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  • India coronavirus: Can its vaccine producers meet demand?

    India is a big player in vaccine production - but supply shortages have appeared in some areas.

  • Nike wants your lightly worn sneakers — to resell them at some US stores. Here’s why

    Nike said it has plans to expand the program.

  • Hank Azaria wants to apologize to every Indian for voicing Apu on ‘The Simpson’s’

    Apu is “practically a slur at this point,” the voice actor said

  • Panthers are giving Sam Darnold a chance to succeed, fair or not

    Matt Rhule did not name Sam Darnold the team’s starting quarterback during Monday’s virtual press conference.

  • 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.

  • Police officer who pepper-sprayed US Army soldier fired

    The black army lieutenant filed a lawsuit against two policemen in Virginia after a traffic stop turned violent.

  • Pentagon chief on inaugural tour of Europe to shore up ties

    Nearly a year after President Donald Trump ordered thousands of troops to leave Germany, capping a series of setbacks for U.S. relations with major allies, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin began an inaugural tour of Europe to shore up partnerships that are a cornerstone of the post-World War II order. Austin arrived in Berlin on Monday against the backdrop of a newly emerging crisis with Iran, which on Monday blamed Israel for a recent attack on its underground Natanz nuclear facility. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement, but the attack nonetheless imperils ongoing talks in Europe over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal.

  • Taliban not ready to meet Afghan govt in Turkey as US wants

    A Taliban spokesman said Monday the religious militia won’t attend a peace conference tentatively planned for later this week in Turkey, putting U.S. efforts to get a peace plan anytime soon in jeopardy. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously said he wanted to see a peace agreement between Afghanistan’s warring sides finalized at a conference hosted by Turkey and attended by top officials from both the Taliban and the Afghan government. Afghan government, U.S. and Turkish officials had said they intended to begin the conference Friday.

  • Eight in Ten Americans are Concerned About Partisanship. Here's How 'The Unum Test' Can Reunite America

    The U.S. Capitol is seen in the distance from the base of the Washington Monument on a stormy morning. Nothing less than the success of the American experiment is at stake. The result is that America often feels like it’s coming apart, with clashing tribes caught in feedback loops of distrust and resentment, amplified online and manipulated through disinformation, driving us toward ever greater levels of mutual incomprehension.

  • Fed's Powell sees US boom ahead, with COVID still a risk

    Chair Jerome Powell, speaking to CBS' “60 Minutes," also said that he doesn't expect to raise the Fed's benchmark interest rate, currently pegged at nearly zero, this year. “We feel like we’re at a place where the economy’s about to start growing much more quickly and job creation coming in much more quickly,” Powell said. In the wide-ranging interview, Powell said that the Fed is closely studying the development of a digital dollar, but hasn't yet made a decision on whether to proceed.

  • OnPolitics: The battle for the GOP's soul

    The GOP continues to struggle to maintain party unity after former President Donald Trump's election loss.

  • Hank Azaria feels he needs to 'personally apologize' to every Indian in America for voicing Apu in 'The Simpsons'

    Hank Azaria said that the depiction of Apu, an Indian convenience-store worker, in "The Simpsons" is "practically a slur at this point."

  • Hornets get some rare good injury news with P.J. Washington’s status

    The Hornets are already down two starters due to injury, but it looks like that number won’t increase to three for Tuesday’s game vs. the LA Lakers.

  • Carnival-loving, eloquent Soeder wants to be Germany's first Bavarian chancellor

    Dismissed for decades by critics as a country bumpkin who loves silly carnival costumes, Bavarian leader Markus Soeder said on Sunday that he was willing to run as the conservative candidate for German chancellor, provided he had the bloc's full backing. Angela Merkel, who has clocked up four election victories and led Europe's biggest economy for 16 years, is not standing for a fifth term when Germany goes to the polls in September. This means the parliamentary bloc formed by her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their sister party, Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU), must decide on a candidate.

  • Wall Street ends lower as investors await earnings, inflation data

    The S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrial average ended lower on Monday, with investors waiting for cues from the upcoming corporate earnings season and a key inflation report later this week. The indexes had closed at record highs on Friday, after rallying for days on a pullback in the benchmark 10-year bond yield from 14-month highs. Big Wall Street names are due to kick off earnings season on Wednesday, giving new catalysts to buy or sell stocks in a record-high market.

  • Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine has not led to blood clots following J&J reports

    Moderna released a statement Tuesday reassuring people of the safety of its coronavirus vaccine hours after the FDA recommended pausing the administration Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines due to reported cases of "extremely rare" blood clots.What they're saying: After over 64.5 million doses administered globally, a comprehensive assessment using data through March 22 "does not suggest an association with" blood clots in the brain or veins, Moderna said.Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.The big picture: The Centers for Disease Control and FDA made its recommendation on the J&J shot "out of an abundance of caution" after six women developed blood clots within two weeks of receiving the shot.J&J delayed rollout of its vaccine in Europe after the FDA announcement.More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

  • 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.

