Daily Archives: January 19, 2021

This crypto startup is offering 8.6% interest on savings accounts 123 times the national average – Yahoo Finance

Posted: January 19, 2021 at 8:55 am

If theres one negative aspect to life at record low interest rates, its earning almost nothing on the cash you have saved at a bank.

Certificates of deposit, or CDs, which require you to lock up savings for a predetermined amount of time offer slightly better interest rates, but not much better than the paltry 0.07% annual percentage yield (APY) that is the current national average for savings accounts, according to Bankrate.

But one crypto startup, BlockFi, is letting users earn at a rate thats nearly 123-times higher on dollar-backed cryptocurrencies known as stablecoins. More specifically, the company is currently paying an 8.6% interest rate on savings accounts holding the Gemini dollar, the stablecoin introduced by the Winklevoss twins regulated and audited New York trust company Gemini. Interest is paid out monthly by BlockFi in either traditional dollars, or a favored cryptocurrency like bitcoin or ether.

You can start earning your interest and gaining passive exposure into a new asset class, BlockFi co-founder Flori Marquez explained in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live. The people who use our products span from everyday consumers who are buying bitcoin for the first time to even some small corporates.

Its important to note that the higher interest rates BlockFi offers on its accounts carry a special set of risks. Unlike traditional savings accounts, BlockFis are not FDIC-insured, which means they dont carry the traditional $250,000 of protection per depositor. Even BlockFis disclaimer warns customers that their savings account is not a risk-free product and loss of principal is possible.

Despite those risks, hundreds of thousands of customers have turned to the Peter Thiel- and Coinbase Ventures-backed platform to either trade cryptocurrencies or earn interest through BlockFis savings accounts, according to Marquez.

As opposed to most fintech platforms, our average account size is actually $50,000, she said. So people are depositing... a meaningful amount of assets.

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Similar to banks, BlockFi acts as a financial intermediary thats able to benefit in the gap between borrowing and lending. As Yahoo Finances Brian Cheung recently explained in this weeks Yahoo U installment, banks profit by enjoying a larger return on money loaned out than the interest they pay on deposits. As BlockFi CEO Zac Prince explained to Yahoo Finance in the past, the companys similar role as an intermediary comes with another perk unique to the crypto space: a lack of other established players.

We're the largest lender of cryptocurrencies to institutional borrowers, who today are primarily market makers and proprietary trading firms that are active in this asset class and have been for a while, but they can't finance that activity with their traditional prime broker relationships because banks aren't active in the space yet, he said. That's the reason why the yields are still high, because this is a new asset class. It's nascent, it's growing quickly, and it doesn't have access to the traditional sources of debt capital. And as a result, when we're lending, we're able to charge higher rates, and then we pay that back to the folks who are our clients on the front end.

As the industry matures, Prince expects that BlockFi will likely have to lower interest rates on its savings accounts at some point, but rates have held at 8.6% for more than a year.

Prince also stressed that interest earned on BlockFis accounts are also taxed much like interest revenue from traditional bank accounts, and that BlockFi provides users with an annual 1099 form to help with tax filings.

Were heavily regulated at the federal level and at the state level as a financial services company in the U.S., he said.

Zack Guzman is the co-host of the 11AM - 1PM hours on Yahoo Finance Live as well as a senior writer and on-air reporter covering entrepreneurship, cannabis, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz.

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One Student’s First-Person Account Of The Rally That Turned Into A Riot – The Federalist

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On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Jaron Pensinger, a 21-year-old student at Georgetown University, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss his time at President Donald Trumps D.C. rally on Jan. 6 and how his role as a peaceful protester concerned about election integrity was misconstrued by his peers and the press.

I just wanted to, as protests are meant to do, send a peaceful message to our government to show that, you know, we want some sort of change and we want our government back for the people, Pensinger said.

The thought of attacking the Capitol, Pensinger said, never crossed his mind.

