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Happy Thursday. Here’s what’s happening:

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CBS News reports that stocks are plummeting on Wall Street, erasing a rally from a day earlier, as markets assess the fallout from the Federal Reserve's stepped-up fight against inflation.

The Dow fell more than 1,000 points, or 3%, as of noon EST, while the S&P 500 fell 3.7%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged 4.8%.
Markets rallied a day earlier after the Federal Reserve on Wednesday said it wouldn't move as quickly as some had feared to hike interest rates. But traders are starting to fret more about the impact of the Fed's moves to dampen demand for borrowing money as it tries to cool surging inflation.
Bond yields resumed their upward march, which will send mortgage rates higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose sharply, to 3.1%, reaching its highest levels since late 2018.
Technology companies had some of the biggest losses and weighed down the broader market, in a reversal from the solid gains they made a day earlier. Apple fell 3.4% and Microsoft fell 3.9%.
Internet retail giant Amazon slumped 6.4% and Google's parent company Alphabet fell 4.3%.
Energy stocks held up better than the rest of the market as U.S. crude oil prices rose 1.4%. Energy markets remain volatile as the conflict in Ukraine continues and demand remains high amid tight supplies of oil. European governments are trying to replace energy supplies from Russia and are considering an embargo. OPEC and allied oil-producing countries decided Thursday to gradually increase the flows of crude they send to the world.
However, higher oil and gas prices have contributed to the uncertainties weighing on investors as they try to assess how inflation will affect businesses, consumer activity and overall economic growth.
The Fed's aggressive shift to raise interest rates has investors worrying about whether it can pull off a tricky balancing act — slowing the economy enough to halt high inflation but not so much as to cause a downturn.
The Fed's latest move to raise interest rates by a half-percentage point had been widely expected. Markets steadied this week ahead of the policy update, but Wall Street was concerned the Fed might elect to raise rates by three-quarters of a percentage point in the months ahead. Fed Chair Jerome Powell eased those concerns, saying the central bank is "not actively considering" such an increase.
The latest numbers as we hit publish:

ABC News: More Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week but the total number of people collecting jobless aid is at its lowest level in more than 50 years.

AP: Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates resumed their ascent this week, as the key 30-year loan reached its highest point since 2009.

Severe weather caused ‘significant damage’ and wide-spread power outages in Oklahoma Wednesday, ABC News reports:

Seminole got hit especially hard after a reported tornado touched down in the city, located about 65 miles east of Oklahoma City.
The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security reported late Wednesday that there was "significant damage" to structures, including businesses, in Seminole, and that the Red Cross was setting up a shelter for displaced residents there.
The National Weather Service of Norman, Oklahoma, had warned residents of a "damaging tornado" on the ground near Seminole County earlier Wednesday.
Aerial footage from Oklahoma City ABC affiliate KOCO showed widespread damage to structures in Seminole after the storm.

Axios reports that a coalition of progressive and abortion rights groups announced plans Thursday to hold a nationwide day of action for abortion rights on May 14.

On Monday, news broke that the Supreme Court was set to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade, repealing federal abortion rights.
If Roe is overturned, abortion would immediately become illegal in at least 13 states, writes Axios' Oriana Gonzalez.
The organizations behind the “Bans Off Our Bodies” day of action include Planned Parenthood, UltraViolet, Women’s March and MoveOn.
Events will take place across the country, with four "anchor marches" planned for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood Action Fund's executive director, said during a press call Thursday.
"We're expecting hundreds of thousands of folks in these anchor cities and still hundreds of events all across the country. So no matter where you are, there's somewhere for you to go," Robinson said.
The Supreme Court's leaked draft document represents a "monumental rupture of trust and legitimacy between the court and the people they are supposed to serve," Shaunna Thomas, co-founder and executive director of UltraViolet, told reporters during the call.
“We will be organizing and demanding more from our leaders, political and, yes, also the hypocritical corporate leaders, that padded the election coffers of anti-abortion politicians for years," Thomas added. "And we're lifting up the voices of those impacted."

