September 21, 2021 - PBS NewsHour full episode

In our news wrap Tuesday, the Biden administration stepped up deportations of Haitian migrants gathered in Del Rio, Texas, on the border with Mexico. Johnson & Johnson says a booster for its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine triggers a strong immune response. The U.S. House of Representatives is set to fund federal operations into December and raise the debt ceiling.

The death toll from the COVID pandemic has put the U.S. at another tragic milestone — more than 675,000 Americans, overall, have died of COVID as of Monday. That number surpasses the number of lives lost to the 1918 flu. The U.S. is averaging more than 2,000 daily deaths. William Brangham takes a wider look at COVID's toll on the country.

With world leaders visiting New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates is calling on the world's richest nations to take what he says are urgent steps needed to end "the crisis phase of this pandemic." Judy Woodruff spoke with Gates about those steps earlier this afternoon in a wide-ranging discussion.

Climate change experts in Sicily, Italy are warning that rising sea waters are threatening some of the island's most crucial heavy industrial plants. They are also forecasting food shortages because crops are being destroyed. The island endured record temperatures this summer. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports from Sicily for NewsHour's climate change series.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Justice Department has released more than 30,000 non-violent inmates to home confinement to try to limit the virus' spread in prison. But, as John Yang reports for our ongoing "Searching for Justice" series, some of these men and women could be forced to return to prison once the pandemic ends.