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Police: 10 people killed in Colorado supermarket shooting Posted: 22 Mar 2021 07:59 PM PDT BOULDER, Colorado — A shooting at a Colorado supermarket killed 10 people Monday, including a police officer who was the first to respond to the scene, authorities said. Police arrested a suspect, but didn't reveal his name or any details about the shooting at an evening news conference where Boulder police Chief Maris Herold fought back tears. Investigators had just begun sorting through evidence and witness interviews and didn't have details on a motive for the shooting at the King Soopers store in Boulder, which is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Denver and home to the University of Colorado, said Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty. "This is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder County," Dougherty said. "These were people going about their day, doing their shopping. I promise the victims and the people of the state of Colorado that we will secure justice." The attack was the seventh mass killing this year in the U.S., following the March 16 shooting that left eight people dead at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. It follows a lull in mass killings during the pandemic in 2020, which had the smallest number of such attacks in more than a decade, according to the database, which tracks mass killings defined as four or more dead, not including the shooter. The slain officer was identified as Eric Talley, 51, who had been with Boulder police since 2010, Herold said. "He was by all accounts one of the outstanding officers of the Boulder Police Department, and his life was cut too short," Dougherty said of Talley. Identities of the other nine victims were not disclosed Monday night as police were still notifying their family members. Matthew Kirsch, the acting U.S. attorney for Colorado, pledged that "the full weight of federal law enforcement" will support the investigation. He said investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were at the crime scene, along with FBI agents. Officers had escorted a shirtless man with blood running down his leg out of the store in handcuffs but authorities would not say if he was the suspect. They did say the suspect was receiving medical care. Dean Schiller told The Associated Press that he had just left the supermarket when he heard gunshots and saw three people lying face down, two in the parking lot and one near the doorway. He said he "couldn't tell if they were breathing." Video posted on YouTube showed one person on the floor inside the store and two more outside on the ground. What sounds like two gunshots are also heard at the beginning of the video. Law enforcement vehicles and officers massed outside the store, including SWAT teams, and at least three helicopters landed on the roof. Some windows at the front of the store were broken. At one point, authorities said over a loudspeaker that the building was surrounded and that "you need to surrender." Sarah Moonshadow told the Denver Post that two shots rang out just after she and her son, Nicolas Edwards, finished buying strawberries. She said she told her son to get down and then "we just ran." Once they got outside, she said they saw a body in the parking lot. Edwards said police were speeding into the lot and pulled up next to the body. "I knew we couldn't do anything for the guy," he said. "We had to go." James Bentz told the Post that he was in the meat section when he heard what he thought was a misfire, then a series of pops. "I was then at the front of a stampede," he said. Bentz said he jumped off a loading dock out back to escape and that younger people were helping older people off of it. One person was taken from the shooting scene to Foothills Hospital in Boulder, said Rich Sheehan, spokesman for Boulder Community Health, which operates the hospital. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis tweeted a statement that his "heart is breaking as we watch this unspeakable event unfold in our Boulder community." Police had told people to shelter in place amid a report of an "armed, dangerous individual" about 3 miles (5 kilometers) away from the grocery store but said at the news conference later that it wasn't related to the shooting. White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the shooting. In a statement, the King Soopers chain offered "thoughts, prayers and support to our associates, customers, and the first responders who so bravely responded to this tragic situation. We will continue to cooperate with local law enforcement and our store will remain closed during the police investigation." Kevin Daly, owner of Under the Sun Eatery and Pizzeria Restaurant a block or so from the supermarket, said he was in his shop when he saw police cars arriving and shoppers running from the grocery store. He said he took in several people to keep them warm, and others boarded a bus provided by Boulder police and were taken away. (AP) This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