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will force a vote next week on legislation codifying Roe v. Wade in the wake of a leaked Supreme Court draft decision that would strike down the landmark case.

POLITICO @politico

Schumer said his chamber will vote Wednesday on a bill to codify abortion rights into law. It's unlikely to have the support necessary to break a filibuster — or even to pass without it.

POLITICO Playbook PM: Schumer tees up doomed abortion voteAnd Jill Biden will head to the Ukraine border.politico.com

NBC News: Workers began installing tall fencing around the Supreme Court Wednesday night after another evening of protests over the leaked opinion that signaled justices plan to overturn Roe v. Wade.

NBC News: Former Supreme Court law clerks said this week's publication of a draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade was a disturbing breach of court tradition that couhange how the justices do their jobs.

AP: Once conflicted, Biden embraces role as abortion defender.

The Financial Times reports that Elon Musk has raised $7.14 billion of funding for his $44 billion buyout of Twitter, from investors including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, crypto exchange Binance and asset management groups Fidelity, Brookfield and Sequoia Capital.

With the new financing commitments, Musk will cut the margin loan he has taken with a group of lenders by half to $6.25bn and increase the equity portion to $27.25bn. The remainder of the purchase price will be paid with debt raised from global banks.
Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao told the Financial Times his crypto exchange would offer Elon Musk almost unconditional support for his takeover of Twitter, after a rapid deal that left the parties little time to discuss details. “It’s more of a blank cheque,” Zhao said after committing $500mn to Musk’s deal.
The Tesla chief has been engaged in a whirlwind effort to secure outside backing to join his audacious bid for the social media platform, even as traditional private equity groups involved in leveraged buyouts have largely eschewed the transaction.
The deal would transform Musk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist” with almost 91mn followers on the site, into a social media baron with control over how millions of people obtain news and information.

And CNBC reports that Elon Musk will serve as a temporary CEO of Twitter for a few months after he completes his $44 billion takeover of the social media company.

Toronto Sun @TheTorontoSun

Elon Musk secures $7.1B in new financing for Twitter, expected to serve as temporary CEO

Elon Musk secures $7.1B in new financing for Twitter, expected to serve as temporary CEOWith the financing picture becoming clearer, the market seems to be coming around to the idea that the deal will close.bit.ly

The WHO estimates that nearly 15 million people were killed either by coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems during the first two years of the pandemic, more than double the current official death toll of over 6 million, the AP reports:

Most of the deaths occurred in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, according to a WHO report issued Thursday.
The U.N. health agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described the calculated figure as “sobering,” saying it should prompt countries to invest more in their capacities to quell future health emergencies.
WHO tasked scientists with determining the actual number of COVID-19 deaths between January 2020 and the end of last year. They estimated that between 13.3 million and 16.6 million people died either due to the coronavirus directly or because of factors somehow attributed to the pandemic’s impact on health systems, such as cancer patients who were unable to seek treatment when hospitals were full of COVID patients.
Based on that range, the scientists came up with an approximated total of 14.9 million.

Doctors are investigating why some people have reported a rebound in COVID-19 symptoms after taking Paxlovid, ABC News reports:

When Laura Martin tested positive for COVID-19 last month during an extended stay in California, she was prescribed Paxlovid, the highly touted antiviral drug created by Pfizer.
Just one day after her diagnosis, she started her five-day course of pills, which have been shown to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.
Martin, a 63-year-old Boston native who now resides in Canada, said she was thrilled when her symptoms began to subside.
“By the end of [the treatment], on Day 5, I was negative and feeling completely normal like without any symptoms, so I thought, 'Wow, this is really great. What a great drug,’” Martin told ABC News.
Martin resumed her normal activities, but a week later, she began to feel ill again. When her symptoms worsened, she tested again.
“It came roaring back, and this round two has been much more severe than round one was," Martin said. "This is like four days of much more significant symptoms than round one.”
Martin's case is part of a seemingly rare, but increasingly reported phenomenon of COVID-19 symptom recurrence after being treated with Paxlovid. While it is largely unknown what is causing the reported viral resurgence, scientists say they are investigating.
Pfizer says that it is taking the reported incidences of recurrence "very seriously," but that the rates mirror those who received a placebo in clinical trials. Experts urge that the benefits of the drug, in preventing hospitalization and death, outweigh the potential risk of a second positive test or symptom reemergence.
ABC News @ABC
Doctors investigating why some report rebound in COVID-19 symptoms after Paxlovid. Doctors investigating why some report rebound in COVID-19 symptoms after PaxlovidAlthough official reports of these relapses still appear to be rare, such occurrences are happening “frequently enough,” one researcher said.abcn.ws
May 5th 2022
14 Retweets23 Likes

