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Business

The Fed’s affected person method could possibly be examined quickly.

The Federal Reserve is expected to keep its monetary policy in crisis mode when it concludes its final meeting on Wednesday, even if the economy improves.

The question now is how long it will be before the recovery is sufficiently advanced to stimulate the central bank to change course.

The Fed has kept rates near zero since March 2020 and is buying bonds at a pace of about $ 120 billion a month. These policies make many types of borrowing cheap and drive investors to riskier, more active investments – by allowing money to flow through the economic system and accelerating growth.

Fed officials are in no hurry to recall this support – even if coronavirus vaccines become widely available, the job market will heal and retail spending will rise, aided by government stimulus measures.

Instead, central bankers, including Fed Chairman Jerome H. Powell, have insisted that the economy is far from being completely healed. Millions are unemployed and the coronavirus is not entirely present in the US or worldwide. This threatens an uneven economic recovery and risks the spread of new variants

The federal Open Market Political Committee has announced that it will see “significant” progress towards its full employment and stable inflation goals before slowing monthly bond purchases. The hurdle for interest rate hikes is even higher: a return to maximum employment and inflation of more than 2 percent, which is expected to slightly exceed it for some time.

At their March meeting, central bank officials signaled that interest rates were likely to stay near zero through 2023 if the economy performed as expected. However, investors will be very focused on clues as to the way ahead when Mr. Powell holds a post-meeting press conference at 2:00 p.m. around 2:30 p.m. following the release of the committee’s statement.

“By the time of the June meeting, well over half of Americans should be partially vaccinated, and employment levels could be a few million higher than now, so the FOMC can discuss some noticeably improved results,” said Michael Feroli, chief executive of The US Economist at JP Morgan wrote in a research report. “For now, however, we think the committee’s message is unlikely to change from what it sent six weeks ago.”

However, the Fed’s commitment to patience – an approach that focuses on real, not just expected results – faces its first major challenge. With unemployment falling and inflation rising, two trends expected to emerge in the coming months, monetary policymakers are likely to be increasingly urged to recall their support to keep conditions from spiraling out of control.

But Mr Powell and colleagues have downplayed concerns about overheating and inflation warnings dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, arguing that the world has changed in recent decades.

“We had 3.5 percent unemployment in the last two years before the pandemic, which is a 50-year low,” Powell said in a recent 60-minute interview. “And inflation didn’t really react. This is not the economy we had 30 years ago. “

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Business

India Covid disaster: Loss of life toll surpasses 200,000

A patient wearing an oxygen mask is taken to a COVID-19 hospital for treatment while coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spreads in Ahmedabad, India on April 26, 2021.

Amit Dave | Reuters

India reported a record daily death toll on Wednesday when the total number of Covid-19 deaths topped the 200,000 mark.

Government data showed that at least 3,293 people died within 24 hours. The total number of cases also rose by a record 360,960 reported infections. This was India’s seventh day in a row with over 300,000 new infections.

The total number of Covid cases in the country is just under 18 million while the death toll stands at 201,187. However, recent media reports suggest that the daily death toll may not be adequately reported.

In April alone, the South Asian nation reported more than 5.8 million new cases, marginalizing the country’s health system.

The international community responded with a promise to send urgently needed aid to India. The United States said it would send raw materials that the South Asian country needs to make AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

India has given more than 145 million doses of vaccine to date, according to the Ministry of Health. However, as of Tuesday, only around 23.9 million people had received their second dose.

India’s variant of Covid?

Experts fear that a mutated variant of the coronavirus is responsible for the dramatic increase in cases during the second wave. Before the resurgence, India reported an average of around 10,000 new cases per day.

The virus has mutated several times since last year. The World Health Organization classifies these variants either as “variant of interest” or as “variant of concern”. The affected variant typically refers to a variant that shows an increase in communicability and more severe illness, including a higher rate of hospitalizations or deaths.

