“After 100 days of rescue and renewal, America is ready for takeoff,” U.S. President Joe Biden told a joint session of Congress, using the occasion to push his proposed $4 trillion in government spending and tout his overall performance in coping with a series of historic crises since taking office in January.  The president, in an address on Wednesday evening, said he had inherited a nation in crisis facing the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”  The address on the eve of his 100th day in office, was not deemed a ‘State of the Union’ presentation because it was delivered in the first year of a new president’s term. It was also shorn of some of the typical pomp of the annual presidential speech to both the House and Senate because of coronavirus restrictions.  Typically, as many as 1,600 people packed the House chamber to attend a presidential speech. Only 200 people, mostly members of Congress joined by a small number of officials from other government branches plus select family members, attended. They were socially distanced in the House chamber and wore masks.U.S. President Joe Biden arrives to deliver his first address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, April 29, 2021.Biden spoke from the same dais that insurrectionists overtook on January 6 when supporters of his predecessor, Donald Trump, stormed past law enforcement officers into the U.S. Capitol to try to block the official certification of Biden as the winner of last November’s presidential election over the incumbent.  The attack on the Capitol, which remains heavily guarded, left five people dead. More than 400 people have been arrested on various charges related to the siege.   “The image of a violent mob assaulting this Capitol, desecrating our democracy, remains vivid in all our minds,” said Biden. “Lives were put at risk, many of your lives. Lives were lost. Extraordinary courage was summoned.” The president said the insurrection was “an existential crisis, a test of whether our democracy could survive — and it did.”  Biden devoted the bulk of his 65-minute address to domestic policy issues, although he did mention matters beyond America’s borders.  The president said he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the United States will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific “just as we do for NATO in Europe – not to start conflict – but to prevent one.” Biden said he had responded proportionally to Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and the cyber-attacks it launched on government and business. That does not however prevent, according to the president, potential cooperation between Washington and Moscow on nuclear arms reduction and combatting climate change.  During the address, Biden proposed a $1.8 trillion expansion of national government assistance for American children and families.U.S. President Joe Biden delivers his first address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, April 29, 2021.The plan features two years of government-paid, pre-kindergarten education for the country’s youths and two years of free community college for young adults, all of it to be paid for with higher taxes on the country’s wealthiest people and corporations.  Massive spending for infrastructure, jobs creation and education is justified because “China and other countries are closing in fast,” said the president.  Such spending, if approved by Congress, would usher in a much bigger national government footprint in American life, way more than most Republican lawmakers would like but would not go as far as some progressive Democrats envision.   In remarks directed to the audience of millions at home, Biden said his American Jobs Plan is “a blue-collar blueprint to build America” with millions of “good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced.”  Republicans contend his infrastructure and family spending plans are too costly and assail Biden’s plans to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest of Americans.  Delivering the opposition party’s televised rebuttal, the only Black Republican in the Senate, Tim Scott of South Carolina, said Biden had inherited from Trump “a tide that already turned” due to the previous administration’s operation to launch vaccine production and economic policies that were the most inclusive in decades.  “A president who promised to bring us together should not push agendas that tear us apart,” added Scott.  In a statement, one of Scott’s Republican colleagues in the Senate, Ted Cruz of Texas was more critical of Biden’s address, saying it outlined “his socialist vision for our country,” and that “I can summarize his speech in three words for you: boring, but radical.” National surveys this week show Biden with an average approval rating of 53%, according to a polling aggregator, Real Clear Politics.  In his speech, Biden also touted his administration’s early success in getting Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus, with more than 200 million shots already administered even as the death toll has risen to a world-leading total of more than 573,000.  U.S. health officials eased mask-wearing suggestions this week, but millions of Americans are refusing, for various reasons, to get vaccinated, or skipping the second  shot of a two-dose regimen.  “Go and get the vaccination,” Biden implored in his Wednesday evening address.    In addition to discussing his plans for domestic spending, Biden discussed his goal of engaging with other nations and taking a leadership role on the world stage, a contrast from Trump who often touted his “America First” stance and withdrew from international pacts that he viewed as poorly crafted or too costly for the United States.  Mentioning the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, the president said: “We’re going to be working closely with our allies to address the threats posed by both of these countries, through diplomacy as well as stern deterrence.”  He added that American leadership “means ending the forever war in Afghanistan.”  It remains to be seen if Biden and congressional Democrats “are willing to engage in real negotiation that would result in changes to many of the proposals highlighted in his speech,” Bipartisan Policy Center President Jason Grumet said in a statement to VOA. “Key Administration proposals to modernize infrastructure, provide paid leave, and strengthen childcare have a history of strong bipartisan support, but it will not be possible to build upon this history if the administration pursues a legislative process that excludes Republicans.” 