NBC News: 'We expected to die at any minute': Azovstal evacuees detail desperate situation inside Mariupol plant.

Each night Natalya would check off her small calendar: another day survived underground and under Russian fire.
Natalya, 50, took shelter at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on March 11 with her elderly mother and small dog. They joined hundreds of other civilians trying to avoid Russian strikes on the city.
At times, the bombardment of the plant, now the last stand of Ukrainian fighters in a city that has been taken over by the Russian military, was so intense she would feel explosions every five to 10 minutes.
“We expected to die at any minute,” said Natalya, who declined to give her last name, fearing for the safety of her sons, one of whom she believes was captured by Russian forces and another who is fighting at the plant. “We were trying to joke, to talk. This helped us get through it.”
Natalya left the plant on Sunday, May 1, feeling the fresh air on her face for the first time since she entered. She was part of a group of more than 150 civilians who Ukrainian officials said reached safety Tuesday in Zaporizhzhia, 145 miles northwest of Mariupol. They stepped off buses looking exhausted, hungry and relieved.
Outnumbered by the press and aid agency staff, the new arrivals, around 20 of whom were children, were handed water and led to a tent where hot food awaited them.
Some like Natalya had been trapped at the steel plant for months, believing that it was one of the safer places in the city and would be spared from Russian attacks.
She described a situation where many of the people in the plant had been wounded and lay on the ground with no access to medicine.
"I don’t know how the doctors are able to help them," she said. "I know they’re badly wounded."

AP: Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in an interview Thursday with The AP, but he said he didn’t expect the 10-week-old conflict to ‘drag on this way.’

The Associated Press @AP

#TheAPInterview: Belarus’ authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko has defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and says he's doing “everything” to stop the war. He also alleged that Ukraine was “provoking Russia.”

The AP Interview: Belarus admits Russia’s war ‘drags on’MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, but he said he didn’t expect the 10-week-old conflict to “drag on this way.”apne.ws

CBS News: Fijian officials have seized a massive Russian-owned yacht worth more than $300 million, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.

An Alabama sheriff said Thursday that a jail official was in phone contact with a murder suspect in prison many months before helping him escape last week and that her actions suggest their plan had been in the works for some time, CBS News reports:

Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton previously said that Vicky White had visited Casey Cole White while he was serving time in Donaldson Prison, but on Thursday, Singleton said that was incorrect and that they were "in contact via phone."
Singleton previously said the communication indicates the two had some type of a relationship for possibly up to two years before the escape. The communication occurred after the inmate was transferred out of the county jail in 2020 because of a suspected escape attempt then and before his return to the jail in February for court proceedings in the ongoing murder case against him.
A nationwide manhunt is ongoing for Casey White, who was awaiting trial on a capital murder case, and Vicky White, the assistant director of corrections for the jail in Lauderdale County, after the pair disappeared Friday. Singleton said the ongoing contact stretched back two years and that Vicky White's actions, such as selling her house recently and purchasing an apparent getaway car, indicated there was advance planning.

