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  • John Kerry returns as Biden's climate czar

    Former senator, presidential nominee and Secretary of State John Kerry is set to begin his latest government job as the first-ever special envoy on climate.

  • Fox paid seven figures to settle lawsuit over bogus Seth Rich conspiracy story

    The settlement between Fox News and Rich’s parents, Joel and Mary Rich, was publicly disclosed Tuesday, but with no details about the terms.

  • Rapid testing could 'drive the epidemic toward extinction'

    Cheap coronavirus tests that ordinary Americans can administer at home could significantly drive down infection rates, researchers say. Their statistical models indicate that potential inaccuracies become effectively inconsequential if enough rapid tests are done with sufficient frequency.

  • Joshua Wong and fellow activists plead guilty in Hong Kong protests trial

    Mr Wong and two fellow activists are now facing jail for taking part in last year's protests.

  • China says pope's remarks about "persecuted" Uighurs are groundless

    The Chinese foreign ministry on Tuesday dismissed Pope Francis's criticism of China's treatment of Muslim Uighurs as groundless. In a new book "Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future," Pope Francis said: "I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi." It was the first time he had called China's Uighurs a persecuted people, something human rights activists have been urging him to do for years.

  • Intelligence employees vent frustrations over being forced to return to the office

    Employees at one of the most secretive parts of government have been forced to return to the office, leading to widespread concerns about their exposure to COVID-19.

  • Trump unexpectedly held a 63-second press conference

    President Trump on Tuesday surprised the White House press corps by announcing he would be making remarks in the briefing room in just a few minutes. As it turned out, he just wanted to highlight that the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 30,000 for the first time ever earlier in the day. He called it a "sacred number."> President Trump: "I just want to congratulate everybody. The stock market Dow Jones Industrial Average just hit 30,000 which is the highest in history. We've never broken 30,000 and that's just despite everything that's taken place with the pandemic." pic.twitter.com/aKsXFqucfu> > -- CSPAN (@cspan) November 24, 2020Trump congratulated his administration and, "most importantly," the American people for the milestone, and then walked out of the room. The entire event lasted just over one minute, which CNN's Jim Acosta described as the "shortest briefing ever." Reporters, as has been the case for the past several weeks, fired questions at him to no avail and were left scratching their heads. > Trump spoke briefly about the stock market and took no questions.> > After he leaves, you can hear a reporter say, "Well that was weird as shit." pic.twitter.com/lrkjlEHx3h> > -- The Recount (@therecount) November 24, 2020More stories from theweek.com Obama the pretender Biden says with his election, world leaders know 'America's back' and 'at the head of the table once again' The airline industry begins to plan COVID-19 'vaccination passports' for international travel

  • Computer repairman who claimed he gave Hunter Biden data to Giuliani closes shop as laptop saga gets stranger

    Computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac, who gave a copy of the laptop to Rudy Giuliani, shuttered his Delaware store and a neighbor said he left town.

  • After senate run, Harrison launching PAC to boost Democrats

    On the heels of his record-breaking but unsuccessful bid to oust U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina's Jaime Harrison on Tuesday launched a political action committee, utilizing his newly minted status as a fundraising powerhouse to try to provide a sustained boost to other Democrats that he hopes can help flip more areas from red to blue. Dirt Road PAC will focus on long term investments in state-level Democratic candidates and parties like intensive voter registration efforts in areas that have been seen by Democrats as harder to win, Harrison told The Associated Press ahead of the official launch. “The days of just swooping in every few years and putting up a candidate, having no grassroots infrastructure and thinking that we’re going to win - that’s just not working,” Harrison told the AP on Monday.

  • Russia chases off U.S. warship in row over waters in Sea of Japan

    Russia said on Tuesday one of its warships caught and chased off a U.S. destroyer operating illegally in its territorial waters in the Sea of Japan, but the U.S. Navy denied wrongdoing by its vessel and accused Moscow of making excessive maritime claims. The Admiral Vinogradov, a Russian destroyer, verbally warned USS John S. McCain, a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, and threatened to ram it in order to force it to leave the area, prompting it to return to neutral waters, Moscow said.

  • Charles Koch doubles down on saying he 'screwed up' with partisanship, but he's still supporting a Republican in the Georgia runoffs

    Charles Koch told Axios that he was "horrified" by some of the policies and positions that the Republican politicians he supported were talking about.

