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  • Nearly 40 people killed in Myanmar's protests

    "Today was the bloodiest day since the coup happened on the 1st of February."Christine Schraner Burgener, The United Nation's special envoy for Myanmar, confirmed 38 people were killed in protests on Wednesday.It was the country's most violent day since demonstrations broke out against last month's military coup.Police and soldiers opened fire with live rounds in several towns and cities, witnesses said.Four children were among those killed, according to aid agency Save the Children and local media reported hundreds have been arrested.A 19-year-old woman, Kyal Sin, also known as 'Angel' was one of two shot in the second largest city Mandalay.Images showed her in the protests wearing a T-shirt that read 'Everything will be Ok.'One youth activist described in a message to Reuters that it was " horrific, it's a massacre."Wednesday's bloodletting more than doubled the death toll since protests began.A spokesman for the ruling military council did not respond to requests for comment.In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States was "appalled" by the increase in violence."We call on all countries to speak with one voice to condemn brutal violence by the Burmese military against its own people and to promote accountability for the military's actions that have led to the life loss of life of so many people in Burma."Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council is due on Friday to hold a closed session on Myanmar.

  • How soon after coronavirus infection should you get a COVID vaccine?

    You definitely can’t get vaccinated if you currently have coronavirus.

  • T cell response to virus variants remains potent; Asthma does not raise severe COVID-19 risk

    The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. While worrisome coronavirus variants identified in Brazil, South Africa, and California have mutations that might help them resist antibody treatments and vaccines, the immune system's T cell responses to the variants are unaffected in recovered patients and in people who have received the Moderna Inc or Pfizer Inc/BioMTech SE vaccines, new data show.

  • Dr. Fauci has a stunningly simple way to explain how Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine differs from Pfizer's and Moderna's shots

    All three of the COVID-19 shots authorized for use in the US train the body to recognize the coronavirus, but J&J's uses a cold virus instead of mRNA.

  • Meghan Markle wore earrings from Mohammed bin Salman 3 weeks after Saudi agents murdered Jamal Khashoggi, report says

    Markle was unaware of the rumors that the Saudi crown prince could be connected to the killing when she wore the earrings, a source told Insider.

  • Turkey not necessarily seeking return to F-35 project: defence industry chief

    Turkey is not necessarily aiming to return to the U.S. F-35 fighter jet programme from which it was removed over its purchase of Russian defence systems, the Turkish defence industry chief said on Wednesday. He said the primary goal was for Turkey to get compensated for its losses. Ankara had ordered more than 100 F-35s and has been making parts for it but was removed from the programme in 2019 after it acquired Russian S-400 missile defence systems, which Washington says threaten the jets.

  • Republicans ‘increasingly irritated’ by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s repeated efforts to disrupt work of Congress, report says

    Reps Cheney, Issa, and Kinzinger were among GOP who voted against adjournment

  • A lawyer for an accused Oath Keeper Capitol rioter says the group's 'quick reaction force' of weapon suppliers was actually just one guy

    The Oath Keepers were one of the most prominent far-right militia groups the FBI said was involved in the January 6 Capitol riot.

  • Photos show North Korea may be trying to extract plutonium

    North Korea may be trying to extract plutonium to make more nuclear weapons at its main atomic complex, recent satellite photos indicated, weeks after leader Kim Jong Un vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal. The 38 North website, which specializes in North Korea studies, cited the imagery as indicating that a coal-fired steam plant at the North’s Yongbyon nuclear complex is in operation after about a two-year hiatus. This suggests “preparations for spent fuel reprocessing could be underway to extract plutonium needed for North Korea’s nuclear weapon,” the website said Wednesday.

  • Israel sentences Palestinian lawmaker to two years in prison

    An Israeli military court has sentenced a prominent Palestinian lawmaker to two years in prison in a plea bargain that convicted her of belonging to an outlawed group. Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has been held without charge since October 2019. Israel, along with the U.S. and other Western allies, considers the PFLP a terror group.

  • 16 times brides looked stunning in daring wedding dresses

    See-through fabric, cutouts, bright colors, and backless designs made for some of the best daring wedding dresses.