The WHO classified the B1617 variant with several sublines with slightly different characteristic mutations as an interesting variant for their weekly epidemiological update of the pandemic. It was first spotted in India last October, but was represented in at least 17 countries as of Tuesday, including the US, UK and Singapore.

The international health agency said in its report that the B1617 variant is circulating in India along with other worrying variants as well as the B1618 variant discovered in some states. The WHO said these variants may collectively play a role in the current resuscitation.

Effects

The Indian government is increasingly criticized for gathering large crowds, mostly without mask, for religious festivals and election campaigns in different parts of the country.

The better-than-expected handling of the first wave last year created a feeling of complacency within the political class, and subsequent questionable decisions contributed to the rise, according to Akhil Bery, South Asia analyst with political risk advisory firm Eurasia Group.

Among those decisions, Bery noted that the government had allowed the week-long Kumbh Mela religious festival, which reportedly saw hundreds of thousands of people bathing in the Ganges. This has become a super-spreader event, as have electoral campaigns by various parties, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party in the eastern state of West Bengal.

“There have been some questionable decisions here and this is a major political challenge for Modi, at least in the short term,” Bery said on CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Wednesday.

“During last year’s boom, there was a general expectation that the Indian health system would collapse. Ultimately, it did not,” he said, adding, “This created a feeling of complacency within the political class, within the people … But ultimately that complacency fed into that mentality, and now we’re seeing the end results of that. “

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Entertainment

‘Greatest Summer season Ever’ Evaluate: Not Simply One other Music and Dance

“Best Summer Ever” is a high school musical. It’s not a “high school musical” – it’s better. Delicate and exuberant, it contains set pieces based on the model of “Footloose” and “Grease” and feels closer to these films in spirit than to the Disney Channel. This type of film vibrates with the energy of the people who made it and whose enthusiasm radiates from the screen. The actors and filmmakers seemed to have had a very good time bringing “Best Summer Ever” to life. Seeing it made me happy.

In Michael Parks Randa’s and Lauren Smitelli’s film (available upon request), Tony (Rickey Wilson Jr.) is the star quarterback who privately longs to become a ballet dancer. Sage (Shannon DeVido) is the daughter of hippies who work in the pot trade and whose nomadic lifestyle has made it difficult for her to settle down. Tony and Sage fall in love at summer camp, but when summer ends and Sage ends up in Tony’s school, the young lovers are besieged by the usual teen movie crises – the scheming cheerleader (MuMu), the soccer rival (Jacob Waltuck). and of course the big game, the outcome of which rests heavily on Tony’s reluctant shoulders.

It’s all very familiar. What’s new is the cast, largely composed of actors with a range of physical and mental disabilities. These disabilities are never mentioned, and disabilities do not play a role in the plot. The effect of this inclusivity is a sense of amazing warmth and camaraderie that is most compelling during the film’s many original musical numbers, which are staged and shot with panache. The cast has a wonderful screen presence – especially DeVido, whose turn it is as the heroine in love. Representation is important. And in “Best Summer Ever” the film comes to life.

The best summer ever
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay-TV operators.

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World News

Brexit Commerce Deal Will get a Last OK From E.U. Parliament

BRUSSELS – In the results published on Wednesday morning, the European Parliament voted by a large margin for the European Union to finally approve a Brexit agreement, which is already fraught with difficulties, complaints and judicial contestation.

The vote was 660 votes in favor, five against and 32 abstentions.

While the outcome was never really in doubt, Parliament raised serious concerns about the trustworthiness of the current UK government in carrying out in good faith the two key Brexit documents: the withdrawal agreement and the trade and cooperation agreement that has just been approved.

The latter agreement, which regulates trade and customs issues and does not provide for tariffs or quotas, has been applied since the beginning of the year under certain conditions. It was completed on Christmas Eve and ratified by the UK Parliament on December 30th. However, a negative vote by the European Parliament would have killed it and produced the “No Deal Brexit”, which neither side supported.

