After years of robust diplomacy with Myanmar under President Barack Obama focused mainly on then-opposition leader and now jailed State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Trump administration adopted a largely hands-off policy. It focused primarily on Myanmar's strategic importance in the competition between the United States and China for influence in the region. Myanmar has become a reminder that, for all the hopefulness and anticipation of Obama administration officials – many of whom now serve in the Biden administration – there are limits to America's ability to shape developments in another nation, particularly one so reclusive and far away.
China on Tuesday rejected an allegation by a cyber intelligence firm that a state-backed hacking group targeted the IT systems of two Indian coronavirus vaccine makers. Cyfirma told Reuters that hacking group APT10, known as Stone Panda, had identified gaps and vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure and supply chain software of Bharat Biotech and the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's largest vaccine maker. "Without showing any evidence, the relevant party made baseless speculation, distorted and concocted facts, to malign a specific party," China's foreign ministry told Reuters.
More than 75 former U.S. attorneys are throwing their support behind President Joe Biden's nominee for associate attorney general and urging congressional leaders to quickly confirm her to the post. Vanita Gupta has been nominated for the No. 3 position in the Justice Department, a position in which she would be responsible for overseeing the department's civil, antitrust and civil rights litigation, but also for helping to implement policy decisions on a host of nationwide issues. The Senate has scheduled the confirmation hearing for Gupta and Lisa Monaco, Biden's nominee for deputy attorney general, for March 9.
The report, issued by the office of the director of national intelligence, concludes that the Saudi crown prince “approved” the operation that resulted in the brutal murder of the Saudi journalist, dissident and U.S. resident two years ago. Release of the intelligence assessment is an important step in revealing the truth about Khashoggi's assassination. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has also decided to impose no meaningful penalty against Bin Salman.
The de facto U.S. and Canadian embassies in Taiwan on Tuesday praised the quality of pineapples grown on the island, depicting photographs of their top diplomats in Taipei with the fruit after an import ban by China. China last week stopped the import of Taiwanese pineapples, citing "harmful creatures" it said could come with the fruit. Infuriated Taiwanese authorities called the ban a political move to further pressure the island, a charge that China denied.
Lawyers for a senior executive for Chinese communications giant Huawei Technologies were in court Monday arguing evidence should be introduced which would undermine the case to have their client extradited to the U.S. Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei's founder and the company's chief financial officer, at Vancouver's airport in late 2018. The U.S. wants her extradited to face fraud charges. Her arrest infuriated Beijing, which sees her case as a political move designed to prevent China's rise.
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With a vote of 97-72, the Georgia state House on Monday passed a bill supported by Republicans that would roll back voting access. House Bill 531 requires a photo ID for absentee voting, limits weekend early voting days, restricts ballot drop box locations, and sets an earlier deadline to request an absentee ballot. State Rep. Barry Fleming (R), the bill's chief sponsor, said it is "designed to begin to bring back the confidence of our voters back into our election system."
Since December, more than 600 students have been abducted from schools in north-west Nigeria, highlighting a worrying development in the country's kidnap-for-ransom crisis. Friday's kidnapping of nearly 300 students from the Government Girls Science Secondary School in Jangebe, Zamfara state, which ended with their release, was the second mass kidnap from schools in less than 10 days. The authorities say recent attacks on schools in the north-west have been carried out by "bandits", a loose term for kidnappers, armed robbers, cattle rustlers, Fulani herdsmen and other armed militia operating in the region who are largely motivated by money.
Scientists have unearthed in Argentina's Patagonian wilderness fossils of what may be the oldest-known member of the dinosaur group known as titanosaurs that includes the largest land animals in Earth's history.
A 19-year-old Pakistani student who shot to fame after her five-second video went viral on social media across the subcontinent, hopes numerous renditions of her monologue will translate into more dialogue between rival neighbours India and Pakistan. The short video shot by Dananeer Mobeen in the Nathaigali mountains of northern Pakistan and uploaded onto Instagram shows a group of youngsters enjoying themselves by a roadside. Swinging around the device she is filming on, Mobeen gestures behind her and says in Urdu, "This is our car, this is us, and this is our party taking place."
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on two military leaders of the Houthi movement in Yemen, accusing them of procuring weapons from Iran and organizing attacks, in the Biden administration's first punitive action against the group. The sanctions contrast with the State Department's decision last month to revoke terrorist designations on the group imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on its last full day in office, over concern that they would exacerbate Yemen's humanitarian crisis. But President Joe Biden's administration has signaled limits to U.S. tolerance of the Iran-backed Houthi movement, warning that Washington will keep up pressure on the group's leadership.
