‘There has never been a better time to simplify and reduce the demands on students:’ College Board CEO

Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and David Coleman, College Board CEO, discuss the company’s decision to eliminate the SAT’s optional essay.

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  • Biden news – live: President approves airstrike in Syria as police fear plot to ‘blow up’ Capitol during SOTU

    Follow all the latest news from the White House

  • Lara Trump gives strongest signal yet that’s she’s running in 2022: ‘Stay tuned’

    Lara Trump is rumoured to be eyeing a Senate run from North Carolina

  • Pandemic leaves many Romanian patients without critical care

    Andrei, a 32-year-old Romanian man who has been HIV positive since he was a baby, began missing his regular medical check-ups when the coronavirus pandemic hit a year ago. “After that, I got used to the idea of taking the antiretroviral treatment blindly without knowing if the parameters are OK or if the therapy works.” A year ago this week, Romania reported its first case of COVID-19, prompting the country's strapped medical system to turn its focus to treating COVID-19 patients.

  • It's a smash hit! Chinese return big-time to movie theaters

    With coronavirus well under control in China and cinemas running at half capacity, moviegoers are smashing China's box office records, setting a new high mark for ticket sales in February, with domestic productions far outpacing their Hollywood competitors. February marked China’s all-time biggest month for movie ticket sales, which have so far totaled 11.2 billion yuan ($1.73 billion). China overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest market for movie ticket sales last year as the American box office took a massive hit from the closure of cinemas because of the coronavirus pandemic.

  • Japan partly ending pandemic emergency, keeps it for Tokyo

    The state of emergency Japan set up to curb the spread of the coronavirus will be lifted in six urban areas this weekend and remain in the Tokyo area for another week, a government minister said Friday. Partially lifting the emergency, and just a week early, underlines Japan’s eagerness to keep business restrictions to a minimum to keep the economy going. Japan has never had a lockdown, but has managed to keep infections relatively low, with deaths related to COVID-19 at about 7,600 people so far.

  • Myanmar security forces disperse anti-coup protesters

    Security forces in Myanmar's largest city on Friday fired warning shots and beat truncheons against their shields while moving to disperse more than 1,000 anti-coup protesters. The demonstrators had gathered in front of a popular shopping mall in Yangon, holding placards and chanting slogans denouncing the Feb. 1 coup even as the security presence increased and a water-cannon truck was brought to the area. When around 50 riot police moved against the protesters, warning shots could be heard, and at least one demonstrator was held by officers.

  • Falling sperm counts 'threaten human survival', expert warns

    Epidemiologist Shanna Swan says low counts and changes to sexual development could endanger human species Swan offers advice on how to protect themselves from damaging chemicals and urges people to ‘do what we can to safeguard our fertility, the fate of mankind, and the planet’. Photograph: Burazin/Getty Images Falling sperm counts and changes to sexual development are “threatening human survival” and leading to a fertility crisis, a leading epidemiologist has warned.Writing in a new book, Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, warns that the impending fertility crisis poses a global threat comparable to that of the climate crisis. “The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” she writes in Count Down. It comes after a study she co-authored in 2017 found that sperm counts in the west had plummeted by 59% between 1973 and 2011, making headlines globally. Now, Swan says, following current projections, the median sperm count is set to reach zero in 2045. “That’s a little concerning, to say the least,” she told Axios. In the book, Swan and co-author Stacey Colino explore how modern life is threatening sperm counts, changing male and female reproductive development and endangering human life. It points to lifestyle and chemical exposures that are changing and threatening human sexual development and fertility. Such is the gravity of the threats they pose, she argues, that humans could become an endangered species.“Of five possible criteria for what makes a species endangered,” Swan writes, “only one needs to be met; the current state of affairs for humans meets at least three.” Swan offers advice on how to protect themselves from damaging chemicals and urges people to “do what we can to safeguard our fertility, the fate of mankind, and the planet”. Between 1964 and 2018 the global fertility rate fell from 5.06 births per woman to 2.4. Now approximately half the world’s countries have fertility rates below 2.1, the population replacement level. While contraception, cultural shifts and the cost of having children are likely to be contributing factors, Swan warns of indicators that suggest there are also biological reasons – including increasing miscarriage rates, more genital abnormalities among boys and earlier puberty for girls. Swan blames “everywhere chemicals”, found in plastics, cosmetics and pesticides, that affect endocrines such as phthalates and bisphenol-A. “Chemicals in our environment and unhealthy lifestyle practices in our modern world are disrupting our hormonal balance, causing various degrees of reproductive havoc,” she writes.She also said factors such as tobacco smoking, marijuana and growing obesity play a role.