The European Parliament had postponed its vote to protest the UK’s dealings with Northern Ireland and the protocol that governs trade on the divided island. The UK’s actions are the source of a legal complaint filed by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, after the UK unilaterally extended the grace period for failing to carry out controls on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The two sides have not yet found a common basis for implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol, which aims to protect the internal market while avoiding a hard border with Ireland, a member of the European Union.

Suspicion ran through the debate. Christophe Hansen, a key Brexit legislator from Luxembourg, said a positive vote “should not be seen as a blank check to the UK government or a blind vote of confidence that it will implement the agreements between us in good faith, but it is over from our point of view more of an insurance policy. “

The trade and cooperation agreement, said Hansen, “will help us remind the UK of the commitments it has signed.”

Terry Reintke, a German Green lawmaker, said: “This deal is not a good one because Brexit is not a good one. The situation is also complicated because we cannot be sure how trustworthy the UK government really is. Still, this agreement can be a starting point to reconstruct what we lost with Brexit. “

Manfred Weber, a German who heads the largest party group, the center-right European People’s Party, has published it bluntly on Twitter. “We will vote for the TCA after Brexit,” he wrote, referring to the trade deal. “But we’re concerned about implementation because we don’t trust Boris Johnson’s administration.”

Many concerns have been expressed that the UK is abusing or undermining the complex rules governing fishing rights and the Northern Ireland Protocol.

David McAllister, a German lawmaker who is half Scottish, said some of the problems encountered so far were due to teething problems, but others were due to the type of Brexit Britain chose for itself, an increasing divergence from the European Union will mean internal market. This alone requires continuous discussion and the processing of areas that are excluded from the Brexit agreement, including financial services and foreign and security policy.

Brussels is determined to work on practical solutions between Northern Ireland, Ireland and mainland Britain. “But the protocol isn’t the problem, it’s the solution. The problem is called Brexit. “

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, urged Parliament to ratify the agreement and promised that Brussels would use the dispute and enforcement mechanisms of the agreement to ensure UK compliance. If not, she said, she would not hesitate to impose punitive tariffs.

“The deal is tied to real teeth – with a binding dispute settlement mechanism and the possibility of unilateral corrective action if necessary,” she said. “We don’t want to have to use these tools. But we won’t hesitate to use them if necessary. “

Dissatisfied with Great Britain, Parliament had postponed ratification twice. However, conditional transposition would have expired at the end of April and Parliament eventually cast its vote.

After nearly five hours of debate on Tuesday, lawmakers, many of whom were in virtual attendance, voted remotely, with final totals not being released until Wednesday morning.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator with Great Britain, thanked the legislators for their diligence. He praised the deal but warned: “Everyone must take responsibility and respect what they have signed.”

But he summed up the feelings of many when he said: “This is a divorce, a warning and a failure, a failure of the European Union and we must learn from it.”

Ratification would mark a new chapter in relations with Britain, good or bad, said Ms. von der Leyen. She hoped that this would constitute “the basis of a strong and close partnership based on our common interests and values”.

The UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum in June 2016 almost five years ago. The complications of Brexit and the ongoing struggles over its implementation have not least contributed to the discussion in the rest of the European Union about a similar outcome.

Monika Pronczuk contributed to the reporting.

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Health

New York Will Enable Stroll-Ins at State Vaccine Websites

All state mass coronavirus vaccination centers in New York will allow people aged 16 and older to step in without an appointment and receive their first dose, starting Thursday, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Tuesday.

Walk-in vaccinations will be available at state locations in New York City like Javits Center in Manhattan and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, as well as Long Island and upstate cities like Albany and Syracuse, the governor said.

The second dose will continue to be administered by appointment, which will be determined after the first dose has been administered.

“Just come over and roll up your sleeve and the mass vaccination centers can handle it,” Cuomo said at a press conference Tuesday.

Other types of vaccine providers in the state, such as pharmacies and locations operated by cities and counties, have the option to allow walk-ins as well, a move the governor endorsed.

