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Thanks to the singer’s expressive reactions at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony on Sunday night, Queen B is now a new meme with thousands of tweets joining the new trend. The queen of R&B and pop now has 28 Grammy Awards after netting four more trophies on Sunday but was nominated for nine awards in total this year. “I am so honored and I am so excited, thank you guys,” the singer said when she stepped onstage to accept the award for Best R&B Performance....

Oliver, or ChezOliz as he is known on the app, first posted a video in March when he was still sitting in a high chair. Of course, this video was a little less involved than his newer videos—showing him whisk an egg or two. Fast-forward to today, Oliver is standing on his own in the kitchen whipping up concoctions with the help of his parents from off camera—he is a toddler after all....

Recent events should not have dimmed that glow. The killing of Amadou Diallo was obviously an aberration; cops aren’t in the habit of firing 41 times at an unarmed immigrant without any criminal record. In fact, the NYPD uses deadly force less often than police in other cities. And for all the excesses, poor neighborhoods are not roiling with complaints against police. I spoke last week with Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, who coauthored a new report on community-police relations for the nonpolitical Vera Institute of Justice....

“We’re not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission,” Biden said during a meeting with Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi of Iraq. Monday marked the fourth meeting of what’s been dubbed the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue in Washington—the second of the Biden administration. The White House has not provided additional details on what it’s broadly describing as an effort to shift to security and training missions—a “change in mission” that had been anticipated for some time and is fully-backed by Iraq....

Medicare announced last month that it would increase its monthly premium for outpatient care for “Part B” from $148.50 to $170.10, almost $22, beginning in January. “Rather than assessing the current $21.60 per month … premium increase in full, I urge you to reduce the amount,” Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, wrote health secretary Xavier Becerra. “Taking this type of approach would reduce near-term expenses for seniors on fixed incomes....

Biden came into office with strong approval ratings, but has since lost support from voters amid a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Two Quinnipiac polls taken four years apart found both Trump and Biden had nearly exactly the same support from members of their own parties, but when it comes to the economy, voters felt better about Trump than they do about Biden. “Battered on trust, doubted on leadership, and challenged on overall competency, President Biden is being hammered on all sides as his approval rating continues its downward slide to a number not seen since the tough scrutiny of the Trump administration,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement....

History, however, is not so optimistic. Though Democrats now lead Republicans in national preference polling, Biden’s approval ratings have so far failed to fully recover from the depths to which they’d plunged in mid-July, while more than half the national electorate continues to disapprove of his job performance. His approval ratings also closely track the pre-midterm election performance of his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, entering an election year in which his party lost 41 seats in the House of Representatives and ceded control of the chamber to Democrats....

In a series of paid ads earlier this month, the Democratic presidential candidate’s team asked users to sign a petition demanding that Facebook change its policies about fact checking, fake news and misinformation “for the sake of our democracy.” Funded by the Biden Victory Fund, some of the advertising posts had a potential reach of more than one million people, the social network’s Ad Library shows. The similarly-worded messages, which ran between 13-15 July, echoed Biden’s earlier open letter to the Mark Zuckerberg-led platform, which accused Facebook of failing to “limit the effect of false ads” while letting President Donald Trump “say anything....

Reports released this month indicated Biden’s reluctance to press ahead with investigations into Trump during his upcoming presidency out of fear that it would divide the nation. But New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell disagreed. In a series of tweets shared earlier this month, the lawmaker called for an investigation of the entire Trump administration after Biden’s inauguration. Biden on Tuesday night said he would not push the DOJ to go forward with investigations against Trump after he leaves office....

U.S. and Polish officials are investigating the deadly blasts that killed two people in Polish territory on Tuesday. A statement from the Polish Foreign Ministry identified the missile as “Russian-made.” However, Biden told reporters in Bali, Indonesia, where he is meeting with G7 leaders, that there was “preliminary” evidence to indicate that the projectile was not fired from Russia. “There is preliminary information to contest that [the missile came from Russia],” said Biden....

