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The U.K. Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) announced Friday it is investigating a sub-lineage of the omicron coronavirus variant—known as BA.2 and nicknamed by some scientists as “stealth omicron”—that appears to be outpacing other forms of the variant around the world and is raising fears of an even more transmissible strain of the virus. KEY FACTS In a statement Friday, the UKHSA said it has designated BA.2 a “variant under investigation,” the agency told Forbes, confirming news reports and a since-deleted tweet from the agency. Just 53 samples of BA.2 have been identified in the U.K. by January 10, it...

The plane was forced to reverse course mid-flight on Thursday due to a positive COVID-19 case on board the aircraft that was headed for the Pacific nation in the aftermath of Saturday's volcanic eruption and tsunami which devastated the country. Since Tonga is COVID-19 free, it has required delivery of aid to the island nation of about 105,000 to be contactless in order to keep the coronavirus out.

Transcript: Ngaire Woods*: The good news is that the elite across the world trust each other more and more, so we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling the majority of people they were polling trusted that elite less. So we can lead, but ....

The comments, which the president and White House sought to clarify amid backlash, served as a signal to Russia that it was okay to “take some” of Ukraine, McConnell said on Thursday. “I hope Vladimir Putin doesn’t misunderstand the message: No incursion into Ukraine is acceptable,” McConnell said during an appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report.”

Theme #3: “The Collapse of Western Civilization is Imminent”Russia pushes the false claim that Western civilization is collapsing and has strayed from “traditional values” because it works to ensure the safety and equality of LGBTQI+ people and promotes concepts such as female equality and multiculturalism. The demise of Western civilization is one of Russia’s oldest disinformation tropes, with claims of “the decaying west” documented since the 19th century.This “values”-based disinformation narrative evokes ill-defined concepts including “tradition,” “family values,” and “spirituality.” Russia argues it is the bastion of so-called “traditional values” and gender roles and serves as a moral counterweight to...

The University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles has a lot in common with urban areas across the US: A dense population with lots of businesses and housing. A cluster of car dealerships. A row of restaurants. Schools and a community center. But nestled in the predominantly Latino community is something rarely found in urban areas outside California: an oil field.

Whether it’s anti-vaccine messaging or falsehoods about the 2020 election, it’s easy to blame conservatives or Republicans as a group for spreading misinformation, as many in the media and academia have done. But this message is oversimplified, and anyone who wants to fight back against the very real scourge of fake news in American politics should look more closely. In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly,...

From a Big Tech crackdown to the rebirth of local news, 16 future-minded thinkers predict where journalism will be in 15 years. It’s almost conventional wisdom right now that the news media is in a fast-moving crisis, with mainstream news sources collapsing and Americans increasingly divided not only in what they read, but even what facts they choose to believe. How much worse will it get? Or is there a way out? When shunted through digital media, information behaves like water: It flows together, it melds and it finds its lowest common level. The trivial blurs with the profound, the...

Our sun just had a medium-sized energy burp. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) caught a mid-level solar flare on Thursday (Jan. 20) with a peak at 1:01 a.m. EST (0601 GMT). You can see the flash on the limb, or edge, of the sun, thanks to SDO's powerful imaging. Because the flare was on the sun's limb, it likely wasn't pointed squarely toward Earth. The flare is classified as medium or M5.5 class, powerful enough to potentially cause radio blackouts in polar regions if the flare were to hit our planet square-on. The sun has an 11-year cycle of solar...

President Joe Biden is nominating a new commissioner to the Federal Election Commission, the nation's chief campaign finance watchdog. The White House announced on Friday that Biden was putting forward Dara Lindenbaum, a campaign finance attorney, to join the six-member board governing the agency, which is charged with enforcing campaign finance laws and issuing opinions guiding federal officeseekers. Lindenbaum, according to her bio on her law firm's website, was general counsel to Stacey Abrams' 2018 Georgia gubernatorial run and deputy general counsel for former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential bid. If confirmed, she would replace longtime commissioner Steven Walther,...

With just a few months left until North Carolina’s U.S. Senate primary, two Republican candidates stepped up their attacks on a third endorsed by former President Donald Trump and steadily moving up in the polls. Former Gov. Pat McCrory and former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker each leveled sharp criticism of U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and the political action committee supporting him at the Moore County Republican Men’s Club luncheon Thursday afternoon — a sign they may be growing concerned by his rise, though they say otherwise. Budd spoke to attendees via video conference because he was in Washington, D.C., for...