New York had already started allowing some vaccinations without an appointment. Mr Cuomo announced last week that people 60 and over could come to 16 state locations for vaccination. And New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that the city-operated vaccination centers would give anyone eligible to get a shot.

Allowing walk-ins simplifies a process that weighed on many New Yorkers earlier in the pandemic when getting a vaccine appointment was often spent hours searching online and some luck too. The new policy could also attract people who are still reluctant to get vaccinated, said Mr Cuomo.

“This is our way of saying, if you’ve been intimidated by trying to make an appointment, that’s gone,” the governor said.

He said it was feasible to allow more walk-ins as fewer vaccinations are now being given across the state – about 115,000 doses per day – than a few weeks ago when the state peaked at about 175,000 doses per day.

“Demand is decreasing, fewer people are asking for appointments,” said Cuomo.

State data shows that just under 45 percent of New Yorkers, or just over 8.9 million people, had received at least one dose of the vaccine by Tuesday morning.

Mr Cuomo also announced at the press conference that New York would adopt the new CDC guidelines that fully vaccinated people can safely do most outdoor activities without masks.

Reports of new cases and hospitalizations in the state have declined, according to a New York Times database, but the risk of infection remains high in New York City, where some problematic variants of the virus appear to be on the rise.

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Politics

Taliban will not take over Afghanistan after U.S. troops depart, ambassador says

Zalmay Khalilzad, Special Envoy for Afghan Reconciliation, testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 27, 2021.

TJ Kirkpatrick | Pool | Reuters

The nation’s chief representative in Afghanistan said Tuesday he does not believe the Afghan government will collapse after US and foreign troops left the war-torn country later this year.

“I don’t think the government will collapse or the Taliban will take power,” said US special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, during a testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Khalilzad’s testimony comes after President Joe Biden announced that the US would complete its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by September 11, effectively ending America’s longest war.

The decision to leave Afghanistan sparked a number of reactions in Washington, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle praising and criticizing the move. It has also raised some concern within the highest levels of the military.

Last week, the chief of the U.S. Middle East Forces told lawmakers he was concerned that the Afghan military would collapse following the withdrawal of U.S. and foreign troops.

“I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold fast after we leave, the ability of the Afghan Air Force to fly, especially after we remove support for these aircraft,” McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said during an Armed Forces committee hearing of the Senate on April 22nd.

The Afghan armed forces had got used to the support of the military of the US and other nations over several years.

Later at the Pentagon, McKenzie told reporters that while the US will continue to provide remote assistance to Afghanistan, he was particularly concerned about aircraft maintenance.

The machines are largely serviced by contractors from the United States and other countries, he explained. The US intends to find innovative ways to replace these services without having boots in place, he added.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

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Business

How Id Thieves Took My Spouse for a Experience

Insurance companies regularly check your balance when you sign up. It was therefore confusing that Progressive would have issued my wife with a policy without her thawing her file. But TransUnion was listed as a “financial responsibility provider” – an amusing euphemism, if you know how long consumer advocates have been complaining about insurance companies using credit data to set interest rates – and my wife’s frozen credit file sure showed Progressive pinged it this month.

How? Incredibly, an exception often allows insurance companies to check your balance even when you don’t want to have anything to do with it. We learned that this exception meant Progressive could put itself on my wife’s file – which in turn helped someone like us pick the pocket of New York State and its taxpayers.

Progressive, in his wisdom, believed my wife was responsible enough to warrant cover. Fortunately, Mr. Pasternak paid! The second page of our welcome package said that “the authorization you gave for your first installment” should come from a bank account with his name on it.

So meet our new best friend. With a name like Shiran Pasternak he was a quick internet search away. Was he the thief? We wondered. But if so, he hid it pretty well. Like my wife, he had a “Welcome to Progressive” package and notes from the state about a mysterious unemployment claim that he had never submitted. (The bank account and routing numbers in his Progressive package were identical to ours, but had no connection with any of the institutions where either of us did our financial business. With the numbers cut off, it was impossible to find out if they were from someone else or were invented.)