  • Top Kremlin Mouthpiece Warns of ‘Inevitable’ War With U.S. Over Another Ukraine Land Grab

    ALEXEY NIKOLSKYAll-out cyberwarfare, nation-wide forced blackouts, and the targeted disruption of internet services—for one of the Kremlin’s top propagandists, all of those tactics are fair game in what she describes as a fated war-to-come against the U.S.“War [with the U.S.] is inevitable,” declared Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the state-funded Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik, who believes the conflict will break out when, not if, Vladimir Putin moves to seize more territory from Ukraine.As Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s doorstep mounts, Kremlin loyalists have been urging for even more overt aggression and bloodshed in the campaign to annex Ukraine’s Donbas region. The only thing standing in the way, they say, is U.S. support for their beleaguered neighbor.NATO issued a statement on Wednesday demanding an end to Russia’s troop movements on the border with the disputed territory of Donbas in eastern Ukraine. It is the largest buildup of Russian troops since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The U.S. underlined the statement this week by deploying two warships to the Black Sea.On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened retaliation. “We warn the United States that it will be better for them to stay far away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast. It will be for their own good,” he said.The escalation was foreshadowed on state television’s Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev over the weekend. Simonyan explained that it was time for Russia to gear up for a showdown against the U.S., and prophesized a kind of war driven by hacking, the forced disruption of internet access, the shutting down of power supplies, and an all-out offensive on U.S. infrastructure.“I do not believe that this will be a large-scale hot war, like World War II, and I do not believe that there will be a long Cold War. It will be a war of the third type: the cyberwar,” said Simonyan.She warned that—in this theoretical battle—the U.S. would plot to cut off the electricity of entire Russian cities. In turn, she speculated, Moscow would be able to force a blackout in Florida or New York’s Harlem at the flip of a switch.“In conventional war, we could defeat Ukraine in two days,” Simonyan said, “but it will be another kind of war. We’ll do it, and then [the U.S.] will respond by turning off power to [the Russian city] Voronezh,” she said.The top RT editor asserted that “[Russia] needs to be ready for this war, which is unavoidable, and of course it will start in Ukraine,” arguing that the Kremlin is “invincible where conventional war is concerned, but forget about conventional war... it will be a war of infrastructures, and here we have many vulnerabilities.”Her solution consists of Stalin-type measures to eliminate “vulnerabilities” in the run-up to another escalation, emphasizing the need for a hack-proof, government-controlled internet. “We still don’t have a sovereign internet, but God willing, we will,” she said.She wholeheartedly endorsed a suggestion from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, who argued that all of Russia’s opposition must be eliminated by May 1, 2021. With imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on a hunger strike—and suffering from severe health ailments after being denied appropriate medical treatment—the Kremlin seems to be firmly set on that course.Simonyan argued that once Russia minimizes its vulnerabilities and renders Putin’s opposition powerless—which she argued could happen in a matter of months—the Kremlin will finally be ready to annex Ukraine’s eastern region.“I’ve been agitating and even demanding that we take Donbas. We need to patch up our vulnerabilities as fast as we can, and then we can do whatever we want,” she boldly proclaimed. The host, Vladimir Soloviev, wholeheartedly agreed: “We only lose if we do nothing.” He argued that by absorbing parts of Ukraine—or the entire country—Russia would be able to remove the zone of American influence further away from its borders.As one of the Kremlin’s most valued propagandists, Margarita Simonyan is notoriously close to the Russian president and has received multiple awards directly from Putin. After accepting one such award in 2019, Simonyan thanked Putin “for the most important reward in life… this honor to serve one’s Motherland.”Her “service” has involved RT and Sputnik-driven disinformation operations aimed at influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which she often boasts about by pointing to the inclusion of her name in various U.S. intelligence reports.Russia’s recent cyberspace activities seem to serve as good practice for the “inevitable war” foreshadowed by Simonyan.Last year, six Russian intelligence officers were criminally charged by the U.S. for using the world’s most destructive malware to force blackouts in Ukraine and damage the critical infrastructure of multiple countries, which caused nearly $1 billion in losses. On Monday, hackers operating from Russia targeted France’s homeschooling platform.The Kremlin is prepared to intensify its offensive against the West, but fears of the retaliation that would follow. The idea of a bulletproof “sovereign internet”—completely under government control within Russian borders—is already on the books, with Moscow having introduced the idea as a preventative measure against retaliatory hacking attempts from other nations.Simonyan argued that Russia will surely be able to exploit the U.S.’s “catastrophic” educational standards, and referred to American military analysts and specialists as incompetent and stupid. She heartily laughed about news that more than 200,000 U.S. service members experienced hearing loss due to defective earplugs.“We can never come to any agreements with [Americans],” Simonyan said, arguing that instead, Russia can just as easily defeat the U.S. in a cyberspace war.She added, mockingly: “We don’t even need the nukes.”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.

  • 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.

  • DMX’s family clarifies rumors Beyoncé, Jay-Z gifted his masters

    ‘No one has bought Earl’s masters,’ they said Monday. ‘Additionally, we are not selling any merch or raising money’ for funeral services. The family of late rapper-actor DMX is clarifying rumors that Jay-Z and his wife, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, purchased the magnetic MC’s master recordings and gifted them to his children.