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A.C.’s parents would not let him shoot a rifle. So, at age 17, two months after finishing high school, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, where he regularly shot an M16 rifle, a staple of America’s military.A.C., who requested that VOA not use his name, is now in his 25th year with a major police department in Southern California. He’s also been a firearms instructor for 20 years. For him, as for millions of Americans, guns are a passion.”Firearms are kind of my life,” A.C. told VOA. “I enjoy firearms; I teach firearms responsibly. Guys who are collectors of cars can identify a headlight. I can do that with [the parts of] guns.”A.C. aims and fires two semiautomatic rifles at a California outdoor range to show how similar they are. Yet the Smith & Wesson M&P-15T is outlawed in California and the Smith & Wesson M&P 15-22S is not. The tactical semiautomatic was banned in the state when Vice President Kamala Harris was California’s attorney general. A.C. can own it because he uses it on the job as a police officer.A.C. is not interested in discussing the politics of America’s gun debate. He says it’s important to distinguish between crimes committed with firearms and the mechanical parts that come together to form a gun.”It’s the intent of the weapon [user], not the weapon itself,” said A.C., that should determine how a gun is classified. For him, the term “assault weapon” so often bandied about is problematic.”It should not be termed an assault weapon unless the shooter intends to use it to assault someone,” he said.Assault rifle vs. regular rifle The definition of an “assault weapon” is a dividing line between gun enthusiasts and those who want to regulate firearms. Rob Weaver steadies his gun for target practice. Weaver, a former owner of a gun range in Maryland, is against gun regulations, saying guns are not the problem. “The problem is people who have ill intent, doing bad things.” (Carolyn Presutti/VOA)Tennessee gun enthusiast Rob Weaver says the AR-15 is the only semiautomatic weapon his wife, Jane, can shoot.”It doesn’t hurt her to shoot it,” he told VOA. “The AR has an adjustable-length stock. She can make this sucker exactly what she wants within plus or minus infinity.”Weapon of choiceThe AR models’ appeal and ubiquity make them the weapon of choice for many mass murderers. In March, a shooter in Boulder, Colorado, killed 10 people at a supermarket with a Ruger AR-556. Police say the shooter who killed eight people at an Indianapolis FedEx facility earlier this month also used a Ruger AR-556, along with another AR-style rifle.Landon Burke and his two best friends drove 45 minutes from North Carolina into Virginia to target shoot four guns at an outdoor range. Burke, 20, fired his GSG-5 .22 and his AR-15, which he readily admits is an assault weapon. Landon Burke and Matt Reierstad aim their semiautomatic guns for target practice in Hampton, Tennessee. Some of their guns are not permitted on indoor gun ranges so they drove out-of-state to find an outdoor range. (Carolyn Presutti/VOA)”It’s just a good gun to have. I mean, I just wanted it. I can buy it, so why not?” Burke said, adding they should not be outlawed.”People kill people,” not guns, he said. “If you, like, have proper gun technique and you know how to operate them, then you shouldn’t be worried.” AR ‘sells itself’The sign on the door outside Barnett’s Guns and Indoor Range lists the Ten Commandments. Another sign reads: “Guns are welcome here.” Inside are 1,500 guns awaiting purchase.Tim Barnett’s multimillion-dollar business has been in Hampton, Tennessee, for nearly nine years.The door leading to Barnett’s Guns and Indoor Range in Tennessee has the Ten Commandments and a sign showing guns are welcome. (Carolyn Presutti/VOA)”We opened the same day [Barack] Obama won reelection,” said the self-described “hillbilly” with a Southern drawl. Barnett said Americans love guns for self-defense, hunting and because movies “glamorize” the AR.”Your AR is your No. 1 gun used because it sells itself in movies,” Barnett said. Kris Brown has shot at a gun range and enjoys skeet shooting. But she doesn’t own a gun. She’s trying to regulate high-powered firearms as president of Brady, an anti-gun violence group. It was launched after the 1981 assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan that left his press secretary, James Brady, permanently disabled.The organization