I was going down to hearDonald Trump speak and then peacefully marchand then go home, Pensinger said.I was not there because Im a white supremacist. I was not there because I support violence. I felt that there were some concerns about election integrity in this past election, you know, with Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and I feel as though a lot of the election concerns were, in a sense, swept under the rug by Democrats.

Despite the threats and calls for his university to take disciplinary action against him, Pensinger hopes the chaotic events on Jan. 6 will spur journalists and others to hear out the concerns of the peaceful protesters who attended the rally.

All it takes is a conversation, Pensinger said. So many of these people wouldnt even have a conversation with me and were rushing to judgment about me, and all it takes is a conversation.

Read more here about why Pensinger and thousands of others traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to protest the presidential election.

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Dems Say GOP Lawmakers Gave ‘Reconnaissance’ Capitol Tours. Where’s The Evidence? – The Federalist

Posted: at 8:55 am

Democratic members of Congress are peddling theories that their GOP colleagues gave reconnaissance tours of the Capitol to insurrectionists just one day before a mob rioted at the historic building, but so far, no evidence has surfaced.

Im going to see they are held accountable, and if necessary, ensure that they dont serve in Congress, said New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill, referring to those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on Jan. 5 a reconnaissance for the next day; those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd; those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy.

While the Capitol was technically closed to the public on Jan. 5 due to COVID-19 restrictions, accepting only tours with members families and staff, more than 30 Democratic legislators, led by Sherrill, signed a letter asking for acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett, acting Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Jennifer Hemingway, and acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman to investigate suspicious behavior and access given to visitors to the Capitol Complex on Tuesday, January 5, 2021 the day before the attacks on the Capitol.

Many of the Members who signed this letter, including those of us who have served in the military and are trained to recognize suspicious activity, as well as various members of our staff, witnessed an extremely high number of outside groups in the complex on Tuesday, January 5, the letter reads. This is unusual for several reasons, including the fact that access to the Capitol Complex has been restricted since public tours ended in March due to the pandemic. We found these tours so concerning that senior staff questioned the SAA on January 5 about what was taking place.

As Politico noted, neither the letter nor Sherrill named any specific members, explained how giving tours was reconnaissance, nor said how tours might have fueled or enabled the riot. Sherrill also did not respond to The Federalists questions about who might have allowed these reportedly suspicious tours to occur.

Sherrill is one of the many lawmakers on the left alleging that their colleagues played a role in orchestrating the Jan. 6 chaos that left five people dead. During a live video session on Instagram just last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told her viewers that she didnt even feel safe around other members of Congress during the attack because she feared they would oust her to the rioters.

There were QAnon and white supremacist sympathizers and, frankly, white supremacist members of Congress who I know and who I have felt would disclose my location and would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, etc., she said.

Similarly, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio also alleged that a couple members of Congress might have given tours to people outside their family and staff.

Im going to wait to make sure we get verification, the congressman said, noting that the tours he knew of were not one-on-one tours or that of a small family.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a member of the progressive House Squad, also suggested that GOP members could not be trusted after every panic button in her office was removed without warning, knowledge, or approval.

Despite these strong allegations, most of the Democrats have failed to provide evidence of or even names of the members who allowed the suspicious tours. One of the closest things to a name that any of the accusers has offered came during Rep. Sean Maloneys rant on MSNBC last week, when the New York lawmaker hinted that some of the newer GOP members could be responsible for giving the tours.

I dont have firsthand knowledge of [the tours], but Ive spoken to a member who saw it personally, he said. And he described it with some alarm that there are some of our new colleagues the same ones, of course, who believe in conspiracy theories and who want to carry guns into the House chamber who, today, today, have been yelling at Capitol Police.

Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee took it a step further, saying Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado was one of the members he saw giving a tour.

We saw congress[woman] Boebert taking a group of people for a tour sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th, he told CNN.

Boebert, however, previously denied ever giving a tour to an outside group.

I have never given a tour of the US Capitol to an outside group, she said in a statement on Jan. 14.

