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Lebanon announced the formation of a government on Thursday ending over eight months of wrangling amid heightened fears of a major economic collapse. The Western-backed Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri now faces a big challenge in delivering the reforms needed to address dire public finances and unlock billions of dollars in pledged aid and loans to boost growth. Hariri, who will head a 30-member cabinet,  said bold moves were needed without delay to address chronic problems facing the heavily indebted state. It has been a difficult political period, especially after the elections, and we must turn the page and start working Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s PM “We are facing economic, financial, social and administrative challenges,” Hariri said at a press conference in Beirut after the announcement. “It has been a difficult political period, especially after the elections, and we must turn the page and start working,” he said. Vicky Khoury, a member of the Sabaa Party, which ...

Interested in Donald Trump? Add Donald Trump as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Donald Trump news, video, and analysis from ABC News. President Donald Trump said Thursday that “unity” will be the theme of his first State of the Union address under divided government and that he respects Stacey Abrams, who will give the Democratic response. “I hope she does a good job. I respect her,” Trump said of Abrams, who will be the first black woman to deliver the rebuttal. Trump will give his speech Tuesday before a joint session of Congress at a sensitive time in talks over keeping the government open and funding the border wall he is demanding as part of any deal. Members of Congress are inviting federal workers worried about another shutdown after Feb. 15. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling also hovers. Trump will also be surrounded by living reminders of the changes wrought by the 2018 midterm elections that ushered Democrats into the H...

Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images LeBron James is willing to extend an olive branch to Kyrie Irving and reunite with his former teammate, according to The Athletic’s Sam Amick . Amick spoke to a source who said James is “ open to the possibility of playing with Irving again.” Irving can opt out of his contract and hit free agency this summer. Amick’s source cited the fact that James returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014 despite owner Dan Gilbert’s  public rebuke   of the four-time MVP in 2010 as evidence LeBron is willing to forgive. It may not matter. Amick reported those inside the Boston Celtics don’t view the Los Angeles Lakers as a contender to sign Irving in free agency. James and Irving’s time together in Cleveland didn’t end on great terms. Irving requested and was granted a trade in the 2017 offseason. “ Everyone knows that when Kyrie got traded it was the beginning of the end for everything,” James said in an interview with The Athletic’s   Jo...

The Trump administration just made a big move against a little-known pricing practice that the pharmaceutical supply chain depends on. On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it’s proposing a rule that would effectively ban the use of rebates for pharmaceutical drugs. HHS said the move is designed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for patients, a major goal for the administration. “This proposal has the potential to be the most significant change in how Americans’ drugs are priced at the pharmacy counter, ever, and finally ease the burden of the sticker shock that millions of Americans experience every month for the drugs they need,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. Drugmakers pay out more than $100 billion in rebates annually. Rebates are a big business for pharmaceutical middlemen, otherwise known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), such as Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and OptumRx. Cigna, which owns Express Scripts, and CVS Health...

Yemen has been in a state of war for the past four years. The United States has firmly backed the Saudi – UAE  coalition which has been fighting Houthi rebels. But repeated attacks on civilians by the coalition have drawn widespread international condemnation and have contributed to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Things could be about to change now. A group of US senators is pushing to end Washington’s support of the conflict . The group of Democrats and Republicans, led by Senator Bernie Sanders , plans to resubmit a draft resolution the Senate passed in December but the House of Representatives rejected. Sanders has issued a warning over America’s continued role in the war. But will President Donald Trump back the resolution? Presenter: Richelle Carey Guests: Adam Baron – Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations Scott Lucas – Professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham Catherine Shakdam – Researcher with Al-Bayan...

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Jonathan Bachman/Associated Press The New York Knicks reportedly explored including Kristaps Porzingis in a trade for New Orleans Pelicans big man Anthony Davis, but the Western Conference team was not interested in that move. A source told ESPN.com’s Ramona Shelburne (h/t colleague Tim MacMahon ) that New Orleans was not sure if he would remain with the team long-term, seeing how Porzingis can become a restricted free agent after this season. Instead, the Knicks  announced  Thursday they traded Porzingis, Tim Hardaway Jr., Trey Burke and Courtney Lee to Dallas for DeAndre Jordan, Wesley Matthews, Dennis Smith Jr. and two future first-round draft picks.                This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.   Get the best sports content from the web and social in the new B/R app . Get the app and get the game. Read More from Trend News Web http://bit.ly/2MNo...

Starting this spring, five corporate giants — Anthem, Cigna, CVS Health, Humana and UnitedHealth Group — will control health insurance and pharmacy benefits for more than 125 million Americans. Why it matters: Most of this happened through rapid consolidation, and now the pressure is on these companies to prove they can better control both medical and drug spending with everything under the same roof. Driving the news: Anthem has been working for over a year to create its own pharmacy benefit manager , called IngenioRx, so it could sever ties with Express Scripts . Anthem’s new prescription drug negotiator is now ready to go live by March, 10 months ahead of schedule, the company said Wednesday . This is the new landscape. These 5 companies will handle both drug and medical bills for millions of people across Medicare, Medicaid and employer-based insurance. UnitedHealth Group is the largest entity combining health insurance and pharmacy benefits, with UnitedHealthcare an...

