The Gulf states and Israel in particular provide an opportunity for the U.S. to participate in a global economy that will be more centered on the Middle East than it was before the coronavirus. This future must be a cornerstone of U.S. policy. COVID has threatened the mature economies of the U.S. and Europe, accelerated China’s inevitable rise and given opportunity to the region’s often more agile and adaptable countries....

The Iranian regime has promised to retaliate against the U.S. for the assassination of Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad last week. His death represents a major escalation in the simmering U.S.-Iranian conflict, and has prompted fears that a direct military confrontation could soon erupt. On Sunday, Ali Akbar Velayati—a senior aide to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—warned that American forces are risking a drawn-out, bloody and unsuccessful stay in the Middle East....

But while most Americans are relegating coronavirus to the back burner, the Biden administration is not, refusing to bring back the “normalcy” the country was promised during the campaign. Though President Biden’s controversial vaccine mandate was recently struck down in court by a federal judge after over half the Attorneys General in the United States challenged it in court, the Biden administration is planning on defying the court and enforcing the President’s executive order compelling businesses with at least 100 employees get their staff vaccinated by early January 2022....

After speaking about his team’s performance in the contest and saying he was frustrated by the poor pitch at BMO Field, Herrera said what really irritated him about the experience was the police officials making things worse instead of better. The manager alleged members of the Toronto Police Service hit goalkeeper Agustin Marchesin, center back Bruno Valdez and the team’s fitness coach Giber Becerra. “We have to take advantage on a much better field, we’ve got to play a lot better....

We know little of our homeland, Afghanistan. What we do know comes from our mothers’ stories of childhood and our own tense, fleeting visits to the country to see relatives. Staying up to date with the situation in Afghanistan is complicated. It requires a lot of email, texts and scrolling through Facebook and Twitter. Despite the fact that the war has been all we’ve known, we still get that sinking feeling each time we read news of another suicide bombing, kidnapping, or roadside attack....

Increased demand for takeout and comfort food put wing consumption on the rise in 2020, The National Chicken Council reported. That demand, coupled with the biggest day for wing eating—Super Bowl Sunday—and devastation from the winter storms in Texas, has shrunken the popular poultry product to a relatively short supply. “One of the biggest challenges in the industry is to get the optimum value for the whole chicken produced,” Fabian Brockötter, editor in chief of Poultry World magazine, told Newsweek....

But the Young Pretender in charge of the Mideast portfolio is gone, and the mommies and daddies are back in charge, their think tanks falling over each other producing glossy full-color booklets promoting policies that would bring to bear the priorities of people who actually understood a thing or two about Israelis, Palestinians, international law, justice, and most importantly, American strategic interests. And four months into the methodical implementation of all the bright ideas reflecting off those glossy booklets, the situation on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has taken a dramatic turn for the worst....

I reached this Cole Porter-esque conclusion on Valentine’s Day when, in my ongoing quest to understand why some heterosexuals believe that gay marriage will destroy their “traditional” marriages, I stopped by the Central Park Zoo to interview the famously gay penguins, Roy and Silo. You may not know about Roy and Silo, but we New Yorkers have been mighty proud since they came out in 1998. Finally, instead of having New York’s collective sex life defined by the floozy, commitment-challenged heterosexual women of “Sex and the City” or the pages of personal ads taken out by single losers, we finally had a First Couple of Monogamy that would show the world that love and fidelity could still conquer all (plus, they looked great in their little tuxedos)....

It was there, in that once reliably liberal city that voters threw cold (and, most likely, fluoridated) water on a ballot referendum that would have changed the morning ritual of tens of thousands of people. Ballot Measure O–as it was officially known–would have banned the sale of coffee that had not been brewed from “organic, shade-grown or fair-trade certified” beans. The measure was all set to pass–let’s face it, Berkeley voters tend to view the city rule book as a manifesto–until someone noticed the fine print: Anyone who served the “wrong” type of coffee would face six months in jail....

