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- BBC
Bafta Film Awards 2021: Snobbery, pianos and other takeaways
Even with social distancing there was plenty of humour, glamour and surprises at the virtual event.
- Lexington Herald-Leader
NBA fines Kings’ De’Aaron Fox $20,000 for criticizing officials following loss to Jazz
The NBA fined Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox $20,000 for his profanity-laced tirade toward officials following Saturday’s loss to the Jazz.
- Kansas City Star
Missouri lawmakers move to bar businesses from requiring ‘vaccine passports’
Gov. Mike Parson has said he won’t require vaccines to travel in Missouri but said he was “fine with” private sector vaccine requirements.
- LA Times
Clippers' Paul George is chosen Western Conference player of the week
Paul George scored 32 points in a win Sunday, his third consecutive game with at least 30. It helped earn him Western Conference player of the week.
- The Independent
Will Smith pulls production of movie ‘Emancipation’ from Georgia over voting law row
‘We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws’
- Associated Press
Stolarz has 46 saves as Ducks beat Sharks 4-0
Anthony Stolarz made a career-high 46 saves for his third career shutout and the Anaheim Ducks beat the San Jose Sharks 4-0 on Monday night. Alexander Volkov had two goals, Max Comtois had a goal and an assist and Rickard Rakell also scored as the Ducks beat the Sharks handily on their home ice for the second time in less than a week.
- Time
John Boehner on His New Book, the Rise of Donald Trump and the Future of the GOP
Former House Speaker John Boehner speaks at a ceremony to unveil a portrait in his honor at the U.S. Capitol on November 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. John Boehner left office months before the biggest political story of the decade played out: Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, became President, and redefined the Republican Party. Boehner, who announced his resignation in 2015 with such relief that he sang zip-a-dee-doo-dah, watched Trump’s rise from afar, apparently glad to be out of the political fray.
- INSIDER
TikTok star Justine Paradise accuses YouTuber Jake Paul of sexual assault, says he did not ask for consent
The TikTok personality Paradise, 24, accused Paul of forcing her to perform oral sex on him, despite her saying "no" multiple times.
- The Week
Biden gets positive GOP reviews after infrastructure meeting, a hard no on corporate tax hike
President Biden hosted a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers in the White House on Monday evening to discuss his $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan, and Republican attendees said afterward the president seemed genuinely interested in their input. "I'm prepared to negotiate as to the extent of my infrastructure project, as well as how we pay for it," Biden said in the two-hour Oval Office meeting. "Everyone acknowledges we need a significant increase in infrastructure." "Those are all the exact words that I wanted to hear going into the meeting," Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told The Associated Press. "And so that was really encouraging." At the very least, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) added, "Nobody stormed out yelling 'no.'" Biden said he is serious about seeking bipartisan support for the bill — "I'm not big on window-dressing, as you've observed," he said — but the Republicans in the meeting repeated objections about the ambitious scope of Biden's proposal, his expansive definition of infrastructure, the price tag, and especially Biden's plan to pay for the bill by raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, from 21 percent. Some Republican participants suggested raising the gas tax. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, said Biden was "highly engaged" and the meeting went "well," but reversing the GOP's corporate tax cut is a nonstarter. "I view the 2017 tax bill as one of my signature achievements in my entire career," Wicker said. "It would be an almost impossible sell for the president to come to a bipartisan agreement that included the undoing of that signature." Cedric Richmond, the White House director of public engagement, said "no one in business" wanted the corporate rate lowered from 35 percent all the way to 21 percent rate in the GOP's top-heavy tax overhaul, and he's reminding business leaders "we would be bringing the rate back to the neighborhood they wanted in the first place. And at the same time, we could fix infrastructure." Biden and his fellow Democrats have made clear they are willing to try to go it alone if there's no GOP interest in good-faith negotiations, but that would leave no room for error in the ideologically disparate Democratic caucus, with its razor-thin control of Congress. At the same time, Biden's proposal is broadly popular even among Republican voters, as is paying for it by taxing corporations. More stories from theweek.comTrump finally jumps the shark7 brutally funny cartoons about Mitch McConnell's corporate hypocrisyRetired Navy admiral says U.S. looks either 'complicit' or 'ignorant' in Iran nuclear facility blackout
- BBC
Taiwan: 'Record number' of China jets enter air zone
Beijing sends 25 military aircraft into Taiwan as the US warns against an 'increasingly aggressive' China.
- INSIDER
A woman was told to put on a mask inside a Florida Walgreens. Instead she went on a racist and Islamophobic rant against other customers.