On a foggy Thursday morning on February 1, 1979, a chartered Air France flight from Paris roared through Mehrabad airport near central Tehran, carrying Iran’s most revered spiritual figure. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an outspoken critic of Iran’s ruler Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was coming home after 14 years in exile in Turkey, Iraq and France. Before touchdown, the plane circled low, reportedly to make sure there were no tanks blocking the runway. Khomeini’s return marked a crucial episode in the success of the Iranian revolution 40 years ago, the establishment of the Islamic Republic and his ascent as supreme leader. It would also pave the way for Iran to recast its role in the Middle East and alter its ties with the West – a geopolitical convulsion that continues to reverberate around the world to this day. Wearing his trademark black robe and turban, the 78-year-old cleric slowly emerged from the aircraft holding on to the pilot with his right hand. His son, Ahmad...

11 detainees at an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas, have been refusing food , some for more than 30 days, and six of the detainees are being force-fed per orders by a federal judge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Thursday. Interested in Immigration? Add Immigration as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Immigration news, video, and analysis from ABC News. An additional four other detainees are on a hunger strike at ICE detention centers nationwide — one each in the Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco areas — bringing the number of detainees refusing to eat to 15 nationwide, according to ICE. The Associated Press, the first to report the hunger strike, said as many as 30 are striking, per interviews with detainees, relatives and an attorney representing those on hunger strike. The hunger strikers are from India and Cuba , the AP reported , and some were so weak they can’t stand up or talk. The detainees are on hunger strike because ...

The following is a transcript of the video. I’ve been using MacBook Air laptops for roughly the last decade, give or take, without pause. I tested out the Microsoft Surface Go, a significantly less expensive laptop solution against my MacBook Air. The results were kind of a mess. The majority of stuff that I do on my MacBook Air is writing and or using the internet. I occasionally do some kind of heavier lifting, but nothing super processor-intensive. Most of what I’m doing is kind of power internet using. My first impressions of the Surface Go are that it looks and feels very similar to previous Surface products. The keyboard is maybe the most impressive hardware feature of it. It in every other way is a relatively budget looking version of a standard Microsoft Surface tablet device. There’s a kind of kickstand device on the back that you can position. It feels extremely strange to have a kind of like kickstand on your legs because it’s not very adjustable to different heights. One...

Washington, DC – The US Senate voted to advance an amendment seeking to rein in President Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal of American special forces from Syria and put parameters around plans to reduce the number of US forces in Afghanistan. The 68-23 vote came on a procedural matter clearing the way for an amendment on Syria and Afghanistan troop levels by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican. McConnell is seeking to add the resolution to a pending measure on Middle East security policy that has broad bipartisan support. Thursday’s vote serves notice to the White House that senior Republican leaders want a reversal of Trump’s order to withdraw US special forces from Syria and a check on future plans to withdraw troops in Afghanistan. “I think the president is slowing down in Syria and he is taking the opportunity to see if we can get a new structure in Afghanistan, if we can get a peace agreement,” Senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a ...

If Ally Brooke ‘s debut solo music video for “Low Key” featuring Tyga is an audition for success, she’s totally got the part. The former Fifth Harmony member just released the dance-heavy visuals alongside her sultry debut single, which also dropped today (January 31). Flirty and fun, “Low Key” offers Brooke’s long-standing fanbase a glimpse into the Latin-meets-urban-pop genre she’s been mastering in the studio. And with the addition of Tyga , who’s featured on “Like Mariah” off Fifth Harmony’s 2015 album,  Reflection , Brooke keeps things familiar while developing her own sound, too. And just as Brooke reintroduces herself to the world, the “Low Key” video features the San Antonio native literally auditioning with some of the best choreography she’s executed to date. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Brooke shares some major chemistry with her love interest, played by Ricky Alvarez, as she slays look after look in the video. With a catchy chorus, an ...

Amazon’s ad business may not be as gigantic as Facebook or Google, but it’s gaining traction. During Amazon’s fourth-quarter earnings, the e-commerce giant reported $3.38 billion in “other revenue,” a line item mostly comprised of advertising sales during the fourth-quarter of 2018, up from $2.5 billion during the third-quarter. Year-over-year “other” revenue jumped 97% from the $1.7 billion Amazon reported in the fourth-quarter of 2017. For the total year of 2018, Amazon’s ad revenue hit $10 billion. According to a recent note from Pivotal Research, Amazon is expected to make $38 billion in ad revenue by 2023. Read more: Amazon’s ad business is set to more than quadruple by 2023 — and Google should be worried Advertising represents a small fraction of Amazon’s revenue, but it’s increasingly on the lips of executives. To compare, Facebook made $56 billion in ad revenue for 2018, and Wall Street expects Alphabet-owned Google to report $136 billion in 2018 revenue when it report...

