Chris Gelardi

It remains unclear what, if anything, Biden has done to stop the Saudi Arabia–led military intervention.

The post As Yemen’s Famine Worsens, Biden Does Nothing appeared first on The Nation.

Mike Konczal

We must start by viewing care work as an essential component not just of the economy but of life itself.

The post Joe Biden Wants to Transform Care Work in America appeared first on The Nation.

D.D. Guttenplan

Ranked-choice voting allows New Yorkers to block this stunt candidate even without a clear progressive front-runner.

The post How to Stop Andrew Yang appeared first on The Nation.

via Netflix

Yasuke concerns Japan’s first Black samurai, although a history lesson is not what’s provided by this six-part Netflix anime series. Enlivened by a cross-cultural spirit that blends East and West—and the classical and the modern—to create something refreshingly unique, showrunner and director LeSean Thomas’ animated venture (premiering April 29) uses its real-life origins as a launching pad for a fantastical tale of feudal war in which swordsmen and archers do battle alongside giant mechas, sentient robots, and magic-wielding warriors. Think of it as a hybrid of Yojimbo, Mobile Suit Gundam and Lone Wolf and Cub, much of it coated in arterial-spray torrents of blood.

LaKeith Stanfield voices the hero of Thomas’ series: Yasuke, a real-life figure who, in this fictionalized story, is acquired in the 16th century from a Western trader by Lord Nobunaga (Takehiro Hira), who aims to unite all of Japan under his rule. That vision includes breaking with tradition by training both Yasuke and female soldier Natsumaru (Ming-Na Wen) as samurais—a decision that doesn’t sit well with their teacher, Mitsuhide, who views Nobunaga’s plan as a violation of Japan’s sacred heritage. This context is fleshed out in flashbacks that pepper the first few episodes, as well as in the opening sequence, which depicts a large-scale skirmish involving blaster-firing mechas, a trio of sorcerers with the ability to conjure magic web-shields, and the Dark General, whose forces triumph against those of Nobunaga, thereby compelling the defeated Lord to have his trusty right-hand man Yasuke kill him.

Yasuke is a perpetual outcast thanks to his skin color, such that during an early encounter with Nobunaga, the Lord (who’s never laid eyes on a Black man) tries to have Yasuke’s dark complexion scrubbed clean. Two decades later, the samurai lives in a remote village as the “Black Boatsman,” spending his days ferrying locals to and fro, and reluctantly training young Ichiro (Jan Chen) to be a warrior—at least, when he’s not drowning his sorrows in booze at the bar. Yasuke prefers to be alone and miserable, wallowing in his alienation and his shame for having killed his beloved master. Nonetheless, a reclusive existence isn’t in the cards; Yasuke is thrust into babysitting duty when singer Ichika hires him to transport her sick daughter Saki (Maya Tanida) to a doctor to treat her mysterious illness.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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By Victoria Knight | KHN

In their last year of medical school, fourth-year students get matched to a hospital where they will serve their residency.

The annual rite of passage is called the National Resident Matching Program. To the students, it’s simply the Match.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Week by week, the Republican field to take on Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in 2022 keeps developing the way Donald Trump wants: into a would-be coronation for football legend and Trump family favorite Herschel Walker.

On Monday, former Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) announced he would not run for U.S. Senate, becoming the latest and most high-profile figure to bow out of consideration. GOP circles considered the stalwart Trump ally to be a likely candidate for the office. He sought the Senate seat just last year, after all, when he unsuccessfully challenged his fellow Republican, then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

But even with no GOP incumbent in his way this time, Collins ruled himself out—and he did it surprisingly early. Some Georgia insiders say that Walker didn’t play a role in Collins’ calculus, but the former University of Georgia football great is casting an undeniable shadow over the GOP primary as he decides whether to run.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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There are dozens of legal cases against the Trumps, but perhaps the most fascinating is one in the District of Columbia that has attracted little public attention, according to Mother Jones’ D.C. bureau chief, David Corn.

