Biden: Trump ‘failed’ to shore up nation’s cybersecurity
WILMINGTON, Del. — President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday assailed the Trump administration for failing to fortify the nation’s cyber defenses, and called on President Donald Trump to publicly identify the perpetrator of a massive breach of U.S. government agencies — a hack some of Trump’s top allies have blamed on Russia.
Biden, who is being briefed on high-level intelligence in preparation for taking office next month, said planning for the hack began as early as 2019. Several federal agencies, including the Treasury Department, have said they were targeted.
“There’s still so much we don’t know,” Biden said during a news conference in Wilmington, Delaware. “But we know this much: This attack constitutes a grave risk to our national security. It was carefully planned and carefully orchestrated.”
The U.S. government has not made a formal assessment of who was behind the attack, but both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr have said all signs point to Russia. But Trump, who has long sidestepped blaming Moscow for its provocations, has not followed suit and has instead suggested — without evidence — that China may have carried out the hack.
The breach of the Treasury Department began in July, but experts believe the overall hacking operation began months earlier when malicious code was slipped into updates to popular software that monitors computer networks of businesses and governments.
US negotiating for millions more vaccine doses from Pfizer
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is negotiating with Pfizer to acquire tens of millions of additional vaccine doses in exchange for helping the pharmaceutical giant gain better access to manufacturing supplies.
A person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the deal is under discussion but has not been finalized. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to describe ongoing deliberations.
Pfizer’s vaccine was the first to gain approval from the Food and Drug Administration and initial shipments went to states last week. It has now been joined by a vaccine from Moderna, which was developed in closer cooperation with scientists from the National Institutes of Health.
A law dating back to the Korean War gives the government authority to direct private companies to produce critical goods in times of national emergency. Called the Defense Production Act, it could be used to help Pfizer secure supplies ranging from needed chemicals to vials to containers and materials to keep its vaccine super-cold. The person who spoke to the AP about the negotiations described using the defense law as an option under consideration.
Public school enrollment dips as virus disrupts education
An analysis of data from 33 states obtained by Chalkbeat and the Associated Press shows that public K-12 enrollment this fall dropped throughout those states by more than 500,000 students, or 2%, since the same time last year.
That is a significant shift considering that enrollment overall in those states has typically gone up by about half a percent in recent years. And the decline is only likely to become more pronounced as several large states have yet to release information. Chalkbeat and AP surveyed all 50 states, but 17 have not released comparable enrollment numbers yet.
The data, which in many states is preliminary, offers the clearest picture yet of the pandemic’s devastating toll on public school enrollment — a decline that could eventually have dire consequences for school budgets that are based on headcounts. But even more alarming, educators say, is that some of the students who left might not be in school at all.
“I would like to hope that many of them are from homes where their parents have taken responsibility on their own to provide for their education,” said Pedro Noguera, the dean of the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, adding that affluent families will have an easier time doing that. “My fear is that large numbers have simply gotten discouraged and given up.”
The declines are driven by a combination of factors brought on by the pandemic. Fewer parents enrolled their children in kindergarten, and some students left public schools for other learning environments. At the same time, students who are struggling to attend classes, as many are right now, might have been purged from public school rolls for missing many days in a row.