On Thursday, the Kansas senator released an eight-point strategy regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. In August, Marshall suggested that there was evidence that China allegedly had knowledge of a laboratory leak in Wuhan that occurred several months before the initial COVID-19 cases arrived in the U.S. “There is substantial evidence that COVID-19 was spreading throughout China in September or October of 2019,” Marshal told Kansas Reflector. “China intentionally misled America and the world about what they knew and slowed our response....

The Coronavirus Origin Validation, Investigation, and Determination (COVID) Act of 2022 submitted by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and co-sponsored by more than a dozen GOP colleagues was also put to Congress last year. It gives Beijing 90 days after enactment to grant a team of international scientists unfettered access to laboratories in the first COVID-19 epicenter in central China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). In February 2021, more than a year after the pandemic began, a team of WHO and Chinese experts concluded that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, was unlikely to have emerged as a result of a laboratory accident....

Tuberville, a newly elected senator from Alabama, previously hinted that he would join GOP Representative Mo Brooks to challenge the election by using the Electoral Count Act of 1877 when Congress meets to finalize the vote on January 6. If Brooks and Tuberville successfully band together to oppose the electoral vote, both chambers would be required to hold a two-hour debate and then vote on whether to approve or deny the objection....

The president’s recent hour-long phone call pressuring Georgia’s top Republican election official to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in the Peach State on the eve of two pivotal Senate runoff elections acted as yet another obstacle for GOP lawmakers who warn that the party has veered away from its values. Additionally, the effort of some in Congress to strip President-elect Joe Biden of his victory by refusing to certify the election results on Wednesday due to baseless claims of voter fraud will go well beyond the pale of presenting a grand finale loyalty test to Trump....

The Value In Electing Women Political Action Committee has lent its support to every Republican woman currently serving in the United States Congress and Senate, with a notable deviation in the cases of Greene from Georgia and Boebert from Colorado. It’s an exception Julie Conway, VIEW PAC’s executive director said was “intentional.” “While we rightfully celebrate the number of GOP women serving in the House, I’ve always professed quality over quantity,” Conway told Business Insider Wednesday in an email....

Dragic, 29, didn’t take long to get his smile back in order, especially considering the jokes thrown his way by teammates comparing him to Jim Carrey’s character in “Dumb and Dumber.” MORE: We rank the top 10 NBA moments of 2015 | Jason Day’s wife responds after being ’tackled’ by LeBron “No more Jim Carrey,” Dragic said Friday (via the Miami Herald). “They just put a crown over it. I was there for two hours....

While Johnson was dominating the race and Matt Kenseth was doing his best to keep him in sight, two drivers saw their Chase hopes officially vanish. Our winners and losers from Texas Motor Speedway. Winners Jimmie Johnson — Johnson threw down the gauntlet at Texas, producing a dominating performance that sent a message that he is poised to wrap up his sixth Sprint Cup championship. Of course, he was in this position last year, too....

U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange ruled against Noem’s lawsuit suing the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI). Noem sued to overturn the National Park Service’s (NPS) refusal to let her state hold a July 4 fireworks at the iconic national monument. Lange, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, refused to issue an injunction against the NPS’ decision. Lange said Noem failed to prove that the agency’s refusal was “arbitrary and capricious” as she had claimed....

As a candidate, he can appear slightly overproduced, a little too smooth for the hurly-burly of the hustings. Lately, Romney has been courting the evangelical vote, key to winning Republican primaries. He knows that some evangelicals regard his religion, Mormonism, as heresy (according to the National Journal, more than a quarter of self-identified evangelicals tell pollsters that they won’t vote for a Mormon). So last week, at a lackluster rally in the Bible belt of South Carolina where maybe 300 people half-filled an auditorium, Romney was trying, a bit unctuously, to show his down-home piety....

