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Outside of communities seeing "high" levels of COVID-19 transmission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ended a blanket plea for Americans in hospitals and nursing homes to wear masks indoors. The change, one of many published Friday evening to the agency's guidance for COVID-19 infection control for healthcare workers, marks one of the final sets of revisions in a sweeping effort launched in August to overhaul the CDC's recommendations for the virus.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden Monday urged private companies to require their employees to get vaccinated against Covid, hours after the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech's two-dose vaccine for people ages 16 and up. Speaking at the White House, Biden said he was calling on companies to "step up the vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people." The president had previously voiced his support for vaccine requirements in workplaces, but his message on Monday marked a more direct appeal to private employers to play a bigger role in boosting the vaccination rate in the U.S....

PHOENIX - Arizona's Attorney General announced on Aug. 20 that businesses within the State of Arizona can require their employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine. A summary of a legal opinion written by Attorney General Mark Brnovich was posted to the Attorney General's website on Friday, amid ongoing debate over vaccine mandates. "While public health measures may be pursued during emergencies, they cannot trample constitutionally guaranteed liberties," Brnovich wrote. "Arizonans should be free, without coercion, to make medical decisions regarding vaccination that they feel are best for themselves and their families."

Anti-drunk driving technology may become standard on all cars in the next few years under one of the provisions baked into the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill. The 2,702-page bill under negotiation also includes a provision that would require manufacturers to equip new vehicles with an alert system to let drivers know that kids or other passengers have been left in the backseat after the engine has been turned off. The new technologies would target alcohol-related car crashes and increasing incidents of kids dying in hot cars. The bill defines the preventative technology for impaired driving as anything that could...

Walt Disney World will again require all guests regardless of vaccination status to wear face masks indoors and other locations beginning Friday, the resort announced late Wednesday. In addition to outdoors, face coverings will be required on Disney buses, the monorail and Disney Skyliner, Disney said.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports” that American employers “should be free to require vaccinations” for workers and masks for customers. Jackson said, “Latest reporting from the White House, we came on the air at 10:00, announcing that we believe based on our sources here at NBC News that the president tomorrow will announce he is looking at federal workers get the vaccine or else get tested regularly. Do you think that goes far enough? Do you believe it requires all federal workers to be vaccinated and make it a mandate?”

Fully vaccinated Americans will “almost certainly” require a coronavirus booster shot within a year of getting their primary injection, Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week. “We know that the vaccine durability of the efficacy lasts at least six months, and likely considerably more, but I think we will almost certainly require a booster sometime within a year or so after getting the primary,” Fauci said

Massachusetts plans on ending the sale of all gas-guzzling vehicles by 2035 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Kathleen Theoharides released a proposal last week that outlined the state’s goals in 2030 and further into the future.

In a change to its longstanding support policy, Microsoft says PCs based on new CPU architectures, including Intel's Skylake chips, will require Windows 10. A list of preferred systems will support older Windows versions on new hardware, but only for 18 months. Enterprise customers are still the bulwark of Microsoft's Windows business, in both the client and server segments. Historically, those customers have also been among the most conservative, lagging years behind the latest releases of an operating system release. Those practices have been encouraged by Microsoft's support lifecycle, which offers a generous ten years of support for each Windows...

7/26/2006 - TARIN KOWT, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- When people deployed to Afghanistan say a location is "hot," it could mean one of two things. Either it feels like the sun is closer than the moon, or the enemy is lurking about. Here, both meanings apply. For pilots, that equates to making quick pit stops here so they can get in and out of this danger zone as quickly as possible. For Tech. Sgt. Philip Lester, deployed from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., that means enduring a 140-degree heat blast from behind C-130 Hercules engines as he unloads cargo and passengers...

PHOENIX -- State lawmakers voted Tuesday to tell every public school, community college and state university to put an American flag in every classroom. But who is going to pay for it remains unclear. The legislation given preliminary Senate approval on a voice vote requires each governing board to seek donations of two-by-three foot flags -- made in the U.S. only -- or seek cash to put one in every room. They also would have to obtain flagpoles and other hardware. HB 2583 also says, though, that if the boards can't get the required number of flags by July 1,...

Bill Would Require ID on La. Caskets Tuesday April 11, 2006 1:01 AM By MELINDA DESLATTE Associated Press Writer BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - The floodwaters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita disturbed hundreds of coffins, many forced from their grave sites without identifying markers to provide information about who was buried inside them. Now, lawmakers are considering ways to make those caskets more identifiable if the state has another flood. ``We have to make sure that family members have some way to identify who is buried here,'' said Rep. Mickey Frith, D-Kaplan. The House Commerce Committee on Monday approved a...

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Schools, universities and other public buildings would have to be built to meet energy efficiency, water conservation and other environmental standards under a bill given final approval by lawmakers Wednesday. If signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire - who has expressed support for the measure - Washington would be the first state in the nation to have such a "green buildings" law. Several cities and municipalities have required new buildings to be built to the standards, including Chicago and Austin, Texas. "It's good for the kids, it's good for the workers, and it's good for the taxpayers,"...

Earlier this year the Food and Drug Administration's Obesity Working Group issued its "Calories Count" report urging the FDA to work with restaurants to disclose the number of calories in the products they sell," according to an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. "But that's not good enough for some grinches in Congress. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (D) and Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D) plan to re-introduce bills requiring chain restaurants with more than 20 outlets to list calorie counts either on menu boards or printed menus." In "Government Gets Fat Fighting Obesity," Cato policy analyst Radley Balko writes: "The...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Doyle urges legislation requiring schools to offer breakfast The Associated Press Published October 17, 2003 MONONA, Wis. - Gov. Jim Doyle urged lawmakers Friday to approve legislation that would require all Wisconsin schools to participate in the federal school breakfast program. Wisconsin ranks last in the nation in school breakfast participation. The federal program reimburses schools that offer free and reduced priced meals for students. Doyle said the legislation is needed because only 44 percent of Wisconsin's 2,471 public and private schools and residential childcare facilities with lunch programs also have breakfast programs. "We are failing our kids and failing...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Rep. C. L. "Butch" Otter (R-ID) has proposed a bill that would require scientific proof that land should be restricted before the Endangered Species Act can be applied to public land. This bill, called the Scientifically Identifying the Need for Critical Habitat (SINCH) Act, or H.R. 2602, would let the secretary of Interior decide whether the habitat that holds these limited species is threatened or endangered. Under the Endangered Species Act, a critical habitat includes any area where an endangered species lives as well as any territory that it decides to migrate to in order to...