Tigray leader says forces fired rockets at Eritrea

The leader of Ethiopia's rebellious Tigray region says his forces have fired rockets at a Eritrea, who he accuses of sending troops into his region. David Doyle reports.

Recommended Stories

  • Biden marks 50 million COVID-19 shots under his administration

    Plus: President Joe Biden declares a major disaster declaration for Oklahoma ahead of Texas trip.

  • Biden raises human rights in call with Saudi king as intelligence officials to release report on Khashoggi killing

    President Joe Biden has spoken with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia ahead of the release of a report from US intelligence officials that is expected to reveal that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved and likely ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. A White House report of their phone call on Thursday did not disclose whether they discussed the findings in the report. The leaders “discussed regional security, including the renewed diplomatic efforts led by the United Nations and the United States to end the war in Yemen, and the US commitment to help Saudi Arabia defend its territory as it faces attacks from Iranian-aligned groups,” according to a readout of their call.

  • France extends lifetime of its oldest nuclear reactors

    France’s nuclear safety authority agreed Thursday to extend the operational lifetime of the country’s 32 oldest nuclear reactors by a decade to as much as 50 years. The public electricity company that operates the nuclear plants, EDF, is in charge of ensuring the safety of the reactors, which had previously been intended to run for 40 years. Nuclear energy currently provides about 70% of French electricity, more than in any other country.

  • Colombia extends health state of emergency, seeks more Sinovac vaccines

    Colombia will extend its health state of emergency to curb the spread of coronavirus by three months, President Ivan Duque said on Thursday, adding that the country is in talks to buy additional doses of coronavirus vaccines produced by China's Sinovac Biotech. Colombia earlier announced agreements with a raft of pharmaceutical companies - including Sinovac - as well as the World Health Organization-backed COVAX mechanism to secure 61.5 million vaccine doses, enough to inoculate some 32.5 million people. However, the country is in talks to buy additional doses from Sinovac, Duque said in his nightly television broadcast.

  • McConnell says he'd support Trump if he wins 2024 nomination

    Less than a month after excoriating Donald Trump in a blistering floor speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that he would “absolutely” support the former president again if he secured the Republican nomination in 2024. “I've got at least four members that I think are planning on running for president, plus governors and others,” McConnell said. McConnell's remarks underscore an awkward balancing act he sought to maintain since Trump lost the election, reflecting the reality that McConnell’s own path back to power in the Senate hinges on enthusiasm from a party base that still ardently supports Trump.

  • 'Dracula' actor Claes Bang was given a bronze cast of his teeth saying 'fangs for the memories'

    Bang said he is "in the dark" as to whether season 2 of "Dracula" is happening or not, but that he would "love" to do it.

  • Ireland sees strong early evidence that vaccines are working

    Ireland is beginning to see strong early evidence that its COVID-19 vaccine rollout is protecting healthcare workers and care home residents from catching the disease, health officials said on Thursday. Ireland has administered almost 360,000 vaccines among its population of 4.9 million, so far to healthcare workers, care home residents and most recently people aged over 85. Ireland is mainly relying on the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and has administered much smaller amounts of the Moderna and AstraZeneca shots.

  • Sturm scores twice, Wild beat Avs 6-2 for 4th straight win

    Nico Sturm led a balanced Minnesota scoring attack with two goals, Kaapo Kahkonen was sharp in making 30 saves and the Wild earned their fourth straight win by beating the Colorado Avalanche 6-2 on Wednesday night. Mats Zuccarello, Zach Parise, Marcus Foligno and Ryan Hartman also scored for the Wild, who finished 4-1 on their road swing.

  • Islamabad beats Karachi in high-scoring PSL game

    Islamabad United overcame a blistering century by Karachi Kings opener Sharjeel Khan to record their second successive victory in the Pakistan Super League on Wednesday. The left-handed Khan, who scored only six runs in the first six overs, plundered eight sixes and nine fours in his 105 off 59 balls to give defending champions a strong total of 196-3. “It was obviously a really big chase and I thought we had to knock the teeth out of it early,” Hales said.

