House Could Vote This Week on $1.9T COVID Relief Bill
The House Budget Committee advanced the bill yesterday.
Exactly a year after New Zealand recorded its first coronavirus case, the biggest city of Auckland woke on Sunday to a second lockdown this month, as authorities try to rein in a cluster of the more contagious UK variant. The seven-day lockdown of a population of nearly 2 million, announced late on Saturday by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, was prompted by the case of a person who had been infectious for a week but not in isolation. "It is more than likely there will be additional cases in the community," Ardern told a televised news conference, although no new cases were recorded on Sunday.
The duke talks about his mother's departure from the Royal Family in excerpts of an upcoming TV special.
A U.S. national security commission is recommending that American universities take steps to prevent sensitive technology from being stolen by the Chinese military, a sign of growing concerns over the security of academic research. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), led by former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, on Monday voted unanimously to approve its final report https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report-Digital-1.pdf to Congress. A new section on university research was added to the final report, which also features numerous recommendations in areas including competition in artificial intelligence and the semiconductor supply chain.
More than 850 cows that have spent months on a ship in the Mediterranean are no longer fit for transport and should be killed, Spain's Agriculure Ministry said on Saturday, confirming an earlier Reuters report. The cows were kept in what an animal rights activist called "hellish" conditions on the Karim Allah, which docked in the southeastern Spanish port of Cartagena on Thursday after struggling to find a buyer for the cattle during the past two months. The animals were rejected by several countries over fears they had bovine bluetongue virus.
A UK-born woman who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State should not be allowed to return to Britain to challenge the government taking away her citizenship, because she poses a security risk, Britain's Supreme Court ruled on Friday. Shamima Begum left London in 2015 when she was 15 and went to Syria via Turkey with two school friends. While there, she married an Islamic State fighter.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may have been spared direct punishment after a U.S. intelligence report implicated him in the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but he has not emerged unscathed. The declassified report, based on CIA intelligence, concludes that the prince approved an operation to "capture or kill" Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. President Joe Biden's decision to publish a report that his predecessor Donald Trump had set aside brings with it a broad refocusing of Washington's stance on dealing with the kingdom, on its human rights record, and on its lucrative arms purchases.
Jackson became Nasa’s first Black female engineer in 1958
Iran on Saturday condemned U.S. air strikes against Iran-backed militias in Syria, and denied responsibility for rocket attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq that prompted Friday's strikes. Washington said its strikes on positions of the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah paramilitary group along the Iraq border were in response to the rocket attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq.
The ambassador made an emotional appeal urging countries to help remove the military from power.
Trump plans a new political action committee to maintain his grip on the Republican Party, Politico says.
Some 317 girls remain missing in Zamfara state, but 42 people abducted in Niger state are freed.
Thailand kicked off its COVID-19 inoculation campaign on Sunday, with cabinet ministers, health officials and medical professionals among the first in the queue to receive vaccinations. The first doses of vaccine, developed by China's Sinovac Biotech, were given to Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who is also the health minister, among others at an infectious diseases institute on the outskirts of Bangkok. "I hope that the vaccination will result in people being safe from the spread of COVID-19 and it allows Thailand to return to normalcy as soon as possible," Anutin told reporters afterwards.
Biden nominated three people to open positions on the agency's governing board, who, if confirmed by the Senate, would create a Democratic advantage.
‘I'm not going to worry about people that their only worry in life is to be re-elected,’ says Enrique Tarrio
Four major Indian states are set to go for polls in the next two months in a test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity amid a raging months-long protest by farmers against three new agricultural laws that have sparked outcry at home and abroad. The eastern states of Assam and West Bengal and the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala will hold state assembly polls between late March and April, India's Election Commission said in a statement on Friday. Modi is battling his biggest political challenge in years as tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on the outskirts of New Delhi since late last year, blocking highways and demanding the government repeal the laws they say will harm farmers and benefit large corporate buyers.
Outspoken GOP congressman complains ‘the left and the media’ were less concerned about ‘caravans going through Mexico’ than Texas senator visiting
At least two political rights groups advocating democracy have quietly quit Hong Kong and moved overseas, unnerved by a national security law that has fanned fears over the erosion of freedoms under China’s rule, sources told Reuters. In the past, China-focused rights groups had valued the wide-ranging autonomy, including freedom of speech and assembly, guaranteed for Hong Kong when control over the former British colony was returned to Beijing in 1997. But some non-government organisations (NGOs) say the new legislation means they face a choice of either having to leave Hong Kong or work with the same kind of fears and constraints they would encounter in mainland China.
Americans want the U.S. to be No. 1, but 'don't appreciate going into endless costly wars.' Where does that leave the Biden administration?
United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Friday that China is restricting basic civil and political freedoms in the name of national security and COVID-19 measures, adding to a wave of criticism of the country's rights record. "Activists, lawyers and human rights defenders – as well as some foreign nationals – face arbitrary criminal charges, detention or unfair trials," Bachelet told the Human Rights Council. More than 600 people in Hong Kong are being investigated for taking part in protests, some under the new national security law imposed by mainland China on the former British colony, she said.
By the end of 'WandaVision' Episode 8, Wanda Maximoff has been called 'the Scarlet Witch.' What does that really mean?