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The third Covid-19 spike may be leveling off at a high level, a worrying shift in the trajectory of the pandemic, a top government health official warned Friday.

Dozens of students abducted from a school in northwest Nigeria last week have been rescued, the state government announced Saturday.

Gov. Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger state said that 38 abductees, including several staff members, were rescued around 4 a.m. Bello met with the victims, all of whom were present at a press conference Saturday afternoon, except for one who was being treated at a local hospital for exhaustion.

The victims, members of the Government Science College of Kagara, had been abducted Feb. 17 by gunmen in military uniforms. One student was shot and killed in the attack. Nigerian schoolchildren have increasingly become the targets of armed gunmen, who kidnap them in the hopes of securing large ransoms.

A third COVID-19 vaccine is on the way, and this one requires only one shot for immunization.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized Johnson & Johnson's vaccine for emergency use Saturday, a day after a panel of advisers to the agency voted unanimously (22-0) in its favor.

"The authorization of this vaccine expands the availability of vaccines, the best medical prevention method for COVID-19, to help us in the fight against this pandemic, which has claimed over half a million lives in the United States," said a statement by Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock.

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The Virginia Legislature approved adult-use marijuana legalization Saturday in a historic vote marking the first state in the Old South to embrace full legalization.

The House passed the measure in a 48-43 vote, and the Senate approved it in a 20-19 vote. Not a single Republican voted for the bill in either chamber.

"This, to me, is a justice bill," Del. Charniele Herring, a sponsor of the legalization bill and the Democratic majority leader, said on the floor. "While it has flaws and it is not the perfect bill ... I think this moves us a step in the right direction."

The vote came after a conference committee struck a deal on Saturday to reconcile different versions of the bill that passed in both chambers earlier this month.

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Reluctance to be vaccinated for Covid-19 is now rife in the US military, with about a third of troops on active duty or in the national guard refusing to be administered the vaccine.

Soldiers have previously been given approved vaccines on a mandatory basis but because the vaccines for the coronavirus have only been given an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, members of the military are able to opt out.

Many are choosing to do so, with military officials recently telling Congress that a third of service members have declined the shots, the New York Times reported. At the large Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, acceptance rates for the vaccines are below 50%.

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- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 72,806,180 doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in the country as of Saturday morning and it had distributed 96,402,290 doses.

The tally is for both the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as of 6 a.m. ET Saturday, the agency said. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines involve two doses.

The CDC on Friday had reported a tally 70,454,064 vaccines doses administered and 94,300,910 doses distributed.

The agency said that as of Saturday, 48,435,536 people had received at least one vaccine dose while 23,698,627 had received the two doses.

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The Democratically-controlled House approved President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package early Saturday, a key step for a measure that would provide millions of Americans $1,400 stimulus payments, ramp up vaccine distribution and extend unemployment aid through the summer.

The bill, known as the American Rescue Plan, passed 219-212. No Republicans voted for it, and two Democrats voted against it: Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., and Jared Golden, D-Maine.

The measure now heads to the Senate where it faces a rocky path in the evenly divided chamber.

No Senate Republicans are expected to support the bill, citing its size and scope, so the president will have to count on every one of the 50 Democratic senators — and a tie-breaking 51st vote from Vice President Kamala Harris — to make sure its key pillars remain in the bill.

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