  • Biden CIA nominee Burns to focus on 'authoritarian adversary' China

    President Joe Biden's nominee to be director of the CIA, William Burns, told a Senate committee on Wednesday that he saw competition with China - and countering its "adversarial, predatory" leadership - as the key to U.S. national security. Burns, 64, a former career diplomat during both Democratic and Republican administrations, is expected to easily win confirmation to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Burns has already been confirmed by the Senate five times for his stints as ambassador to Jordan and Russia and three senior State Department positions.

  • Every single Emma Watson movie, ranked

    The "Harry Potter" star may be best-known for playing Hermione Granger, but critics also enjoyed her roles in "Ballet Shoes" and "Little Women."

  • Israeli plan to share vaccines frozen by legal questions

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial plan to ship surplus coronavirus vaccines to a group of allied nations was frozen Thursday following a legal challenge to the deal, his office announced. The plan has also illustrated how at a time of global shortages, the vaccine has become an asset that can be used for diplomatic gain. Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that he had personally decided to share small quantities of surplus Israeli vaccines with allied nations.

  • Myanmar coup: What is happening and why?

    People across Myanmar are taking to the streets after a military coup that saw its leaders detained.

  • Texas lawmakers seek to assign blame for deadly power blackout

    Texas state lawmakers dug into the causes and cast blame on Thursday for deadly power blackouts that left millions shivering in the dark as frigid temperatures caught its grid operator and utilities ill-prepared for skyrocketing power demand. Dual hearings in the state House and Senate are highlighting shortcomings by grid planners, electric utilities, natural gas suppliers, renewable energy and transmission operators that led to billions of dollars in damages and dozens of deaths. Mauricio Gutierrez, the chief executive of NRG Energy Inc, said, "The entire energy sector failed Texas."

  • Newly confirmed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is 'obsessed' with creating 'clean-energy jobs'

    The Senate on Thursday confirmed former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, 64-35, to lead the Energy Department, with 14 Republicans joining all 50 members of the Democratic caucus to give President Biden his 10th Cabinet-level appointee (plus one deputy secretary). After her confirmation, Granholm tweeted that she's "obsessed with creating good-paying clean energy jobs in all corners of America in service of addressing our climate crisis" and "impatient for results." Granholm repeated her priorities on MSNBC Thursday night. "I am all about bringing clean-energy jobs" to communities, especially those, like Michigan, reliant on fossil fuels, she told host Chris Hayes. "I am totally obsessed about how to create good-paying jobs in America," and the clean-energy sector "is the biggest opportunity for us." The market is shifting toward green energy, regardless of what politicians prefer, and the Energy Department's 17 national labs are creating ways to not only expand renewable energy but also "decarbonize fossil fuels," Granholm said. "And honestly, if we can bring the supply chains for all of these clean-energy products to the United States, instead of letting our economic competitors eat us for lunch, the jobs that could be created for us in the U.S. — good-paying jobs — are boundless." Biden has sent the Senate more nominations, and gotten fewer of them confirmed, than any recent president, Axios reports, citing a count by the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post. Biden has submitted more nominees to the Senate — but received fewer confirmations — than recent presidents, data shows. https://t.co/tZQbBPahjI pic.twitter.com/BbuqlSmwOP — Axios (@axios) February 26, 2021 "The new president is facing a pandemic without a surgeon general or head of the Department of Health and Human Services, he confronts an economic crisis without his leaders at Labor or Commerce, and domestic terrorism is on the rise with no attorney general," Axios notes. You can track Biden's nominations at The Washington Post. More stories from theweek.comJournalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiryDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriouslyThe MyPillow guy might be Trump's ultimate chump