"We're proud we're Muslim and this is not going to change, we're not going to pick off our hijabs. We like it and I'm not scared," Nahla Ebeid, who uploaded the video to Facebook, said.
- National Review
Anthony Fauci Has Worn Out His Welcome
More than a year ago, Americans welcomed Anthony Fauci into their homes as a sober scientist who was helping them make sense of a deadly new virus. But he has worn out that welcome. It’s true that Fauci has enjoyed an illustrious career, advising every president since Ronald Reagan and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. There’s much to admire in his overall leadership since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, as director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he has a serious job that’s not supposed to involve being a media spokesman so ubiquitous that it’s hard to believe he ever turns down any media requests. As he’s maintained a media schedule worthy of a serious presidential candidate or an actor in a new major studio release, Fauci has gradually stopped standing apart from the contentious debate about the pandemic, lockdowns, restrictions, precautions, and what is safe and what is risky. Instead, he has become part of the acrimony, offering murky and sometimes contradictory recommendations. This goes well beyond his initially discouraging the use of masks in January and February 2020, like most U.S. public health officials, or his mid-March 2020 reassurance: “The guidelines are a 15-day trial guideline to be reconsidering. It isn’t that these guidelines are now going to be in effect until July.” Fauci doesn’t write or establish the quarantine policies being enforced by cities and states; he can only advise other people in and out of government. But his voice carries a lot of weight, and, more or less willingly, he has become the face of America’s quarantine policies. Frustratingly, his perspective always seem to be that the right time to open up is another six weeks from now, no matter how low caseloads get or how much the national vaccination program accelerates. And it’s hard to shake the sense that Fauci makes recommendations based on how he thinks people will react. Fauci admitted in December that he had changed his assessments about herd immunity, based on what he thought the public could handle hearing. In the pandemic’s early days, Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did, but Fauci gradually boosted it to 85 percent. In an interview with the New York Times’ Donald McNeil Jr., Fauci “acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.” At the beginning of March, Fauci forcefully criticized the state of Texas for ending its statewide mask mandate, declaring, “It’s risky and could set us back to a place that’s even worse than where we are now . . . and lead to additional surges.” And yet, Texas has seen its caseload continue to decline. When asked about the lack of an increase in that state, he answered, “You know, there are a lot of things that go into that. I mean, when you say that they’ve had a lot of the activity on the outside like ball games, I’m not really quite sure. It could be they’re doing things outdoors.” Earlier this month, after GOP lawmakers asked Fauci about the risk of outbreaks in migrant detention facilities, he said, “I have nothing to do with the border. . . . Having me down at the border, that’s really not what I do.” Except Fauci has weighed in on travel restrictions and border closures plenty of times in the past year. It’s self-evidently obvious that having lots of migrants of all ages cramped into detention facilities is a formula for a rapid spread of the virus. Fauci just didn’t want to criticize the Biden administration, so he dodged the question. But perhaps most frustrating is Fauci’s recent comments suggesting that getting vaccinated doesn’t alter the risk of catching COVID-19 much and can’t justify changes in behavior. Fauci said that even though he’s vaccinated, he still won’t eat indoors at a restaurant, go to a movie theater, or “go into an indoor, crowded place where people are not wearing masks.” He said he still won’t be traveling, either. Vaccinated people are protected against serious health problems from COVID-19 and we’ve known for a month that vaccinated people, if infected, shed dramatically less virus — perhaps 75 percent to 90 percent. If results like that don’t make going to a restaurant or movie theater safe, what will? If getting vaccinated doesn’t allow you to return to something like normality, what’s the point? We can overlook the Hollywood-style poolside photo shoot, or his unmasking while watching a baseball game. But Fauci has turned into the perpetually pessimistic, overcautious, position-shifting, administration-pleasing face of the pandemic recovery. At this point, he’d do himself a favor by sitting out the next opportunity to appear on a TV show or podcast and focus on his day job.
- INSIDER
Teachers are hitting a wall more than a year into the pandemic. Some have decided to walk away from the profession amid a growing educator shortage in the US.
Between technology challenges, low student engagement, and the risk of catching COVID-19, teachers told Insider they're struggling.
- South Florida Sun Sentinel
Another cruise line will require vaccines; DeSantis says no
SilverSea Cruises became the second major cruise line to announce it will require COVID-19 vaccinations for all passengers when it resumes global itineraries on June 5. The decision could set up a confrontation with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when the luxury cruise line is scheduled to sail from Port Everglades in December. DeSantis’ press office on Monday asserted that his recent executive ...
