NPR News

When the Supreme Court hands down its decision in a highly-watched Mississippi abortion case this summer, access to legal abortion could end for more than 100 million Americans, including those living in nearly every Southern state and large swaths of the Midwest.

A day before the federal government is scheduled to run out of money, the House of Representatives on Thursday approved a short-term spending bill that would keep federal agencies running through Feb. 18, 2022.

The vote was 221-212, with one Republican joining all Democrats to pass it.

The legislation would not change existing funding levels or policy, but does include $7 billion for evacuees from Afghanistan, according to House Committee on Appropriations Chair Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued to block a $40 billion deal in which the Silicon Valley chip maker Nvidia sought to buy British chip designer Arm.

Officials with the FTC say the deal, which would be the largest semiconductor-chip merger in history, would give Nvidia too much power, hurt competition and raise prices for consumers.

Researchers in Botswana and South Africa just detected the omicron variant a few weeks ago, but already many scientists are predicting that the efficacy of the vaccines will likely take a hit, probably a big hit, when it comes to stopping infections of omicron. And more breakthrough infections will likely occur if (and that's a big if) omicron spreads here in the U.S.

At the same time, there's hope that vaccines will still offer good protection against severe disease and hospitalization, especially with a third dose.

Retired Special Forces Maj. Ian Fishback graduated near the top of his West Point class, deployed four times to Iraq and Afghanistan, earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan, and was named one of Time magazine's most influential people in 2005 for blowing the whistle on torture by the U.S. military.

He died broke, virtually homeless and medicated with heavy antipsychotic drugs in an adult foster care center near Kalamazoo, Mich., on Nov. 19 at age 42, as his friends and family scrambled to find him mental health care.