News Round-Up: August 16, 2021

Some news items you might have missed: • Instinct Magazine: Moderna is using the same mRNA platform as its COVID-19 vaccine to create and test two possible HIV vaccines. Both vaccines have cleared initial safety testing and are moving on to human trials. • CNN: LGBTQ groups across the US are considering a new Pride flag meant to be more inclusive of the transgender community and people of color. Hit the link for a history of the Pride flag and where we are today. https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1427349471319535620 • Politico: GOP operatives, former Trump administration officials, and conservative leaders say there is a widespread acceptance that marriage equality is settled law and there are no serious discussions about reversing the SCOTUS ruling that established national recognition of same-sex marriages. • NBC Out: Thousands showed up for an LGBTQ pride march in Romania’s Bucharest this weekend for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Click through some pics from the event below. https://www.instagram.com/p/CSo0q_8r-WH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link • Religion News Service: Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, an outspoken skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines, has been placed on a ventilator after testing positive for the virus.  Burke has repeated suggestions that COVID-19 vaccines inject “a kind of microchip” that allow citizens to “be controlled by the state regarding health and about other matters which we can only imagine.” • Newsweek: The Republican National Committee has removed a webpage from 2020 in which it praised Donald Trump for signing a “historic peace agreement with the Taliban.” Newsweek notes that Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s current political chief, was released from a Pakistani jail at the request of the US while Trump was in office. https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1427018983379640323