After we put all of this together, Mr. Pasternak – who happened to be a former New York Times employee – in Irvington, NY, took a breath of relief and let me find out what had happened to all of us.

This is how it works.

Auto insurers – even those you don’t use – already know a lot about you. They share damage information with each other in order to weed out unprofitable or reckless customers who try to switch to another provider. You can also access your driver’s license number, your current auto policy data, and the make and model of your vehicle. Often times, they buy this information from states (which end up sending money back instantly if buyers are negligent and unemployment fraud increases).

Insurers want to make applying for a policy as easy as possible. Once you fill in information, they’ll be happy to help and fill in some of these gaps for you. For some unfortunate victims, it was as easy for the scammers as copying the driver’s license number that appeared, although more technical know-how was usually required.

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Health

Public demand for AstraZeneca vaccine falls after blood clot scares

A medical worker fills a syringe with AstraZeneca vaccine at Santa Caterina da Siena – Amendola secondary school in Salerno on March 13, 2021 in Salerno, Italy.

Francesco Pecoraro | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON – Public preference for the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has fallen since reports surfaced suggesting it may be linked to some cases of unusual blood clotting events.

An April study of nearly 5,000 adults in the UK, with Covid vaccine uptake high and the vaccination program well established, found that public preference for the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has declined since March and there is a belief that that he caused blood clots to have increased.

The UK academic study found that 17% of the public now say they would prefer the AstraZeneca vaccine if given a choice – up from 24% towards the end of March.

And 23% of people now believe the AstraZeneca vaccine causes blood clots – up from 13% in March. However, the public are still the most likely to say that this claim is false (39%) or that they don’t know if it is true (38%).

The study, conducted April 1–16 by the University of Bristol, King’s College London, and the NIHR Health Protection Unit for Emergency Preparedness and Relief, found a “big difference” in beliefs before and after MHRA ( the UK Medicines Agency) announced on April 7th that there is a possible link between the vaccine and extremely rare blood clots.

The study found that 17% of respondents in the first week of this month thought this claim was true, compared with 31% who were asked about it.

Why autumn

Since the first clinical data was published, the vaccine has shown an average effectiveness rate of 70% (subsequent studies in the US have shown an effectiveness rate of 79%, and other studies have shown that the effectiveness rate increases with a larger gap between the first and second doses ) The fate of the AstraZeneca vaccine is mixed to say the least.

Continue reading: Dates, Doubts, and Disputes: A Timeline for AstraZeneca’s Covid Vaccine Problems

One of the recent hurdles for the AstraZeneca vaccine was a small number of reports of unusual, sometimes fatal, blood coagulation events that occurred in post-vaccinating people in Europe in February, causing several countries to suspend use of the vaccine.

The UK and EU drug regulators (the UK Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Authority and the European Medicines Agency) examined the reports and said that while there is a possible link between the vaccine and low incidence of blood clotting, the benefits of the vaccine are significant outweighing them Risks.

The Anglo-Swedish vaccine maker, British government and experts largely defended the vaccine, saying it protected millions of people by reducing Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

In addition, experts tried to correlate the risk, saying the number of reported rare blood clotting cases with low platelets was about one case in 250,000 people vaccinated and one death in one million.

Britain is fortunate that it has traditionally received high levels of public support for vaccination. The vaccine preference survey found that, despite the growing belief that it was associated with blood clots, the AstraZeneca vaccine did not affect general confidence in vaccines in general. 81% say vaccines are safe, compared to 73% who said so in late 2020.

Similarly, views on how well vaccines work have changed: 86% say they are effective, up from 79% in November and December 2020.

However, surveys have shown that the public perception of the AstraZeneca vaccine has deteriorated in mainland Europe, and there is scattered evidence that people in the EU are using the AstraZeneca vaccine (referred to as the “Aldi” vaccine after the low-cost food chain will) because in favor of the coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, which also prevails when EU vaccinations are introduced.