  • Rush Limbaugh Does Full 180, Blasts Sidney Powell After Team Trump Disavowed Her

    Rush Limbaugh fully reversed course on Monday, trashing the Trump legal team’s unhinged press conference detailing baseless election-fraud conspiracies just days after praising attorney Sidney Powell—whom the Trump team has since disavowed—for dropping “bombs all over the place.”Over the weekend, after Powell claimed millions of votes were stolen from President Donald Trump by corrupted software, Powell gave an off-the-rails interview to Newsmax TV in which she expanded her bonkers conspiracy to include Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state being bribed.With Powell having already come under fire from Fox News host Tucker Carlson for failing to provide any evidence for her outrageous allegations, which included claims that late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was involved in stealing votes, Team Trump finally distanced itself from Powell on Sunday evening, saying she “is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”Trump and his legal team weren’t the only people trying to retroactively memory-hole Powell just days after giving over-the-top praise for the QAnon-boosting lawyer’s baseless conspiracies and incessant promises to “Release the Kraken.”During his Thursday broadcast, immediately following the insane news conference—which also featured Giuliani’s hair-dye streaking down his face as he acted out My Cousin Vinny—Limbaugh couldn’t contain his glee over Powell’s debunked theories about Dominion voting software flipping votes to President-elect Joe Biden.“Sidney Powell just dropped bombs all over the place,” Limbaugh bellowed at the time. “For instance, Trump votes were so overwhelming, the number of people who had voted for Trump that the rigged system, this Dominion system with the Smartmatic software melted down. It couldn’t handle, it couldn’t cheat fast enough, it could not overcome the number of legitimate Trump votes.”Repeatedly praising Powell’s “impeccable reputation” on Thursday afternoon, Limbaugh claimed that Powell had “evidence of fraud” and “detailed evidence of communist money” being used to “rig the elections,” telling his listeners that the presser was a “full hour of constant, overwhelming evidence.”Fast forward to Monday: Limbaugh now sings a different tune.“I mean, it’s a tough thing to deny that she was ever a part of it because they introduced her as part of it. I mean, she was at that press conference last week,” he noted, adding that there is no credibly denying Powell's official involvement on Trump's legal team. (Ellis had said Powell was a member of the legal team’s “elite strike force” on Thursday.)“You call a gigantic press conference like that—one that lasts an hour—and you announce ‘massive bombshells,’ then you better have some bombshells,” he added. “There better be something at that press conference other than what we got.”Noting that Powell “jumped the shark,” Limbaugh again expressed disappointment in the lack of evidence while throwing the president’s legal team under the bus.“I talked to so many people who were blown away by it, by the very nature of the press conference,” he concluded. “They promised blockbuster stuff, and then nothing happened, and that’s just, it’s not good.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Biden's White House: 'Sipping unflavored almond milk' after guzzling vats of Tabasco for 4 years

    President-elect Joe Biden will start introducing his Cabinet picks Tuesday, and the consensus in Washington was perhaps best described by Brendan Buck, a former top aide to Republican House Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner:> These Biden nominations and appointments are so delightfully boring> > — Brendan Buck (@BrendanBuck) November 23, 2020Most of the names Biden announced Monday — Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Jake Sullivan as national security adviser, Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security secretary, Avril Haines as director of national intelligence, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.N. ambassador, and Ron Klein as White House chief of staff — are career professionals little known outside Washington policy and politics circles, but well regarded within them. "By design, they seem meant to project a dutiful competence," The Washington Post reports.Biden has also chosen some boldface names: John Kerry as international climate envoy and former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen as treasury secretary. What ties them all together is the prospect of a Biden administration "filled with people who have deep experience in government and in the agencies they will be running," Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer write at Politico.You can expect fewer impulsive tweets and more of "a linear, plodding, purposeful, and standard policy process" run "by political professionals who aren't likely to try to burn down the White House over petty disagreements and jockeying to get in the good graces of the president," Sherman and Palmer add. "In other words, if the Trump White House was like downing a vat of Tabasco sauce over the past four years, the Biden White House will be like sipping unflavored almond milk."The selection process hasn't been entirely without drama, but "the relatively uncontroversial nature of these picks has been by design," Politico's Ryan Lizza reports. "Internally, Biden officials have been instructed to emphasize to reporters how normal the picks are, how 'these are tested leaders.' It's seen as a success if the Biden staff and Cabinet announcements don't make much news."More stories from theweek.com Obama the pretender Biden says with his election, world leaders know 'America's back' and 'at the head of the table once again' The airline industry begins to plan COVID-19 'vaccination passports' for international travel

  • Clever’s 2020 Gift Guide Is Here and It Just Wants You to Have a Nice Time

    We rounded up a mix of gifts that help others, keep folks healthy, and add a little something-something to the home Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Biden certified as winner of Pennsylvania vote

    President-elect Joe Biden was certified on Tuesday as the winner of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, culminating three weeks of vote counting and multiple failed legal challenges by President Trump.

  • Rights experts: Japan's handling of Carlos Ghosn was wrong

    A panel of human rights experts working with the United Nations said Monday that former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn was wrongly detained in Japan and has urged “compensation” for him from the Japanese government. The Japanese government denounced the report as a “totally unacceptable” viewpoint that will change nothing in the country's legal process. In its opinion published Monday, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Ghosn’s arrest in Japan in late 2018 and early 2019 was “arbitrary” and called on Japan’s government to “take the necessary steps to remedy the situation of Mr. Ghosn without delay.”

  • Israel's Netanyahu says he will visit Bahrain soon

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he would visit Bahrain "soon" at the invitation of the Gulf state's Crown Prince Salman al-Khalifa. Bahrain followed the United Arab Emirates in normalising ties with Israel in a deal brokered by the United States that marked a strategic Middle East alignment against Iran.