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Exclusive: Large bitcoin payments to right-wing activists a month before Capitol riot linked to foreign account – Yahoo News

Posted: at 8:55 am

WASHINGTON On Dec. 8, someone made a simultaneous transfer of 28.15 bitcoins worth more than $500,000 at the time to 22 different virtual wallets, most of them belonging to prominent right-wing organizations and personalities.

Now cryptocurrency researchers believe they have identified who made the transfer, and suspect it was intended to bolster those far-right causes. U.S. law enforcement is investigating whether the donations were linked to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

While the motivation is difficult to prove, the transfer came just a month before the violent riot in the Capitol, which took place after President Trump invited supporters to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and take back our country.

Right-wing figures and websites, including VDARE, the Daily Stormer and Nick Fuentes, received generous donations from a bitcoin account linked to a French cryptocurrency exchange, according to research done by software company Chainalysis, which maintains a repository of information about public cryptocurrency exchanges and whose tools aid in government, law enforcement and private sector investigations. Chainalysis investigated the donations after Yahoo News shared the data points about the transaction.

According to one source familiar with the matter, the suspicious Dec. 8 transaction, along with a number of other pieces of intelligence, has prompted law enforcement and intelligence agencies in recent days to actively investigate the sources of funding for the individuals who participated in the Capitol insurrection, as well as their networks. The government is hoping to prevent future attacks but also to uncover potential foreign involvement in or support of right-wing activities, the source said.

During a press conference on Tuesday on the investigation into the Capitol riot, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said the scope and scale of this investigation in these cases are really unprecedented. At this time, Sherwin added, prosecutors are treating the matter as a significant counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigation involving deeper dives into money, travel records, disposition, movement, communication records.

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One of the ways extremist groups have made money in recent years is online through cryptocurrency and crowdfunding. Bitcoin, which was anonymously released online in 2009 as open-source software, exists only virtually. It does not utilize a central bank or administrator to disburse funds, nor does any government control or distribute it. While bitcoin has fluctuated in value in recent years, and continues to do so, it gained mainstream popularity around 2017, the same year prominent alt-right figure Richard Spencer tweeted, Bitcoin is the currency of the alt right.

A 2017 Washington Post investigation explored how far-right groups turned even more aggressively toward bitcoin following the deadly August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. The story cited research by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center that identified a large bitcoin donation to Andrew Anglin, the editor of the Daily Stormer, a prominent neo-Nazi website that accepts bitcoin donations. At the time, the donation was worth around $60,000.

A newfound expertise in online messaging and recruitment, coupled with the fact that modern extremist groups are generally young and digitally savvy, means that these organizations and individuals have fundamentally altered the way that extremists raise money, wrote Alex Newhouse, a data analyst at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in a 2019 report that explored the links between white supremacists and digital currency.

Some prominent right-wing groups or sites display their bitcoin wallets prominently, the report noted. The lack of regulation over Bitcoin has driven its adoption by white supremacists, it said.

While cryptocurrency has been used by extremist groups and criminals to raise funds while shielding their identities, bitcoin is pseudonymous rather than anonymous. Bitcoin wallet addresses are permanent, and the digital ledger of transactions, called the blockchain, is public and cant be changed. That means if people identify their bitcoin wallet addresses, as many right-wing groups do to raise funds, transactions can be traced, which is what allowed Chainalysis to uncover information about the source of the large December donations.

The source of the funding, according to research conducted by Chainanalysis, appears to be a computer programmer based in France who created an account in 2013 and who maintained a personal blog, which was not updated between 2014 and Dec. 9, 2020, the day after the donations.

Chainalysis researchers discovered a blog post from the bitcoin user that reads like an apparent suicide note, bequeathing his money to certain causes and people in light of what he describes as the decline of Western civilization, though the researchers were unable to confirm that the user was in fact dead. Chainalysis declined to publish the users name, citing privacy concerns due to the inability to conclusively confirm his death and out of concerns over ongoing law enforcement investigations.

An email to the apparent French donor did not immediately receive a reply.