Continue reading: “The damage is done”: Europe’s caution against the AstraZeneca vaccine could have far-reaching consequences

Moderna’s shot and Johnson & Johnson’s shot have also been approved for use in the EU and the UK, but have been less widely used, EU vaccination data show.

Hesitation to vaccinate can apparently work both ways. A British doctor reported in the Evening Standard newspaper in January that some of his patients had turned down the opportunity to receive the Pfizer vaccine, saying they would “wait for the English one.”

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Business

Former HHS official applauds ‘data-driven’ easing of CDC masks steering

Former health and social worker Dr. Mario Ramirez on Tuesday welcomed President Joe Biden’s support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s masking updates.

“I think the president made the right point today, namely that today’s guidance is not about politics, but rather a data-driven recommendation based on how these vaccines behave in the wild,” said Ramirez.

According to the CDC, fully vaccinated people can exercise outdoors and attend small gatherings without wearing a face mask. Biden said the new recommendations underscore the strides the US has made in fighting Covid.

Ramirez, a former HHS Pandemic and Emerging Threat Coordinator for the Office of Global Affairs, told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that while the US is headed in the right direction on vaccinations, officials have an “ongoing messaging campaign “to convince skeptical Americans to vaccinate.

In the US, 232 million shots of vaccine have been put into guns, according to CDC data, with 43% of the total population receiving at least one dose and nearly 20% of the country being fully vaccinated.

Dr. Peter Hotez told The News with Shepard Smith on Friday that daylight saving time in the US could return to a pre-Covid-19 normal if 75% to 80% of the US population are vaccinated.

Ramirez said improving vaccine convenience will be another helpful step in getting more Americans vaccinated.

“One of the things we’re looking forward to this fall is whether vaccine makers can actually pool a flu and a coronavirus vaccine together. If we can, it will go a long way toward improving vaccine uptake,” he said Ramirez.

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Business

New York Publish Reporter Who Wrote False Kamala Harris Story Resigns

Ms. Italiano, a veteran postal journalist and long-time chronicler of the New York Courts, is a popular figure on the newspaper’s newsroom. She did not respond to inquiries about her resignation or the making of the Harris Article. Post officials did not respond to calls and emails on Tuesday evening.

In business today

Updated

April 27, 2021 at 5:49 p.m. ET

Her sudden exit underscored some of the tensions currently plaguing the Post, a classic militant city tabloid that served as a means of reporting for former President Donald J. Trump many times during his tenure.

Mr Murdoch, who spoke to Mr Trump frequently, installed a new editor at the tabloid last month, Keith Poole, who previously held a top position in Mr Murdoch’s London newspaper The Sun. At least eight journalists from The Post recently left, including a White House correspondent Ebony Bowden.

Fox News and The Post have long shown a certain symbiosis due to their joint ownership of Murdoch. (Just last week, The Post published a gossip article complaining that Glamor magazine didn’t write articles about female Fox News stars.)

Fox News presenters like Tucker Carlson, Greg Gutfeld and Martha MacCallum discussed the Post article about their programs on Monday. Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy quoted “a report in the last few days in the New York Post” before asking White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday whether Ms. Harris made “money on her books.” “allegedly distributed in the shelters. Ms. Psaki said she “definitely needs to check” what The Post described in a follow-up story when Ms. Psaki offered “no answers”.

On Tuesday’s Fox & Friends, co-host Ainsley Earhardt told viewers the allegations about the Harris Book were “incorrect” and quoted the Washington Post that morning’s fact-checking column. Also on Tuesday, Fox News updated its article on the Harris Book to determine that only a single copy was seen at the shelter and that it was being shipped as “part of a citywide book and toy drive.”

Fox News has come under fire in the past few days for another false claim aired on the network: President Biden planned to cut American red meat consumption as part of his plan to combat climate change. An on-air graphic from Fox News declared “Bye-Bye Burgers Under Biden’s Climate Plan,” sparking a cycle of outrage from conservative commentators.