel culture.”

This prompts several key questions: How significant is the problem of "cancel culture"? Is the media's coverage of it balanced? What impact might this have on public discourse? In this week's analysis, The Factual reviews 38 articles from 25 sources across the political spectrum so that you can better interpret allegations of cancel culture and how it affects the information you receive.

[The 20-person board includes] specialists in law and human rights, a Nobel Peace laureate from Yemen, the vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute and several former journalists. In its first batch of decisions, the board overturned Facebook's post removals in four of five cases.
...
In the first [of two decisions about hate speech], the board overruled the removal of a post from a Facebook user in Myanmar that Facebook said violated its rules against hate speech for disparaging Muslims as psychologically inferior. The board acknowledged the case was fraught because Facebook has been criticized for its role in the genocide of the country's Muslim minority.
...
[In the second decision about hate speech], it said the company was right to remove a post that used a slur against Azerbaijanis. "The context in which the term was used makes clear it was meant to dehumanize its target," the board said. The rulings announced on Thursday do not include Facebook's suspension of former President Donald Trump.

Pearl, a 38-year-old Jewish American, was in Karachi following leads on al Qaeda and Richard Reid, the British-born “Shoe Bomber." After being abducted, Pearl was beheaded on video by al Qaeda operatives on Feb. 1, 2002. In April of last year, a Pakistani court overturned the conviction of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was found guilty of the kidnapping and murder of Pearl.
...
Sheikh had his death sentence voided by a two-person judicial panel, which tossed most of the charges against the British-born man and reduced his sentence to seven years. Sheikh has been behind bars for 18 years, and a Pakistani tribunal ruled in December that Sheikh must now be set free.
...
The Pakistani high court ordered Sheikh’s immediate release from jail if he was not wanted in another criminal case. Pakistani prosecutor Faiz Shah said he was disappointed in the decision, that the Pakistani government would fight the ruling, and that it wasn’t yet known if Sheikh would be let out as the legal saga continues.

In its 15,000-volunteer U.K. trial, Novavax said, the vaccine prevented nine in 10 cases, including against a new strain of the virus that is circulating there. But in a 4,400-volunteer study in South Africa, the vaccine proved only 49% effective. Some experts cautioned against over-interpreting the efficacy results in the South Africa trial, noting that they amounted to a relatively small number of cases in a preliminary analysis.
...
It’s unclear whether these data will be enough for U.S. approval, or if the U.S. will wait for further data, as it appears to be doing with vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. Novavax has said it expects to produce about 2 billion doses of its vaccine in 2021. The U.S. has signed a contract to buy 100 million of them.
...
In July, Novavax received $1.6 billion in funding from Operation Warp Speed to scale up its manufacturing processes. Novavax said it is already at work on a new version of the vaccine designed to combat more infectious strains of SARS-CoV-2, which could work as a booster shot for people already inoculated. But clinical testing isn’t expected until the second quarter of this year.