The Full Belmonte, 1/25/2022
“NATO is sending ships and jet fighters to its eastern allies, as Ukraine-Russia tensions rise. Lithuania, Bulgaria and the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean Seas are among destinations for the military reinforcements. Russia wants NATO to restrict its military power in the area and to deny Ukraine membership in the alliance.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Ukrainian civilians train in a Kyiv Territorial Defense unit. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
“We’re now on the verge of a full-fledged crisis in Eastern Europe: NATO is building up forces near Ukraine, while Russia amasses along its own borders and in neighboring Belarus.
The U.S. placed 8,500 troops on ‘heightened preparedness to deploy’ to NATO allies in Eastern Europe, Axios' Zachary Basu reports.
NATO allies — including Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands — are deploying ships and fighter jets in Eastern Europe.
The U.S. and U.K. ordered some embassy staff and families to evacuate Ukraine.
The big picture: ‘This is really about reassuring the eastern flank of NATO,’ Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said.
Kirby reiterated President Biden's position that U.S. troops will not be sent to Ukraine to fight a war against Russia, but that the West is still determined to deter Moscow from launching an invasion through the threat of sanctions and military aid.” Read more at Axios
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
“WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are lawful, putting the fate of affirmative action in higher education at risk.
The court has repeatedly upheld similar programs, most recently in 2016. But recent changes in the court’s membership have made it more conservative, and the challenged programs are almost certain to meet skepticism.
The case against Harvard accused it of discriminating against Asian American students by using a subjective standard to gauge traits like likability, courage and kindness and by effectively creating a ceiling for them in admissions.
Lawyers for Harvard said that the challengers had relied on a flawed statistical analysis and denied that the university discriminated against Asian American applicants. More generally, they said that race-conscious admissions policies are lawful.” Read more at New York Times
VERBATIM
“In a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation like ours, the college admissions bar cannot be raised for some races and ethnic groups but lowered for others. Our nation cannot remedy past discrimination and racial preferences with new discrimination and different racial preferences.”
“Also in the pipeline, the high court agreed to take up a case that could limit the federal government's jurisdiction over wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act. The case comes as the Biden administration actively tries to undo Trump-era rollbacks to federal protections. Separately, the Supreme Court declined to take up House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's proxy voting protocols that were put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic.” Read more at CNN
“A defamation trial pitting Sarah Palin against The New York Times was supposed to get started first thing Monday morning—but proceedings have been interrupted after the unvaccinated former Alaska governor tested positive for COVID-19. Palin is suing the paper over a 2017 editorial she says falsely linked her to a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. But, at the start of the trial on Monday, the judge had an announcement to make. ‘Ms. Palin has tested positive for coronavirus. She is of course unvaccinated,’ said U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, according to court reporter Frank G. Runyeon. Palin’s attorney then reportedly asked for a seven to 10 day delay in the trial so that she can be present for the jury selection. The Daily Beast has contacted the Southern District of New York for comment.” [Daily Beast] Read more at Reuters
“Judges in Georgia’s most populous county granted its top prosecutor’s request to impanel a special grand jury to investigate efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, the next step in a probe into the actions of former President Donald Trump and supporters after his loss in the state.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, asked for the grand jury, saying she needed one to issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify and provide evidence.
The request was approved by a majority of the judges on the county’s superior court, who are elected in nonpartisan races, according to an order filed Monday.
Republicans have accused Ms. Willis of trying to score partisan points. Mr. Trump said last week that he didn’t do anything wrong.
The ‘special purpose’ grand jury can serve beginning on May 2 and could continue for up to a year, according to the order, signed by the chief judge of Fulton County’s Superior Court, Christopher S. Brasher. The grand jury won’t have authority to return an indictment but can subpoena witnesses, demand documents and make recommendations regarding criminal prosecution.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The Biden administration says it will not be enforcing the federal employee vaccine mandate amid ongoing litigation, after a Texas federal judge on Friday blocked the enforcement of the vaccine mandate for government employees. The move comes after the judge called the mandate an overstep of presidential authority, while striking down a separate mandate that had applied to private sector workers. Separately, a state supreme court judge struck down New York state’s mask mandate yesterday, ruling that the governor and the New York State Department of Health did not have the authority to enact such a mandate without approval from the State Legislature.” Read more at CNN
“Omicron infections are trending down nationally — but the number of deaths is as high now as it was during the summer's Delta wave, Axios' Bob Herman writes.
