There’s only so much you can control when it comes to travel, especially during the holidays. Whether you’re embarking on a road trip to see family, or simply worried about driving through the snow to the other side of town, the cold winter months typically mean the start of increasingly dangerous road conditions.

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Chances are good you are less popular than your friends. Poorer, too. Probably they are also better looking. Sorry. This is called “the friendship paradox,” and it’s just logical fact.

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Barbados officially became a parliamentary republic on Monday night, severing ties with Queen Elizabeth II and instantly declaring Rihanna as the island’s “national hero.”

“On behalf of a grateful nation, but an even prouder people, we, therefore, present to you the designee for national hero of Barbados, Ambassador Robyn Rihanna Fenty,” Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley said at the ceremony, referring to the star — born in the Barbados parish of Saint Michael — by her given name.

“May you continue to shine like a diamond and bring honor to your nation by your words, by your actions, and to do credit wherever you shall go. God bless you, my dear.”

Rihanna was bestowed with the title of “right excellent,” adding to her laundry list of titles that include Grammy award-winning artist, billionaire, makeup mogul, designer, actor, and entrepreneur.

According to a statement from the Barbados Government Information Office, Rihanna’s position grants her “specific responsibility for promoting education, tourism and investment for the island.”

She was given the latest honor during Barbados’ first-ever presidential inauguration ceremony in its capital Bridgetown, which ended the island’s nearly 400-year history as an English colony.

Prince Charles, heir apparent to the British throne, attended the ceremony, which named Dame Sandra Mason as the first president of the country and stripped Queen Elizabeth II of her title as head of state.

The ceremony also marked the first time in over 20 years that Barbados has named a new national hero, as the last person to receive the honor was former cricket player Garfield St. Aubrun Sobers.

Rihanna was officially honored at a separate ceremony last week, where she gave a brief speech sharing her love for Barbados, according to The Associated Press.

“This is a day that I will never, ever forget. It’s also a day that I never saw coming,” she said. “I have traveled the world and received several awards and recognitions, but nothing, nothing compares to being recognized in the soil that you grew in.”

Watch above, via Sky News.

On Monday, Fox Nation host Lara Hogan ignorantly compared America’s top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele, the evil Nazi doctor at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.

During Fox News Primetime, Logan said:

Dr. Fauci, this is what people say to me, that he doesn’t represent science to them.

He represents Joseph Mengele. Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the second World War and in the concentration camps.

And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this because the response from Covid, what it has done to countries everywhere, what it has done to civil liberties, the suicide rates, the poverty, it has obliterated economies.

Fauci is deserving of criticism. He has been misleading on the subject of gain-of-function research; opposed, though he later reversed, President Donald Trump restricting travel from China at the start of the pandemic; used his position, which is supposed to be apolitical, to insert himself into political squabbles with the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

But Fauci playing politics is not remotely close to what Mengele did: torture and experiment on Auschwitz inmates and send many of them to their deaths in the gas chambers.

While coronavirus restrictions have made life hard for everyone, no one has been sent to their deaths by authorities for not following protocols. America does not have concentration camps. Infringements on civil liberty in America are not comparable to the complete freedom that the Nazis took away from people through fascist rule.

(I’m going to pause for a moment to note the obvious: I shouldn’t have to remind a journalist like Logan of these facts.)

Making Holocaust comparisons crosses the line from criticism to demonization. It is offensive to the memory of the Holocaust, those who perished, and those who survived, including my late grandparents.

The answer to pushing back against onerous coronavirus restrictions is through speaking out and going through the judicial system, neither one of which the Nazis allowed under their rule during the Third Reich.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt again was forced to point out the obvious in response to an obscene comment by a Fox News host. He told CNN that “there’s absolutely no comparison between mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and other COVID-19 mitigation efforts to what happened to Jews during the Holocaust.”

“This includes making outlandish and offensive analogies suggesting that somehow Dr. Anthony Fauci is akin to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, known for his gruesome medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners,” he said.

Logan’s remarks are just another example of why she is not fit for air. Since joining Fox News in 2019, the veteran journalist has pushed a series of insane conspiracy theories that have embarrassed the network, and yet she continues to appear on the air.

Logan’s absurd conspiracies include claiming that the coronavirus vaccine is “not really a vaccine.” She has claimed those who criticize of Biden and support U.S. troops are at risk of being jailed by the FBI. She has suggested that China, Iran and possibly Russia are funding the far-left movement Antifa. She has said that “bioweapons specialists and intel agents” told her allowing migrants into the country is a “typical” way to launch a “virus attack.”