  • Militia official: US strike in Syria kills 1, wounds several

    A U.S. airstrike in Syria targeted facilities belonging to a powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi armed group, killing one of their militiamen and wounding a number of others, an Iraqi militia official said Friday. The official told The Associated Press that the strikes against the Kataeb Hezbollah militia, or Hezbollah Brigades, hit an area along the border between the Syrian site of Boukamal facing Qaim on the Iraqi side. The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

  • Jimmy Kimmel Brands Marjorie Taylor Greene ‘Frontrunner for Worst Human of 2021’

    ABCMarjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican representative from Georgia, was recently stripped of her committee duties after it emerged that she’d pushed a whole range of wacko conspiracy theories—the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracies, or that a cabal of Democrats are “Satan-worshipping pedophiles” (her words) trafficking children out of D.C. pizza parlors and harvesting their blood for a substance called “Adrenochrome,” a plotline straight out of the Pixar film Monsters Inc. (really); that the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings were “false flag” operations; that “Zionist supremacists” are lording over a plot to push immigration all over the world; that the 9/11 attacks may not have happened, referring to a “so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon”—and called for the execution of Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and FBI agents. She’s also, despite presenting as a God-fearing Christian, been accused of conducting a number of affairs (she’s denied the allegations).Well, this week, she attempted to outdo herself in the “terrible” department by hanging an anti-transgender sign outside her office in order to taunt a congresswoman across the hall who has a trans child—and this before fighting against the Equality Act.“The frontrunner for Worst Human of 2021 is working to defeat the Equality Act right now. This is an act that would ban discrimination against Americans based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” explained Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night, before throwing to footage of Illinois Rep. Marie Newman hanging a transgender flag outside of her office as a message to Greene.“Of course Marjorie could not let this go,” Kimmel continued. “She had to respond by putting up a sign outside her office that said, ‘There are two genders: male and female. Trust the science.’ Now she trusts the science. Because that wasn’t enough scumbaggery for one day, QAnon Marj had the audacity to say this on the floor of the House.”Shockingly Real Tom Cruise Deepfakes Are Invading TikTokKimmel then cut to video of Greene offering this rather unconvincing argument: “I’d like to point out to my Democrat colleagues that there is no Republican member of Congress that condones the attack on the Capitol on January 6. I was also a victim in this chamber when it happened, and we are very offended at your constant attacks on us for claiming we had anything to do with it. So, that needs to stop.” The late-night host was less than convinced, to say the least. “My god. We’ve got a Karen in Congress now. She’s so awful,” said Kimmel. “And by the way, what she said is interesting because yesterday, we learned that one of her closest friends and allies, a guy named Anthony Aguero, was in the Capitol on January 6. This is a guy who, when she was banned from Facebook, she appeared on his Facebook account. They’re very good friends. But she’s offended, because she had nothing to do with what happened! And not only that, one of her other close friends is the guy who actually planned and incited the riot at the Capitol. This guy,” he added, pointing to a photo of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene together at a rally. Despite Greene’s hateful theatrics, the Equality Act passed the House on Thursday.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.

  • Vaccination 'passports' may open society, but inequity looms

    Violet light bathed the club stage as 300 people, masked and socially distanced, erupted in gentle applause. For the first time since the pandemic began, Israeli musician Aviv Geffen stepped to his electric piano and began to play for an audience seated right in front of him. Governments say getting vaccinated and having proper documentation will smooth the way to travel, entertainment and other social gatherings in a post-pandemic world.

  • Journalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiry

    Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien, one of the few journalists who has seen former President Donald Trump's tax returns, told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night he will sleep better now that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance finally has eight years of Trump's financial documents, from 2011 to 2019. Trump "is very afraid of what's in these documents, I think," because they put him in serious criminal jeopardy, O'Brien said, but he isn't the only one implicated. O'Brien went on to explain why he thinks it's likely Trump's chief accountant, Allen Weisselberg, is likely to flip on Trump. "The thing to really focus in on here is that it's not just the tax records that Cy Vance has now," O'Brien said. "He probably has reams and reams of the accountant's work product. This is a criminal case, they're going to need to prove criminal intent on the part of Trump, his three eldest children, Allen Weisselberg, and anyone else in the Trump Organization who's fallen under the parameters of this investigation. And if there are email and notes and other records of communication about what they intended to do when they inflated the value of buildings so they could get loans against them and then turned around and deflated the value of the buildings so they could pay lower taxes on them, and there's a communication around that that predates any of these tax entries, that is gold for a prosecutor." A few hours earlier, O'Brien told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that the particular eight years of documents Vance's team has "is important, because it predates Trump's ascent into the White House, and I think helps build the narrative around the money trail and Trump's motivations for his destructive and obscene dance with people like Vladimir Putin. It's a shame they couldn't go back further — think this is one of the tragic misses of Robert Mueller's investigation, he could have gone back further, I think, than Cy Vance is able to into Trump's finances." O'Brien also underscored that the investigation implicates at least Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, and "it also targets people inside the Trump Organization who might flip on Trump if they're exposed to criminal liability," but "the brass ring in all of this is that if Trump has a criminal conviction, he cannot run for president again, and that's looming over this entire thing as well." More stories from theweek.comDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriouslyThe MyPillow guy might be Trump's ultimate chumpThe GOP's apathy for governing is being exposed