Why it matters: Although vaccines have been available for roughly a year, more than 2,000 people are dying from COVID in the U.S. every day right now. That number has been rising for the past week, according to the latest seven-day rolling averages.
Roughly three out of four deaths are people who are 65 or older, according to the CDC.
Unvaccinated people are 100 times more likely to die from COVID than those with three doses of an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna).” Read more at Axios
“The Biden administration restricted the use of two monoclonal antibody drugs for Covid-19 because they are unlikely to be effective against the Omicron variant.
The drugs— Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Regen-Cov and Eli Lilly& Co.’s bamlanivimab and etesevimab—shouldn’t be used in any U.S. states, territories or jurisdictions at this time, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday.
After the move, the Health and Human Services Department said it wasn’t going to include the antibody drugs in the latest Covid-19 drug shipment to states.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“‘Stupid son of a b----’: President Joe Biden used a slur to describe a reporter who shouted a question about inflation during a White House meeting with members of his Cabinet.” Read more at USA Today
“Republicans in seven states tried to send in illegitimate Electoral College votes for Donald Trump during the 2020 election. Their efforts didn't work, and now they could face legal ramifications as federal prosecutors investigate their actions.” Read more at NPR
“NASA’s revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope on Monday fired its thrusters for five minutes and reached its final destination, a special orbit around the sun where it will spend the rest of its life scrutinizing the universe and capturing light emitted soon after the big bang.
The telescope has been cruising through space for a month since its Christmas launch from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. The final course correction, the third engine burn since launch, placed the Webb in a gravitationally stable position known as L2, where it will always be roughly 1 million miles from Earth on the opposite side of our planet from the sun.
A NASA representative said the engine burn ended at 2:05 p.m. and worked as planned.
The high-risk, long-delayed mission, burdened with ambitious astronomy goals and a $10 billion price tag, has gone spectacularly well, overcoming an eye-popping list of potential snags that had haunted the dreams of engineers for years. More challenges lie ahead, but the engineers and scientists are breathing more easily.” Read more at Washington Post
“Opening statements began in the trial of the three ex-Minneapolis police officers who were on the scene when George Floyd was killed. Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng pleaded not guilty to accusations that they violated Floyd’s civil rights. Former cop Derek Chauvin pleaded guilty to similar charges in December and was found guilty of second-dgeree murder in state court. Legal experts expect the trio to blame Chauvin.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Julian Assange will not be extradited to the United States—at least, not quite yet. In court Monday, the WikiLeaks founder was given permission to go to Britain’s Supreme Court to challenge a decision allowing him to be sent to the U.S. to face 18 criminal charges related to the leak of thousands of top-secret documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If he’d lost his case, the British government’s Home Secretary Priti Patel would have made a final call on whether to allow Assange’s extradition to the U.S. However, his lawyers won the right to seek an appeal at the Supreme Court, meaning the long-running legal battle over his extradition will rumble on. The next step will be a decision from the high court on whether to hear Assange’s challenge.” [Daily Beast] Read more at The Guardian
“WASHINGTON — A study that provided poor mothers with cash stipends for the first year of their children’s lives appears to have changed the babies’ brain activity in ways associated with stronger cognitive development, a finding with potential implications for safety net policy.
The differences were modest — researchers likened them in statistical magnitude to moving to the 75th position in a line of 100 from the 81st — and it remains to be seen if changes in brain patterns will translate to higher skills, as other research offers reason to expect.
Still, evidence that a single year of subsidies could alter something as profound as brain functioning highlights the role that money may play in child development and comes as President Biden is pushing for a much larger program of subsidies for families with children.” Read more at New York Times
“Seven school boards — including one overseeing the largest and most prominent district in the state — are suing to stop a mask-optional order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) on the day it is supposed to take effect, arguing that the order violates the Virginia Constitution.