fought to get the 1993 Brady Bill passed, which requires background checks on all gun purchases from licensed dealers. Today, Brown wants the White House and Congress to restrict high-powered semiautomatics like the AR-style rifles.”We have seen a rapid increase of the use of these weapons,” Brown said. “Their prototypes were weapons of war that our soldiers did not use in Vietnam because it stopped them from being able to take enemy combatants alive. Let’s just face it, there is a velocity from these guns. That means, when those bullets hit bodies, there’s nothing left.”Rob Weaver is shooting one of those precursor guns at an outdoor gun range in Tennessee. His gun, the Russian SKS Carbine with a bayonet on the front, is the precursor to the AK-47, the worldwide military assault rifle first used by the Soviet Union and termed “the gun that changed the battlefield.”Weaver, who once owned a shooting range in Maryland, doesn’t believe in further controls on the AR or other semiautomatics, comparing gun ownership to another thorny topic: drunken driving.”It’s not the car that makes the drunk driver drunk,” he said. “It’s not the gun that makes a mass murderer a mass murderer.” Brown disagrees. “It is often, in fact, the gun that makes a shooting a mass shooting,” she said. “… Just like there are laws to prevent people who have demonstrated they are not responsible enough to operate a car, we have laws that similarly restrict access to dangerous firearms for those who should not have them.”‘Every day … 316 people are shot’ Brown was at the White House on April 8 when President Joe Biden declared, “Every day in this country, 316 people are shot.” Biden pledged to make what he called “the epidemic of gun violence” a top priority of his administration, focusing on strengthening background check requirements and cracking down on so-called “ghost guns” that can be made with a kit.Biden also is urging registration of stabilizing braces, expanding “red flag laws” to alert law enforcement of someone believed to be dangerous who has a gun, and making gun manufacturers legally liable for harm caused by the weapons they make.As a senator in the 1990s, Biden was instrumental in getting the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban passed. The measure expired in 2004 and should be renewed, Biden said. “There’s no reason someone needs a weapon of war with 100 rounds, 100 bullets, that can be fired from that weapon,” the president said. Flowers for 40,000 To try to sway Congress, another gun prevention organization, The gun control group Giffords placed 40,000 bouquets on the National Mall in Washington, to represent the 40,000 Americans who die annually from gun violence. (Lynn Davis/VOA)The Gun Violence Memorial stood on the mall for four days in April, a few days after Biden made his gun violence prevention remarks.  Giffords is a gun control group led by former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head during a 2011 campaign appearance in Arizona. Six others were killed. Looking for compromiseFew gun enthusiasts agree with gun restrictions, believing they will lead to confiscation of firearms by the government and erosion of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which enshrines the right to gun ownership as part of a Tim Barnett started his gun store in 2012, and now has an indoor range and a counter dedicated to semiautomatic weapons. (Carolyn Presutti/VOA)Barnett said gun shops can also turn down buyers, adding, “Just yesterday, we had one come over here from the local Woodbridge [a hospital for mental health treatment] with the bracelets still on showing that they just got out and wanting to buy a gun.” Most Americans agree with Barnett and support universal background checks. A Morning Consult/Politico survey showed that 84% support the idea. Despite decades of congressional inaction on gun legislation, observers say expanding background checks could be the focus of a narrow area of compromise on Capitol Hill this year — one supported by gun control advocates and a substantial number of gun enthusiasts. 
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American astronaut Michael Collins, who stayed behind in the command module of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin traveled to the lunar surface to become the first humans to walk on the moon, died on Wednesday at age 90, his family said.
A statement released by his family said Collins died of cancer.
