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"Well, guys, after 64 days in office, today President Biden held his very first press conference," Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday's Tonight Show. "Normally when a 78-year-old answers and hour of questions, they're getting a physical. It was quite the event. If you did a shot every time Biden said 'Look, folks,' you got drunker than a ship captain in the Suez Canal." Fallon obviously taped his show before Biden's press conference he suggested any of the reporters asked about the COVID-19 pandemic, for example but Late Night's Seth Meyers watched the event. Biden's presidency has been boring and popular, "and because Fox couldn't find anything else to jump on, they decided to spend weeks obsessing over the whole press conference thing," he said. "Fox has also been full of absurd and baseless speculation about what would happen at this press conference," Meyers demonstrated. "Maybe Fox News just can't believe that a president would be able to give a coherent answer to a question without a teleprompter: 'He must have had a script, he didn't suggest chugging bleach once!'" They didn't get the gaffes or blunders that they wanted. The president's opening announcement that 200 million people will get vaccinated in his first 100 days, not 100 million, "is Biden at his best, when he's got the vibe of an old-timer football coach giving his young squad an inspiration halftime speech," Meyers said. "On the other hand, he gets a little off-track when he trails off, like he did at the end of an answer on immigration." "And there were some other weird moments, too, like when Biden was asked about the tidal wave of GOP voter-suppression laws Republicans have unleashed," and he followed a perfectly good answer by saying it "makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle," Meyers said. "Jim Eagle? Are you talking about the Muppet? Jim Eagle sounds like a desperate guess on Jeopardy! for the question 'He was the lead singer of the Eagles.'" "Whatever you thought of Biden's press conference," Meyers said, "it was certainly refreshing to see a president directly answer reporters' questions without attacking anyone or melting down." There are also lots of borderline NSFW Ted Cruz jokes. Watch below. More stories from theweek.comIs Biden setting Harris up to fail?5 blisteringly funny cartoons about spring break superspreadersTrump says his supporters were 'hugging and kissing the police' during the 'zero threat' Jan. 6 Capitol siege

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NSA Sullivan on talks with China: 'We knew it was going to be tough' - Yahoo News

The National Sheep Association (NSA) has warned that the current inability to move breeding sheep to the EU will cause problems as the breeding season progresses.

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker commented: With the UK government easing controls on imports from the EU until the end of the year and into 2022, we are seeing no reciprocal decisions from the EU and it feels as though our negotiating hand is being given away.

We are in the ridiculous position of being able to import live breeding animals into the UK now, but not able to export anything due to an absence of facilities to take breeding animals on the other side of the channel.

While most of the trade in breeding cattle results in animals being brought into the UK, for sheep, virtually all trade is based on farmers in the EU wanting to buy British-bred sheep something they are deprived of at the moment and a situation that is causing growing concern among a number of sheep breeders for who this is an important trade.

Stocker continued: Britain has a reputation for being the stockyard of the world with our genetics and high-quality animals being in strong demand.

If we lose our ability to move breeding animals across borders then others will soon step in.

I am concerned that the potential severity of the impact this could have on UK breeders is not being sufficiently recognised by Defra and ministers because of the link with the governments recent consultation on journey times and welfare in transport that in itself is resulting in a loss of confidence amongst breeders.

Even within the UK, the situation is dire with all promises made, broken, over free and frictionless trade between Great Britain [GB] and Northern Ireland [NI].

No one knew or expected what was coming, and it is going to be difficult for GB breeders to satisfy the Scrapie requirements for exporting the majority of breeding sheep to NI, with it needing three years to be part of the scheme that would allow trade to continue.

Equally as bad are the requirements for any animals coming from NI to GB for shows or sales to then not have the ability to return home without staying here for six months.

The NI protocols have silently killed off the majority of the trade for GB farmers selling commercial maternal sheep to NI, as well as a crucial part of the NI farming sector that is based on breeding high-value pedigree animals as part of the UK industry.

Stocker concluded: It feels like we are being told Britain is to become a bigger player on the global stage whereas the reality is that we cannot even trade with our closest neighbours.