The school boards, led by Fairfax County Public Schools, whose 180,000 students make it Virginia’s biggest system, filed suit Monday morning in Arlington Circuit Court. The suit asks for an immediate injunction barring enforcement of Youngkin’s order, which sought to leave masking decisions to parents, contravening federal health guidance and the masking mandates that the vast majority of Virginia school districts have maintained throughout the pandemic.
In the school boards’ complaint, their lawyers write that Youngkin’s executive order goes against Article 8, Section 7 of Virginia’s constitution, which asserts that ‘the supervision of schools in each school division shall be vested in a school board.’ The lawyers also say Youngkin’s order contradicts a state law passed over the summer that requires Virginia school districts to follow federal health guidelines to the ‘maximum extent practicable.’ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends masking inside K-12 schools for everyone over age 2, regardless of vaccination status.” Read more at Washington Post
“Mayor Eric Adams, at a pivotal moment in his first weeks in office, announced an ambitious public safety plan on Monday to address a growing crisis of gun violence in New York City.
In a solemn speech just three days after a police officer was killed in Manhattan, Mr. Adams called for immediate changes to add police officers to city streets to remove guns, and for help from the courts and state lawmakers in the months ahead.
‘We will not surrender our city to the violent few,’ Mr. Adams said.
Mr. Adams’s plan included the restoration of a new modified plainclothes police unit, and called on state lawmakers to make a number of changes, including to New York’s bail law and to a law that altered how the state handles teenage defendants.
‘I want to be clear: This is not just a plan for the future — it is a plan for right now,’ the mayor said. ‘Gun violence is a public health crisis. There is no time to wait.’” Read more at New York Times
“(CNN)Pfizer and BioNTech have begun a clinical trial for their Omicron-specific Covid-19 vaccine candidate, they announced in a news release on Tuesday.
The study will evaluate the vaccine for safety, tolerability and the level of immune response, as both a primary series and a booster dose, in up to 1,420 healthy adults ages 18 to 55.” Read more at CNN
“Two Covid Americas
Covid’s starkly different impact on the young and old has been one of the virus’s defining characteristics. It tends to be mild for children and younger adults but is often severe for the elderly. More than three-quarters of all U.S. Covid deaths have occurred among people 65 and older.
Given these patterns, it seems obvious that older Americans should be more fearful of Covid than younger Americans. Yet they’re not.
That’s one of the striking findings from a new poll that Morning Consult, a survey firm, has conducted for this newsletter: Old and young people express similar concern about their personal risk from Covid. By some measures, young people are actually more worried:
From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult
The most plausible explanation for this pattern is political ideology. Older Americans, as a group, currently lean to the right, while younger generations lean to the left. And no other factor influences Covid attitudes as strongly as political ideology, the poll shows.
Across most demographic groups, Americans have broadly similar attitudes toward Covid. It’s true not just of the young and old, but also of men and women, as well as the rich, middle class and poor. The partisan gap, by contrast, is huge:
From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult
Many Democrats say that they feel unsafe in their communities; are worried about getting sick from Covid; and believe the virus poses a significant risk to their children, parents and friends. Republicans are less worried about each of these issues.
Who’s right? There is no one answer to that question, because different people have different attitudes toward risk. An acceptable risk to one person (driving in a snowstorm, say, or swimming in the ocean) may be unacceptable to another. Neither is necessarily wrong.
But the poll results suggest that Americans have adopted at least some irrational beliefs about Covid. In our highly polarized country, many people seem to be allowing partisanship to influence their beliefs and sometimes to overwhelm scientific evidence.
Millions of Republican voters have decided that downplaying Covid is core to their identity as conservatives, even as their skepticism of vaccines means that the virus is killing many more Republicans than Democrats.
Millions of Democrats have decided that organizing their lives around Covid is core to their identity as progressives, even as pandemic isolation and disruption are fueling mental-health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime, rising blood pressure and growing educational inequality. As David Hogg, a gun-control activist, tweeted last year, ‘The inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative.’…
No vaccine, no worry
The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu.