A lawsuit filed by Karl Racine, D.C. attorney general, alleges that the Trump clan used the purportedly nonprofit Trump inaugural committee to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit, Corn tells The New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong-Fast. Yes, the family’s “fuckery,” according to Corn, started even before the former president reached the White House and allegedly included the committee overpaying the Trump Hotel in D.C. by hundreds of thousands of dollars by booking space for events that didn’t even happen—and one that did.

“There was indeed fuckery,” Corn says.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday.

For observers of the royal narrative trying to figure out just how badly damaged relations are between Prince Harry and his brother, a pivotal moment was always going to be their joint appearance to unveil a statue to their mother this on what would have been her 60th birthday.

The event appeared to be formally announced as a joint appearance in August last year, when Kensington Palace issued a rare joint statement on behalf of William and Harry announcing that the long-awaited memorial would be revealed in the Sunken Garden of Kensington Palace on July 1, 2021.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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MOSCOW—On Thursday, Russia woke up to news of alleged terrorists preparing to carry out violent attacks in nine of the country’s southern and northern cities. The Federal Security Service (FSB) reported that 16 suspects from a Ukrainian far-right neo-Nazi group known as “Maniacs. Cult of Killers” (M.K.U.) were arrested in connection with the plot.

A video of the Thursday arrest released by the FSB—the successor to the KGB—features armed special unit officers breaking into an apartment. One of the officers is heard yelling: “Down on the ground, on the ground!” With their hands behind their heads, several half-naked young men—some sporting Nazi tattoos—are shown spread out on the floor of a messy flat. In the clip, one of them admits to plotting a violent shooting spree against “non-white people and Arab nationals” on the orders of M.K.U.’s leader.

Little is known about the group and its origins. Its leader, Yegor Krasnov, is currently under arrest and on trial for five violent attacks in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. A Ukrainian newspaper reported last year that the “maniac” leader and his three friends had published a video of himself on Telegram stabbing pedestrians.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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We are at a tipping point, nearly at the threshold of a 50 percent vaccination rate. The science is working. Yet, more than 20 percent of Americans don’t believe scientific experts and say they are unlikely to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccinating enough people to get to herd immunity will require new strategies.

When we asked 6,000 Americans for their leading sources of vaccine information, the leading answer was “the CDC” (42 percent) followed by “internet and social media” (36 percent), “cable TV news” (18 percent) and “local news” (14 percent). Given the raft of COVID-19 misinformation on the web and cable news, it pleased us that so many people get their facts from our top public health agency. The professionals who “follow the science” on COVID-19 should guide our country back to health.

The sad truth, however, is the CDC has not effectively communicated vital health information, like the power of vaccines, masking, and social distancing. Recently, the CDC paused the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, followed by a restart 10 days later. Communication on the news of rare but serious blood clots that led to the pause also triggered additional declines in public confidence in vaccinations, resulting in waning vaccinations this week at sites throughout America.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

How on earth are Republicans going to run against the American Families Plan?

On Wednesday, President Biden unveiled some details for his $1.8 trillion plan to directly address some of the ways in which our government has failed our families. Flanked, for the first time, by a female vice president and a female speaker of the House, Biden used his speech to a joint session of Congress to propose paid 12-week family leave. We are one of three countries in the entire world with no mandated paid parental leave, and nearly three-quarters of American workers presently get no paid family leave at all. His plan also includes universal pre-K, hefty tax cuts and credits for parents, two years of free community college, a higher wage for childcare providers and expanded tax credits for middle-income people without children—all by simply forcing wealthy people to pay the taxes they should have been paying all along.

How are all the so-called pro-family Republicans going to run against it? How does a GOP official who ran for office “as a mom” justify opposing measures that would help mothers who don’t have government-funded health care or six-figure salaries? We’re about to find out.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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With the commercial success and awards recognition of foreign-language films like Roma, Parasite, The Farewell, and Minari (the latter two are partially in English) in the U.S. over the past three years, debates about subtitles, dubbing, the descriptor “foreign” and English-language film adaptations have been resurfacing online, with users reevaluating our relationships with international works of art.