  • Husband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6

    Illinois state Rep. Chris Miller (R), the husband of freshman U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), acknowledged Thursday that his pickup truck was parked in a restricted area outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, but he said the "Three Percenter" militia sticker on the back window doesn't mean anything. "Army friend gave me decal," Miller told The Daily Beast in an email late Thursday. "Thought it was a cool decal. Took it off because of negative pub." He said he "never was member" of the militia and "didn't know anything about 3% till fake news started this fake story and read about them." Online sleuths had linked him to the truck visible in footage from a CBS News report, earlier Thursday. The #Sedition3PTruck with government plates parked in a restricted zone from 1:02. #SeditionHunters #Sedition3P Source: https://t.co/DubmxJhjSZ pic.twitter.com/INCs6geEYg — Phoenix on Wheels (@phoenixonwheels) February 25, 2021 The Three Percenters, founded in 2008, are a "radical militia group" implicated in leading the Jan. 6 siege along with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers,and other far-right extremist groups, the FBI said in an affidavit filed in the case against alleged rioter Robert Gieswein. Their name comes from the apocryphal claim that only 3 percent of U.S. colonists fought in the Revolutionary War, and they fashion themselves as the same kind of tyranny-stomping "patriots." Miller's wife, Mary Miller, is most famous for favorably quoting Nazi leader Adolf Hitler at a "Moms for America" rally outside the Capitol on Jan. 5. "Hitler was right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future," she told the rally, apologizing later when video of her comments went viral but insisting that "some are trying to intentionally twist my words to mean something antithetical to my beliefs." More stories from theweek.comJournalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiryDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriouslyThe MyPillow guy might be Trump's ultimate chump

  • Journalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiry

    Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien, one of the few journalists who has seen former President Donald Trump's tax returns, told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night he will sleep better now that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance finally has eight years of Trump's financial documents, from 2011 to 2019. Trump "is very afraid of what's in these documents, I think," because they put him in serious criminal jeopardy, O'Brien said, but he isn't the only one implicated. O'Brien went on to explain why he thinks it's likely Trump's chief accountant, Allen Weisselberg, is likely to flip on Trump. "The thing to really focus in on here is that it's not just the tax records that Cy Vance has now," O'Brien said. "He probably has reams and reams of the accountant's work product. This is a criminal case, they're going to need to prove criminal intent on the part of Trump, his three eldest children, Allen Weisselberg, and anyone else in the Trump Organization who's fallen under the parameters of this investigation. And if there are email and notes and other records of communication about what they intended to do when they inflated the value of buildings so they could get loans against them and then turned around and deflated the value of the buildings so they could pay lower taxes on them, and there's a communication around that that predates any of these tax entries, that is gold for a prosecutor." A few hours earlier, O'Brien told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that the particular eight years of documents Vance's team has "is important, because it predates Trump's ascent into the White House, and I think helps build the narrative around the money trail and Trump's motivations for his destructive and obscene dance with people like Vladimir Putin. It's a shame they couldn't go back further — think this is one of the tragic misses of Robert Mueller's investigation, he could have gone back further, I think, than Cy Vance is able to into Trump's finances." O'Brien also underscored that the investigation implicates at least Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, and "it also targets people inside the Trump Organization who might flip on Trump if they're exposed to criminal liability," but "the brass ring in all of this is that if Trump has a criminal conviction, he cannot run for president again, and that's looming over this entire thing as well." More stories from theweek.comDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriouslyThe MyPillow guy might be Trump's ultimate chumpThe GOP's apathy for governing is being exposed

  • While President Biden visits storm-torn Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz will be giving a speech on 'cancel culture' in Florida

    The president will tour the state with Gov. Greg Abbott.

  • Billie Eilish's documentary gives an intimate look at her secret relationship with rapper 7: AMP - and why she decided to end it

    They began dating in late 2018, when Eilish was 16. The film chronicles her frustration with his "lack of effort" and "self-destructive" behavior.

  • Trump lost because 'character counts.' That's why his CPAC speech won't change anything.

    The problem in 2020 was with the Republican candidate. That won't change in 2024 if Trump stays on top.