
Judge says Cuomo's prison COVID-19 vaccine policies were "arbitrary and capricious"
CBSN
A judge ordered New York to offer COVID-19 vaccines to people incarcerated in state jails and prisons after a lawsuit argued that Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state's health commissioner had unfairly denied prisoners access to the vaccine.
The judge's decision ends a nearly two-month dispute after prisoners sued Cuomo and the state's Commissioner of Health, Howard Zucker, to request access to the vaccine. Even as jail and prison workers were prioritized for vaccine access this winter, the lawsuit argued that incarcerated people were unfairly blocked from being inoculated. In a Monday ruling that ordered the state to offer prisoners access to the vaccine, Justice Alison Y. Tuitt wrote that the inmates' exclusion from vaccine access was "by definition arbitrary and capricious." She added, "There is no acceptable excuse for this deliberate exclusion."
Santa Fe, New Mexico — A representative for the estate of actor Gene Hackman is seeking to block the public release of autopsy and investigative reports, especially photographs and police body-camera video related to the recent deaths of Hackman and wife Betsy Arakawa after their partially mummified bodies were discovered at their New Mexico home in February.

In the past year, over 135 million passengers traveled to the U.S. from other countries. To infectious disease experts, that represents 135 million chances for an outbreak to begin. To identify and stop the next potential pandemic, government disease detectives have been discreetly searching for viral pathogens in wastewater from airplanes. Experts are worried that these efforts may not be enough.