Chainalysis investigators relied on openly available information, or public bitcoin transactions, to investigate and map out the large transaction. The original donor was registered on NameID, an internet service that allows bitcoin users to tie their online pseudonym or email address with their bitcoin profile information the original donor included. Investigators tracked that email address to the blog, and to several cryptocurrency forum posts going back to 2013.

According to their research, Fuentes, a popular right-wing commentator who was suspended from YouTube last winter for violating its policies on hate speech, received the largest chunk of funding on Dec. 8 about $250,000 in bitcoin. The Daily Stormer and the anti-immigration website VDARE were among the other recipients.

Yahoo News reached out to the recipients named in this article to confirm whether they had received the funding, what information they had about the donor and what they planned on doing with the funds. None returned a request for comment, although Fuentes tweeted an obscene gesture, naming several journalists, including this reporter, shortly after the inquiry was sent.

While the Daily Stormer website openly requests cryptocurrency donations, it also includes a disclaimer that says it is opposed to violence and that anyone suggesting or promoting violence in the comments section will be immediately banned.

While theres no evidence that Fuentes directly participated in the Capitol riot, something he has so far denied, the financial resources of prominent right-wing actors are of growing interest to law enforcement.

Id be stunned if both nation-state adversaries and terrorist organizations werent figuring out how to funnel money to these guys, one former FBI official who reviewed the data for Yahoo News said. Many of them use fundraising sites (often in Bitcoin) that are virtually unmonitored and unmonitorable. If they werent doing it, theyd be incompetent.

Additionally, much like conversations that took place on social media in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot, the digital currency transactions are happening in plain sight. While cryptocurrency has the reputation of being anonymous and shadowy, thats actually a common misconception, explained Maddie Kennedy, Chainalysiss communications director. With the right tools you can follow the money, she said. Cryptocurrency was designed to be transparent.

While there are methods that cryptocurrency users can deploy to obfuscate their identities including using privacy coins such as Monero, which are difficult to trace, or using a mixer that allows various users to combine their bitcoins and mix them together to disguise their origin theres no indication the French programmer utilized those tools, Kennedy said.

Though the donations are not a smoking gun or indicative of a crime, and it remains unclear to what extent the Capitol riot was coordinated in advance, the activity is nonetheless revealing, according to Kennedy.

These extremist groups are probably more well organized and well funded than what was previously believed, she said. Chainalysis maintains a database of domestic extremists who have cryptocurrency accounts, and while the company has traced donations to right-wing groups over the years, the December deposit was the single biggest month weve ever observed directed toward these causes, the researchers wrote.

This is evidence to show theyre raising money, Kennedy said. Additionally, the fact that the donor was outside the United States suggests this has international scope, she continued, a fact that law enforcement should be paying attention to.

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Twitter CEO Says Censorship Will Be ‘Much Bigger’ Than The Trump Ban – The Federalist

Posted: at 8:55 am

In a secret recording from Jan. 8, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that the big tech company is exploring a long-term political censorship campaign to purge and ban users the company deems unacceptable.

The focus is certainly on this account, and how it ties to real-world violence, but also we need to think much longer-term around how these dynamics play out over time, Dorsey said, referring in context to President Donald Trumps account. I dont believe this is going away any time soon.

In the short video, obtained and published by Project Veritas, Dorsey reportedly addressed his employees about the Silicon Valley giants efforts to censor, ban, and de-platform certain users such as President Donald Trump and other conservatives. In the recording, Dorsey pledged to expand Twitters purge in the days following President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration.

We know we are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and its going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, the next few weeks, going on beyond inauguration, Dorsey said. We have to expect that. We have to be ready for that.

In addition to banning the sitting president and removing more than 70,000 accounts that Twitter claimed were linked to or amplified QAnon conspiracy theories, Dorsey said the heads of the company are exploring banning more users.

The moves that were making today, around, you know, QAnon, for instance, is one such example of a much broader approach that we should be looking at and going deeper on, Dorsey said. The team has a lot of work and a lot of focus on this particular issue, but we also need to give them the space and the support to focus on the much bigger picture because it is, it is not going away.