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NSA warns of problems over unlevel playing field of UK breeding animal trade - Agriland.co.uk

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Will Boost Operators' 5G Network Deployments" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Access to the 3.5GHz band is considered to be necessary for mobile network operators (MNOs) to roll out 5G services, but national regulatory authorities (NRAs) in some countries have not planned or released spectrum in this band.

MNOs in this situation should use dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) technology to deploy 5G non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) networks using the spectrum they already have.

MNOs will further benefit from what the analyst calls DSS+ solutions - those that can mix legacy 2G and 3G technologies with 4G and 5G on the same band and increase spectrum usage efficiency.

This report provides:

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hp0m1h

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2021 Analysis of How DSS and DSS+ Technologies will Help Operators as They Roll Out 5G NSA networks and Plan for SA Networks: Dynamic Spectrum Sharing...

Cars enter and leave a drive-thru voting site in Houston on Election Day in 2020. Texas Republican lawmakers are looking to ban the practice. David J. Phillip/AP hide caption

Cars enter and leave a drive-thru voting site in Houston on Election Day in 2020. Texas Republican lawmakers are looking to ban the practice.

Last year, when Isabel Longoria had to figure out how to safely hold an election during a pandemic, she saw the daunting task as an opportunity to do things differently.

"I just started dreaming," says Longoria, the elections administrator for Harris County in Texas. "And I just said, 'OK, let's start from the beginning not with what's possible first but what do voters want, and what's going to make it safer?' "

Harris County is home to Houston, and is one of the most populous and diverse areas of the country. Longoria says figuring out how to make polling locations less crowded was a main focus in the leadup to the 2020 elections, but she had always wanted to make voting easier as well.

One of her solutions was to increase the hours that voting centers were open. Some polling locations were open 24 hours at one point. Longoria says being open late at night gave shift workers including first responders more opportunities to vote. She says it also "spread out the number of people voting at any time" at a location.

Longoria also looked to local businesses, which were shifting to curbside options for their customers. She came up with drive-thru voting.

"Most folks who are fortunate to have a car use it to do all sorts of things banking, grocery shopping," she says. "What makes voting different? In my opinion, nothing."

Longoria and her team also tried to make mail voting easier by sending out ballot applications to all eligible voters, in case people didn't know they had that option.

But Republican leaders in Texas say all of these efforts were an overreach.

During a recent news conference, Gov. Greg Abbott argued that local election officials including those in Harris County were doing things not explicitly allowed by law. He also accused them of effectively opening the door to voter fraud.

"Whether it's the unauthorized expansion of mail-in ballots or the unauthorized expansion of drive-thru voting," Abbott says, "we must pass laws to prevent election officials from jeopardizing the election process."

In response to those local efforts, Republicans who control the state legislature filed a series of restrictive voting bills. Researchers last year said "Texas is the state with the most restrictive voting processes," but it's likely its laws will become stricter.

One measure that's been proposed would make distributing ballot applications to voters who didn't ask for one a felony. Others would outlaw drive thru-voting, and not allow polling locations to be open for more than 12 hours specifically beyond 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Another would require that election administrators put the same amount of voting machines in every one of their polling sites, no matter what.

That last one makes no sense to Chris Davis, the election administrator in Williamson County, a swing county in central Texas.

"If you have a smaller-size room in one part of your county that can only fit eight [voting machines]," he says, "well, by golly, eight is as many as you can have in an arena, or a lecture hall or high school gym."

Davis says the proposed changes to how local officials run elections are "incredibly short-sighted" and could lead to a misuse of public resources. And he also takes issue with proposals that would allow people to record video and sound in polling locations and ballot counting sites. He says that creates election security concerns.

But mostly Davis says he feels like lawmakers are accusing election administrators of doing bad things, which he says just isn't true.

"We contend that this isn't based in reality," he says. "It's a perception brought on by very, very visible candidates. And that perception has taken on a life of its own."

Committees in the Texas House and Senate began hearing two of the most notable Republican voting bills this week including House Bill 6 and Senate Bill 7.

Texas Democrats have raised concerns that certain bills would make running elections harder because of the fear of prosecution looming over many possible mistakes.

