Category Archives: Joe Biden

Joe Biden has ‘great confidence’ in top general Milley after Trump revelation

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The chair of the joint chiefs of staff sought to prevent the former president from ‘going rogue’, according to new Woodward book

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Joe Biden threw his weight behind the top US military officer on Wednesday, saying he had “great confidence” in the general who, according to a new book, took steps to prevent the outgoing Republican president Donald Trump from “going rogue” and launching a nuclear war or an attack on China.

Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, also defended phone calls he made to his Chinese military counterpart in the tumultuous final months of Trump’s presidency, signaling that the hitherto secret conversations were in keeping with his duties.

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Californians vote in recall election as polls show Newsom holding favor – live

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Damien Gayle reports:

Facebook has kept internal research secret for two years that suggests its Instagram app makes body image issues worse for teenage girls, according to a leak from the tech firm.

Related: Facebook aware of Instagram’s harmful effect on teenage girls, leak reveals

Joe Biden will reportedly propose a target for 70% of the world’s population to be vaccinated within the next year at a global vaccines summit he intends to convene alongside the UN general assembly in New York this month.

The US president’s target, reported by the New York Times, is in line with ambitions set jointly by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the WTO and the World Health Organization (WHO) but is more ambitious than current performance and the targets set at the G7 meeting in Cornwall chaired by the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson. The G7 agreed to donate 870m doses of Covid-19 vaccines directly, with an aim to deliver at least half by the end of 2021.

Related: Joe Biden to propose target of vaccinating 70% of world in a year

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‘It’s a reality’: Biden calls for urgency in California as climate crisis fuels wildfires

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President calls year-round fires an emergency country can no longer ignore as he advocates for rebuilding plan

Joe Biden travelled to California on Monday to survey wildfire damage as the state battles a devastating fire season that is on track to outpace that of 2020, the state’s worst fire season on record.

The president is using the trip to highlight the connection between the climate crisis and the west’s increasingly extreme wildfires as he seeks to rally support for a $3.5tn spending plan Congress is debating.

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Republican backlash against Biden’s Covid vaccine mandate grows

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Asa Hutchinson calls directive ‘unprecedented assumption of federal mandate authority’ as other governors threaten to sue

The political sparring match over Joe Biden’s new vaccine mandate continued on Sunday with one Republican governor blasting the measure as “counterproductive” and the White House insisting it was necessary to end the coronavirus pandemic.

Related: Northern Idaho’s anti-government streak hinders fight against Covid

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America mourns as leaders and families mark 20th anniversary of 9/11 attacks

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Ceremonies in New York, Pennsylvania and at Pentagon mark the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks

Some wept. Some held photos of loved ones At 8.46am, precisely two decades after a passenger plane became a new and deadly weapon here, all fell silent in remembrance.

Families of the victims gathered at the 9/11 memorial plaza in New York on Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and helped shape the 21st century.

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9/11 anniversary: Biden, Bush and Harris urge unity as US marks 20 years since attacks – live

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Biden and Harris among leaders at ceremonies in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania

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The Guardian’s David Smith has the full report on today’s commemorations so far:

Some wept. Some held photos of loved ones. At 8:46am, precisely two decades after a passenger plane became a new and deadly weapon here, all fell silent in remembrance.

Families of the victims gathered at the 9/11 memorial plaza in New York on Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and helped shape the 21st century.

Related: America mourns as leaders and families mark 20th anniversary of 9/11 attacks

Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrived in Pennsylvania earlier and walked out to the Flight 93 National Memorial, where they bowed their heads as they helped to place a wreath of white and red roses.

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9/11 anniversary: Joe Biden calls for unity as US marks 20 years – video

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Joe Biden has called for unity as the US remembers the 2,977 people who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks. ‘We honour all those who risked and gave their lives in the minutes, hours, months and years afterwards,’ he said. Biden is due this morning to join families of the victims at three separate locations. But anger at the US president’s recent botched withdrawal from Afghanistan is still raw

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Biden’s hard line on vaccine mandates draws praise and pushback

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Some experts say Biden’s move comes at critical moment in pandemic but lawsuits from Republican leaders are also expected

Joe Biden’s new hard line on vaccine mandates in America has dropped in an already politically fraught environment, where some governors have banned requirements by education authorities that masks be used in schools even as many experts lament low rates of vaccination and some hospitals are straining under the pressure of the Delta variant of Covid-19.

Related: ‘Have at it’: Joe Biden dares vaccine mandate opponents to take him on

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Biden tells Republicans threatening to sue over vaccine mandate: ‘Have at it’ – as it happened

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South Carolina and Arizona governors decry ‘big government overreach’ after president orders larger businesses to demand employees be vaccinated

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That’s it for me tonight. Thanks for reading along! Here’s some of what we covered:

Related: US Capitol rioter photographed wearing horns pleads guilty

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Tennessee’s controversial abortion law was blocked by a federal appeals court today, ruling that the measure was “constitutionally unsound”.

The law banned abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which typically occurs around 6 weeks into the pregnancy — often before many women know they are pregnant.