When the candidates were asked if they would give a gift or offer forgiveness to other candidates, Senator Elizabeth Warren talked about the hundreds of thousands of selfies she had taken with people. Biden said he also had done that, but took it a bit further. “My wife and I have a call list of somewhere between 20 and 100 people that we call at least every week or every month to tell them, ‘I’m here,’” Biden said....

The election is more than two years away, but speculation about whether Biden plans to run for reelection has already begun as he faces low approval numbers, challenges to key parts of his agenda and high inflation. Axelrod, a strategist who helped propel former President Barack Obama to victory in 2008, warned Biden’s age could be a possible setback to his 2024 campaign. Biden, 79, became the oldest elected president in United States history when he won in 2020....

According to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker, Biden’s average approval rating now stands at 41 percent, up from his lowest score in office of 37.5 percent recorded on July 20 amid decades-high levels of inflation and record-breaking gas prices. The last time Biden’s approval rating was at 41 percent was on June 1, with his current score the joint highest average score since it reached 41.1 percent on May 23. While still way down from the low to mid-50s he was recording in the first several months of his presidency, Biden’s approval ratings now rising from an all-time low is a much-needed step in the right direction for him and his party ahead of the upcoming midterms....

That improvement comes as the president continues to consider his options for the 2024 presidential election amid speculation about his future and voters’ apparent concern about his age. The Marist poll published on Thursday found that Biden’s approval rating is now 43 percent—up from 42 percent in mid-November—while disapproval of the job he’s doing has fallen from 54 percent to 48 percent over the same period. The poll was conducted from December 6 to 8 among 1,312 U....

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, had already delayed the vote multiple times, as the White House tried to negotiate a deal over money for road and bridge repairs, electric car incentives, and water system and broadband upgrades, among several other priorities that Biden had laid out during the presidential campaign last year. Negotiations are expected to continue on the effort, though its delay signals struggles in getting Biden’s agenda through under razor-thin margins in both the House and Senate....

During the hearing, Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders asked Califf a question related to Califf’s relations with drug companies and his investments in pharmaceutical stocks. “What kind of comfort can you give to the American people when you have been so closely tied to the pharmaceutical industry yourself?” asked Sanders. “I’m totally with you. The price of pharmaceuticals is way too high in this country,” Califf responded. Califf, who served as FDA commissioner before the end of the Obama administration, promised that he would work to make prescription drugs more affordable, use data to efficiently approve COVID treatments and tests, do a full review of the agency’s management of opioid painkillers, continue the focus on tobacco regulation and combat medical misinformation on social media if he were confirmed....

That’s the question the United States’ allies around the world are asking themselves these days, thanks to the president’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. In what can only be seen as a purely political decision—rather than a move to make our nation, our allies or our Afghan partners any safer—Biden has enabled the enslavement of roughly 39 million people to the Taliban. A population the size of California’s was cavalierly discarded with no thought of the consequences, and no consideration of the American citizens left behind or the Afghans who helped America’s war effort for years....

It should not have taken so long for Pompeo to come to such a conclusion on his last day in office, especially with the prevalence of Uighur testimonials and satellite images of Chinese camps. It makes you question the efficacy and authenticity behind the decision. It sows further doubt in our government institutions and highlights how genocide can be used as a political tool. We have seen for decades how presidents from both parties use the Armenian genocide for political expediency....

“It’s the closest we’ve been to the use of nuclear weapons in over 50 years,” says one civilian working at the Omaha, Nebraska-based Strategic Command. “But I’m not so sure that we are communicating the right thing to deter Putin.” The nuclear planner and two other senior officers who spoke to Newsweek say that President Biden favors non-nuclear options over nuclear ones, should Russia cross the nuclear threshold. The officials don’t disagree with that view, and none of them advocate any use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike....

Miller said the Trump campaign has not been “cavalier” in regards to their treatment of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing practices, dismissing the numerous rallies and Rose Garden events held with no masks. The 2020 campaign senior adviser told ABC News’ This Week on Sunday that Americans just want to “get life back to normal,” and he accused Biden of wearing masks purely as political posturing. Miller’s remarks come just three days after Trump himself was diagnosed with coronavirus—and just over one week since the president mocked Biden at the first presidential debate for wearing “the biggest mask I’ve ever seen....