
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.

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 “revived” in order to influence the EU and the U.N. Human Rights Council.
President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani provides insight into the strongest piece of evidence he will present for legal challenge.

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.
The Christian Bible describes it as something more. “Church” 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.

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

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 48°F), 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 “last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation.” 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.

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.

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 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.

Turkey on Saturday summoned the Iranian ambassador to Ankara over Iran's “aggressive” 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 “by force.

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.

President Donald Trump lambasted the Supreme Court on Saturday for declining to take a case he hoped would overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election victory and called Attorney General William Barr a "disappointment." The decision comes ahead of a meeting by the U.S. Electoral College on Monday to make Democrat Biden's victory official. Trump, a Republican, has refused to concede despite losing to Biden, who took 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, which allots votes to all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on population.

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.

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.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a long-shot lawsuit by Texas and backed by President Donald Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states, dealing him a likely fatal blow in his quest to undo his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden. The decision allows the U.S. Electoral College to press ahead with a meeting on Monday, where it is expected to formally cast its votes and make Biden's victory official. Biden, a Democrat, has amassed 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, which allots votes to all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on population.

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.

Republicans are signaling that they won't support the $908 billion bipartisan coronavirus relief plan. The plan was intended to be a compromise between Democrats and Republicans after months of deadlock over how much should be spent and on what. Democrats have dismissed the White House's alternative proposal in favor of working on the bipartisan one, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested that negotiations could continue after Christmas.

Steve Bannon, the former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, has hired a lawyer who also represents the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to defend him against criminal fraud charges. Bannon's hiring of Robert Costello came five weeks after his prior lawyer, William Burck, withdrew following Bannon's Nov. 5 online suggestion that the government infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray be beheaded for being disloyal to Trump.

On Saturday morning, aggrieved Trump supporters are set to rally outside the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Department of Justice's headquarters. For the second time since those elections concluded, his fans are set to flock to the nation's capital to rally for a cause that the Supreme Court itself—on Friday night—dismissed. Arina Grossu, a Jericho March co-founder and staffer at the conservative Family Research Council, claims she had a vision two days after Election Day that imagined Trump supporters protesting the election results by marching around buildings.


“The prospect of a 2024 run is politically significant. It’s also a complete fiction.”
“His flirtation with a 2024 bid ensures he’ll remain the dominant force in the Republican Party.”
“He shouldn’t run for president again. There’s a better job and life for him on the horizon.”
“Trump is in for years of scandals and humiliations…He’ll have to devote much of his energy to trying to stay out of prison.”
“If Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children could also potentially pick up the mantle.”