Appeals court strikes down Tennessee abortion restrictions, with Judge Thapar (a Trump appointee) writing lengthy partial dissent taking aim at Roe v. Wade: https://t.co/bZqizndvtJ pic.twitter.com/J1kcQRDBMn

Related: AOC on Texas governor’s ‘disgusting’ abortion remarks: ‘He is not familiar with a female body’

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Biden: ‘Patience wearing thin with unvaccinated Americans’ – video

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US president Joe Biden has announced new vaccination mandates for 100 million workers as he looks to stop the surge of Covid-19 across the country. Biden said said the Department of Labor is developing an emergency temporary standard that will require all employers with more than 100 employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly. 'Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated even though the vaccine is safe, effective and free'.

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Biden tells Xi US and China must not ‘veer into conflict’ in first call for months

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White House says leaders agree to engage ‘openly and straightforwardly’ amid US frustration at lack of progress in advancing countries’ relations

US president Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have spoken in their first phone call for seven months, amid continuing frustrations over attempts to find common ground.

During the 90-minute call, which was initiated by Biden, the two leaders discussed their shared responsibility to ensure competition does not “veer into conflict”, according to a transcript of the conversation from the White House.

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Biden says ‘we can and we will turn the tide on Covid-19’ in White House speech – live

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Joe Biden said in a Thursday afternoon statement that he was no longer proposing David Chipman, a 25-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) who has worked to tighten gun laws, as the agency’s next director, confirming an earlier Washington Post report.

The gun reform group Brady says Biden’s decision to bow to National Rifle Association (NRA) pressure and withdraw his nominee, a strong gun control advocate, to lead the agency enforcing federal firearms laws is “a shameful day for our country”.

Related: Biden withdraws pick to run firearms agency after NRA pressure

“We have the tools. Now we just have to finish the job,” Biden said in his concluding remarks.

More details of his pandemic plan will be revealed in the coming weeks, he said. He ended his speech with a whisper: “Get vaccinated”.

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Biden administration sues Texas for ‘unconstitutional’ abortion law – video

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The US attorney general has announced that the Biden administration is suing Texas over the state’s 'clearly unconstitutional' abortion law, which amounts to a near-total ban on abortion. Senate Bill 8 bans abortion around six weeks after a pregnancy starts, and is enforced by private citizens being invited to report any woman seeking an abortion after this time, with a prize of $10,000 (£72,000) for each report.

Merrick Garland said the law that came into effect at the beginning of September was one 'all Americans should fear' because it opened the possibility for other constitutional rights to be put in danger by 'bounty hunting' private citizens

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White House asks Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway to quit military academy boards – video

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The White House has confirmed that Trump appointees to military service academy advisory boards, among them former press secretary Sean Spicer and adviser Kellyanne Conway, have been asked to step down or be fired. During a White House press briefing Jen Psaki responded to questions about whether this risked politicising these  appointments: 'I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified, or not political, to serve on these boards, but the president’s qualification requirements are not your party registration, they are whether you’re qualified to serve and whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration.'

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Biden asks Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway to quit military academy boards

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White House confirms that 11 Trump appointees were asked to step down – or be fired – including Conway and Spicer

The White House confirmed on Wednesday that 11 Trump appointees to military service academy advisory boards, among them former press secretary Sean Spicer and adviser Kellyanne Conway, were asked to step down – or be fired.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said: “The president’s objective is what any president’s objective is – to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with your values. And so yes, that was an ask that was made.”

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Biden vowed to make racial justice the heart of his agenda – is it still beating?

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The president named one of the most diverse cabinets ever but efforts to reform voting rights and other priorities are bogged down by legislative and legal obstacles

Defying the punishing August heat, the Rev Al Sharpton recently led a gathering thousands strong through the streets of the nation’s capital on the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr delivered his immortal I Have a Dream speech on that day in 1963.

Now, as then, there was an urgency to their march. In statehouses across the country, Republicans are proposing – and passing – new voter restrictions that activists say amount to the greatest erosion of voting rights since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement.

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‘This is code red’: Biden sounds alarm on climate crisis as he tours New York damage – video

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US president Joe Biden has emphasised the danger of the climate crisis after touring Hurricane Ida-impacted neighbourhoods. ‘People are beginning to realise this is much, much bigger than anyone was willing to believe,’ Biden said during a tour of Queens, New York. ‘Even the climate skeptics are seeing that this really does matter.’

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Texas governor Greg Abbott signs restrictive voting bill into law – live

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Statements are coming in from opponents of the new Texas voting law. Here are some edited versions of some of them:

Here’s where the day stands so far:

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US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds

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Figures based on reported number of US airstrikes highlight the human cost of the 20-year ‘war on terror’

US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to new analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars.

The analysis, based on the US military’s own assertion that it has conducted almost 100,000 airstrikes since 2001, represents an attempt to estimate the number of civilian deaths across the multiple conflicts that have comprised aspects of the “war on terror”.

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Biden under pressure as NGO says flights from Afghanistan blocked

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Marina LeGree claims group of Americans and at-risk Afghans prevented from flying for a week

Joe Biden’s administration is facing mounting pressure amid reports that several hundred people, including Americans, had been prevented for a week from flying out of an airport in northern Afghanistan.

Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of a small American NGO active in Afghanistan, said 600 to 1,300 people, including girls from her group, had been waiting near the Mazar-i-Sharif airport for as long as a week amid confusion involving the Taliban and US officials.

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