The U.S. is extremely divided. Our platform is showing up every single day. And our role is to protect the integrity of that conversation and do what we can to make sure that no one is being harmed based off that, Dorsey concluded.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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How Corey Kluber deal happened, and what it means for Yankees rotation – Yahoo Sports

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Corey Kluber in blue Rangers jersey strides to the plate

After a winter of unfulfilled need, the Yankees struck quickly on Friday to bolster their starting rotation, agreeing to terms with Corey Kluber soon after finalizing their deal with D.J. LeMahieu.

Assuming Kluber passes his physical, the teams rotation is likely set. After paying LeMahieu $15 million and Kluber $11 million, the Yanks are just a few million under a $210 luxury tax threshold that they do not plan to exceed.

According to league sources, longtime Yankee Masahiro Tanaka is seeking a one-year deal at $15-20 million. SNY reported earlier in the offseason that a reunion with the Yankees was unlikely. Now its even harder to see how it would work.

The San Diego Padres have been engaged with Tanakas camp, but sources say those negotiations have not heated up. It remains a real possibility that Tanaka will return to Japan. Anything connecting the Mets to Tanaka has been pure rumor (as it was with LeMahieu, who the Mets never pursued).

The Yankees have talked to Cincinnati about Luis Castillo, but it sounds as if we should file those discussions under Duh, who wouldnt ask about Luis Castillo?

Though Castillo talks havent advanced to date, it does seem worth keeping at least one eye on this situation, as Castillo is set to make just $4.2 million this year. If the Yanks can unload Adam Ottavinos contract, they could accommodate Castillo. The prospect cost would be steep, too.

Back in reality, its clear that the Yankees calculation was straightforward: They chose Kluber as their major rotation expenditure this year.

After Kluber threw a well-attended bullpen session in Florida last week, several teams began bidding aggressively, including a previously unknown suitor: the Toronto Blue Jays. This pushed Klubers base salary past what many in the industry expected, considering his recent injury history.

According to league sources, the Yanks actually did not submit the highest offer for Kluber. There were multiple teams willing to pay more than $10 million.

It came down to a desire on the part of Kluber and the Yanks to work together. It couldnt have hurt that Kluber enjoys working with Eric Cressey, the Yankees new director of player health and performance.

For both sides, it felt like a fit. Now, if Kluber can stay healthy, the Yanks have more depth and experience in the rotation.

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Andrew Yang Used To Champion Ideas. Now He Is A Boring Democrat – The Federalist

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Former Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced his candidacy for New York mayor on Jan. 14, and its time we set the record straight on him.

Despite a colorful ad featuring New York bodegas, his Asian-American credentials, and his fundraising prowess, Yangs run for mayor is nothing like the barnstorming presidential candidacy in which he presented new ideas and interesting credentials as an entrepreneur and nonprofit founder. Yang has become a standard Democratic candidate who now upholds very standard and uninteresting Democratic positions.

His signature issue, universal basic income cash payments of $1,000 a month, has lost its luster as more Democrat candidates in New York City have co-opted the proposal. We have also seen the limited effects of universal cash payments, as the Trump administration has carried out effectively the same policy to perverse consequences, such as inflation, that would be worse if payments are carried out over the long term, as Yang proposes. Consumer prices for groceries remain up even as the supply chain has righted itself, and the average American will pay roughly $400 more in 2021 for groceries than she did in 2020.

Other than a universal basic income, Yangs policy priorities for New Yorkers are uninspiring. He wants to form a government-run bank to pick and choose winners and losers in business. He wants to add new teachers to a public school system mismanaged by outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio. Although he has some other interesting ideas, such as fostering a startup incubator with $100 million in private capital, it is unclear where that money comes from or if he has the skill to raise it.

Yangs most disheartening attribute is his quick descent from independent-minded freethinker to Democratic Party shill and coattails-rider. The quirky former presidential candidate came into national politics with concerns about automation taking away American jobs, admirably writing in his 2018 book, The War on Normal People: America is starting 100,000 fewer businesses per year than it was only 12 years ago, and is in the midst of shedding millions of jobs due primarily to technological advances.

