For many separated or divorced parents, the COVID-19 vaccine for children isn't a relief, but rather another source of co-parenting contention.

That's certainly the case for Jillian, a 32-year-old mom of three living in Washington State. She's eager to get her children protected against a virus that has claimed over 750,000 American lives, and cheered when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the two-shot Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use for kids ages 5 through 11 on Oct. 29.

While she says her ex-husband never had an issue with their three children, ages 9, 8, and 5, receiving other FDA-approved vaccination shots — like the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines — he doesn't want his children to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.

"He doesn't agree that the children should be getting it without years of research proving that it works and that it's not going to kill our children," Jillian told TODAY Parents (we are withholding the last names of the parents in this article to protect their children's privacy). "We have talked about it two or three times, because we knew it was going to be something we'd eventually have to decide, but his mindset is that even if the kids caught Covid they'd be fine, so why get a shot to prevent it?"

(CNN)Austria is going back into a national lockdown and plans to become the first country in Europe to make Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for all eligible people as the nation's coronavirus crisis deepens, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced Friday.

Schallenberg said his government would look to impose the national vaccine requirement from February 1. Just under 66% of Austria's total population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, one of the lower rates in the European Union, where cases are surging.

The national lockdown -- the first in Europe this fall -- starts Monday and will last for 10 days minimum, and could be extended for a further 10 days, Schallenberg told reporters at a news conference in Vienna.

"We don't want a fifth wave. We don't want a sixth and seventh wave. We don't want to have this discussion next summer," Schallenberg said.

(CNN)In a matter of months, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gone from being a shining example in Donald Trump's eyes of a MAGA leader molded in his image to an average politician who forgot his roots as he rose to Republican stardom.

People close to both men first noticed the palpable shift in Trump's posture toward DeSantis earlier this year as enthusiasm for the Florida governor swelled among donors and GOP operatives who praised his laissez-faire response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The more DeSantis' popularity soared, the more obsessed Trump became with receiving credit for his political celebrity.

In April, Trump had told Fox News that DeSantis would "certainly" be under consideration for the VP slot if he were to launch a third presidential campaign in 2024. By October, the former President was demanding that he publicly rule out a White House bid of his own.
"It's not that Trump is complaining about Ron... but he likes to remind Ron and others that he made him," said a person close to the former President, who added that Trump has been telling people around him that DeSantis could show more gratitude. Politico first reported the tension in their relationship last Friday.

A statement to CNN from Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich appeared to confirm Trump's obsession with receiving credit for DeSantis' success. Budowich said the former President's 2020 victory in Florida "paved the way for Republicans, including Governor Ron DeSantis, to sweep the state in 2022" and suggested that Trump "catapulted" then-Congressman DeSantis "into the Governor's Mansion" with his endorsement in the 2018 GOP primary for Florida governor.

During a recent taping of “This Week in Connecticut,” with Dennis House, News 8’s Chief Political Correspondent Jodi Latina asked Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, “Does this mean your administration will take tolls off the table?”

At the time, Bysiewicz would not definitively say they were.

However, on Monday, Lamont told us, “No, that door is closed, Jodi. We needed that money in order to pay our part for transportation. Now we’ve got other ways to pay for transportation. So we’re not gonna be doing tolls. Period, dead stop.”

WASHINGTON — About 99.7% of all active-duty sailors are at least partially vaccinated against the coronavirus less than two weeks ahead of the Navy’s deadline, the service announced Wednesday.

The Navy also said all but about three percent are fully vaccinated. The Pentagon considers troops fully vaccinated two weeks after their final coronavirus shot.

The total does not include the Marine Corps’ numbers, though the two services share the same Nov. 28 deadline for troops to be vaccinated. As of Nov. 10, about 94% of active-duty Marines were at least partially vaccinated and 89% were fully vaccinated, according to the service.

The deadline was established after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in August ordered all services members to be vaccinated. The Marine Corps said it would publish its number of approved exemptions after the deadline passes.

he Najah’s Desert Oasis gas station appears on the horizon like a mirage, the only fuel stop in a stretch of nearly 100 miles of mountains and desert in this remote part of south-eastern California. The numbers listed on its sign can evoke a similar feeling of disbelief.

$6.39 a gallon for regular, the display read on Tuesday.

Prices at the gas station, located along historic Route 66, are among the most expensive in the United States, high even for California.

The Golden state has long had the highest gas prices in the country. This week, they hit a new record amid fuel shortages and increased demand, recording an average price per gallon of $4.68.

Prices at Najah’s Desert Oasis have always been higher than average, workers say, because getting anything delivered this far out – fuel included – is expensive. The station only recently got electricity after running on diesel generators for much of its 25 years.

