White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday addressed the multiple allegations of sexual harassment made against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, saying the Biden administration supports an investigation of him and believes the three women making the accusations should be heard. The benefit of doing a briefing every day is that I can certainly speak on behalf of the president and the vice president. And so let me reiterate that they both believe that every woman coming forward should be heard, should be treated with dignity and treated with respect,” Psaki said during a briefing with reporters.
The FBI has arrested a second South Carolina man in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. William Robert Norwood III of Greer has been charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building without lawful authority, violent and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, obstruction of justice and theft of government property. Norwood, arrested Feb. 25 by the FBI, has been detained in jail.
Three women who worked for a local radio and TV station in eastern Afghanistan were gunned down Tuesday in separate attacks, the news editor of the privately owned station said. Shokrullah Pasoon, of Enikass Radio and TV in Jalalabad, said one of the women, Mursal Wahidi, was walking home when gunmen opened fire, according to eyewitnesses. The other two, whom Pasoon identified only as Shahnaz and Sadia, were shot and killed in a separate incident, also walking home from work.
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.
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."
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.
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo started his Monday night show by awkwardly acknowledging the sexual assault allegations against his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Three women have now accused Governor Cuomo of inappropriate behaviour and sexual misconduct. Chris Cuomo said it would be inappropriate for him to cover the allegations against his brother because they are family. Both Democrats and Republicans have called for Governor Cuomo to resign.
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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.
The Palestinian Authority has acquired only a few thousand doses — not even enough for front-line health workers — and reported nearly 2,000 new cases on Tuesday alone. It's a stark illustration of the disparity at the heart of the Middle East conflict — one of the few aspects of life here that haven't changed over the past year. Israel cites past agreements that say the PA is responsible for health care in areas it administers.
Police in Sri Lanka said Monday they have arrested two people in connection with the death of a 9-year-old girl who was repeatedly beaten during a ritual they believed would drive away an evil spirit. The two suspects — the woman performing the exorcism and the girl's mother — appeared in court on Monday to hear charges over the girl's death, which occurred over the weekend in Delgoda, a small town about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of the capital, Colombo. According to police spokesperson Ajith Rohana, the mother believed her daughter had been possessed by a demon and took her to the home of the exorcist so a ritual could be performed to drive the spirit away.
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.
The leader of Taiwan's main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) said on Tuesday he is in no rush to travel to China to meet President Xi Jinping, and that Beijing's proposals to get Taiwan to accept Communist rule had "no market" on the island. The KMT ruled China before retreating to Taiwan at the end of a civil war with the Communists in 1949. While ties across the Taiwan Strait have improved dramatically in the last three decades, Beijing continues to claim Taiwan as its own territory.
The United States is expected to impose sanctions to punish Russia for the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny as early as Tuesday, two sources familiar with the matter said. President Joe Biden's decision to impose sanctions for Navalny's poisoning reflects a harder stance than taken by his predecessor, Donald Trump, who let the incident last August pass without punitive U.S. action. The sources said on Monday on condition of anonymity that the United States was expected to act under two executive orders: 13661, which was issued after Russia's invasion of Crimea but provides broad authority to target Russian officials, and 13382, issued in 2005 to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
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.
China, under growing global pressure over its treatment of a Muslim minority in its far west, is mounting an unprecedented and aggressive campaign to push back, including explicit attacks on women who have made claims of abuse.
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.
China's plan to dramatically reform Hong Kong's electoral system, expected to be unveiled in a parliamentary session in Beijing starting this week, will upend the territory's political scene, according to more than a dozen politicians from across the spectrum. The proposed reform will put further pressure on pro-democracy activists, who are already the subject of a crackdown on dissent, and has ruffled the feathers of some pro-Beijing loyalists, some of whom may find themselves swept aside by a new and ambitious crop of loyalists, the people said. The measures will be introduced at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp parliament, which starts on Friday, according to media reports.
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions to punish Russia for what it described as Moscow's attempt to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent last year, in President Joe Biden's most direct challenge yet to the Kremlin. The sanctions against seven senior Russian officials, among them the head of its FSB security service, and on 14 entities marked a sharp departure from former President Donald Trump's reluctance to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden stopped short, however, of putting sanctions on Putin himself.
For years, Boston city leaders have vowed to diversify the police department so it looks more like the community it serves. The percentage of officers of color is up slightly compared to 2018, but the racial makeup of the overall force is largely the same as 10 years ago and only slightly more diverse than 20 years ago, according to data compiled in a 2015 audit of the department.
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.
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.
Last September, in the arid hills of northern Nevada, a cluster of flowers found nowhere else on earth died mysteriously overnight. Conservationists were quick to suspect ioneer Ltd, an Australian firm that wants to mine the lithium that lies beneath the flowers for use in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. One conservation group alleged in a lawsuit that the flowers, known as Tiehm's buckwheat, were "dug up and destroyed."
Israel's Supreme Court on Monday dealt a major blow to the country's powerful Orthodox establishment, ruling that people who convert to Judaism through the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel are also Jewish and entitled to become citizens. The landmark ruling, 15 years in the making, centered around the combustible question of who is Jewish and marked an important victory for the Reform and Conservative movements. These liberal streams of Judaism, which represent the vast majority of affiliated American Jews, have long been marginalized in Israel.
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.
“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.”