Harris County's Longoria says the reaction from state leaders has been disappointing because she was successful in getting more people to vote while also limiting the potential spread of the coronavirus. Turnout in Harris County hit about a 30-year high in 2020.

"We were really proud," she says.

Longoria, as well as voting rights advocates in Texas, are also worried these voting bills could make it harder for marginalized communities to vote. Longoria says it's difficult to disregard the role of race in this effort as lawmakers zero in on things like drive-thru voting.

"One hundred twenty-seven thousand voters did drive-thru voting the majority of which were Black and brown voters," she says. "It's hard to not draw a line and say, 'Why are you going after this innovation?' "

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Texas Republicans Look To Curb Local Efforts To Expand Voting Access - NPR

By Tom Barton, Quad-City Times

Iowa Republicans continued a GOP-pressure campaign Thursday, casting a U.S. House review of a contested congressional election in Iowas 2nd District as a partisan power grab to pad Democrats narrow 219-211 majority in the House.

Those votes have been counted. Theyve been recounted. Theyve been canvassed by bipartisan (recount) boards, and certified by bipartisan groups of county and state officials, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said at a news conference Thursday. This election should stand.

Reynolds was joined by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, of Ottumwa, was seated as a new member of Congress in January, pending the outcome of a House committees review of Democrat Rita Harts election challenge. Hart, of Wheatland, lost to Miller-Meeks by just six votes out of nearly 400,000 cast after a bipartisan panel of state officials certified the election results in November following a recount in all 24 counties in southeast Iowas 2nd Congressional District.

Attorneys for Hart and Miller-Meeks submitted initial legal briefs to a House panel on Monday.

Miller-Meeks attorney, Alan Ostergren, broadly denied Harts claims and said the burden was on Hart to prove that a state-certified election should be overturned.

Hart argues that 22 ballots were legally cast in the district but not counted, because of errors by election workers. Had the 22 ballots been tallied, Hart argues she would have won by nine votes.

Republicans have criticized Hart for not challenging the election results in state court before asking Congress to resolve the issue.

They chose to bypass an impartial court system and go directly to a partisan process. And that is unconscionable, Reynolds said. The voters in Iowa have spoken. Weve gone through the process. Mariannette Miller-Meeks has won this election. Shes been seated by Congress, and its time to move on.

Harts campaign has argued she did not do so because Iowa statute does not offer enough time for a sufficient appeal process.

Pate pushed back on the assertion, stating both my office and the (Iowa) Supreme Court were ready, willing and able to facilitate a fair and thorough contest process.

Harts campaign argues the contest is the proper avenue for Congress to fulfill its duty and ensure that all Iowa voters have their voices heard and uphold voters constitutional right to have their legal ballots counted.

Reynolds and other Republicans, including Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, have seized on wording in Harts legal brief asking the House panel depart from Iowa law, and adopt counting rules that disenfranchise the smallest possible number of voters.

Rita Hart isnt just asking Congress to overturn a state-certified election. Shes asking Democrats to throw out Iowa law in deciding which votes to count, Reynolds said.

Harts campaign argues Iowa law prevented legally cast but wrongly rejected ballots from being included in the recount. Iowa Code states recount boards may consider only ballots considered by county canvass boards, even if made aware of legally cast ballots excluded from the initial count.

House committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., in a statement issued Wednesday, argues the House has a constitutional obligation to ensure the will of the people, through their votes, is reflected in the final composition of the House.

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I urge Republicans to end their coordinated public campaign filled with the same dangerous rhetoric and baseless accusations of stealing an election that contributed to a deadly riot in the Capitol and instead join us in a deliberate and dispassionate examination of the facts before the Committee, she said, stressing the House panel has not made any decision about the outcome of the contest.

A handful of moderate and vulnerable House Democrats have expressed reservations at the prospect of reversing a state-certified election and unseating Miller-Meeks, enough to potentially sink any floor vote.

Hart attorney Marc Elias, however, told reporters Tuesday he expects lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, will respect the will of Iowa voters if evidence shows Hart received more lawful votes.

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Republicans Reynolds, Pate blast U.S. House review of Iowa's 2nd District election - The Gazette