Stocks are off to a tough start this year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is already in a correction, a more than 10% drop. Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist of Grantham, Mayo, & van Otterloo (GMO) said in a report called "Let the Wild Rumpus Begin" that stocks are now in the midst of a "superbubble," that it won't end well. He noted that US stocks have experienced two such "superbubbles" before: 1929, a market fall that led to the Great Depression, and again in 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst. He also said the US housing market was a...

[Catholic Caucus] Back to the 70’s: What if All Traditional Priests are Suspended? (Part I) Bad news is brewing as to the future of Ecclesia Dei communities in light of Pope Francis’ promulgation of Traditionis Custodes, which attempts to severely restrict the celebration of the Traditional Mass in dioceses as well as eliminates the use of all other Traditional sacraments with the goal of the eventual abolition of all 1962 Rites. On December 3, 2021, Lifesite News reported the following:A German Catholic website reported that, according to its sources, the Vatican is planning a crackdown soon on the traditional...

Kevin McCarthy was done being nice. The House Republican leader cast off his typically sunny demeanor during a December 8 meeting of the GOP conference to deliver a stern warning to his most raucous members: Quit trying to hold your vote for speaker over my head. "He said, 'If any of you come to me and tell me that you're not going to vote for me unless I do something, I'm going to do exactly the opposite, even if I agree with you,'" said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who was there at the time. A second Republican member told...

Fewer than one in six Americans want U.S. soldiers deployed to defend Ukraine if Russia invades the country, according to a new poll published on Friday, as high level talks got underway in Geneva. A poll from Convention of States Action (COSA) in partnership with the Trafalgar Group found that just 15.3 percent of likely general election voters believed the U.S. should provide troops as "boots on the ground" in the event of an invasion. The figures came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks in Geneva with tensions between Russia and Ukraine...

The update from the company follows a CNBC report on Thursday that said Peloton plans to temporarily stop production of its Bike in February and March and won't make its Tread treadmill for six weeks starting in February. The company already paused production of the upgraded, more expensive Bike Plus in December and won't resume until at least June, reported CNBC, citing internal company documents. Peloton reportedly may not produce any of the larger and heavier Tread Plus in the 2022 fiscal year. Foley pushed back on the report, saying the information obtained by the media is "incomplete, out of...

Texas Man Arrested for Making Election-Related Threats to Government Officials First Case Charged by Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force A Texas man was arrested today in Travis County, Texas, for allegedly sending threatening election-related communications to government officials on Jan. 5, 2021. Chad Stark, 54, of Leander, was arrested this morning in a law enforcement operation carried out by the FBI. He is scheduled to make his initial appearance this afternoon at the federal courthouse in Austin, Texas. This is the first criminal case brought by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force. Announced by Attorney General Merrick B....

Two New York City police officers were struck in a shooting in Harlem Friday night, days after a 16-year-old boy allegedly shot another officer in the Bronx, according to authorities. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed that two officers had been shot near 119 West 135th Street in the NYPD’s 32nd Precinct but said their conditions were not immediately available. They were rushed to Harlem Hospital. Multiple police sources told Fox News Digital that both officers have died. The suspect's condition was not immediately clear, but he may have turned the gun on himself. Authorities could not immediately confirm his injuries.

I went to my first eviction hearing in two years last week. I hadn’t evicted anybody, or lost any rents, during Covid. The neighborhood social-services agency had given out rent vouchers to six delinquent tenants of mine. The tenant in apartment 403—a one-bedroom—was an exception. I had told him about the free rent money at the agency, but he never moved on it. His living room consisted of a sleeping bag, dozens of cigarette butts and a bong. Every Monday I knocked on his door to see if he was still there. He owed three months’ rent. On his application...

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Friday defended his record on civil rights and race relations, blasting criticism sparked by voting remarks he made earlier this week, where he said he made an "inadvertent omission." McConnell immediately raised the issue as he started a press conference in Kentucky, saying that he wanted to "take an opportunity at the outset here to address the outrageous characterization of my history and record on voting rights and race relations."