A version of this conversation appeared again on social media this week after Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson’s production company Appian Way, along with Endeavor Content and Makeready, announced that they would be developing an English-language remake of the Danish film Another Round—about a group of teachers who embark on a binge-drinking experiment as a potential star vehicle for the Wolf of Wall Street actor. Just a day after director and co-writer Thomas Vinterberg took home Best International Film at the 93rd Academy Awards for his beloved and incessantly memed comedy-drama, fans of the original were less than enthused about the announcement of the adaptation on Twitter.

“There's no rhyme or reason to remake ANOTHER ROUND,” said one user. “The film is accessible af. It’s literally right on Hulu. International films have a greater reach than ever before in America because of growing interest in world cinema in audiences. We don’t need a fucking American remake.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

How technology that generates fake faces is helping to tackle bias in facial recognition systems.

The prime minister has imperilled peace in Northern Ireland, and every day the economic fallout worsens

Amid slippages, losses, vanishing investments and export drops, the drip, drip of Brexit damage never stops. I collect examples every week, as if picking up spent mortar rounds from a battlefield. On Wednesday, it was 450 jobs lost as car parts manufacturer Toyoda Gosei prepares to shut factories in Rotherham and Swansea, and relocate to the Czech Republic.

A breathtaking £800 roll of gold wallpaper distracts our eye. A prime minister who caused tens of thousands of bodies to pile high, while apparently fixing taxes for pals and contracts for cronies, has our eyes out on stalks. No one knows how deep in slurry Boris Johnson can sink and still swim out.

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Office romances, festive misery, an almighty family fall-out – here are some of the small screen’s most audacious rug-pulls

• Modern Toss on plot twists
  

Jessica Raine’s arrival in the cast of Jed Mercurio’s anti-corruption police drama was at the heart of the publicity leading up to the show’s second series. The opening episode constructed DC Georgia Trotman’s character: dedicated, perhaps overly fond of a drink. And then, oops, a bent copper threw her out of a fifth-storey hospital window and she was gone. Trotman, we barely knew you …

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With stirring songwriting that considers grief, philosophy and ecological collapse, the French quartet have become one of the world’s greatest heavy bands. They discuss their journey so far

Joe and Mario Duplantier grew up in a calm idyll – perhaps surprisingly for two of metal’s most forthright rabble-rousers. Born to a sketch-artist father and yoga teacher mother, the brothers were raised in Ondres, a remote commune on France’s western coast. Their house was so rural that, when a journalist visited, he compared it to a “hermitage”. Music was always playing, from folk to Mike Oldfield; it only stopped when poets and painters stayed the night and the children overheard the grownups discussing international philosophies.

The pair often passed the time on the beach. Joe collected wood and stones – only to come home to find his hands black with crude oil. Mario, meanwhile, had plastic bags flying in his face when he was out surfing. The serenity of the fairytale upbringing cracked. “We were confronted by nature hurting all the time, and nature hurting hurts you,” says Joe, the elder brother.

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Australian billionaire Clive Palmer used a version of We're Not Gonna Take It when he ran for parliament.

From educating them about Emmett Till to telling them never to leave home without an ID card, parents of Black children in the US share how they prepare them for encounters with the police, and the daily impact on their young lives

My husband is one of just a handful of Black police officers in our city. Our daughter saw some of the George Floyd coverage and asked a lot of questions. We have had to explain that not all police are the good guys, that some people have racism and bias in their hearts. It has been a very tough spot to be in. We tell her some police are bad, as her daddy stands in a uniform and people say they hate the police. But her daddy is also that Black skin lying on the ground. We ourselves are struggling with it. How do we explain it to a child? We do so by teaching her the truth of the country and its violent past and present. And we believe in our hearts and with my husband’s words and actions in policing that he is that change. We have to. Shanda; Kansas; parent of a biracial eight-year-old daughter

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A stampede broke out at a Jewish religious gathering attended by tens of thousands of people in northern Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a "great tragedy."

Aerial photographs of England’s best-loved seaside resorts, taken between the 1920s and the 1950s when coastal destinations were nearing the peak of their popularity, tell the story of how they developed. Initially places where the wealthy few bathed in the sea to improve their health, they became a magnet for the whole population. England’s Seaside Heritage from the Air, written by Historic England’s Allan Brodie, is published by Liverpool University Press

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