Week of 06/13: FREECABLE TV’s Top 10 Stories

Mixing COVID-19 Vaccines

TheTribune - Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has recently announced its updated guidance to allow mixing and matching approved Covid-19 vaccines in most scenarios. Under the aforementioned updated guidance, people who received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine may receive Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna for their second dose, unless contraindicated. Similarly, the new guidance also advises that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can in fact be mixed for first and second doses.

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Americans Are Back In Theatres

CBS - "A Quiet Place Part 2" from Paramount Pictures was able to break pandemic box-office records and took in nearly $100 million this past week. But regardless of this particular film's fortunate success, movie theaters will need to develop a way to better consistently lure Americans who have become accustomed to streaming from home back out to the big screen. "The first challenge is to get more people to come back. The second challenge is to have all these films that have been sort of waiting in the pipeline to come out at the right time, so they can start to make that the kind of money to justify their $200 million budget," film critic Scott Mantz said.

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Meet Prince Harry's & Meghan Markle's New Baby Girl

FOX - Meghan Markle and Prince Harry welcomed their second child last Friday, a baby girl named Lilibet "Lili" Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said the following Sunday. The baby's first name, Lilibet, is a nod to Her Majesty The Queen's nickname while her middle name is in honor of her grandmother and Harry's mother, Princess Diana. "On June 4th, we were blessed with the arrival of our daughter, Lili. She is more than we could have ever imagined, and we remain grateful for the love and prayers we’ve felt from across the globe", the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said in a written statement. "Thank you for your continued kindness and support during this very special time for our family."

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All Aboard The 1st NA Cruise Ship To Set Sail Again

ABC - Celebrity Cruises crossed a major hurdle on the high seas this week as its Celebrity Millennium became the first ship to sail with guests from North America in more than a year. The Millennium pulled away from St. Maarten with 95% of its passengers and the entire crew fully vaccinated, effectively making it the largest COVID-19-vaccinated cruise in the world so far. "I don't even have words to express my feelings," Milenium Captain Theo Zakkas said while in tears. "It's something amazing and unique, it's also a very emotional moment for me."

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US Approves 1st New Alzheimer's Drug In 20 Years

BBC - The first new treatment for Alzheimer's disease for nearly 20 years has just been approved by regulators in the United States. The treatment Aducanumab targets the underlying cause of Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia, rather than its symptoms. Prof Bart De Strooper, director of the UK Dementia Research Institute, said the decision to approve aducanumab marked "a hugely significant milestone" in the search for treatments for Alzheimer's disease. And while Strooper hopes that this new treatment would prove to be a turning point for millions of people with the condition, he said there were "still many barriers to overcome".

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Hospital Sued By Staff For Mandating Vaccinations

CBS - Nearly 200 staff members at a Houston-area hospital have been suspended for not following a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19. The hospital in question, Houston Methodist, had reportedly told employees that they had to be vaccinated by Monday or face suspension. As a result, just last month, 117 employees ended up filing a lawsuit against their employer over the vaccine policy. “If we don’t stop this now and do some kind of change, everybody’s just going to topple,” Jennifer Bridges, a nurse who led the Houston Methodist protest, told local media covering the protest. “It’s going to create a domino effect. Everybody across the nation is going to be forced to get things into their body that they don’t want and that’s not right.”

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Iconic Dogecoin Dog Meme Auctioned Off As NFT

NBC - Doge, the iconic meme of an excited-looking shiba inu, was auctioned off as a nonfungible token, or NFT, for $4 million this past Tuesday. To be more precise, the auction winner, @pleasrdao, placed a willing bid of 1,696.9 of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, worth approximately $4 million, according to the auction site Zora. "We're so happy to be a part of this milestone in internet history. If any meme deserved to be the new meme NFT record holder, it's Doge," said Don Caldwell, editor-in-chief of the internet meme database Know Your Meme, which certified Doge ahead of the auction to ensure that the meme was being sold by its rightful owner.

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Biden Replaces Executive Orders That Banned TikTok

CNBC - Pres. Biden signed an executive order this past Wednesday that sets a criteria for the government to evaluate the risk of apps connected to foreign adversaries, a move with implications for Chinese-owned sites like TikTok and WeChat. As a result, Biden effectively revoked and replaced the three executive orders by former Pres. Trump that sought to ban transactions with TikTok and WeChat by American businesses entirely. Thus far, a TikTok spokesperson had declined to comment on the new excutive order.

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Black TikTok Creator Rejects Critical Race Theory

FOX - Black TikTok content creator Savannah Edwards has gone viral this week for a video arguing against reparations. The post, which has since been viewed over 100,000 times on the account @thisissavvy, depicts Edwards picking apart the idea that financial payment to the Black community is the "first step to healing" for a history of slavery and discrimination in the United States. "Reparations as a first step to healing? Uh-uh," Edwards said shaking her head. "The first step to healing is forgiveness."

Watch more: https://youtu.be/OyeV_ZA6fX8

Pfizer Advances Clinical Trial Of Vaccine On Kids 5-11

ABC - "Today marks an important next step in our efforts to understand the safety and immune response of our COVID-19 vaccine," Dr. Bill Gruber, senior vice president of clinical research and development at Pfizer, said in a statement. In the coming weeks, Phase 2/3 trials will start for 2- to 4-year-olds, as well as those as young as six months, according to Gruber. "We take a deliberate and careful approach to help us understand the safety and how well the vaccine can be tolerated in younger children."