The Biden administration’s embattled plan to dispense COVID-19 booster shots to most Americans faced its first major hurdle Friday as a government advisory panel met to decide whether to endorse extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The more thorny question of who should get the shots and when will be debated next week by advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC generally adopts the group’s recommendations, which set policy for U.S. vaccination campaigns.
Friday’s meeting came as the delta variant continues to drive U.S. cases and deaths back to levels not seen since last winter. That has given urgency to efforts by top health officials to shore up Americans’ protection against the virus.
One of two men suspected in the shooting deaths of four people found in an abandoned SUV in Wisconsin was spotted meeting with one of the victims the night before at a Minnesota bar, authorities said Thursday.
Darren Lee McWright, 56, from St. Paul, Minnesota, who also uses the alias last name of Osborne, was arrested on a warrant from Dunn County, Wisconsin and is being held in the Ramsey County Jail. A warrant is out for the other suspect, Antoine Darnique Suggs, 38, who is believed to be in the Twin Cities area.
A complaint filed Thursday against McWright, who’s charged in Dunn County with four counts of hiding a corpse, said witnesses told police they saw Suggs late Saturday evening in the White Squirrel Bar in St. Paul with Nitosha Lee Flug-Presley, 30, of Stillwater. One witness noticed the pair at the bar, the complaint said, while a second witness saw Flug-Presley buy a shot of tequila and hand it to Suggs.
St. Thomas announced its decision to cut its varsity tennis programs last May, but the women’s team was reinstated a month later after members threatened to file a Title IX lawsuit against the university. Now, the team prepares for its first Division I competition at the end of September with a new coach, a new place to practice and new DI expectations.
“Let’s live in the here and now,” coach Lois Arterberry said. “The most important thing is that we’re here, and we’re a team, and we’re not going anywhere.”
The team, which used to train at the University of Minnesota, now practices outdoors at St. Paul Academy and Summit School. Arterberry said there are no current conversations about building courts on campus.
Natalie Hoepner can be reached at hoep8497@stthomas.edu.