Often described as the “forgotten” third astronaut on the historic mission, Collins remained alone for more than 21 hours until his two colleagues returned in the lunar module. He lost contact with mission control in Houston each time the spacecraft circled the dark side of the moon.
“Not since Adam has any human known such solitude as Mike Collins,” the mission log said, referring to the biblical figure.
Collins wrote an account of his experiences in his 1974 autobiography, “Carrying the Fire,” but largely shunned publicity.
“I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have,” Collins said in comments released by NASA in 2009.
Collins was born in Rome on Oct. 31, 1930 – the same year as both Armstrong and Aldrin. He was the son of a U.S. Army major general and, like his father, attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating in 1952.
Like many of the first generation of American astronauts, Collins started out as an Air Force test pilot.
In 1963, he was chosen by NASA for its astronaut program, still in its early days but ramping up quickly at the height of the Cold War as the United States sought to push ahead of the Soviet Union and fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s pledge of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Collins’ first voyage into space came in July 1966 as pilot on Gemini X, part of the missions that prepared NASA’s Apollo program. The Gemini X mission carried out a successful docking with a separate target vehicle.
His second, and final, spaceflight was the historic Apollo 11.
He avoided much of the media fanfare that greeted the astronauts on their return to Earth, and was later often critical of the cult of celebrity.
After a short stint in government, Collins became director of the National Air and Space Museum, stepping down in 1978. He was also the author of a number of space-related books.
His strongest memory from Apollo 11, he said, was looking back at the Earth, which he said seemed “fragile.”
“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles, their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced,” he said.
His family’s statement said they know “how lucky Mike felt to live the life he did.”
“Please join us in fondly and joyfully remembering his sharp wit, his quiet sense of purpose, and his wise perspective, gained both from looking back at Earth from the vantage of space and gazing across calm waters from the deck of his fishing boat.”
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Fully vaccinated people can skip the mask when they get together outside with others, vaccinated or not, according to A person wears a mask while jogging, April 27, 2021, near the Capitol in Olympia, Washington.The only time vaccinated people need to wear masks outdoors is when they are in crowds, like at street festivals, parades, farmers markets or political rallies, for example.Keep that mask handy, however. CDC still says to mask up when you go inside. But do go inside, the recommendations say. Indoor dining, movies, haircuts, religious services, exercise classes, and other indoor public spaces all are much safer for vaccinated people than unvaccinated.Just wear a mask.Why wear a mask indoors if you are vaccinated?”At their best, these vaccines are 95% effective,” said Vanderbilt University Medical Center infectious diseases professor William Schaffner. “I did not say 100%. So, there’s still that small risk that you could yourself acquire the infection.”Even if a vaccinated person does not get seriously ill, there remains a chance that the person could pass the virus on to someone who is not vaccinated.Also, not wearing a mask puts an unfair burden on workers to enforce mask rules.”You can’t expect someone at a store to go around and look at people’s vaccination status,” noted Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.Indoor get-togethers without masks are fine when everyone is vaccinated, as earlier CDC guidelines said.Students at Wyandotte County High School wear masks as they walk through a hallway on the first day of in-person learning at the school in Kansas City, Kansas, March 31. 2021.The guidelines also note that unvaccinated people can walk, run or bike outside without a mask, a recommendation that some experts said is long overdue.”If you’re walking outside and passing someone for a second, even without vaccination, you did not need to be wearing a mask,” said Leana Wen, health policy professor at The George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner. “So, I’m glad that the Biden administration is clarifying that part.””I do still think that their guidance is overly cautious,” she added. “But at least now they are finally differentiating between what it is that people can do once they’re fully vaccinated compared to those who are not.”The updated recommendations give people more of an incentive to get vaccinated, Wen said.The recommendation regarding wearing masks indoors will likely remain until a bigger chunk of the population is vaccinated and the case count comes down from where it is today, in the tens of thousands, Adalja said.The pace of vaccination has slowed, however, from more than 3 million shots per day two weeks ago to about 2.5 million.The people who were ready and willing to get vaccinated have largely done so. Now, the hard work of overcoming hesitancy begins.”The more people who are vaccinated, the more steps we can take towards spending time with people we love doing the things we love to enjoy,” Walensky said. 
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