congress dying at the age of 82. his wife said he passed peacefully this afternoon following a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. former president barack obama sharing a letter he wrote to harry reid ahead of his passing with this quote: i wouldn t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and i wouldn t have gotten most of what i got done without your skill and determination. most of all, you ve been a good friend. as different as we are, i think we both saw something of ourselves in each other, a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy. and you know what? we made for a pretty good team. chuck schumer tweeting tonight and perhaps not surprisingly one-time middleweight amateur boxer sa boxer saying harry reid was one. most amazing individuals i d ever met, he never forgot where he came from and used those boxing instincts to fight for those who were hurting, the poor and midd
the time capsule discovered after 134 years at the site of a confederate monument what historians found inside the box. announcer: this is nbc nightly news with lester holt good evening i m kristen welker in for lester with just four days until the new year, a troubling trend tonight. the united states is racing toward the all-time high for new covid cases, approaching a mark set nearly a year ago. at the same time, the cdc now says the omicron variant accounts for fewer cases than previously reported, meaning there were more delta cases at the start of the surge it comes amid rising concerns over the spike in childhood cases of covid an nbc news analysis finding the average number of children hospitalized jumped more than 50% over the last four weeks country return to and major changes are coming to school districts like new york city as some colleges across the country return to virtual learning this as confusion swirls about those new cdc guidelines i will talk to dr
garrett: denver shooting rampage. still no motive in the shooting deaths of six people, including the gunman. this is the holiday season. to have this kind of spree take place is not normal for our community. garrett: california plane crash: four people killed when a small plane goes down on approach near san diego. american innovation: a new hydrogen passenger ferry that could carry america to a greener future. feeding america s military families. how your generosity leads to the one millionth meal served. and a lesson in giving from one generation to another. this is the cbs evening news with norah o donnell, reporting from the nation s capital. garrett: good evening to our viewers in the west. thank you for joining us. i m major garrett in for norah. we begin tonight with the latest wave of covid infections making it feel yes like december of 2020. as an example: new york city is once again the epicenter of this stage of the pandemic. but it s not alone. new je
it is 10:00 a.m. eastern, 7:00 pacific. i m chris jansing in for jose diaz-balart and there is a lot going on right now. in less than an hour, the white house covid-19 response team will hold a briefing on latest efforts to combat the coronavirus. it comes as new data shows the u.s. hitting a record seven-day case average. more than 262,000 daily u.s. cases as of yesterday, breaking a nearly year-long record. overall, the u.s. has now surpassed 53 million cases since the pandemic began, which is why federal strike teams are heading to hospitals and testing sites to help, including now to pennsylvania and georgia. there s also growing confusion this morning, over the cdc cutting its isolation guidance to five days for asymptomatic people who test positive for covid. the cdc director defended that guidance this morning and clarified why. i want to be very clear and say, if you have the capacity to stay home for longer, if you still have symptoms, we are not saying you have to
health care system. the steepest rise is in los angeles county which has reported at least 6500 new cases every day for the last week. that includes over 9,000 infections on tuesday alone. but that increase has not yet translated into a comparable rise in hospitalizations. which remain a fraction of what they were at this time last year. it is also unclear how many of those recent hospitalizations are due to omicron or the still present delta variant as the cdc revised its earlier counts. and cdc director rochelle wallinski goes on to clarify why they shortened the covid isolation guidelines. many of those cases are mildly symptomatic, if not asymptomatic and among those who have vaccinated and what will people do when people need to get back to work. so from what you re saying it sounds like this decision had just as much to do as it did with the science? well, so it really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate. well that guidance rela