
Chinese authorities have detained a Chinese national working for the Bloomberg News bureau in Beijing on suspicion of endangering national security, the news agency and China's foreign ministry said on Friday. According to a Bloomberg report, Haze Fan was seen being escorted from her apartment building by plain-clothes security officials on Monday, shortly after she had been in contact with one of her editors. "Chinese citizen Ms. Fan has been detained by the Beijing National Security Bureau according to relevant Chinese law on suspicion of engaging in criminal activities that jeopardize national security," the Chinese foreign ministry said in response to a Reuters query.

The US is to execute a female federal inmate for the first time in almost 70 years, the Justice Department said. Lisa Montgomery strangled a pregnant woman in Missouri before cutting out and kidnapping the baby in 2004. The last woman to be executed by the US government was Bonnie Heady, who died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The first woman detained under India's controversial new 'Love Jihad' laws has miscarried in custody, her family have told The Sunday Telegraph. Yesterday a distraught Muskan Jahan, 22, called her mother-in-law, from a government shelter where she is being held in the city of Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, saying she had bled profusely and then lost her baby. Mrs Jahan believes her three-month-pregnant daughter-in-law was given an injection to abort the baby by staff because she converted from Hinduism to Islam and married a Muslim man.

In the hands of Pierre Yovanovitch, the Paris apartment that iconic designer Jean-Michel Frank once called home gets a spectacular new lease on life Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani provides insight into the strongest piece of evidence he will present for legal challenge.

Some Republican senators are using their unfounded election fraud claims as an excuse to muddy President-elect Joe Biden's transition. Biden has spent the past few weeks since the election filling out his Cabinet, hoping quick confirmations will help him get a quick start on reversing President Trump's policies. But "as long as there's litigation ongoing, and the election result is disputed, I do not think you will see the Senate act to confirm any nominee," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Axios.

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned Turkey's ambassador on Friday over remarks by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Azerbaijan, which Tehran said amounted to meddling in its affairs. Erdogan recited an Azeri-Iranian poem about the division of Azerbaijan's territory between Russia and Iran in the 19th century. Tehran appeared concerned his remarks could fan separatist tendencies among Iran's Azeri minority.

Pakistan's foreign minister on Friday called for the United Nations and the European Union to investigate a recent report exposing a 15-year disinformation campaign that Islamabad alleges was designed to serve India's interests and discredit Pakistan. The extensive report was published earlier this week by EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization. The findings detail how 10 defunct but U.N.-accredited NGOs were โrevivedโ in order to influence the EU and the U.N. Human Rights Council.

He also failed to convince state lawmakers in states he lost like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia to certify their own separate slates of Trump electors. It means Monday will lack the drama of competing slates of electors casting votes, spoiling a dubious legal strategy pursued by the Trump team. "We've seen pretty clear signals from state legislators that's not going to happen," said Rebecca Green, director of William and Mary School of Law's election law program.

India will deploy its vast election machinery to deliver 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the most vulnerable people in the next six to eight months through conventional cold chain systems, the expert leading the initiative said on Friday. The government has lined up cold storage facilities with temperatures between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 48ยฐF), said V.K. Paul, who heads the group of experts on vaccine administration for COVID-19 that advises India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Paul said these preparations meet the requirements of what he said were the four emerging candidates in the race for India's vaccine.

A lone senator from Utah has singlehandedly blocked the bipartisan approval of two new national museums to honor American Latinos and women, arguing that โlast thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation.โ Republican Sen. Mike Lee objected Thursday to the creation of the two proposed Smithsonian museums, stalling two projects that have been in the making for decades and enjoy broad bipartisan support. Senate approval would have sent the legislation approving the Latino museum to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Canada approved Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine, deeming it safe, effective, and ready for distribution, on Wednesday. Now that Canada's health regulators have deemed Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine safe and effective, all eyes have turned to the next phase: distribution. The first Canadians are just days away from receiving shots of Pfizer and BioNTech 's coronavirus vaccine, Canadian health officials said.

