Not good news, particularly with the Democratic majority hanging by a thread
Well, that would be nice
A sign of where this trial is going
You can stop fiddling with your router โ itโs not just you
People across the East Coast were having trouble accessing core Internet services Tuesday morning, just as they were logging on for work and school.
Users reported trouble loading Gmail, Slack and Zoom โ apps that have become necessities to keep work-from-home life running smoothly during theย coronavirusย pandemic. Downdetector, which tracks reports of outages, showed widespread issues with Verizon, Google, Zoom, YouTube, Slack, Amazon Web Services and others Tuesday just before noon.
On Twitter, which many still were able to access, people reported they were seeing issues with their Verizon Fios Internet service. Verizonโs customer support team said on Twitter Tuesday that a fiber had been cut in Brooklyn, which could possibly account for some of the issues. The support account on Twitter quickly became inundated with customers asking why their internet was slow and bumpy.
It was not immediately clear what was causing the outages, though many people pointed to issues with their Verizon Fios service. Amazon Web Servicesโ status page showed its service, which provides computing power to large swaths of the Internet, was experiencing an issue with an external provider. On its status page, it said that it is โinvestigating connectivity issues with an internet provider, mainly affecting the East Coast of the United States, outside of the AWS Network.โ Slack said there were no issues with its own service.
Now that McConnell has caved on the filibuster, we should see a Senate power-sharing agreement later this week
Senator Mitch McConnell on Monday dropped his demand that the new Democratic Senate majority promise to preserve the filibuster โ which Republicans could use to obstruct President Bidenโs agenda โ ending an impasse that had prevented Democrats from assuming full power even after their election wins.
In his negotiations with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new majority leader, Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, had refused to agree to a plan for organizing the chamber without a pledge from Democrats to protect the filibuster, a condition that Mr. Schumer had rejected.
But late Monday, as the stalemate persisted, Mr. McConnell found a way out by pointing to statements by two centrist Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, that said they opposed getting rid of the procedural tool โ a position they had held for months โ as enough of a guarantee to move forward without a formal promise from Mr. Schumer.
โWith these assurances, I look forward to moving ahead with a power-sharing agreement modeled on that precedent,โ Mr. McConnell said in a statement.
Democrats had been anticipating a capitulation by Mr. McConnell and said they believed he had overreached in the negotiation.
Yellenโs got the votes
The good vaccine news keeps on coming
Not news Senate Republicans wanted to hear
Merck is shutting down its COVID vaccine program after lackluster results
Merck said Monday that it is halting development of its two experimental Covid-19 vaccines, after early clinical-trial data showed the shots generated disappointing immune responses against the virus.
Early-stage studies of the vaccines indicated they produced inferior immune responses in subjects given the shots compared with people who survived Covid-19 or took authorized Covid-19 vaccines, the company said.
The exit removes a major vaccine player from the constellation of firms seeking shots to curb the spread of the virus, as the few companies that have been able to bring shots to marketย struggle to meet heavy demand.
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