Wednesday morning news - March 3, 2021

Biden: Vaccines for all Americans by end of May » President Biden says all Americans will soon have access to coronavirus vaccines. 

BIDEN: We are now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May. 

Speaking from the White House, the president said in an effort to overcome production delays, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine manufacturing facilities will now operate 24 hours a day. 

Biden also praised the company and its biggest competitor Merck for being “good corporate citizens.” 

The rival companies are teaming up to help ramp up supplies of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

BIDEN: This is the type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II. 

Merck will manufacture supplies of the J&J vaccine at its facilities.

FBI chief testifies about Capitol siege » Testifying on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, FBI Director Chris Wray condemned the January riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

WRAY: That attack, that siege was criminal behavior, plain and simple. And it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.

He also pushed back against claims by Capitol law enforcement officials that they had not been warned about threats to the Capitol building.

Senators grilled Wray about a Jan. 5 report from a field office warning of online posts foreshadowing a “war” in Washington the following day. The posts described “glass breaking” and “doors being kicked in.”

Capitol Police leaders say they never saw that report. But Wray said the FBI did share it even though the information was raw and unverified. 

WRAY: In addition to the email, in addition to the verbal briefing at the command post, the information was posted on what we call LEAP, which is a law enforcement portal, which is made available to law enforcement not just here in the national capital region but all around the country. 

Wray also said domestic threats have been growing for years and that the FBI has been sounding alarms about those mounting threats.

U.S. sanctions Russian officials, businesses over Navalny poisoning » The White House on Tuesday announced new sanctions against Russian officials and businesses. The move is in response to the nerve-agent attack on opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his jailing after he returned from medical treatment in Germany. 

Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the sanctions will start with seven senior members of the Russian government and…

PSAKI: An expansion of sanctions under the chemical and biological weapons and warfare elimination act, new export restriction on items that could be used for biological agent and chemical production and visa restrictions.   

The European Union has also announced actions against Russia. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov immediately fired back. He claimed that officials in Germany hid facts about Navalny’s medical treatment and that Western governments are lying about Russia’s guilt. 

LAVROV (translated): Instead of honest collaboration and not hiding they start to punish us. This doesn’t bring any credit to those who take decisions, and we will surely respond. 

The U.S. intelligence community concluded with high confidence that Russian agents carried out nerve agent attack against Navalny. 

At least 15 dead after truck hits SUV in Calif. » At least 15 people are dead after a semitruck crashed into an SUV carrying more than two-dozen people in Southern California. 

The crash occurred Tuesday 11 miles north of the Mexico border.

Judy Cruz with El Centro Regional Medical Center said 28 people were inside the SUV. 

CRUZ: Fourteen were dead on the scene. Four of those patients were flown out from the scene to Desert Hospital. 

The SUV was a Ford Expedition that would typically seat eight to nine people. It drove into the path of the semitruck, which slammed into the left side of the vehicle. 

The Border Patrol is helping investigate the crash. A Border Patrol official said “it was an unusual number of people in an SUV, but we don’t know who they were.” He added that they could have been farmworkers.

Boy Scouts file bankruptcy reorganization plan » The Boy Scouts of America has submitted a bankruptcy reorganization plan that would set aside hundreds of millions for abuse victims. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The Boy Scouts filed the plan this week in Delaware bankruptcy court. 

It would place $300 million into a trust fund for abuse victims. 

The organization says it needs to keep $75 million for operating costs, including local troops and national adventure camps. But under the plan, any unrestricted cash above that amount would also go into the trust. 

To further contribute to the fund, the BSA has agreed to part with its collection of Norman Rockwell paintings. It would also sell a warehouse facility in North Carolina, a Scouting University facility in Texas, and other properties. 

But Paul Mones, an attorney representing hundreds of former Scouts, was not impressed. He called the plan “woefully and tragically inadequate.”

More than 95,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin. 

(AP Photo/John Locher, File) In this Feb. 10, 2021, file photo, a man receives a COVID-19 vaccine in North Las Vegas. 

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