The brief reports, which were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, detail how two patients were able to receive their second doses under careful medical supervision after having allergic reactions to their first doses of the Moderna vaccine. The researchers note that, with other vaccines, if patients have positive skin allergy test results and more doses are needed, the vaccine is administered in graded—meaning small, subsequent—doses under medical observation....

This led to instant confusion from viewers of the Grammy nominations live stream. For example, one tweeted “lizzo’s truth hurts is 2 years old wtf,” another wrote, “Listen…no shade to lizzo but those songs are like 3 years old…how does that work??,” while another made their feelings known by tweeting: “lizzo got so many nominations for old music i—— am not feeling god as hell.” How Lizzo’s 2017 single managed to get a 2019 nod for Song of the Year is all down to the fine print of the category, as can be seen of the official list of nominees on the Grammy website....

Sheila Sugden, who sleeps with a cut out of the “Delilah” singer in her bedroom, was left stunned after her grandaughter, Lori Walker, got her a ticket to the concert in Halifax, England. The superfan became the real star at the gig last week when she went armed with a sign reading: “I’m 89 and still your No. 1 fan! Love you Tom.” The grandmother, who has 11 grandkids, first began bopping to Jones’ music in 1965 after he stormed the charts with his first hit single “It’s Not Unusual....

The woman explained that she had children from a previous relationship and a child with her current spouse. She asked if “you heard a telephone call between your spouse and their parents asking if they could meet at a local attraction at some point soon but specifically asking not to bring your older children so they could spend some time with their grandchild.” The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a blended family as “a family that includes children of a previous marriage of one spouse or both,” and these relationships can sometimes be hard to navigate....

Head over to his Instagram page to see the full set in detail. (You should also check out the Simpsons/NHL crossover logos.) And we certainly hope Chris Rock is wrong.

During pregnancy, untreated hyperthyroidism may lead to life-threatening complications for you and your baby. Graves’ disease is the most common type of pregnancy-related hyperthyroidism. Graves’ disease can run in families. Anyone can get it, but it most often develops in biological females under 40—in other words, during potential childbearing years. It sometimes comes on during pregnancy. But you can have a successful pregnancy with Graves’ disease. This article looks at what Graves’ disease is, fertility and pregnancy risks, how it’s diagnosed and treated, and how to avoid possible complications....

Despite China’s egregious human rights violations (genocide, occupation, arbitrary detention, to name a few), my country, Greece, became the first country to accept China’s invitation to attend Beijing 2022 after Chinese President Xi Jinping invited Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and urged him not to “politicize” the Winter Games. By accepting the invitation, the Greek government is now complicit in the Chinese government’s crimes and is soiling the sacred origin of the Olympics....

The storm brought icy temperatures and strong winds to Texas on Friday, straining the state’s power grid and leaving more than 77,000 customers without power. While the storm did not cause widespread blackouts as one did in 2021, some power companies were forced to initiate smaller blackouts to alleviate the power grid’s stress after Texas authorities underestimated demand. The outages added political pressure to Abbott, whose administration has long faced scrutiny over its handling of the power grid....

On Monday, Laura Hogue took direct aim at Arbery, saying that he wasn’t “an innocent victim,” but rather a “recurring nighttime intruder.” “Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made, does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Hogue said. Hogue suggested to the jury that Arbery would still be alive if he had not run away from Travis McMichael, McMichael’s father Greg and William “Roddie” Bryan on February 23, 2020, when the three white men confronted him in the Satilla Shores neighborhood in Glynn County, Georgia....

Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, later joined by neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, armed themselves and then pursued Arbery through their Georgia neighborhood before Travis McMichael shot him with a shotgun on February 23, 2020, the Associated Press reported. Glynn County Police Sgt. Roderic Nohilly read a transcript in court Wednesday of his recorded interview with Greg McMichael hours after the shooting occurred. He told Nohilly in the interview that he recognized Arbery from recordings captured on security cameras inside a neighborhood home under construction....

The former first-round draft pick, whose NBA career petered out before it really began, was wearing a popular Nike shirt. The irony is heavy here.