Steven Senne/Associated Press Despite New England’s dominance this century, the Patriots’ four Super Bowl victories have come by just 19 total points, and they’ve lost three Super Bowls despite being favored. So while all three of our panelists agreed the Pats would cover a 2.5-point spread Sunday, there was some trepidation.  Davenport said:  “It’s quite possible I’m going to regret this. I made a similar pick a year ago, taking the Patriots to win a close Super Bowl in a game featuring evenly matched teams. We all know how that turned out. And given my against-the-spread (ATS) record in the postseason (2-7-1), you should absolutely bet the kids’ college fund on the Rams. I’m kidding. Please don’t do that.” But Bleacher Report’s regular-season pick king was willing to lay the points with New England, and he listed three reasons for that: “The first is New England’s bend-but-don’t-break defense. While the Rams and Patriots allowed almost an identical amount of ya...

Venezuela ‘s self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido presented the opposition’s broad vision for the country’s future on Thursday, as the political crisis in the country deepened.  “We have a plan, well thought out, structured,” Guaido  said at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences in the Central University of Venezuela on Thursday, noting that “it is the sum of many sacrifices”.  The “National Plan” focuses on the opposition’s vision for the economy and oil resources, but it also tackles public services, security, governability and society.  Guaido said there would be something for everyone in society to do as Venezuela moves forward, including the military. “The armed forces also have a role in the reconstruction of the country,” he said. Last week, Guaido swore himself in as interim president before a crowd of his supporters. The proclamation came after the opposition-controlled National Assembly declared President Nicolas Maduro’s second-term “i...

On Netflix’s Sex Education , 17-year-old Otis ( Asa Butterfield ) is your average lanky high schooler. Too co-dependent to be an outsider, too uncomfortable in his own skin to fit in, and too obsessed with The Cure to truly be depressed. But all of that unresolved anxiety and teenage ennui has manifested itself in an interesting way: Otis can’t masturbate. This is especially awkward for Otis because his mom is a renowned sex therapist who loves to, well, therapize her son. But all of that meddling does have its advantages. When faced with a lucrative business proposition from the school’s resident alt dream girl, Otis, despite his inexperience, begins to dole out sex and intimacy advice to his classmates. What follows are very real, very earnest, and very healthy conversations about sex and intimacy, the kind we don’t often see in teen sex comedies. MTV News chatted with Sex Education stars Asa Butterfield and Ncuti Gatwa about how the series subve...

Facebook is suffering through a second day of chaos. On Wednesday, Apple took the extraordinary step of effectively blocking Facebook’s internal company iOS apps, causing havoc for the Silicon Valley tech giant’s tens of thousands of employees. They’ve been left unable to do anything, from communicating with their colleagues to using company transportation. The iPhone maker took action after Facebook was caught by tech news site TechCrunch paying people to install an app that let it spy on their data and phone habits . The program violated Apple’s policies, so Apple pulled the plug by revoking the app’s certificate — and because that certificate was also powering all of Facebook’s internal employee apps, they all stopped working too. In a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider on Wednesday , Facebook leadership attempted to quell unrest among employees and told them the company was working “closely” with Apple. But a day later, Facebook’s internal apps remain unusable, sources sa...

The 2019 AFC Asian Cup final Who: Japan v Qatar When: 14:00 GMT, February 1, 2019 Where: Zayed Sport City Stadium, Abu Dhabi Doha, Qatar –  Underdogs Qatar will take on four-time winners Japan in the final of the 2019 AFC Asian Cup  on Friday. Japan, Asia’s number three side, sit 43 places above their opponents and are clear favourites for the trophy, especially after a commendable show in the 2018 World Cup. For Qatar, the road to the final has not come without controversy . Hosts UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt severed all diplomatic and economic ties with Doha, imposing a land, sea and air blockade on the Gulf nation in June 2017. The team had to take a circuitous route via Kuwait lasting more than five hours to make an air journey that can be done directly in under an hour. Playing against the backdrop of that regional political dispute , and without any fans in the stands, Qatar beat Saudi Arabia 2-0 in a group match and then  thrash...

Maddie Meyer/Getty Images If the Boston Celtics want to see Anthony Davis galloping up and down the TD Garden’s parquet floors while wearing the classic white uniform of the Beantown franchise, they have two options. Now that the all-world big man has officially requested a trade from the New Orleans Pelicans, they can either remain patient or get aggressive. Very aggressive, in fact. The patient approach requires general manager Danny Ainge holding tight, operating under the assumption that the Pelicans will do likewise until all cards are on the table this offseason. After all, Boston can compile one of the NBA ‘s more aggressive trade packages, but only after Kyrie Irving ‘s salary is off the books—by rule, as Boston.com’s Nicole Yang  explained in detail earlier this season, a team can’t acquire a player on a Rose Rule contract (Davis) when one is already under contract (Irving).  The aggressive approach, however, would allow Davis to contribute toward an immediate...