Just last week, Logan celebrated Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg resigning from their Fox News contributorships — over Carlson’s conspiratorial documentary about the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol — by calling the two “cockroaches.”

This is not a call for Logan to be fired. It’s a simple question: why does Fox News continue to put her on the air?

Watch above, via Fox News.

Once considered one of the fiercest competitors in sports, Tiger Woods appears to have a new sense of focus and gratitude after surviving a horrific car crash earlier this year.

Woods held a 38-minute press conference Tuesday morning ahead of his Hero World Challenge charity tournament in the Bahamas, where the golf star sounded comfortable, happy and emotional as he discussed his challenging recovery.

“I’m lucky to be alive and also have a limb,” Woods admitted to reporters Tuesday morning. “Those are two crucial things, I’m very grateful that someone upstairs was taking care of me, that I’m able to not only be here, but also to walk without a prosthesis.”

Asked how realistic amputation was, Woods acknowledged losing his leg “was on the table.”

Woods remains optimistic about the ability to play professional golf again, but the 45-year-old said a return to the PGA Tour full-time is unrealistic, and returning at all remains a long way off.

“This year has been a year I’d like to turn the page on,” Woods said Tuesday, 30 days before he turns 46. “It’s been full of some tough memories and tough times. But it would be nice to turn the page.”

Woods declined to offer details about the February car crash that left him hospitalized for three weeks because of a shattered leg, instead he cited the 22-page police report that was released in April. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office deducted excessive speed was the cause of Woods’ mangled SUV.

Watch above via The Golf Channel

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told a Senate panel on Tuesday that he believed it was time to stop referring to inflation as “transitory.”

“I think the word ‘transitory’ has different meanings to different people,” Powell said in testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. “To many, it carries a time — a sense of short-lived. We tend to use it to mean that it won’t leave a permanent mark in the form of higher inflation. I think it’s probably a good time to retire that word and try to explain clearly what we mean.”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines transitory as meaning “of brief duration” or as “not persistent.” Powell has repeatedly used the word to insist that inflation would be “transitory” in duration.

But skeptics have questioned that thesis, including Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who asked Powell the question that prompted him to suggest eliminating the term. “I know you believe this is transitory,” Toomey had remarked. “How long does inflation have to run above your target before the Fed decides maybe it’s not so transitory?”

Inflation hit a 30-year record in October, with consumer prices rising by 6.2 percent. It was the fifth consecutive month the Labor Department reported inflation exceeding 5 percent.

Markets reacted poorly to Powell’s comment. The Dow Jones plunged by 400 points in the hour after his remark, while the Nasdaq fell 200 points. In cryptocurrency, the remark put a stop to a record-breaking surge for Ethereum, which fell from an all-time high of $4,758 to roughly $4,500.

“We understand that high inflation imposes significant burdens, especially on those less able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing, and transportation,” Powell added elsewhere in his testimony. “We are committed to our price-stability goal. We will use our tools both to support the economy and a strong labor market and to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched.”

Watch above via C-SPAN.

The View was unanimously displeased with the revelations about Chris Cuomo’s conduct on behalf of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, though they debated whether the CNN anchor should be taken off the network over his brother’s scandals.

Chris Cuomo is facing an internal review at CNN following the release of new exhibits and transcripts from the investigation into his brother. The evidence shows how Chris strategically assisted Andrew amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment, and the CNN host also used journalistic sources to dig up information on Andrew’s accusers.

As The View dissected the news, Joy Behar started things off by predicting Chris Cuomo is “in a little bit of trouble” now. Jane Coaston, who was guest-hosting on Tuesday, took things up a notch as she told Behar “I think he’s in a lot of trouble.”

“If he were reporting about this on someone else, he would be saying that person should be fired,” Coaston added.

Behar responded that “I’m not going to be judge and jury of the guy,” but she took a very disapproving view of Cuomo’s attempts to dig up dirt.

“I don’t think that’s kosher,” Behar said. “Whether he should be fired for it, you know, that’s for Jeff Zucker to figure out, not me. There’s a lot in this story that doesn’t feel right, even though I do appreciate the Cuomo family very much.”