For the unvaccinated, however, Covid is worse than any other common virus. It has killed more than 865,000 Americans, the vast majority unvaccinated. In the weeks before vaccines became widely available, Covid was the country’s No. 1 cause of death, above even cancer and heart disease.
But look at Americans’ level of worry about getting sick, by vaccination status:
From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult
It’s a remarkable disconnect between perception and reality. A majority of the boosted say they are worried about getting sick from Covid. In truth, riding in a car presents more danger to most of them than the virus does.
A majority of the unvaccinated, on the other hand, say they are not particularly worried. The starkest, saddest way to understand the irrationality of this view is to listen to the regret of unvaccinated people who are desperately sick from Covid or who have watched relatives die from it.
‘There’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now,’ a California prosecutor said at an anti-vaccine rally in December. She died of Covid this month.
Children in crisis
I know that some Democrats believe that their approach — the emphasis on minimizing any Covid risks — comes with little downside. But the poll results call that argument into question.
One area of agreement among Democrats and Republicans is a widespread concern that pandemic disruptions are harming their children:
From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult
People are right to be worried, too. Three medical groups — representing pediatricians, child psychiatrists and children’s hospitals — recently declared ‘a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health.’ The worst effects have been on Black and Latino children, as well as children in high-poverty schools.
Many Democrats are effectively dismissing these costs and instead focusing on the minuscule risks of Covid hospitalization or long Covid among children. Most Democrats, for example, say they favor moving classes online in response to Omicron, despite widespread evidence that remote school has failed and little evidence that shutting schools leads to fewer Covid cases.
Closed schools almost certainly do more damage to children and vaccinated adults than Omicron does.
From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult
(Here’s much more Morning Consult polling on Covid, going back to early 2020.)
Democrats like to think of their political party as the one that respects science and evidence. And on several issues — vaccines, climate change, voter fraud, Barack Obama’s birthplace and more — that certainly seems to be the case. But just because something is usually true doesn’t mean it always is.
On Covid, both political tribes really do seem to be struggling to read the evidence objectively. As a result, the country is suffering thousands of preventable deaths every week while also accepting a preventable crisis of isolation that’s falling particularly hard on children.” Read more at New York Times
“The memorial entrusted to preserve Nazi Germany’s most notorious extermination camp has denounced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his absurd Holocaust comparison at an anti-vaccine march on Sunday. Kennedy, one of America’s most well-known vaccine conspiracy theorists, told a crowd in Washington, D.C. that Anne Frank was in a better situation when she was hiding from the Nazis when compared to Americans who don’t want to receive a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine. ‘Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did,’ he told the crowd. In a blunt response later Sunday, the Auschwitz Memorial said it was clear that Kennedy had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany—including children like Anne Frank—in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay,’ the museum wrote.” Read more at The Hill
“An activist investor wants Peloton to fire its CEO and consider a sale. In a letter made public today, Blackwells Capital blames John Foley for the fitness-equipment company’s recent weak performance and described it as an attractive acquisition target.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“When Mark Rosenberg suddenly resigned as president of Florida International University last week, he said he needed to tend to his and his wife’s health problems. But it turns out there was much more to the story. CBS Miami reports that Rosenberg, 72, relentlessly pursued a young employee at FIU—and then admitted his conduct to the board of trustees when he learned the woman was talking about it. In a statement on Sunday, Rosenberg blamed mental health issues. ‘Regrettably, these issues spilled over to my work and I caused discomfort for a valued colleague. I unintentionally created emotional—not physical—entanglement. I have apologized. I apologize to you. I take full responsibility and regret my actions,’ he said.” [Daily Beast] Read more at CBS Miami