Joe Exotic of “Tiger King" fame has found new attorneys who say they plan to file a motion for a new trial in a matter of months. Joe Exotic, whose real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in federal prison for violating federal wildlife laws and for his role in a failed murder-for-hire plot targeting his chief rival, Carole Baskin, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida. Baskin was not harmed.
The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago's airport in late January, and Chile's president, Sebastián Piñera, was beaming. The source of that hope: China – a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic. China's vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccine to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press.
The Senate Finance Committee said its members will vote on Wednesday on three Biden administration nominees, including Katherine Tai as trade czar and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as U.S. health secretary. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden will convene the business meeting at 10 a.m. to vote on the nominations of Tai, Becerra and Wally Adeyemo, who was nominated as to be deputy Treasury secretary, the committee said. All three candidates are expected to win approval by the committee, a congressional aide said, which would clear the way for their consideration by the full Senate.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was roundly mocked for grovelling comments he made about Donald Trump in a TV interview. Mr Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday evening that the former president was “very nice” because “he's allowed me to be in his world”. On MSNBC's Morning Joe the following day, the co-hosts laughed at the senator's subservient tone in praising his master.
The UK will receive 10 million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses made by the Serum Institute of India (SII), the UK government said in a statement on Tuesday. SII, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer by volume, is mass producing the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with Oxford University, for dozens of poor and middle-income countries. "The UK has ordered 100 million doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, of which 10 million doses will come from the Serum Institute of India," a UK government spokesperson told Reuters.
President Joe Biden's pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, has withdrawn her nomination after she faced opposition from key Democratic and Republican senators for her controversial tweets. Thirteen of the 23 Cabinet nominees requiring Senate approval have been confirmed, most with strong bipartisan support. “Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities,” Tanden wrote in a letter to Biden.
China and the United States should remove all barriers to travel between the two countries if the United States achieves herd immunity for COVID-19 with 90% of its population vaccinated, potentially by August, a Chinese epidemiologist has said. The United States is the worst-hit nation in the world by case count, with nearly 30 million infections so far, though new cases have been declining. China has COVID-19 largely under control, with relatively small clusters of new local infections in recent months.
The Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to uphold voting restrictions in Arizona in a key case that could make it harder to challenge a raft of other voting measures Republicans have proposed following last year's elections. All six conservative justices, appointed by Republican presidents, suggested they would throw out an appellate ruling that struck down the restrictions as racially discriminatory under the landmark Voting Rights Act. Less clear is what standard the court might set for how to prove discrimination under the law, first enacted in 1965.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Sen. Ted Cruz after he mocked her during his CPAC speech. Ocasio-Cortez again criticized Cruz for fleeing Texas during the recent electrical-grid collapse. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Sen. Ted Cruz after the Texas Republican mocked her in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Friday.
Duterte, whose six-year term ends next year, has been reading the names of government employees and officers implicated in graft and corruption in his TV appearances to highlight his campaign against abuses and irregularities. But Duterte, a former government prosecutor who has threatened drug suspects with death and is known for his expletives-laden outbursts, has faced criticisms for abusive behavior himself. In his televised remarks Monday night, Duterte lashed out at Vice President Leni Robredo for criticizing the government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak and vaccination campaign.
Abandoning the 'Operation Warp Speed' name In the week leading up to the 2021 presidential inauguration, the Biden transition team announced that the White House's national COVID-19 vaccine plan would no longer be called “Operation Warp Speed,” the name coined by Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump. On Jan. 21, 2021, the Biden administration released its 200-page COVID-19 plan, “The National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. The change in names not only broadened the focus to include additional safety measures to curb transmission during the distribution process.
Turkey's government plans to shut down the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the ruling AK Party's deputy parliament chairman was quoted as saying on Tuesday, the most senior official to endorse nationalist demands for its closure. President Tayyip Erdogan's government and its nationalist MHP allies accuse the HDP of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), accusations that escalated after Ankara said Turkish captives were killed by the PKK in Iraq last month. The MHP have repeatedly called for the HDP's closure over links to the PKK, which Turkey, the European Union, and United States designate a terrorist organisation.
Fitness brand CrossFit, a staple of Marjorie Taylor Greene's political brand, is distancing from the Republican. A spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company is against Greene's conspiracy theories. CrossFit's statement comes after the House voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments.
“How about we skip ‘he won’t win’ cycle and not do 2016 all over again. Trump can absolutely win another presidential election.”
“With independents deserting him, there is simply no path for Trump to get back into the White House — except as a tourist.”
“They might as well cancel the 2024 primaries...because there is no way he can lose.”
“The next Republican presidential primary will be heavily shaped by Trump — whether or not he decides to run again.”
“Donald Trump will not be running for president again. He will, however, continue to tease the possibility of a 2024 run.”