Vaccines In The South, LGBTQ Athletes, The View From Space: News You Need To Start Your Day

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Good morning. The week is almost over, but the news keeps coming. Here’s what we’re watching today:
- President Biden is traveling to North Carolina to encourage people to get the COVID-19 shot. It’s one of several Southern states with low vaccination rates.
- If aliens are watching us, the view’s pretty good.
- Athletes are offering praise and hoping for change after Carl Nassib became the NFL’s first openly gay active player this week.
- A massive search-and-rescue operation continues just north of Miami Beach, after a 12-story residential building partially collapsed.
- 🎧 Also on Up First, our daily podcast, a new study says life expectancy in the U.S. decreased by about two years on average between 2018 and 2020. Declines are most pronounced among communities of color.
— The Morning Edition live blog team
(Emily Alfin Johnson, Rachel Treisman, Nell Clark, Casey Noenickx and William Jones)