As the panel discussed the journalistic quagmire between CNN and the Cuomo brothers, Behar addressed Chris as raised the question “Why not take yourself off the air?” Coaston continued to outline Chris Cuomo’s “abuse of power” to aid his brother, but Whoopi Goldberg summed up the conversation by determining that his actions were “not illegal [but] it’s ethically questionable.”

Goldberg also raised the possibility that Chris should’ve taken time off from CNN while the scandal surrounding his brother played out.

“Maybe he should have done that,” Behar chimed in with the double-down, but “maybe the horse is out of the barn. It’s too late now.”

Watch above, via ABC.

The rise of screen use has raised a number of concerns, especially when it comes to eye health and the impacts of blue light on the eye. But what is blue light, and how much is it really to blame for the strain our daily screen activity is putting on our eyes?

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Holiday lights are a cozy tradition—as the days get shorter, a few sparkly strands can really brighten up the endless evenings. While this holiday tradition is worth keeping, traditional filament light bulbs are not. Here’s why you should make the switch to LED lights this year.

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A newly-released batch of exhibits and transcripts from the investigation into former Gov. Andrew Cuomo include a series of new revelations about CNN host Chris Cuomo.

The texts and transcript show the larger-than-known extent to which the CNN host advised his brother and appeared to run interference for him.

Among the shocking new details, Chris told the governor’s staff that a friend of his appealed to actor Alec Baldwin to record a rant on Instagram against “cancel culture,” which was purportedly meant to be a defense of Andrew Cuomo.

‘My friend asked him to do it,’ Chris wrote, in a text to Andrew’s former top aide Melissa DeRosa. ‘Very close to him.’

In testimony for the investigation, the CNN host claimed that he, through the friend, implored Baldwin not to get involved.

I know Alec Baldwin. So does Andrew. I have a very good friend who is named here, who called me said, “Alec wants to talk about cancel culture or political correctness.” I asked him not to. I said, “Tell him to stay out of it. It’s not necessary.” He said, “Well, he’s going to do it. And I think it’s a good idea for him to do it. He wants to talk about these things.”

The conversation with DeRosa on Baldwin was just one of the notable exchanges between Chris Cuomo and Andrew’s former top aide. The batch of messages shows that Cuomo suggested damage control statements for the then-governor.

“Please let me help with the prep,” Cuomo told DeRosa.

A March 9 report by the Albany Times-Union about which broke news of Andrew Cuomo’s 6th accuser set off a dispute between Chris Cuomo and DeRosa.

“Why didnt you tell him abt potential ATU intv with 6?” Chris wrote.

“I asked u not to say anything until I talked to him,” DeRosa replied.

“That was a day ago,” Cuomo shot back. “Stop hiding shit.”

Additionally, Chris Cuomo admitted that he asked other journalists whether there might be more accusers coming forward against his brother. DeRosa, in one text, told Cuomo of a “Rumor going around from politico 1-2 more ppl coming out tomorrow.”

“Can u check your sources?” DeRosa asked the CNN host.

Chris Cuomo replied “on it,” and then, approximately 40 minutes later, wrote back “No one has heard that yet.”

On March 9, DeRosa asked Chris Cuomo to inquire about the status of a report that she believed The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow was ready to publish. Four days later, Cuomo wrote back, “If ronan has nothing better than [former Andrew Cuomo aide and accuser Lindsay] boylan, thats a great sign.”

He also encouraged DeRosa to tighten the former governor’s circle — lobbying to be included along with former Pete Buttigieg campaign manager Lis Smith and public relations specialist Jeffrey Pollock.

“You need to trust me lis and jeff more,” the CNN host wrote. “Not these other people. We are making mistakes we cant afford.”

Cuomo was asked by one of the investigators, Jennifer Kennedy Park, “Did you reach out to anyone…to find out if there might be any other complainants?”

Cuomo answered “yes,” and when Park asked whom, he said “I would reach out to sources, other journalists, to see if they had heard of anybody else coming out.”

The New York attorney general previously revealed that Chris Cuomo participated in strategy calls with his brother and urged him not to resign. In an August statement, the CNN host said on the air that “I did urge my brother to resign when the time came.”

These were Chris Cuomo’s comments the last time he addressed his role in Andrew’s scandal in-depth on August 16.

I never covered my brother’s troubles because I obviously have a conflict, and there are rules at CNN about that. I said last year that his appearances on this show would be short-lived, and they were. The last was over a year ago, long before any kind of scandal. I also said back then that a day would come when he would have to be held to account and I can’t do that. I said point blank, I can’t be objective when it comes to my family, so I never reported on the scandal and when it happened, I tried to be there for my brother.