Apple is stepping up its plans to enter the car market and aims to launch a self-driving electric vehicle in 2025, according to a report.

The tech company’s much-rumoured automotive project has bolstered its ambitions under new leadership and is pushing for a fully self-driving vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, said Bloomberg. The car’s interior would be designed for hands-off driving, with one possible design featuring passengers sitting around a U-shaped seating formation.

Apple’s below-the-radar car venture – known as Project Titan – was dealt an apparent blow in September when the executive in charge of its development, Doug Field, defected to Ford. But the iPhone maker appears undaunted by the challenge of entering the competitive electric vehicle market despite a number of senior leadership changes at Titan this year, Field’s the most significant among them.

Bloomberg reported that the ambitious targets have been set by Field’s replacement, the Apple Watch software executive Kevin Lynch. He is aiming for a fully self-driving car within four years – if the company can pull off a self-driving system within that timeframe.

(CNN)Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Thursday she recognizes President Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, even as she claimed there were "lots of problems" with the 2020 election that Republican candidates should address.

"Painfully, Joe Biden won the election and it's very painful to watch. He's the President. We know that," McDaniel said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, DC.

While the RNC has for months criticized Biden in press releases and rapid response materials, McDaniel's comments Thursday marked the first time the party chairwoman has clearly stated that Biden "won" the 2020 election.

Her comments also come as former President Donald Trump, who McDaniel said remains an overwhelming influence on the Republican Party, continues to push conspiracy theories about the 2020 election with the help of leaders across the GOP's election apparatus. Earlier this year, the RNC unveiled a "Committee on Election Integrity," and, on Thursday, McDaniel declined to say whether Trump's pressure campaign to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to block congressional certification of Biden's Electoral College victory was unconstitutional.

From the moment former President Donald Trump entered the White House, various self-proclaimed “prophets” guaranteed that he would be reelected in 2020 and serve eight years in office. One of those “prophets” was Nathan French, who is growing increasingly desperate with President Joe Biden in the White House, declaring during an appearance on the Elijah Streams program last Friday that Trump must be returned to office because people are starting to lose faith in the prophets.

“The Lord is going to bring Trump back in,” French proclaimed. “I believe that he knows deep down in his spirit, he knows that God has chosen him, not someone else. He’s flawed for sure—I don’t believe in some of the things he says about vaccines—but the truth is God called him as the trump card, and he’s gonna throw that card on the table in just the next few months, and you’re going to see how God is actually going to take back what the enemy tried to unauthorize, he tried to steal, and he tried to manipulate, and the whole system of how we elect people in the future will be restored.”

Host Steve Schultz then asked French how he responds to those who say the election was over a year ago and if God was going to restore Trump to office, it would have happened by now. French replied that God must restore Trump to office in order to silence those who are “trying to discredit the prophetic community.”

“I took a risk to prophesy over him and Melania,” French said. “What we’re seeing right now is the unraveling of the enemy’s plan because God’s been shining the light. … I saw the Lord shining a light into the dark places and all the scurrying of the evildoers or those who had worked against Christ with an Antichrist spirit. We’re gonna see God finish what he began. The word promises that he will finish the good work he began. Where people miss it and start trying to discredit the prophetic community is when they start getting the timeline messed up. If somebody gives a word that, ‘Hey, on this date, this person is going to be in office,’ and it doesn’t come to pass, then it was a false word. It wasn’t true. But if they give that word and the date that they gave hasn’t yet come to pass, you can’t call him a liar or [say] that they were wrong because the time hasn’t happened yet. If somebody doesn’t give a date and God gives a word and speaks through the voice of his prophets—which he’s doing on the Earth right now because there’s still prophets today. … There’s a whole bunch of people on the planet that don’t believe that there are still prophets on the Earth. And so they scripturally are trying to resolve that, and they’re teaching people that prophets no longer exist.”

TRENTON, N.J. — It took three decades for Democratic power broker George Norcross to build one of the most effective and influential political machines in the country. It took one night for the operation to lose its biggest public figure.

The insurance executive, who has never held elected office, had seized near-absolute control over elections in much of southern New Jersey. He funneled seemingly endless campaign cash to support his allies and crush his foes. His allies won every Democratic legislative seat south of Trenton.

…snip…

Instead, the biggest hit to the power of Norcross came this month, when a truck driver who spent $10,000 on his campaign defeated Sweeney. It was one of the biggest political upsets in New Jersey history and the biggest in the nation this year — a dark omen for Democrats worried about the 2022 midterms. That night, South Jersey Democrats also lost two of their six state Senate seats and four of their 12 state Assembly seats, accounting for most of the Democratic Party’s losses in New Jersey, where Murphy stumbled to a narrow, 3-point reelection victory.