Johnny Depp surrounded himself with an entourage of enablers to shield him from the consequences of his drug and alcohol use, his ex-wife Amber Heard testified Thursday, the AP reports:

Heard was back on the witness stand to defend herself against her ex-husband’s libel allegations.
Depp is suing Heard for libel over an op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” His lawyers say he was defamed by the 2018 article even though it never mentioned his name.
Heard told jurors about photos she took of Depp starting in 2013 in which he was passed out. She said she took the photos because Depp couldn’t remember what he’d done when he was drunk, and denied what had occurred while he was blacked out.
“He wouldn’t remember, or he would deny it. There was no one to back me up,” she said.
She also gave her description of an incident that has already come up at trial, a May 2014 plane ride from Boston to Los Angeles. According to Heard, Depp was jealous and irate that she was making a movie with actor James Franco that included a kissing scene.
The Guardian @guardian
Johnny Depp’s entourage enabled drug and alcohol use, Amber Heard testifies Johnny Depp’s entourage enabled drug and alcohol use, Amber Heard testifiesActor tells court that Depp would deny what had taken place when he was drunk, and that she suffered suspected broken nose by himtheguardian.com
May 5th 2022
4 Retweets18 Likes

The Biden administration has announced a wide-ranging enforcement strategy aimed at holding industrial polluters accountable for damage done to poor and minority communities, the AP reports:

The strategy includes creation of an Office of Environmental Justice within the Justice Department and reinstatement of a dormant program that allowed fines paid by industry as part of a settlement go to community activities sus river cleanup, health clinics or other programs that benefit the environment or public health.
“The burdens of environmental pollution have long been borne disproportionately by members of minority and low-income communities,″ said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta in prepared remarks. “No American should have to live, work or send their kids to school in a neighborhood that carries an unfair share of environmental hazards.″
President Joe Biden had promised during the 2020 campaign that he would establish an environmental justice division in Justice Department and elevate environmental justice issues in an all-of-government approach.
The strategy unveiled Thursday is intended to guide the work of employees throughout the Justice Department, including U.S. attorneys across the country who will begin a renewed focus on environmental justice issues, Gupta said.
“This means prioritizing enforcement of environmental laws as well as civil rights statutes,″ such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin, she said.
Michael Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement that the “partnership” between his agency and the Justice Department “has never been stronger” and will ensure that the federal government does all it can “to protect overburdened and underserved communities across America.″
The strategy follows a series of enforcement actions announced by Regan in January to address air pollution, unsafe drinking water and other problems afflicting minority communities in Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states that Regan toured in November.
The plan includes unannounced inspections of chemical plants, refineries and other industrial sites and installation of air monitoring equipment in Louisiana’s “chemical corridor” to enhance enforcement at a series of chemical and plastics plants between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The region contains several hotspots where cancer risks are far above national levels.

More Headlines

Jerusalem Post: At least six people were injured, including at least four in critical and serious condition, in an attack in Elad near Petah Tikva in Israel on Thursday.

AP: Officials at Emory University urged people on its main campus to stay inside buildings until an all-clear is announced following earlier reports of a possible armed suspect.

WSJ: Boeing is expected to move its headquarters to Arlington, Va. from Chicago, a shift that would place the aerospace company’s senior executives closer to key government decision makers in the nation’s capital.

ABC News: Attorneys with the Department of Justice recently clashed behind closed doors with staff members for the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.

Axios: President Biden is considering former Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to replace Cedric Richmond as the head of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

CNBC: Rep. Madison Cawthorn vowed that ‘blackmail won’t win’ after an opposition group released a video appearing to show the North Carolina Republican naked in a bed and making thrusting motions on top of another person.

AP: The Walgreens pharmacy chain has reached a $683 million settlement with the state of Florida in a lawsuit accusing the company of improperly dispensing millions of painkillers that contributed to the opioid crisis, state officials said Thursday.

ABC News: President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration that brings new financial resources to remote stretches of New Mexico devastated by wildfires since early April.

New York Post: The body of a Yale University employee who vanished three months ago was found on the Long Island shoreline.

NBC News: A passenger aboard a United Airlines flight opened an emergency exit and slid down the wing of the plane after it landed Thursday morning in Chicago, prompting his arrest.

AP: Numerous tenants who faced eviction after the end of New York’s eviction moratorium in January had their overdue rent paid by an anonymous person who donated $60,000 to a public housing complex in Hudson.

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Thursday, May 5, 2022