  • D.C. National Guard Chief: Trump Pentagon Screwed Up Riot Response

    Greg Nash/ReutersBureaucratic restrictions and public-relations concerns from the Army and top Trump administration Pentagon appointees unreasonably restrained the D.C. National Guard from responding to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, its commander testified to the Senate in a dramatic Wednesday session.The Guard commander, Major General William Walker, described receiving a “frantic” phone call from the then-head of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, shortly before 2 p.m., as the breach was underway.Yet because of the restrictions from Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, and the “best military advice” of senior Army officers, Walker and his 155 Guardsmen could not respond to the scene of the insurrection for another three hours and 19 minutes—restrictions Walker pointedly noted were not placed upon him during the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C.Had Walker been able to deploy to the Capitol “immediately,” as he testified he wanted, around 2 p.m.—a process he said took less than 20 minutes—“that number could have made a difference,” Walker said. “We could have helped extend the perimeter and pushed back the crowd.”FBI Director Shoots Back, Insisting Bureau Shared Intel Ahead of Capitol InsurrectionIt was perhaps the most intense moment thus far in a series of Senate hearings on Jan. 6 that have prompted dueling claims of irresponsibility, recriminations that have focused overwhelmingly on security and intelligence failures, rather than the politicians who spread the inciting lie that the Democrats stole the presidential election and hailed the violent protest called for by President Donald Trump.Army and Pentagon officials have heard this critique from Walker in the press and pushed back on it. Yet it was clear at the hearing that even senior Republican senators considered the Pentagon’s restrictions on the D.C. National Guard unacceptable.Walker described pre-insurrection letters from McCarthy, relaying instructions from Miller—whom Trump installed atop the Pentagon shortly after losing the election—that withheld from Walker the issuance of “weapons, ammunition, batons, ballistic protection equipment, to include body armor.” He did not have preapproval to mobilize a quick-reaction force of 40 Guardsmen and found it “unusual” to be denied a typical commanders’ authority to protect his own forces.As well, Walker described an instruction that afternoon from McCarthy to provide a “concept of operations” for the Guard before getting approval to shift from backing up the D.C. police and relieving beleaguered Capitol Police officers. “In 19 years, I never had that before happen,” Walker told senators. In several instances that day, Walker acted on his own initiative to muster the quick-reaction force at the D.C. Armory and get his Guardsmen protective gear, ahead of the belated approval to deploy to the Capitol.Neither Miller nor McCarthy testified. Instead, a senior Pentagon civilian, Robert Salesses, was left to effectively testify that Walker was wrong.Walker testified that two Army three-star generals, Charles Flynn and Walter Piatt, told him on Jan. 6 afternoon phone calls that they advised against sending the Guard to the Capitol because it was a poor “optics” and “could incite the crowd.” Salesses stoically said that Piatt, who is not in the chain of command, told him he never “used the word ‘optics,’” which represents the second revision in Piatt’s story, as the Army general recently acknowledged he may have indeed used that word.Walker shot back: “There were people in the room with me on that call that heard what they heard.”But Salesses’ broader point was that the restrictions Miller placed on Walker were political. “There was a lot of things that happened in the spring the department was criticized for,” Salesses said, referring to the Pentagon’s use of the National Guard to suppress the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington.Yet Salesses, questioned by Republican senators, could not explain all the Pentagon restrictions on the National Guard.The National Guard was on the streets of D.C. on Jan. 6 to support the D.C. police, in an unarmed and unarmored fashion, at 30 city traffic-control points and six Metro stations. Walker said he had to seek approval from the Pentagon to accompany the police in moving a traffic point over by a single block. The quick-reaction force, stationed initially at Joint Base Andrews just outside the district, was “not [designed] to respond to the events of the Capitol,” Salesses pleaded. “I don’t know if that’s true,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) replied, quickly prompting Walker’s agreement.Salesses also had to concede that over a half-hour passed between his account of Miller finally authorizing the Guard deployment, at 4:32 p.m., and notifying Walker of that decision at 5:08 p.m. Asked what accounted for that delay by an incredulous Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Salesses said only, “Senator, it’s an issue.”“That’s a significant problem for the future,” Blunt said.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.

