Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official and an outspoken anti-Muslim activist, is set to be one of the newest members of the Cruz campaign's national security advisory team, Bloomberg reports. Gaffney, who first met Sen. Ted Cruz back in 2012 when he says he advised the Texas senator about introducing "legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization," has been labeled "one of the nation's leading Islamophobes" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Gaffney has claimed that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated the Obama administration, specifically citing Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and he was banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2010 after he accused CPAC officials of "infiltrating the organization on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood," Talking Points Memo reports. He reappeared at CPAC this year to lead a panel called "Countering the Global Jihad."

Cruz's new advisory team members will also include other members of Gaffney's Center for Security Policy as well as conservatives who disagree with Gaffney's stance on confronting radical Islam, including former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) and former Reagan official Michael Ledeen. Cruz is expected to announce his team's latest additions on Thursday. Becca Stanek

China's antitrust regulator doled out a record 18.2 billion yuan fine to e-commerce giant Alibaba on Saturday for abusing its market dominance. The figure is equivalent to $2.8 billion and 4 percent of the company's domestic annual sales. Additionally, Alibaba will have to revamp its operations and submit a "self-examination compliance report" within three years, per The Wall Street Journal.

Considering the penalty far surpasses Qualcomm's previous record $975 million fine in terms of raw money (relatively that was a bigger hit) it seems like a real blow to Alibaba, especially since its founder Jack Ma remains under heavy government scrutiny after criticizing Beijing's regulatory restrictions. But it may actually be a weight off the company's shoulders, at least for now.

"China's record fine on Alibaba may lift the regulatory uncertainty that has weighed on the company since the start of an anti-monopoly probe in late December," Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Vey Sern-Ling and Tiffany Tam said. They described the fine as a small price to pay for some clarity.

The fine alone shouldn't be too much to worry about for Alibaba, suggested Jeffrey Towson, a former professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management. "That is serious money, but it's not going to hinder their development," he told the Journal.

In a statement, Alibaba said it "accepts the penalty with sincerity and will ensure its compliance with determination."

That said, Bloomberg called the Alibaba investigation "one of the opening salvos in a campaign seemingly designed to curb the power of China's internet leaders and their billionaire founders" like Ma. Read more at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Tim O'Donnell

Dr. Andrew Baker, the medical examiner who performed George Floyd's autopsy, testified in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's murder trial on Friday, telling jurors that the primary cause of Floyd's death was the restraint of his body and pressure on his neck.

Chauvin's defense attorneys have repeatedly argued that Floyd's underlying health issues and drug use were to blame for his death while Chauvin was arresting him in May 2020, reports The New York Times. Baker testified that while Floyd's heart disease and drug use were "contributing conditions," compression of his neck was the primary cause of death.

Baker said medical examiners are allowed to classify the manner of death as "undetermined" if circumstances are unclear, but in this case, he classified Floyd's death as "homicide." Read more at The New York Times. The Week Staff

Taylor Swift didn't re-record 27 tracks for Fearless (Taylor's Version) just for fans to listen to the one owned by her former label/sworn enemy, Big Machine.

Following Friday's midnight release of Fearless (Taylor's Version) — for which Swift re-recorded her music after failing to acquire the rights to her early albums two years ago — Swifties launched a campaign to bury the Big Machine version on Spotify.

The instructions — which involve looking up Fearless (Platinum Edition), clicking the three dots to "hide this song," and then repeating the process "for all the songs" — are intended to make it so the "old versions don't play during shuffle," a fan account said. "[For] Swifties who want to heed Taylor's call to stop supporting her old albums ... it's pretty much mandatory," TMZ wrote. Jeva Lange

Being an 11-time Grammy Award nominee is maybe not as glamorous as you might think.

Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, who shares two daughters with her wife, Catherine Shepherd, published her memoir, Broken Horses, this week, and in it details the complexities of being both a music star and a parent.

Describing the morning that she learned that she and her bandmates had received six Grammy nominations for their album By the Way, I Forgive You, Carlile writes that "both my kids woke up vomiting. That's what I love about the juxtaposition of my jobs. You'd think that it would be a total downer to spend a day like that getting life-affirming news and simultaneously being thrown up on and stuck in front of Dora the Explorer all day, but it was PERFECT."

Read more at The New York Times. Jeva Lange

Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes ... Travis sucking Kourtney's fingers in public. Then comes Travis with a Kourtney tattoo.

Even though Kourtney and Travis have been friends and neighbors for years, things are moving pretty quickly for the new couple, who've only been public with their relationship since January 2021. Travis has seemingly already devoted himself to Kourtney with the permanence of a tattoo, having apparently gotten her name inked over his heart — at least judging by shirtless photos of him on the set of his new music video, reports Cosmopolitan.

Kourtney's ex, Scott Disick, recently was rumored to not be "threatened" by Kourtney and Travis' blossoming relationship, although that might quickly be changing… Read more at Cosmopolitan. Jeva Lange

After recently unveiling positive trial results, Pfizer and BioNTech are looking to get their COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in adolescents between 12 and 15 before the next school year.

Pfizer announced Friday that it has submitted a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve its COVID-19 vaccine for use in adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15.

The request came after the companies last week said a phase 3 study showed the vaccine, which has already been approved for those 16 and older, to be 100 percent effective in this age group. The study consisted of 2,260 adolescents between 12 and 15, and there were no COVID-19 cases reported among the group that was vaccinated, with the vaccine demonstrating "robust antibody responses, exceeding those recorded earlier in vaccinated participants aged 16 to 25 years old," the companies said.

Pfizer's goal, it says, is to make the vaccine available to adolescents between 12 and 15 before the start of the 2021 school year. Meanwhile, according to NBC News, the company is also studying the vaccine in children between 6 months and 11 years old, and the first participants in that trial were dosed last month. Brendan Morrow