…

I never misled anyone about the information I was delivering or not delivering on this program. I never attacked nor encouraged anyone to attack any woman who came forward. I never made calls to the press about my brother’s situation. I never influenced or attempted to control CNN’s coverage of my family. And as you know, back in May when I was told to no longer communicate with my brother’s aides in any group meetings, I acknowledged it was a mistake, I apologized to my colleagues, I stopped, and I meant it. It was a unique situation being a brother to a politician in a scandal and being part of the media. I tried to do the right thing, and I just want you all to know that.

Ken Meyer contributed to this report.

Federal prosecutors filed a motion Sunday night to block former Trump adviser Steve Bannon from making public documents he receives from the Justice Department, in what they charge are an attempt to “try this case in the media rather than in court.”

Bannon, who is charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the committee investigating the January 6th insurrection, has previously declared he will “go on the offense” against the charges.

“The defense’s misleading claims, failure to confer, unexplained wholesale opposition, and extrajudicial statements make clear the defense’s real purpose: to abuse criminal discovery to try this case in the media rather than in court,” the prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Bannon’s lawyers are working to unseal all evidence in the case, including grand jury testimony, which federal prosecutors are fighting against, claiming to do so would amount to “witness tampering.”

“Allowing the defendant to publicly disseminate reports of witness statements will have the collateral effect of witness tampering because it will expose witnesses to public commentary on their potential testimony before trial and allow a witness to review summaries of other witnesses’ statements recounting the same event or events,” the prosecutors argued.

Bannon’s failure to cooperate and public defiance of Congress has made national headlines as Bannon has vowed to make the legal battle “hell” for the Biden administration.

Rich Fury/Getty Images

R&B singer Ari Lennox accused security at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport of racial discrimination after she was arrested on Monday for allegedly disturbing public order.

While Reuters first reported the official cause for her apprehension, Lennox confirmed the arrest in a series of tweets, first claiming that security at the airport, run by Dutch military police, “hate black people.”

Fuck Amsterdam security. They hate black people.

— Ari Lennox (@AriLennox) November 29, 2021

“I just want to go home. I’ll never leave my house again,” she wrote in a follow-up tweet, simply saying, “Wow,” in another.

Lennox, whose given name is Courtney Shanade Salter, went on to share that she was being taken into custody.

They’re arresting me

— Ari Lennox (@AriLennox) November 29, 2021

“I’m being arrested in Amsterdam for reacting to a woman racially profiling me,” she said in her latest tweet — posted at 10:36 a.m. CET (4:36 a.m. ET).

I’m being arrested in Amsterdam for reacting to a woman racially profiling me

— Ari Lennox (@AriLennox) November 29, 2021

While the “Shea Butter Baby” singer called out security for racial discrimination, Reuters reported that the Dutch military police claimed Lennox “was held because of her aggressive behaviour towards an airline official, and for being drunk in public.”

According to police spokesman Robert van Kapel, it remains unclear how long Lennox will stay in custody as authorities are investigating claims that she made threatening comments during the incident.

“Our unit found a woman full of emotions, that wouldn’t calm down,” Van Kapel told Reuters. “That’s why she had to be taken into custody.”

What a week for LeBron James, whose actions caused the NBA to reprimand their golden boy for a second time in the span of seven days.

Monday morning, notorious James critic Skip Bayless lauded the NBA and commissioner Adam Silver for slapping their superstar with a fine. The infraction occurred when James made an obscene gesture during his first game back from a league issued suspension.

“I think the commissioner finally sat back and sad ‘I’m not gonna let even you get away with either of these things,’” Bayless told his Undisputed co-host Shannon Sharpe.

Last week, James was ejected and suspended after he bloodied Detroit Pistons center Isaiah Stewart with a vicious elbow. During his first game back, James had two fans ejected from the Indiana Pacers crowd, claiming they directed obscene gestures and language at him. Later in the game, James returned the favor and made an obscene gesture of his own.

Watch below via NBATV

After draining a late three-pointer against Indiana, James stomped back down the court and firmly grabbed his groin area, mimicking the infamous “big balls” dance that other NBA players have been reprimanded for in the past.

The league handed James a $15,000 fine because of the obscene celebration.

