Mask mandates in Missouri highlight political divisions, as hospitals fill with COVID patients
CBSN
With the rise of the Delta variant across the state of Missouri, Kansas City reinstated its COVID-19 mask mandate earlier this week.
"The entire state of Missouri, every one of our 114 counties is a hotspot zone for COVID-19. So we saw it was important for us to act, given that updated guidance, from not just the CDC, but our health department, and that's why we have a mask mandate today," said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. Fully vaccinated rates are just below 40% in Kansas City and with cases on the rise, Lucas and the city were prompted to issue the mask mandate, which requires masks to be worn in all indoor spaces where six feet can not be maintained.President Joe Biden said France was America's "first friend" at its founding and is one of its closest allies more than two centuries later as he was honored with a state visit Saturday by French President Emmanuel Macron aimed at showing off their partnership on global security issues and easing past trade tensions.
The Consumer Federal Protection Bureau last week launched an inquiry into what the agency is calling "junk fees in mortgage closing costs." These additional fees, involving home appraisal, title insurance and other services, have spiked in recent years and can add thousands of dollars to the final cost of buying a home.
Retired Maj. Gen. William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic "Earthrise" photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.