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Biden Labor Candidate Oversaw Fraudulent Payments to California Prison Inmates

A frontrunner to be president-elect Joe Biden’s labor secretary oversaw the payment of nearly $1 billion in fraudulent benefits to California prison inmates.

Julie Su is the secretary of California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which operates the state’s pandemic unemployment system. The system paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment payments to prison inmates and convicts, prosecutors announced on Tuesday.

The fraud involved over 35,000 unemployment claims filed between March and August under the names of California state prison inmates. The inmates included two serial killers responsible for the deaths of at least eight people, as well as the well-known murderer Scott Peterson, who was convicted in 2004 for killing his pregnant wife. The Sacramento County district attorney called the scandal “one of the biggest fraud of taxpayer dollars in California history.”

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Many Epidemiologists Want Social Distancing and Masks Forever—Even After the Vaccine

The New York Times asked700 epidemiologists to describe their COVID-19 habits, how their thinking has changed since the pandemic began, and when they think it will be safe for normal life to resume. Dismayingly, several answered that last question with a resounding never.

“I expect that wearing a mask will become part of my daily life, moving forward, even after a vaccine is deployed,” Amy Hobbs, a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Times.

Marilyn Tseng, an assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University, said life would never revert to the way it was, though the preventative measures currently practiced—masks and social distancing—will feel “normal” in time. Similarly, Vasily Vlassov, a professor at HSE University in Moscow, said life was perfectly normal now because this is the new normal.

Others disagreed. Michael Webster-Clark of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said he expected “further relaxation of most precautions by mid-to-late summer 2021″ following widespread availability of the vaccine. Some epidemiologists said their own risk aversion would decrease after they were vaccinated, but many said they would remain just as cautious until”80 percent or more” of the entire population had received the vaccine.

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Private jet company CEO busted by NYPD for alleged underaged sex trafficking

Private jet company executive, Paul Alexander, 57, was arrested last week for allegedly trafficking and soliciting sex from two minors.

The Central Jet Charter CEO was arrested following a month-long probe by the NYPD and the state prosecutor’s office, according to a press release from the NY Attorney General. The investigation was dubbed “Operation Mile High,” on account of Alexander’s profession.

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Vaccination cards will be issued to everyone getting Covid-19 vaccine, health officials say

The Department of Defense released the first images of a Covid-19 vaccination record card and vaccination kits Wednesday.Vaccination cards will be used as the “simplest” way to keep track of Covid-19 shots, said Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of the Immunization Action Coalition, which is supporting frontline workers who will administer Covid-19 vaccinations.

“Everyone will be issued a written card that they can put in their wallet that will tell them what they had and when their next dose is due,” Moore said. “Let’s do the simple, easy thing first. Everyone’s going to get that.”Vaccination clinics will also be reporting to their state immunization registries what vaccine was given, so that, for example, an entity could run a query if it didn’t know where a patient got a first dose.Moore said many places are planning to ask patients to voluntarily provide a cell phone number, so they can get a text message telling them when and where their next dose is scheduled to be administered.Every dose administered will be reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.The CDC did not immediately respond to CNN’s inquiry about whether such a database would include a record of everyone immunized.

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