“In response to the shooting of two police officers responding to a 911 call in Harlem—one was fatally injured and the other remains in critical condition—New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced plans to officially bring back the NYPD’s controversial plainclothes anti-gun unit in a modified form. The unit was dissolved in 2020 because of criticism over its disproportionate use of force against Black and Hispanic New Yorkers. ‘I talked about this on the campaign trail. Our team has done the proper analysis. And now we’re going to deploy that,’ he said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ on Sunday. During the show, Adams broadly discussed plans to make the city safer and mentioned an additional plan to place mental health professionals in the subway system, saying that the city plans to ‘flood our system with mental health professionals and law enforcement working as a team to move out the disorder that’s clearly in the subway system in our city.’ [Daily Beast] Read more at The Hill
“John Stockton, the former Utah Jazz player and one of Gonzaga University’s basketball team’s most famous alumni, has lost his season tickets to home games after a disagreement with the university’s athletics department over its mask mandate. ‘Basically, it came down to, they were asking me to wear a mask to the games and being a public figure, someone a little bit more visible, I stuck out in the crowd a little bit,’ Stockton said. ‘And therefore they received complaints and felt like from whatever the higher-ups—those weren’t discussed, but from whatever it was higher up – they were going to have to either ask me to wear a mask or they were going to suspend my tickets.’ Stockton has taken a very public stance against pandemic safety measures and has spread extensive misinformation around the COVID-19 virus, including the bogus claims that possibly millions of people have died from vaccines, including more than 100 professional athletes. He is one of two players for whom Gonzaga has retired jersey numbers and he remains the NBA’s all-time leader in assists and steals.” [Daily Beast] Read more at Spokesman
“The former chairman of Credit Suisse had the company pay for empty private flights on multiple occasions, The Wall Street Journal reports. An internal review of company travel found that, after António Horta-Osório moved to Zurich last spring, he flew from there to London and Lisbon on several weekends, usually disembarking on a Thursday. The planes, paid for by Credit Suisse, would then return to Switzerland empty, fly back to Horta-Osório on Monday, and return him to Zurich, rather than waiting out the weekend. According to the Journal, a person close to Horta-Osório said the planes were rented and not chartered for the weekends. Horta-Osório’s use of company cash for empty planes reportedly hastened his ouster from the chairmanship. The company announced his resignation this week after none of his fellow board members chose to back him in the power struggle.”[Daily Beast] Read more at The Wall Street Journal
“Ford taps the brakes on orders for Maverick pickups.
The automaker is already struggling to meet demand and will accept customer orders for the 2023 Maverick in the summer. The truck starts at around $20,000, making it an entry-level option for drivers as supply-chain issues and computer-chip shortages have caused new-vehicle prices to skyrocket. Experts expect Ford to sell 80,000-95,000 Mavericks this year.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Conservative groups across the US, often linked to deep-pocketed rightwing donors, are carrying out a campaign to ban books from school libraries, often focused on works that address race, LGBTQ issues or marginalized communities.
Literature has already been removed from schools in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Librarians and teachers warn the trend is on the increase, as groups backed by wealthy Republican donors use centrally drawn up tactics and messaging to harangue school districts into removing certain texts.” Read more at The Guardian
“Amid major selloffs, tech stocks from major companies like Zoom, Peloton, and Netflix that enjoyed a successful 2021 are faring far worse in 2022. Beyond concerns about federal monetary policy, these companies are also struggling due to people venturing back outside.” [Vox] Read more at Washington Post / Aaron Gregg
“In a new letter, 27 House members asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Jim Jordan to ban members of Congress from owning or trading stocks.” [Vox] Read more at Business Insider / Bryan Metzger
“Attorneys general in DC, Texas, Indiana, and Washington state are suing Google over allegations that the company used deceptive measures to obtain customers’ location data.” [Vox] Read more at Axios / Oriana Gonzalez
“New Restrictions Cause Mass Rejections In Texas
Last week we reported on the beginning of a new voter suppression pattern out of Texas: Due to new voter restrictions passed in the state last year, hundreds of absentee ballots applications are being rejected.
The cause is a new ID requirement: Voters who qualify to vote by mail in the state must now apply with either a state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. But there’s a problem: The type of number on the application (whether state ID, driver’s license or SSN) must match the type of number the voter used when they first registered to vote — forcing them to remember sometimes decades-old minutiae.
