Carnegie Hall Performances Canceled Through July
For the first time in its 130-year history, Carnegie Hall will miss an entire season because of the pandemic.
Each week, we’ll offer you a round-up of our noteworthy coronavirus coverage.
A judge will make a final decision on dropping charges against Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker on March 8.
With "Coming 2 America" hitting Amazon Prime today, Insider took a look back at the cast of the original "Coming to America."
Rishi Sunak has left the door open to another stealth tax raid after a Conservative manifesto commitment to raise the national insurance contributions (NICS) threshold to £12,500 was left out of the Budget. On Wednesday the Chancellor confirmed that personal allowances on income tax, pensions, inheritance tax and capital gains tax would be frozen until 2026, netting the Treasury an additional £21bn as more people are dragged into higher tax rates over time. However, in the Budget Red Book, he has also kept open the option to change a number of NICs thresholds at future budgets, handing the Exchequer the ability to raise billions of pounds in additional revenues if required. In 2019, Boris Johnson told voters that his “ultimate ambition” was to raise the level at which people begin paying both national insurance and income tax to £12,500 - a move which would save taxpayers £500. Last year’s budget also confirmed that the national insurance primary threshold - over which employees’ earnings are taxed at 12 per cent - would rise to £9,500. It described this as “the first step in meeting the government’s ambition to increase these thresholds to £12,500.” Mr Sunak confirmed yesterday that the threshold would increase again to £9,568 from April, along with the upper rate, which will increase to £50,270 and then stay frozen until 2026, in line the personal income allowance. But the future level of the primary threshold has not been set, with the document stating only that it would with “all other NICs thresholds... be considered and set at future fiscal events”. The 102-page Red Book does not appear to mention the Government’s ambition to raise the threshold to £12,500 once. Approached for comment, a Treasury spokesman said raising the NICs threshold to £12,500 was still the Government’s “ultimate ambition”. However, they acknowledged that there was no timeline for doing this. The omission suggests that Mr Sunak has kept open the possibility of temporarily freezing the lower NICs thresholds, should he need to boost tax receipts again in future. This would see more people dragged into tax as wages rise, and is known as "fiscal drag." Mr Sunak has already chosen to freeze other personal allowances due to the limited revenue raising options available to him because of the manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, VAT or NICs during this Parliament
El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey were extradited after US agreed not to seek death penalty
A proposal from Bernie Sanders to raise the federal hourly minimum wage to $15 from its current $7.25 failed in the Senate after the senator sought to include the measure in a White House-backed coronavirus relief package. The House of Representatives included the wage hike in its version of its $1.9 trillion legislation, which includes unemployment relief, support for families with children, and funding for schools and vaccine distribution, among other initiatives critical to Joe Biden’s plan to combat the pandemic and its economic fallout a year after the outbreak. After the Senate rules-advising parliamentarian shot down the inclusion of a wage increase in the bill, Senator Sanders vowed to introduce an amendment to put it into the legislation.
‘I always knew where my boss stood ... I could walk in at any time,’ former press secretary says
The plea will take place a day after Republicans required the 628-page legislation be read aloud
NAACP accuses Trump of disenfranchising Black voters and trying to ‘destroy democracy’
The NFL has worked to balance overtime over the past few years, but a radical new proposal could change the game for good.
Two months after Capitol attack, embittered conspiracy cult holds out for last-ditch effort to revive former president – but law enforcement warns that the insurrection was not an isolated event
Live updates from the White House
After Italy blocked a shipment of COVID-19 vaccines to Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has appealed to the European Commission to intervene.Italy barred the planned export of around 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine, after the drug manufacturer failed to meet its European Union contract commitments.Italy's decision was given the approval of the Commission, as anger simmers in Europe over the slow supply of vaccine doses.Italian leader Mario Draghi has told fellow EU leaders they must take a tougher approach to drug companies.Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he could understand the reasons for Italy's objection."In Italy people are dying at the rate of 300 a day. And so I can certainly understand the high level of anxiety that would exist in Italy and in many countries across Europe, as is regularly conveyed to me. And so they have some real difficulties there. They are in an unbridled crisis situation. That is not the situation in Australia. But, nevertheless, we have been able to secure our supplies."EU countries began inoculations at the end of December, but are moving at a far slower pace than many other nations.Australia started its vaccination program two weeks ago, but is under less pressure than Europe, having recorded just under 29,000 COVID-19 cases and 909 deaths.
Obama administration greatly expanded the use of drone strikes before later imposing checks
Senate Democrats want to make the larger tax credit permanent and give families an option to receive monthly checks. Biden wants a permanent one too.
The majority of global COVID-19 deaths have been in countries where many people are obese, a worldwide study found on Thursday (March 4).With coronavirus fatality rates 10 times higher in nations where at least 50% of adults are overweight.The report, which described a "dramatic" correlation between countries' COVID-19 death and obesity rates, found that 90% or 2.2 million of the 2.5 million deaths from the pandemic disease so far were in countries with high levels of obesity.Olivia Barata Cavalcanti is a doctor and director of science and programs at the World Obesity Federation.''So this is not exactly surprising. The surprising part is that governments haven't really acted on obesity until now. So now we have this perfect storm of an obesity pandemic and COVID-19 pandemic."The study analyzed the COVID-19 death figures from Johns Hopkins University in the United States and the World Health Organization's Global Health Observatory data on obesity.Strikingly, the authors said, there is no example of a country where people are generally not overweight or obese having high COVID-19 death rates.The report found that in the U.S. and Britain, for example, both COVID-19 death rates and obesity levels were among the highest.John Wilding is a professor of medicine at Britain's University of Liverpool and president of the World Obesity Federation."I think it's really important that countries around the world work together to put into place systematic approaches to both prevent and treat obesity. This means making changes to food systems, transport systems and providing good healthcare options for people living with obesity so that they can access effective interventions."Wilding says obesity should be recognized as a key COVID-19 health risk and taken into account in vaccination plans.
Republicans have one goal for President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package: to erode public support for the rescue plan by portraying it as too big, too bloated and too much wasteful public spending for a pandemic that’s almost over. Senate Republicans prepared Friday to vote lockstep against the relief bill, taking the calculated political risk that Americans will sour on the big-dollar spending for vaccination distribution, unemployment benefits, money for the states and other outlays as unnecessary, once they learn all the details. Reviving a page from their 2009 takedown of Barack Obama’s costly recovery from the financial crisis, they expect their opposition will pay political rewards, much like the earlier effort contributed to the House Republicans' rise to power.
Boris Johnson has yet to appoint a successor to his adviser on ministerial standards, more than three months after the resignation of Sir Alex Allan.
The activists Iyad el-Baghdadi and Omar Abdulzaziz told The Guardian that Biden has effectively told MBS he can do as he pleases with no retribution.
Democrat Joe Biden has promised to undo the 'cruelty' of Donald Trump's immigration policies.