  • Once the mainstream model, Michigan GOP embraces right wing

    Josh Venable, a longtime Michigan GOP operative and chief of staff to former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, can trace the arc of the state's Republican Party clearly. “This was the state where to be Republican was defined by Gerald Ford and George Romney,” Venable said, referring to the moderate former president and former governor. Now, he said, it's defined by Mike Shirkey, the state Senate majority leader who was overheard calling the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot a “hoax"; Meshawn Maddock, the new co-chair of the state party who backed former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud; and the Proud Boys.

  • ‘Welcome Insurrectionists’ sign to be flown over CPAC by protester

    ‘Grim Reaper’ lawyer is fundraising to remind Republicans about last month’s Capitol riots

  • Georgia prosecutor investigating Trump call urges patience

    The Georgia prosecutor investigating potential efforts by Donald Trump and others to influence last year's general election has a message for people who are eager to see whether the former president will be charged: Be patient. “I'm in no rush,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said this week in an interview with The Associated Press. Willis, a Democrat elected in November, sent letters to state officials on Feb. 10 instructing them to preserve records related to the election, particularly those that may contain evidence of attempts to influence elections officials.

  • Lady Gaga dog-walker shooting: Video shows how two men jumped out of car and shouted ‘give it up’

    It is unclear at the moment if the dog walker was attacked due to his celebrity client

  • As Somalia's COVID-19 cases surge, a variant is suspected

    A resurgence of COVID-19 cases is hitting Somalia hard, straining one of the world’s most fragile health systems, while officials await test results to show whether a more infectious variant of the coronavirus is spreading. In the lone COVID-19 isolation center in the capital, Mogadishu, 50 people have died in the past two and a half weeks, Martini hospital deputy director Sadaq Adan Hussein told The Associated Press during a visit. Test results for the presence of one of the new variants are expected next month, Sadaq said.

  • Native American nominee's grilling raises questions on bias

    When Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso snapped at Deb Haaland during her confirmation hearing, many in Indian Country were incensed. The exchange, coupled with descriptions of the Interior secretary nominee as “radical” — by other white, male Republicans — left some feeling Haaland is being treated differently because she is a Native American woman. At Wednesday's hearing, Barrasso wanted assurance that Haaland would follow the law when it comes to imperiled species.

  • Water near Arizona Air Force base is tainted in latest case

    The U.S. Air Force says it will be distributing bottled water to thousands of residents and business owners near its base in suburban Phoenix until at least April, marking the latest case of chemicals from military firefighting efforts contaminating the water supply in a nearby community. Luke Air Force Base announced this month that studies showed high levels of contaminants had affected drinking water for about 6,000 people in roughly 1,600 homes as well as a few neighboring businesses. A contractor is scheduling deliveries of drinking water to the homes of people who picked up their first bottles this week, said Sean Clements, chief of public affairs for the 56th Fighter Wing at the base.

  • House to vote on virus bill; arbiter says wage hike a no-go

    Democrats are ready to shove a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package through the House on Friday, despite a setback that means a minimum wage boost is unlikely to be in the final version that reaches President Joe Biden. The relief bill would provide millions of people with $1,400 direct payments.

  • Trump reportedly wants to start a new super PAC, have Corey Lewandowski run it

    During a meeting with advisers on Thursday, former President Donald Trump shared that he is going to form a new super PAC and has tapped former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to run it, several people familiar with the matter told Politico. The meeting was held at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and the attendees included Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; former campaign managers Brad Parscale and Bill Stepien; former deputy campaign manager Justin Clark; former White House social media director Dan Scavino; and senior adviser Jason Miller. Miller told Politico that Trump's fans will be "impressed with the political operation being built out here," and more details will be released "in the coming weeks." Lewandowski served as Trump's first campaign manager, and after being fired in June 2016, he remained close to Trump and spent time with him at the White House. Nothing about the new super PAC is set in stone, people familiar with the matter stressed to Politico, and Trump could change the plan at any moment. Trump already has a leadership PAC called Save America, which he launched after the election. While Trump was falsely claiming the election had been stolen from him, Save America was raising tens of millions of dollars, and had $31.5 million in the bank at the end of December, Politico reports. Leadership PACs are limited in how much they can raise from individual donors, but super PACs can solicit and spend unlimited amounts of money. Trump associates say he wants to play a major role in the 2022 midterms, primarily so he can seek revenge against Republicans who backed his impeachment and didn't help him overturn the election results. More stories from theweek.comDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriouslyThe MyPillow guy might be Trump's ultimate chumpThe GOP's apathy for governing is being exposed