Yang broke boundaries (not just racial) in his presidential campaign, appearing on Fox News, Joe Rogans podcast and The View to articulate his ideas, and he attracted young and tech-savvy voters known as the Yang Gang. At times, Yang wrote as an independent-minded and even admirable personality.

During the height of the lockdowns in 2020, Yang asked Asian-Americans to step up and become leaders in their communities, showing a gentle patriotism mixed with understanding about Asian-American fears. He wrote: We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness in ways we never have before. We need to step up, help our neighbors, donate gear, vote, wear red white, and blue, volunteer, fund aid organizations, and do everything in our power to accelerate the end of this crisis.

But after his presidential campaign ended, Yang ingratiated himself with the Democratic mainstream. He became a stump speaker for Joe Biden, who is hardly a reformer or changemaker by any stretch of the imagination, and capitulated to leftist identity politics by saying that a Biden-Harris win would be Asian-Americans best hope. He directed followers to move to Georgia for Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock before the runoff elections.

Now in his New York City mayoral campaign, he is promising free everything: from free money to free business bucks (at the mercy of the government, of course), to free college and forgiveness of college tuition. He has become a caricature of himself as free stuff Santa.

All the while, Yang has drifted further and further away from the concerns of ordinary Americans. In one interview at the start of his mayoral campaign, Yang said to The New York Times, We live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. And so, like, can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?

It was a classically Yang kind of thing to say, but criticism mounted immediately over his out-of-touch words, especially since Yang owns a second home far away from the city in which he camped during the pandemic. Over Twitter, New York critics compared his comments to let them eat cake. Yang responded feistily: Anyone who thinks my New Yorkness is in question, he said, should come and say it to my face.

An early poll shows Yang up among the candidates for NYC mayor. But pitfalls can also follow high initial name-recognition. His recordor lack thereofwill be put through the meat-grinder in the New York political machine. Without a truly independent brand, Yang may prove to be ultimately indistinguishable from either his more liberal or conservative opponents.

Yangs evaporation is surely disappointing. A promising outsider, a family man, and a man with intellectual credibility about the decline of middle-class America has become a shill for the Democratic Party, and New Yorkers shouldnt expect much more.

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Divisional round recap: Is a win next week bigger for Rodgers or Brady? – Yahoo Sports

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Subscribe to The Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast

Terez Paylor & Charles Robinson recap all four divisional round games from the weekend, starting with Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers putting away Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints on Sunday evening in what is likely to be Brees' final game before retirement.

Later in the show, they break down the Kansas City Chiefs outlasting the Cleveland Browns after Patrick Mahomes suffered a concussion in the third quarter, what's next for Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens after scoring only three points against the Buffalo Bills and why the Green Bay Packers offense should get more credit after dispatching the Los Angeles Rams on Saturday afternoon.

There's also some Wentz vs. Goff talk, and the show closes out with our experts sharing some thoughts about the hirings of Arthur Smith in Atlanta and Robert Saleh in New York. Later in the week, they'll go deep into the five head coaches hired in the last week.

Stay tuned for a special month of LIVE episodes of the Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast, streaming every Monday through the Super Bowl at 1pm EST/10am PST on the Yahoo Sports YouTube, Twitter, Twitch & Facebook pages.

Stay up to date with the latest NFL news and coverage from Yahoo Sports on Twitter @YahooSportsNFL.

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March For Life Cancelled As Abortion Extremist Descends On White House – The Federalist

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After 46 years, the annual Washington, D.C., March for Life has been cancelled, with leaders citing COVID-19 concerns and the Jan. 6th U.S. capitol riot, which has resulted in heightened pressures for law enforcement officers. Organizers of Americas largest outdoor pro-life demonstration announced Friday that there will be a virtual March for Life on Jan. 29 instead.