  • Poll: Americans are more interested in getting stimulus than in seeing bipartisanship support for bill

    Americans are more interested in seeing $1,400 stimulus checks issued to Americans faster than see any potential bill receive bipartisan support, according to a recent Monmouth poll.

  • Eager to act, Biden and Democrats leave Republicans behind

    President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are jamming their agenda forward with a sense of urgency, an unapologetically partisan approach based on the calculation that it’s better to advance the giant COVID-19 rescue package and other priorities than waste time courting Republicans who may never compromise. The pandemic is driving the crush of legislative action, but so are the still-raw emotions from the U.S. Capitol siege as well as the hard lessons of the last time Democrats had the sweep of party control of Washington. Republicans are mounting blockades of Biden’s agenda just as they did during the devastating 2009 financial crisis with Barack Obama.

  • Spanish princesses skip vaccine queue by getting jabs in the UAE

    Members of Spain’s government have criticised the Spanish royal family after it emerged that King Felipe’s two sisters received Covid vaccinations during a visit to UAE instead of waiting their turn in Spain. “Their privileges come before the people they claim to represent,” the Left-wing Podemos party, the junior member of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s coalition government, said in a tweet. Pablo Iglesias, Podemos’s leader and deputy prime minister, said society “won’t accept that royal family members have vaccinations in Abu Dhabi when the rest of the Spanish people are queueing up with discipline for their turn”. The online newspaper El Confidencial revealed on Tuesday evening that princesses Elena and Cristina, both in their fifties, had been vaccinated when visiting exiled father Juan Carlos in Abu Dhabi a month ago. They would still have to wait months for jabs in Spain due to their age. According to Spain’s vaccination programme, the elderly in care homes and many key workers have been vaccinated, with the over-80s the current focus of the campaign. The Royal Household said that King Felipe “is not responsible for his sisters’ behaviour”. Felipe stripped his sister Cristina of her title of Duchess of Palma of Mallorca after she and her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, were put on trial on charges of fraud and corruption in 2016. Cristina was acquitted but Urdangarin is serving a six-year jail sentence. Princess Elena, who like her sister no longer receives state funding, admitted that she and Cristina had been vaccinated while visiting former king Juan Carlos in UAE, “with the idea of having a healthcare passport that would allow us to do so more regularly”. Juan Carlos has lived in Abu Dhabi since last August, when he left Spain after the country’s Supreme Court opened an investigation into alleged financial impropriety. Last week the former king, who abdicated in 2014 after a series of scandals, made a payment of 4.4 million euros to Spain’s tax agency in a bid to ward off a possible accusation of tax fraud. The 83-year-old is also reported to have had the Sinopharm vaccine in UAE.

  • The Latest: House to wrap early amid threat of violence

    The U.S. House is abruptly finishing its work for the week given the threat of violence at the Capitol by a militia group seeking to storm the building, as happened in a deadly siege Jan. 6. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer notified lawmakers late Wednesday of the sudden schedule change. Capitol Police said earlier Wednesday they have uncovered intelligence of a “possible plot” by a militia group to breach the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.

  • Virginia student blasted for choosing Candace Owens as 'Black trailblazer'

    Owens called a 'racist;' High school student Julia Saville tells her story on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'

  • Violence erupts as kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls return to families

    It was supposed to be a joyous reunion to end the five-day ordeal of 279 girls kidnapped last week from the Jangebe Government Girls Science Secondary School in a remote corner of northwest Nigeria. Cheering children had lined the street as buses brought the girls, grinning and waving, back to their school from the Zamfara state capital Gusau, where they had been cared for since their release on Tuesday. As government officials in a hall were giving lengthy speeches in front of the girls, impatient parents burst in and grabbed their children to take them home.

  • Brits bagged 40% of the Golden Globes: Here are the 25 best British movies of the last 10 years

    From blockbusters like "Skyfall" and "Dunkirk" to smaller gems like "Wuthering Heights," here are the 25 best British movies of the last decade.

  • 'If the others go I'll go': Inside China's scheme to transfer Uighurs into work

    A high-level Chinese study says a massive work scheme is reducing Uighur population density in Xinjiang.