AstraZeneca: US data shows vaccine effective for all ages Posted: 22 Mar 2021 05:18 AM PDT LONDON -- AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine provided strong protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups in a late-stage study in the United States, the company announced Monday, March 22, 2021. AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding no increased risk of rare blood clots identified in Europe. Although AstraZeneca's vaccine has been authorized in more than 50 countries, it has not yet been given the green light in the US — and has struggled to gain public trust amid a troubled rollout. The study comprised more than 30,000 volunteers, of whom two-thirds were given the vaccine while the rest got dummy shots. In a statement, AstraZeneca said its Covid-19 vaccine was 79 percent effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 and was 100 percent effective in stopping severe disease and hospitalization, though it has not yet published full data. Investigators said the vaccine worked across all ages, including older people — something experts wanted better data on. Two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were given to people four weeks apart. "These findings reconfirm previous results observed," said Ann Falsey, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, who helped lead the trial. "It's exciting to see similar efficacy results in people over 65 for the first time." The AstraZeneca shot is a pillar of a UN-backed project known as Covax that aims to get Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries, and it has also become a key tool in European countries' efforts to boost their sluggish vaccine rollouts. Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the results were reassuring but that more details were needed to back up AstraZeneca's claim that the vaccine was completely effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalization. "It would be good to know how many severe cases occurred in the control group and so what the confidence intervals are for this 100 percent figure," said Hunter, who was not connected to the study. "But this should add confidence that the vaccine is doing what it is most needed for." The early findings from the US study are just one set of information AstraZeneca must submit to the Food and Drug Administration. An FDA advisory committee will publicly debate the evidence behind the shots before the agency decides whether to allow emergency use of the vaccine. In the past, the time between a company revealing efficacy data and a shot being authorized in the US has been about a month. Stephen Evans, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the new data is important for two reasons: The findings will reassure the FDA, which is reluctant to rely on data obtained outside the United States, but they could also boost confidence more broadly in the shot. "The benefits of these results will mainly be for the rest of the world where confidence in the AZ (AstraZeneca) vaccine has been eroded, largely by political and media comment," he said. Scientists had hoped the US study would clear up some of the confusion about just how well the shots really work, particularly in older people. Previous research suggested the vaccine was effective in younger populations, but there was no solid data proving its efficacy in those over 65, often those most vulnerable to Covid-19. Britain first authorized the vaccine based on partial results from testing in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa that suggested the shots were about 70 percent effective. But those results were clouded by a manufacturing mistake that led some participants to get just a half dose in their first shot — an error the researchers didn't immediately acknowledge. Then came more questions, about how well the vaccine protected older adults and how long to wait before the second dose. Some European countries including Germany, France and Belgium initially withheld the shot from older adults and only reversed their decisions after new data suggested it was offering seniors protection. AstraZeneca's vaccine development was rocky in the US, too. Last fall, the FDA suspended the company's study for an unusual six weeks, as frustrated regulators sought information about some neurologic complaints reported in Britain; ultimately, there was no evidence the vaccine was to blame. Last week, more than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, temporarily suspended their use of the AstraZeneca shot after reports it was linked to rare blood clots — even as international health agencies insisted the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency concluded after an investigation that the vaccine did not raise the overall risk of blood clots, but could not rule out that it was connected to two very rare types of clots. It recommended adding a warning about these cases to the vaccine's leaflet. It's not unheard of for such rare problems to crop up as vaccines are rolled out since trials typically look at tens of thousands of people, and some issues are only seen once the shot is used in millions of people. France, Germany, Italy and other countries subsequently resumed their use of the shot on Friday, with senior politicians rolling up their sleeves to show the vaccine was safe. AstraZeneca said it would continue to analyze the US data before submitting it to the FDA in the coming weeks. It said the data would also soon be published in a peer-reviewed journal. The AstraZeneca shot is what scientists call a "viral vector" vaccine. The shots are made with a harmless virus, a cold virus that normally infects chimpanzees. It acts like a Trojan horse to carry the coronavirus's spike protein's genetic material into the body that in turn produces some harmless protein. That primes the immune system to fight if the real virus comes along. Two other companies, Johnson & Johnson and China's CanSino Biologics, make Covid-19 vaccines using the same technology but using different cold viruses. (AP) This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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