“I believe that commissioner Silver took that personally, like ‘that’s at me, that’s at us,’ that’s like ‘I’m gonna take it out on you because you dared to suspend me,’” Bayless said of James and the NBA commissioner.

“This is very public and you are the face and you are the number one role model in sports,” Bayless continued, referring to James and his controversial actions of late.

Watch above via Fox Sports

President Joe Biden ruled out fresh lockdowns as a response to a new variant of Covid-19 but told reporters at a Monday press conference that his administration was looking into the possibility of additional vaccine booster shots.

“I’ll be putting forward a detailed strategy outlining how we’re going to fight Covid this winter,” Biden said, promising another press conference on Thursday. “Not with shutdowns or lockdowns, but with more widespread vaccinations, boosters, testing, and more.”

To date, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have approved booster shots developed by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, adding a third dose to the two-shot series from Pfizer and Moderna and a second dose to the J&J regimen.

But Biden said the federal response to Covid-19’s Omicron included looking at the possibility of adding new boosters in the future, saying the feds were working with all three companies “to develop contingency plans for vaccines or boosters.”

“I expect the new normal to be everyone ends up getting vaccinated with a booster shot, so we’ve reduced the number of people who aren’t protected to such a low degree that we’re not seeing the spread of these viruses,” he added later in the conference. “It remains to be seen what the elements of this particular strain are, but if they are as I hope, then it’s not going to be fundamentally different than in the past.”

Previously Biden urged calm and not to panic amid news of the new omicron variant.

Watch above via CNN.

There are two types of Christmas-observing families: Those who are serious about stockings, and amateurs. Like most things, my sisters and I view stocking stuffing as a competition, but we will never beat our mother, who has had three decades to perfect her stocking stuffing methods (with her children as test…

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You might know about Apple’s feature that lets you automatically unlock your iPhone using the Apple Watch (when you’re wearing a face mask, at least). But you may not have known that this feature has also existed for years on the Mac. As long as you’re wearing your Apple Watch—and it’s unlocked—you can sign in to your…

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As long as we’ve had cameras, we’ve tried to take the perfect group photo. You set the camera on a stand, turn on the timer, run back to crowd, say “Cheese!” and hope no one blinked. Of course, someone often does, and you have to take the photo all over again—that is, unless you have a phone that can automatically…

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Growing up, there wasn’t a strong Christmas ornament tradition in my family. Or one at all, really. There were no hand-crafted trinkets with sentimental value, or delicate keepsakes passed down through generations. The main thing I remember about our tree was its comical 1980s artificiality of sparse, rigid branches,…

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Fact: people love latkes. I wish I was one of them. Fried potatoes should be a slam dunk, but most of my Chanukah memories involve skipping the latkes for the applesauce they were served with.

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Kevin Nishita, a security guard for KRON4 a local San Francisco TV news station, was shot in the abdomen earlier this week during an attempted robbery, has passed away.

Nishita was serving as security for a news crew on assignment in Oakland, CA. On Wednesday, when they were covering a smash-and-grab robbery at Prime 356 clothing store on 14th Street, thieves attempted to steal the crew’s equipment. As Nishita stepped in, the armed robbers shot him in the abdomen.

Local TV station KPIX5 spoke to witnesses who said, “An armed robbery crew pulled up on the television crew and ordered the news crew and their guard to get on the ground.” This was when Nishita intervened and was subsequently shot.

KRON-TV’s vice president and general manager, Jim Rose expressed his condolences, “We are devastated by the loss of security guard and our friend, Kevin Nishita. Our deepest sympathy goes to Kevin’s wife, his children, his family, and to all his friends and colleagues,” he said in a statement Saturday.

“This senseless loss of life is due to yet another violent criminal act in the Bay Area,” continued Rose, adding that “We hope that offering a reward will help lead to the arrest of those responsible so they can face justice for this terrible tragedy.”

To reward those who come forward with information relevant to Nishita’s death, $32,000 is being offered in return.

According to the LA Times, TV news crews are often targeted in the area and Nishita’s employer Star Protection Agency, provides security for those stations.

This comes as similar instances of smash-and-grab theft have been reported throughout the Thanksgiving weekend, putting law enforcement on high alert. Only just last week a Nordstrom department store near San Francisco was ransacked by around 80 suspects who fleed in about ten vehicles.

Many people including California Governor Gavin Newsom are calling for state leaders and law enforcement to put an end to this looting and violent robbery.

Nishita was a retired police officer who leaves behind a wife, two children and three grandchildren.