President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate Antony Blinken as secretary of state, according to multiple people familiar with the Biden team’s planning.
Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and has close ties with Biden. If nominated and confirmed, he would be a leading force in the incoming administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which President Donald Trump questioned longtime alliances.
In nominating Blinken, Biden would sidestep potentially thorny issues that could have affected Senate confirmation for two other candidates on his short list to be America’s top diplomat: Susan Rice and Sen. Chris Coons.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz plans to unveil a new technology Monday that’s designed to help slow the spread of COVID-19, which has been surging in the state this month.
Minnesota health officials reported 7,219 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, lifting the total number of positive cases to more than 270,000 since the start of the pandemic. Officials also confirmed 40 deaths due to complications from COVID-19 in the last day, for a total of 3,241 fatalities.
There were 1,591 new cases per 100,000 people in Minnesota over the past two weeks, which ranks sixth in the country for new cases per capita. One in every 120 people in Minnesota tested positive in the past week.
Tutoring departments at St. Thomas have made the most of their services since students have moved back to campus, including adding plexiglass dividers to get students back in-person as well as adapting to Zoom for online tutoring.
The Mathematics Resource Center (MaRC) and the Center for Writing have proactively adapted since the transition to online tutoring in March. The MaRC was the first tutoring service to include some in-person drop-in hours while following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and St. Thomas guidelines until the announcement of the quiet period. The MaRC still allows in-person hours by appointment.
“I think we’ve made the most of (online tutoring), and I think we’ve all improved greatly since last semester,” math tutor and senior Kai Olson said. “We’d prefer everything in-person obviously, without COVID, but it’s as good as it can be.”
Macy Berendsen can be reached at bere9405@stthomas.edu.