Ripped from the Headlines: December 2020: Current Events Vocab for December 5–11, 2020

When the President's lawyer Rudy Giuliani caught Covid-19, he received the same monoclonal antibodies that the President did, which appear to have helped him recover in a matter of days. These drugs are rare and expensive, and not available to the public except by a lottery system. Critics said that this was unfair, that the President should not be able to give special treatment to his friends and allies when so many people are dying.

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 returned to Earth, landing in a remote corner of the Australian outback. The robotic probe carried samples from the Ryugu asteroid, a half-mile-wide lump of rock that orbits between Earth and Mars. The probe launched in 2016, and arrived at Ryugu in 2018, where it touched down, deployed a couple of small rovers, and blasted a small hole in the rock's surface before gathering samples.

Intensive care units in hospitals around the country are reaching capacity, and doctors warn that they will soon have to start making decisions about who gets a bed and who does not as they are overwhelmed with critically ill Covid-19 patients. One third of Americans live in areas with hospital bed shortages, and that number will likely grow as the virus continues to spread after the Thanksgiving holiday, when many people traveled and gathered together.

A ninety-year-old British woman named Margaret Keenan was the first person to receive a clinically approved vaccine for Covid-19. Britain approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot and ordered 40 million doses. The government also ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but there are questions about the effectiveness of that one. "Clinical" comes from the Greek "klinikos," meaning "bed;" in Latin a "clinicus" was a bedridden patient.

The pandemic may have hit the restaurant business hardest of all, forcing thousands to close forever and cutting business severely for those able to stay open. The industry has been devastated, losing five million jobs last spring. Despite a rebound over the summer when outdoor dining helped many get back to work, the arrival of cold weather in much of the country means that a lot of those jobs may disappear again.

New York State's $226 billion pension fund will divest from fossil fuel stocks over the next five years and sell all its shares in companies that contribute to climate change by 2040. The huge fund is influential, and this decision may signal a significant change as global markets move toward renewable energy companies. State comptroller Michael DiNapoli, who manages the fund, said the fund's obligation is to provide long-term growth and fossil fuels will not deliver that.

A new study shows that Vietnamese honeybees protect their hives from giant hornets — the so-called "murder hornets" — by surrounding the entrances with dabs of animal dung. The study showed that hornets spent much less time attacking nests that had been defended in this manner. This behavior is the first documented use of tools by honeybees, but North American bees have not learned this technique so they're more vulnerable to the hornets.

WarnerMedia announced that all of Warner Brothers' 2021 movies would be released in the U.S. on HBO Max as well as in theaters. Executives believe that this hybrid approach will attract more subscribers to their streaming service. Christopher Nolan, the director of "Tenet," made a statement expressing his unhappiness at this decision, but the company said that most people will not be going to theaters any time soon. Outside of the U.S., the films will not be available to stream.

Pantone named two colors as its Colors of the Year for 2021: Ultimate Gray and Illuminating. Both colors are somewhat pale pastels, with the gray calm and neutral and the yellow a bright, warm, sunny hue. The two together evoke a clean, futuristic look, and designers are already predicting ways in which they'll be combined, from interiors to clothing to — obviously — masks. "Lumen" means "light' in Latin.

The Boeing 737 Max returned to the sky for the first time since it was grounded in 2019 after two deadly crashes. Boeing says it has replaced wiring and software in the aircraft. The crashes were caused by a program called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which pilots were never told about or trained on as Boeing tried to save time and money by rushing the planes to market.
"Maneuver" means "manual labor" in French, including adjusting a ship's rigging to alter its course.

Seventeen states have joined together to sue four states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin — that Biden won, demanding that those results be thrown out. Attorneys general from the four states in question and legal experts around the country say this suit is without merit and will not succeed in overturning the election results.

The Justice Department sued Facebook for antitrust violations, alleging that the social media company used predatory tactics to buy up or stifle competition. Among other actions, Facebook's purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp in particular were seen as moves to absorb threats to its dominance. Regulators say the result is a digital landscape with limited options for consumers and too much power in the hands of a few huge companies.

The unofficial fan-created TikTok musical based on the movie Ratatouille will stream for three days beginning January 1 to raise money for the Actors Fund. The musical, which was created by hundreds of people around the world with no script or musical direction, came together organically as fans worked out their frustrations with quarantine using the popular short-form video app. The Pixar film, which came out in 2007, is named for a classic Southern French summer vegetable dish.

Chuck Yeager, the legendary test pilot and first person to break the sound barrier, died at 97. After serving as a successful fighter pilot in World War II, he flew hundreds of test missions after the war in a variety of aircraft. His most famous flight was on October 14, 1947, when he flew an X-1 rocket plane 700 miles per hour, creating the first sonic boom in history. Yeager featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff," which was also made into a film.

With eight days remaining before the next government spending deadline, Congress has yet to agree on two huge bills: one that would fund the government, and another that would provide a stimulus for the economy, including possible money for individuals and local and state governments. Negotiations are ongoing, but appear to be stuck on some big issues.

Mount Everest, the world's highest, has officially gotten a little bit higher. Crews from both China and Nepal determined that the peak is now 29,031.69 feet (8,848.86 meters) above sea level, more than two feet above previous measurements. The rise is due to the continued upward movement of the tectonic plates that form the Himalayan mountain range. The Chinese team used navigation satellites, and the Nepalese crew used laser-equipped theodolites to survey the peak with pinpoint accuracy.

Britain voted to leave the European Union four years ago — the so-called "Brexit" vote — and yet, when that takes effect on January 1, nobody knows exactly what it will mean. Negotiations over a long list of trade and other agreements are ongoing, but some issues, like the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, look to be major sticking points with uncertain implications for the future.

President Trump threatened to veto a Congressional attempt to block the sale of F-35 fighters and Reaper drones to the United Arab Emirates. Those resolutions failed, and did not have the two-thirds majorities in both houses needed to override a veto. The arms sales are rewards for the Arab nation's involvement in the so-called "Abraham Accords" between Israel and some Gulf states. Democrats say the sale is being rushed through before Joe Biden becomes President.

President-Elect Biden announced that he would nominate General Lloyd Austin to be Secretary of Defense. General Austin will need a waiver from Congress because federal law requires military officers to have been retired for seven years before serving in an administration. Austin retired four years ago. If confirmed, General Austin would be America's first Black Secretary of Defense. To "waive" something is to legally give it up. It comes from the Anglo-Norman "weyf," which is the root of "waif."

The blackness of interstellar space is twice as bright as it should be, scientists say, given all of the known sources of light. But they have no idea what might be adding the additional light. Theories include faint galaxies or star clusters that haven't been detected yet, or something called "dim matter," which might be subatomic particles that emit some radiation at visible wavelengths, or possibly the supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies give off more energy than we think.