The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear arguments over the weekend on President Donald Trump's state lawsuit seeking to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots and overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state. The court's decision to take the case, and to hear arguments on Saturday, came hours after a lower court judge ruled against Trump and said there was nothing illegal about the election or subsequent recount in the state's two largest counties. The highly unusual Saturday arguments will come exactly 48 hours before Monday's scheduled Electoral College vote.
The Christian Bible describes it as something more. โChurchโ or its translation in the Greek, ecclesia, denotes a group of believers. Whichever definition one prefers, in the case of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, its place in history is secure.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday said he opposed legislation under consideration in Mexico that would put tough restrictions on foreign agents operating in the country, including those fighting the drug trade. Mexico's Senate approved a bill on Wednesday widely seen as a broadside against the United States, after weeks of tension with Washington over counternarcotics operations. The proposed law does not specifically target the United States, but was proposed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador after a diplomatic flare-up over the arrest of former Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos in Los Angeles in October on drug charges.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that the nation's 21 million healthcare workers and 3 million residents of long-term care facilities - including assisted living and nursing homes - get priority access to the shots. With the FDA's authorization, Pfizer can distribute shots using its own delivery system, which is centered in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. Pfizer has 6.4 million vaccine doses available, but the company's first shipments will only contain 2.9 million doses.

A Florida newspaper apologized Friday for endorsing the reelection of a Republican congressman who supported a lawsuit that tried to have the Supreme Court overthrow the will of the voters in the presidential election. The Orlando Sentinel in an editorial said โto its horror, U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz was one of 126 Republican representatives who supported a Texas lawsuit filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that wants to deprive President-elect Joe Biden of his victory in last month's election and give a second term to President Donald Trump. The Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit Friday night.

Turkey on Saturday summoned the Iranian ambassador to Ankara over Iran's โaggressiveโ reaction to the Turkish president's recitation of a poem on a visit to Azerbaijan, which Tehran deemed to support a secession of Azeri ethnic parts of Iran. The diplomatic spat between neighbors Iran and Turkey began earlier this week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who strongly backs Azerbaijan, read parts of a poem during a parade in the Caucasian country's capital of Baku. The verses that Erdogan read included lines about how a border tore apart ancient Azeri, or Azerbaijani, lands โby force.

American women, who traditionally make most of the healthcare decisions in their families, are more wary than men of the new, rapidly developed COVID-19 vaccines, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, presenting a potential challenge to efforts to immunize the public. The regulator said on Friday it was working rapidly to issue an emergency use authorization.

President Donald Trump wants a special counsel to investigate unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter and election fraud related to the 2020 presidential race, The Wall Street Journal reported. Senior White House officials are also said to be interested in the appointment of a special counsel to investigate allegations surrounding President-elect Joe Biden's son, Hunter. Trump's focus on a special counsel comes as federal judges across the country, as well as the Supreme Court, reject dozens of Republican legal challenges seeking to overthrow the election results.
White House press secretary joins 'Hannity' to react to high court turning aside bid to overturn results in key states

The chief executive of Germany's BioNTech SE said the biggest challenge facing it and partner Pfizer Inc now that their COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use in the United States will be to scale up manufacturing to meet huge demand. "We need to solve the manufacturing challenge," Ugur Sahin told Reuters in an interview. The companies have said they will produce up to 1.3 billion doses of the vaccine next year.

A congressional monitor of federal pandemic aid is raising the possibility of a link between President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a $700 million relief loan to a struggling trucking company. Bharat Ramamurti, a Democratic member of the four-person Congressional Oversight Commission, raised the possible Kushner connection at a hearing Thursday, as panel members from both parties challenged the Treasury Department's decision to award the loan to YRC Worldwide. The taxpayer-funded loan was made on the grounds that the company's operations are critical for maintaining national security.

President Donald Trump effectively admitted on Friday that he lost the 2020 election when he tweeted about the "Biden Administration." "Now that the Biden Administration will be a scandal plagued mess for years to come, it is much easier for the Supreme Court of the United States to follow the Constitution and do what everybody knows has to be done," Trump said. Trump has refused to concede, repeatedly pushing the baseless claim that President-elect Joe Biden won because of mass fraud.

A Virgin Galactic test flight Saturday ended prematurely as the spacecraft's rocket motor failed to ignite and it then glided down safely to its landing site in southern New Mexico. The hourlong flight was the first from Virgin Galactic's new headquarters at Spaceport America, a futuristic desert outpost where the aircraft carrying the spacecraft took off at approximately 8:25 a.m.


โThe prospect of a 2024 run is politically significant. Itโs also a complete fiction.โ
โHis flirtation with a 2024 bid ensures heโll remain the dominant force in the Republican Party.โ
โHe shouldnโt run for president again. Thereโs a better job and life for him on the horizon.โ
โTrump is in for years of scandals and humiliationsโฆHeโll have to devote much of his energy to trying to stay out of prison.โ
โIf Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children could also potentially pick up the mantle.โ