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The Biden administration will begin offering coronavirus booster shots Sept. 20, top health officials announced Wednesday, after concluding that a third shot is needed to fight off waning immunity. The administration said it is developing plans to begin offering the booster shots after reviewing a wide array of data. The plan, which applies only to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, calls for Americans to get a booster shot eight months after receiving their second doses. The officials said they expect that a booster shot will be needed for people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but they are still...

WASHINGTON—Beijing is showing “a sign of weakness” with its escalating “war with faith,” says former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for international religious freedom Sam Brownback. “It’s a sign of a regime on its last legs,” Brownback told The Epoch Times at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington on July 14. “It’s gotten harsher, not more open. It’s gotten more brutal, not more liberating. It’s taken on tactics of bullying rather than open cooperation.” By contrast, a “confident regime” openly acknowledges its flaws rather than going after its critics, Brownback said. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) increased harshness and brutality, as well...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Occupy Wall Street" is occupying less space in TV broadcasts, newspapers and social media as the story settles into a familiar pattern and protesters dig in for what could be a protracted fight. While the movement's reliance on Twitter and Facebook to spread its message is well established, it has also benefited from becoming a media curiosity, at times drawing legions of TV crews and reporters to its encampments. Coverage fed on itself, as more people joined in more cities. But experts say the protests are now making a natural -- yet challenging -- progression off...

WASHINGTON, June 5, 2007 – Circumstantial evidence indicates al Qaeda in Iraq is weakening and popular support is swinging toward the coalition in Iraq’s Diyala province, the commander of U.S. military forces there said yesterday. In a call with online journalists, Army Lt. Col. Morris Goins, commander of 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry, Multinational Division North, said the fact al Qaeda is increasingly turning to kidnapping for ransom as a means of financing implies support for the organization is waning among the area’s Sunni population. Al Qaeda “has to use the Sunni population to gain money to finance their operation,” Goins...

WASHINGTON, April 30, 2007 – Ongoing NATO military and reconstruction operations are helping erode Taliban militants’ power in southern Afghanistan, a senior Dutch officer said today. The behavior of the Afghan people is perhaps the most convincing indicator of the Taliban’s waning influence in southern Afghanistan, Royal Netherlands Army Maj. Gen. Ton van Loon told Pentagon reporters during a satellite-carried news conference. “We experience success every time (International Security Assistance Force) troops stand back after securing an area and witness local elders extend their authority,” said van Loon, the commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force Regional Command South....

SACRAMENTO — Rolling out his agenda last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proudly elevated his eclectic approach to a kind of political doctrine: Republicans and Democrats might be invested in the fight for supremacy, but voters aren't. Seeing that party loyalties are dwindling, Schwarzenegger is confident that he faces no real repercussions if he disappoints the state's GOP leadership. Siphoning ideas from both major parties, he remains a Republican by registration, but he is acting, speaking and governing increasingly like an independent. Like a party of one. In the first week of his new term, Schwarzenegger's moves were nearly impossible to...

The failure of the Labor Party and Meretz in the recent elections brought in its wake numerous articles analyzing the reasons for their downfall. Most of them pointed to incorrect strategy and management, problematic leadership and so on. Bearing in mind the electoral potential of Labor and Meretz, the answer to the question of whether the two parties failed depends on the targets they set themselves. If their aim was to garner the support of the Zionist left camp, their success was complete. But if their intention was to win wide public support, they failed dismally. The Peace Index survey...