What’s worse, outdated application forms — without the ID number field — are still in circulation by the thousands all around the state, in municipal offices, libraries and the like. Some counties are rejecting up to 50% of ballot applications.
To add to the trouble, the secretary of state’s office says a ‘paper shortage’ is restricting the number of registration forms they can print and distribute this year. Texas law requires voters to register using paper forms. (The League of Women Voters has threatened a lawsuit over the shortage.)” Read more at Talking Points Memo
“Burkina Faso's army said it took control of the country yesterday, deposing President Roch Kabore, dissolving the government, suspending the constitution and shuttering its borders. The coup was announced on state television by Captain Sidsore Kader Ouedraogo, who said the military had seized power in response to the ‘ongoing degradation of the security situation’ in the country and the ‘incapacity of the government’ to unite the population. Sitting alongside him was Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, who was introduced as the country's new leader. Damiba was recently promoted by Kabore to commander of the country's third military region, which is responsible for security in the capital city of Ouagadougou, according to Reuters. There was no mention of Kabore's whereabouts. The president has not been seen in public since fighting broke out on Sunday around the presidential palace.” Read more at CNN
“Big trouble | U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s problems escalatedtoday when the police said they will formally investigate allegations of pandemic rule-breaking parties at his Downing Street office. His premiership has been engulfed by the claims, and the probe may raise the chance that members of his Conservative Party ask him to resign.
Conservative Party member Theodore Agnew, a Treasury and Cabinet Office minister responsible for efficiency, resigned after accusing Johnson’s government of failing to properly root out fraud in a pandemic loan program.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Protest politics | Australian Open organizers today reversed a ban on political slogans on t-shirts following criticism after some attendees were removed from a weekend match for wearing shirts saying ‘Where is Peng Shuai?’ in support of the Chinese tennis star. Tennis Australia said it would now allow spectators to wear such statement clothing, as long as they behaved themselves at the event.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The Mexican government pledged to investigate the killing of a journalist, the third reporter assassinated this year in the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous country for the press.” Read more at Bloomberg
“(CNN)A lone gunman opened fire in an auditorium at Heidelberg University in south west Germany on Monday, injuring four people, police said.
The perpetrator, described as a young man, is dead, a police spokesman told CNN.
Police said the lone gunman began shooting while a lecture was taking place, before running outside.
A police spokesperson told Reuters they believe he killed himself.” Read more at CNN
“Looking for some Hollywood entertainment with a bit more respect for authority? Consider streaming Tencent Video, the Chinese streaming service suffering ridicule for censoring Hollywood productions and providing alternate endings that upend the original plot.
As Vice reports, Chinese users have mocked Tencent Video’s version of the 1999 David Fincher film Fight Club, which culminates with the anti-hero successfully imploding the headquarters of credit card companies in a bid to unleash anarchy. In the Tencent edit, no such destruction occurs. Instead the film ends with text imposed on a black screen informing the audience that ‘the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.’One sarcastic Weibo user suggested some more alternate endings for censors to consider: ‘Probably Ocean’s 11 would have all been arrested. The Godfather’s entire family would end up in jail.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen were locked in a duel for the ages Sunday night. They engineered scoring drives in ever shorter amounts of time, until there was no time left. The Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills headed to overtime to settle their epic playoff game.
Then the tens of millions of people watching saw how an all-time classic game was decided: by the flip of the coin.
The Chiefs won the toss in overtime. Mahomes led another touchdown drive. Kansas City won 42-36 and advanced to the AFC Championship game while Buffalo and Josh Allen were the victims of an overtime structure that places the closest outcomes in a billion-dollar industry on the whims of a coin landing on one side or the other.
The result reignited the controversy over how football’s most exciting games are settled. Allen was left helpless on the sidelines as Mahomes marched down the field for a touchdown drive, after a game when the most important plays were engineered by Mahomes, Allen and an official who tossed a coin into the air.
“The rules are what they are,” Allen said afterward.