So as I watched Mir kamikaze into the Pacific, I hoped that our two countries had finally put years of antagonism behind them. Yeah, right. Faster than you could say Yuri Andropov, the U.S. and Russia are already starting a new Cold War over a few spies. We caught Russia stealing secrets from our side, so we kicked a bunch of their “diplomats” out of our country. They retaliated by kicking a bunch of our “emissaries” out of Moscow....

We need to be nurturing and building a wider pool of entrepreneurial talent if we want to stimulate economic growth from the bottom up. That starts with replacing the Ivy League fraternity culture of many investors with a transparent, meritocratic and tech-enabled VC ecosystem. If we get this right, we could be entering a golden age of entrepreneurship: Many of the newly unemployed are opting to start their own businesses, with 804,398 new businesses being started in 2020, compared with an average of approximately 700,000 in previous years....

The timing couldn’t be better. “Bombay Dreams,” which has been playing in London since 2002, tells the story of a young man from the slums who rises to film stardom. It’s an apt metaphor for the growing visibility of a new generation of South Asians in the United States–some immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, and others born here–who are making their mark everywhere from Hollywood to Wall Street....

The American teenager, less-than-affectionately referred to as the former by Alexi Lalas back in September 2017, is now staking some claim to the latter, following another assist in Borussia Dortmund’s 2-0 win over Bobby Wood and Hamburg on Saturday. In each of the last two weeks, Pulisic has assisted on a goal scored by Chelsea loanee Michy Batshuayi, who likes the nickname “Batsman.” The pair combined on the second goal in Batshuayi’s debut, a 3-2 win over Koln....

Nichols received a conditional release from his scholarship at Memphis, but the school would not allow him to leave for any school on the Tigers’ schedule over the next two seasons, or to cross-state rival Tennessee. MORE: Hall of Fame-bound coaches | SN’s preseason top 25 The Nichols family took issue with the restrictions and retained the services of prominent sports lawyer Don Jackson to fight his eligibility. Virginia is one of the four schools that Memphis brass is blocking Nichols from transferring to....

After two weeks of Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, the violence has shown no signs of slowing down, raising concerns about the possibility of a full-blown war. Foreign airlines have canceled flights into and out of Israel, and the inability of Americans to renew passports and obtain them for family members could make leaving the country a challenge. Both the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv branch are operating with minimal staffing, and with the threat of rocket attacks and violent protests, they’ve largely halted passport and visa services....

The family was traveling south on Cumberland Road in Cumberland County, Virginia Sunday night when they were rear-ended by a Toyota Tundra, said ABC affiliate station WSET. The buggy was reportedly fashioned with working headlights and taillights, as well as a “slow-moving vehicle” sign. KIRO 7 reported that 38-year-old Barbie Esh was pronounced dead at the scene and that her husband, 39-year-old John Esh, died at VCU Medical Center on Monday night....

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) plans to hold the final confirmation vote on Monday, just eight days before the election. The conservative Trump nominee will make history by becoming the first justice to be confirmed so close to an election. “We did it. We did it. Judge Barrett’s nomination is going to the floor,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. " I hope you look back on this time on the committee and say, ‘I was there when it mattered,’ and you were....

During a Sunday morning appearance on CNN, Klobuchar declined to speculate on the much-rumored and discussed suggestion of Breyer retiring from the high court, but did offer her perspective on the possibility. “When you look at the [Supreme Court], [Breyer] has to be concerned about the makeup,” Klobuchar said. “And you have to be concerned about how you get a justice on the court with all the manipulation that [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell has engaged in....

Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman and the former mayor of New York City, launched an unconventional presidential campaign in late November. He decided to forego campaigning in the early voting states, instead focusing on spending big in Super Tuesday states. He has already shelled out hundreds of millions from his own fortune to pay for television ads targeting voters. Progressive candidates Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have argued that Bloomberg is essentially trying to buy the election....