- Business Insider
GameStop's Reddit-fuelled trading surge could plunge 94% as it faces growing competition from rival digital games, one Wall Street analyst says
Woo downgraded the company's stock to "sell" from "hold," and lowered his 12-month price target to $10 per share from $12.
- INSIDER
Harvey Weinstein's attorneys say he shouldn't face trial in LA because he's lost teeth and is legally blind
Harvey Weinstein's lawyers said the 69-year-old disgraced film mogul is also experiencing cardiac issues, back issues, and sleep apnea.
- INSIDER
Erika Jayne breaks her silence on divorce drama and her husband's legal battles in new 'Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' trailer
A lawsuit alleges that Erika Jayne and Tom Girardi are using their divorce to hide money meant for the orphans and widows of plane crash victims.
- The Daily Beast
‘The Talk’ Hosts Fire Back at Sharon Osbourne’s Claim She Was ‘Set Up’
Valerie Macon/AFP/GettyAs it returned to air Monday, CBS’s The Talk spent a full hour reckoning with the on-air tirade Sharon Osbourne launched last month. Host Sheryl Underwood—who endured the brunt of Osbourne’s rage during her March meltdown defending Piers Morgan’s vile implosion over Meghan Markle—opened The Talk by telling the audience, “We need to process the events of that day and what happened since so we can get to the healing... And we will also show you how anyone can become more comfortable with discussing important issues and having difficult conversations.” The show invited Donald Grant, executive director at Mindful Training Solutions, and trauma therapist Anita Phillips to join Monday’s episode.Underwood said she has not spoken with Osbourne since their exchange in March, when she told Osbourne she was providing “validation” to racist views and remarks. She said she has not received a call from Osbourne, but did ignore text messages amid the network’s internal investigation for fear that she was not supposed to communicate with her former co-host. Sharon Osbourne Just Blew Up Her Career Over Meghan MarkleOsbourne has issued a statement in which she said she “panicked, felt blindsided, got defensive & allowed my fear & horror of being accused of being racist.” She announced her departure later in March.“Please hear me when I say I do not condone racism, misogyny or bullying,” she wrote.In the moment when Osbourne grew heated, Underwood said, “I didn’t want to escalate things... because I thought I was having a conversation with a friend. But also, I knew I had to be an example for others to follow because I didn’t want to be perceived as the angry Black woman, and that really scared me. I didn’t want to be that, and I wanted to remain calm and remain focused.”Underwood said that if Osbourne greeted her “warmly and sincerely,” she would return the gesture “because we’ve been together on this show for 10 years. So I want people to understand when you’re friends with somebody, you stay friends.”“I wanted to be an example for every woman that might be on a job somewhere and be faced with something like that,” Underwood said, “but definitely Black women who have to manage not just their own expectations and responses but we have to manage ourselves and we’re a family. Regardless of your background, every day there’s some woman going through something like this.”“I think when you go back and watch what happened in that episode, you will see two Black women walking the same tightrope that Black women are walking every single day in the workplace,” Welteroth added. “As Sheryl said, we knew that we had to stay composed in that situation. Even in the face of someone who was, A, not listening, and B, went off the rails into disrespect.”Welteroth also took a moment to address “the false accusations that are swirling in the press” that she and Underwood “attacked a woman on air and were part of some conspiracy.”The idea that Osbourne was somehow set up, Welteroth said, “is absolutely categorically false. And I think it’s really important that people hear that. Because if you actually watch what happened on that episode, what you will see is two women who were maintaining their composure, their dignity, and a sense of respect every step of the way. And we were not heard.”A representative for Osbourne did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.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.
- TheGrio
LA woman arrested for keeping $1.2 million accidentally deposited into her account
Kelyn Spadoni, 33, of Harvey, Louisiana, allegedly refused to return more than $1.2 million she mistakenly received from Charles Schwab & Co. According to Nola.com, the suspect allegedly immediately transferred them to another account. “She secreted it, and they were not able to access it,” said a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, Capt. Jason Rivarde. Before receiving the funds, Spadoni had opened an account with Charles Schwab & Co. in January.
- Miami Herald
‘It was indeed terrible.’ Officials in St. Vincent get look at volcano destruction.
A large eruption at the La Soufrière volcano in the eastern Caribbean early Monday is sending a rapidly moving avalanche of hot rocks and volcanic ash down the mountain, raising fears that some communities could be destroyed.