The NFL’s overtime rules boil down to something simple: If the team that gets the ball first scores a touchdown, it wins. The game is over. If there isn’t a touchdown, it becomes sudden death.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The SAT college admission exam will soon go fully digital, ditching paper test booklets and answer sheets, and get much shorter, shrinking from three hours to two.
Those changes and others announced by the College Board on Tuesday will take effect at international test sites next year and domestic sites by spring 2024. There are no plans to offer the digital test to students at home. The third major overhaul of the SAT within the past 20 years comes amid mounting challenges, unprecedented in modern times, to the relevance of standardized testing in college admissions.
Prominent colleges and universities across the country have halted or ended testing requirements during the coronavirus pandemic, and some competitive schools, including the University of California, have gone a step further and declared they won’t consider scores from the SAT or rival ACT at all when choosing a class.” Read more at Washington Post
Amy Schneider just won her 39th game on “Jeopardy!” (Casey Durkin/Jeopardy Productions Inc.)
“On Monday night, ‘Jeopardy!’ phenom Amy Schneider continued to trounce her fellow competitors and make show history: She won her 39th game in a row, officially becoming the player with the second-highest number of consecutive victories.
She broke the recent record set by Matt Amodio, another super-champion who won 38 games last fall. The all-time champion is, of course, Ken Jennings, who happens to be serving as a guest host, and won 74 games and more than $2.5 million back in 2004.
But Schneider has continued racking up winnings over the past two months, and has now collected a total of $1,319,800. In a rare instance, she missed big on Final Jeopardy, losing $25,000 on a clue about U.S. museums. Luckily, she was already crushing the competition with $37,600 going into the last round, so she still finished with a healthy margin over the second-place finisher.” Read more at Washington Post
“Madison Keys advanced to the Australian Open semifinals with a 6-3, 6-2 quarterfinal win over French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova – her 10th match win in a row and 11th of the new year.” Read more at USA Today
Jan. 25: Madison Keys hits a return against Barbora Krejcikova during their quarterfinal match.WILLIAM WEST, AFP via Getty Images
“‘Secrets of Playboy’: Hugh Hefner's former girlfriends, Playmates and employees allege a culture of abuse in a new docuseries that arrives at a time when the public may finally be ready to reckon with Hefner's legacy.” Read more at USA Today
“Baseball’s 2022 Hall of Fame class – or lack thereof – will be revealed on Tuesday. Based on past precedent and current vote totals, seven-time MVP Barry Bonds and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens will miss induction in their 10th and final year on the ballot due to accusations they used performance-enhancing drugs. Meanwhile, first-time candidate David Ortiz will find out if his star turn as Boston Red Sox DH will be enough to get him in – or if questions over a reported positive test for a banned substance will at least temporarily land him in Bonds-Clemens limbo. Other first-time candidates include Alex Rodriguez, who sits fourth on the all-time home runs list, and Tim Lincecum, who has three World Series rings and two Cy Young awards.” Read more at USA Today
“Lives Lived: The photojournalist Steve Schapiro documented the civil rights movement, migrant workers and movie stars. He died at 87.” Read more at New York Times
“More than 1,000 books from the personal collection of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are up for auction at Bonhams. The trove features legal textbooks, photos, feminist literature and other documents spanning some 60 years of Ginsburg’s career, reports Harriet Sherwood for the Guardian.
‘A person’s library can give us a sense of who the individual is and how she came to be,’ says Catherine Williamson, director of Bonhams’ book department, in a statement. ‘Justice Ginsburg’s library is no different, as it records her evolution from student (and voracious reader) to lawyer and law professor, to judge and finally, justice of the United States Supreme Court.’” Read more at Smithsonian
“Rock legend Neil Young wants Spotify to remove his music in response to the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on the platform.” Read more at USA Today
Bob Dylan in a recording studio, c. 1962. Photo: Getty Images
“Sony Music Entertainment announced today that it acquired Bob Dylan's entire back catalog, dating to 1962.
Dylan, 80, was first signed by Sony's Columbia Records in 1961, and he's since sold 125 million records.
‘I’m glad that all my recordings can stay where they belong,’ Dylan said in a statement.” Read more at Axios