Those who were planning to make the D.C. pilgrimage are being asked to stay home and watch the march online. Only a small group of pro-life leaders will attend the event and walk the protest route.

The march takes place every year on the anniversary of the 1973 landmark Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, which forced states to allow abortion nationwide. It has become a powerful symbol of the right to life movement.

March organizers bring in passionate pro-life advocates to speak, ranging from Live Action founder Lila Rose to saline abortion survivor Melissa Ohden. Recently, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence became the first president and vice president to speak at the march.

Each year, the demonstration inspires tens of thousands of Americans, especially young people, to brave the cold weather and take a stand for the more than 600,000 unborn babies killed every year in America. The lasting tradition couldnt even stop 10,000 people from marching in a blizzard during the 1987 rally! Yet leftist corporate media has routinelyrefused to give the mega-march the coverage it deserves, while playing up much smaller leftist rallies.

This year, the March for Life is a sorry loss for pro-lifers, especially since the incoming administration has been named the mostanti-life ticketin our nations history. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is an extremist who supports late-term abortion. As a senator, Harris had a 0 percent rating from theNational Right to Life Committeeand a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote,said, Like Joe Biden himself, Kamala Harris favors radical abortion policies including late-term abortion paid for by taxpayers, as well as forcing Catholic religious orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide abortion drugs in their healthcare plans.

As the attorney general of California, Harris used her power to target the pro-life journalists who investigated Planned Parenthood and exposeditsleadershipnegotiating the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal body parts. Harris has called for arepeal of the Hyde Amendment,which protects taxpayer from being forced to fund abortion.

Harris supports codifying Roe,which would prompt Congress to establish an affirmative and statutory right to abortion, prohibiting states from passing their own restrictions. She also endorses aplanthat would force states and localities to seek prior approval and clearance through the U.S. Department of Justice before placing any restrictions on abortions.Since both Biden and Harris have dodged answering questions on their opinion ofcourt packing, there is a real probability that the U.S. Supreme Court may be cemented as anti-life for decades under the incoming administration.

While the reasons for cancelling an in-person March for Life may be understandable, it couldnt have come at a more dire time for the pro-life movement.

Evita Duffy is an intern at The Federalist and a junior at the University of Chicago, where she studies American History. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, & her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1

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The face mask mistake that could cost drivers $349 – Yahoo News Australia

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Drivers have been issued a warning about a mask habit that could see them fined hundreds of dollars.

With many people in the habit of keeping a face mask handy, theres one crucial spot they should never store them in the car.

Much like dangling air fresheners and decorative pairs of dice, drivers arent allowed to hang their masks from their rearview mirror.

Doing so in Queensland can cost drivers $311, while in NSW they could be hit with three demerit points and a $349 fine.

The fine is $248 and no demerit points in Victoria, and while penalties exists in other jurisdictions, the exact penalties are not listed.

The RACQ issued a warning on Tuesday, telling motorists it's a simple error but it could cost you big.

Greater Brisbane drivers are naturally in the habit of having their mask handy at all times, but having a mask dangling from the rear-view mirror isnt safe, RACQ spokesperson Lauren Ritchie said.

Drivers need to have a clear view of the road from all angles so they can easily spot other cars, pedestrians and cyclists.

Ms Ritchie said masks could easily create a blind spot and subsequently increase the risk of a crash, which was particularly dangerous on highways and busy roads.

You shouldnt have anything hanging on their mirror which could block your view that includes your mask. So pack it away where it wont be a distraction no matter how long your drive is, she said.

It comes after confusion over whether drivers would be fined for not wearing a mask while driving during Brisbanes three-day lockdown early this month.

Queensland Health told the public they must wear a mask in the car, even if they were travelling alone, which created mass confusion.

Days later, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk backflipped on the earlier request, telling residents of Brisbane they no longer were required to wear a mask while driving.

Story continues

Queensland recorded three cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, all in hotel quarantine. There are 26 active cases in Queensland.

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The face mask mistake that could cost drivers $349 - Yahoo News Australia

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