  • Yes, Mark Halperin Works at Newsmax Now

    Over the weekend, social media was abuzz with the realization that disgraced political pundit Mark Halperin is now an on-air contributor for fledgling right-wing network Newsmax, which has been making a recent play for disgruntled Trump supporters angry with Fox News.As The Daily Beast reported last month, Halperin, who became persona non grata in mainstream media after his history of alleged, widespread sexual misconduct was exposed in 2017, has been at Newsmax since at least the summer—and he even hosts his own show on the Trump-boosting channel.It was an explosive Saturday interview—one that inevitably reshaped the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overthrow President Donald Trump’s election loss—that led many to discover that Halperin had quietly returned to cable news.> Would swear that’s Mark Halpern on the right there https://t.co/gD5QUmWr4d> > — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 22, 2020The former MSNBC and Bloomberg analyst has long been making regular appearances on several Newsmax programs, such as former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s early-evening show. Beyond that, the one-time influential pundit now also hosts a weekend show called Mark Halperin’s Focus Group.When asked about Halperin’s role with the network in August, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy told The Washington Post that Halperin had “been posting or doing a focus group Zoom video on YouTube” and that they thought they “would test it on the weekends and see how the political talk did.” Ruddy added that there was “no long-term agreement to run the show.”And last month, with Halperin’s show still running on the weekends and the pundit being billed as a Newsmax political analyst on-air, the network still insisted to The Daily Beast that while they “continue to air Focus Group, a program that is developed and owned by Mr. Halperin,” Newsmax had “not made any final determination on the program.”On Sunday, Halperin, along with former Fox News host and current Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt, spoke with now-former Trump legal team member Sidney Powell, who has been peddling the outlandishly baseless allegations that Dominion voting software—apparently at the behest of late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and liberal philanthropist George Soros—flipped millions of votes from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.During the interview, which quickly went viral, Halperin and Schmitt uncritically allowed Powell to expand her outrageous election-fraud accusations to include Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state, claiming they are part of the vast conspiracy while implying they were both bribed. She went on to vow that she would “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” lawsuit.Also on Sunday, just a few days after Powell headlined the Trump team’s insane press conference in which she laid out her bizarre voter fraud conspiracy, Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis released a statement disavowing Powell and distancing her from their legal efforts. “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity,” the statement read.Newsmax TV Is Coming for Fox News by Hiring All the Crazies. Is It Actually Working?Before helping to credulously amplify Powell’s fringe theories, Halperin turned to Newsmax earlier this year when it appeared that all other avenues to a mainstream media return had been closed to him. A previous comeback last year, with the help of some of his high-profile cable news pals like the Morning Joe crew, was quickly dashed amid widespread outrage and criticism.Halperin is hardly alone at Newsmax as the network has become something of a safe haven for personalities whose scandals have made them unwelcome on other networks or outlets.The network’s star host Greg Kelly, a former Fox News correspondent and one-time New York City local news fixture, was previously accused of sexual assault (prosecutors decided not to file charges) and has an alleged history of creepy behavior with female colleagues.And one of the network’s top legal analysts, Alan Dershowitz, has largely seen his frequent Fox News appearances dry up in the wake of his connection to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal, especially after Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest and a Netflix documentary that included explosive allegations about Dershowitz. (He has vehemently maintained his innocence.)Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Marco Rubio blasts Biden White House picks for Ivy League degrees — despite Trump administration's similar credentials

    Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Tuesday predicted President-elect Joe Biden's new hires for his incoming administration would be "polite and orderly caretakers of America's decline," facetiously citing how many members of the group have Ivy League degrees.It's true that many of Biden's picks so far went to Ivy League schools, but Rubio's remark makes less sense when considering that the current White House is a similarly Ivy-infused crowd. President Trump himself went to the University of Pennsylvania, after all.> Come on, @marcorubio pic.twitter.com/xYjMwjRyli> > -- Yashar Ali (@yashar) November 24, 2020The GOP's critique that Democratic administrations are oversaturated with Ivy Leaguers isn't new. NBC News' Benjy Sarlin pointed out that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who has a Harvard degree, issued a similar complaint about former the Cabinet chosen by former President Barack Obama, who defeated him in the 2012 election. > This is always a classic. Mitt Romney derided Obama's "Harvard faculty lounge" cabinet in 2012 while he had a Harvard JD/MBA, three (!!!) sons who attended Harvard business, and his advisors included famous Harvard faculty members. https://t.co/GiTVVD5Jlw> > -- Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) November 24, 2020More stories from theweek.com Obama the pretender Biden says with his election, world leaders know 'America's back' and 'at the head of the table once again' The airline industry begins to plan COVID-19 'vaccination passports' for international travel

  • Indonesia's confirmed coronavirus cases exceed half million

    Indonesia’s confirmed COVID-19 cases breached half a million on Monday as the government of the world’s fourth most populous nation scrambled to procure vaccines to help it win the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Indonesia's Health Ministry announced that new daily infections rose by 4,442 to bring the country’s total to 502,110, the most in Southeast Asia and second in Asia only to India’s 9.1 million confirmed cases. President Joko Widodo said at a Cabinet meeting that his administration is preparing mass vaccinations.