Biden faces the challenge of repairing transatlantic ties damaged by Trump as president embarks on first European tour
The United States’s reputation as the leading global power has suffered in France and Germany because of Washington’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 600,000 Americans, according to a new poll of views in 11 countries.
Related: US's global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump's coronavirus response
Continue reading...Alleged sedition and a royal family feud may have been driven by a broader plan to reshape the Middle East
The phone call that shook the Jordanian government came in the second week of March this year. On the line to the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) in Amman was the US Embassy, seeking an urgent meeting about a matter of national importance. The kingdom’s spies were startled. Danger was brewing on the home front, they were told, and could soon pose a threat to the throne.
Within hours, the GID had turned its full array of resources towards one of the country’s most senior royals, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, a former crown prince and half-brother of the king, whom the Americans suspected was sowing dissent and had begun rallying supporters. By early April, officials had placed Hamzah under house arrest and publicly accused the former heir and two close aides of plotting to unseat King Abdullah.
Continue reading...Newspaper ‘deeply troubled’ by revelation that records were secretly obtained over three months in 2017
The phone-call records of three reporters with the Washington Post were secretly obtained by officials with Donald Trump’s justice department over a period of three months in 2017, the newspaper reported.
Related: The sleazy, sordid Matt Gaetz scandal: are the walls now closing in on him?
Continue reading...Defense department will cancel all construction paid for with military funds originally intended for other purposes
The US Department of Defense said on Friday it was cancelling the construction of parts of former president Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico that were being built using military funds.
All unobligated money was being returned to military, the Pentagon said.
Continue reading...A petition, signed by more than 54,000 people, calls on Biden to return the garden to its ‘former glory’ as Jacqueline Kennedy designed
Efforts to erase the Trump family legacy have reached the White House potting sheds and nurseries with Jill Biden being urged to restore the mansion’s garden to a state that predates ex-First Lady Melania Trump’s 2019 makeover.
An online petition calling on the first lady to return the Rose Garden to its “former glory” has been signed by more than 54,000 people. The petition says Biden’s predecessor “had the cherry trees, a gift from Japan, removed as well as the rest of the foliage and replaced with a boring tribute to herself”.
Continue reading...Funding was ‘unnecessarily delayed’ by bureaucratic obstacles, after hurricane killed thousands of people in 2017
The Trump administration delayed more than $20bn in hurricane relief aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, according to a report by the housing department’s office of the inspector General.
The efforts to deliver recovery funding to the island were “unnecessarily delayed by bureaucratic obstacles”, according to the 46-page report. The hurricane, which hit the island in 2017, killed thousands of people and left thousands more without electricity or water for months.
Continue reading...Previously undisclosed internal report reveals how officials sought to re-establish order during 6 January attack
A previously undisclosed document prepared by the Pentagon for internal use reveals dramatic new details about how authorities sought to quell the attack on the Capitol on 6 January and re-establish order – and how such help took agonising hours in coming.
Related: Why aren't we calling the Capitol attack an act of treason?
Continue reading...Alessandro Bazzoni’s bank account was closed after he faced sanctions in a case of mistaken identity
A small business owner in Italy is preparing to sue the US Treasury after accidentally being put on a sanctions blacklist before Donald Trump left the presidency.
Alessandro Bazzoni, who owns a graphic design company in Sardinia, has been unable to trade since 19 January, when his business was slapped with sanctions as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on blacklisted Venezuelan crude oil.
Continue reading...Intelligence value of SolarWinds hacking of then acting secretary Chad Wolf is not publicly known
Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration’s head of homeland security (DHS) and members of cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats from foreign countries, the Associated Press (AP) has learned.
The intelligence value of the hacking of then acting secretary Chad Wolf and his staff is not publicly known but the symbolism is stark. Their accounts were accessed in what is known as the SolarWinds intrusion, throwing into question how the US government can protect individuals, companies and institutions if it can’t protect itself.
Continue reading...As unaccompanied children reach the US, Republicans seek political gain. The White House has a fight on its hands
Lauded for his human touch, Joe Biden is facing an early political and moral test over how his government treats thousands of migrant children who make the dangerous journey to America alone.
Related: Is there a crisis at the border? Advocates in Texas say it's 'political manipulation'
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s former coronavirus testing tsar has urged the former president to address Covid vaccine hesitancy among Republicans, even as the man who some say has assumed Trump’s platform and megaphone, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, criticized vaccine outreach by the Biden administration.
Several recent surveys have shown vaccine hesitancy is highest among Republican men. Public health experts are scrambling to respond.
Continue reading...Birx, who was criticised for not standing up to Trump over Covid, takes job with Texas company that says its purifiers clean virus from the air
Dr Deborah Birx, the former Trump White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, is taking a private sector job, joining a Texas manufacturer that says its purifiers clean Covid-19 from the air within minutes and from surfaces within hours.
Birx will join Dallas-based ActivePure as chief scientific and medical adviser, she and the company said on Friday.
Continue reading...Move undoes actions that blocked many immigrants from entering the US and sought to cut funding to cities Trump deemed ‘lawless’
Joe Biden has formally reversed a series of executive actions taken by Donald Trump, including a proclamation that blocked many green card applicants from entering the United States.
Continue reading...A defamation lawsuit brought against CNN by the California Republican Devin Nunes, a leading ally of former president Donald Trump, was tossed out by a Manhattan judge on Friday.
Related: Icy blast of anti-Ted Cruz outrage shows little sign of abating
Continue reading...World leaders expect Washington to prove commitment to accord after four years of inaction
The US is back in the Paris climate accord, just 107 days after it left.
While Friday’s return is heavily symbolic, world leaders say they expect the US to prove its seriousness after four years of being mostly absent. They are especially keen to hear an announcement from Washington in the coming months on the US’s goal for cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2030.
Continue reading...Infectious disease expert tells Axios he had been nervous going there when many were coming down with the virus
Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert and chief medical and coronavirus adviser to Joe Biden, revealed on Monday that he had been nervous entering the White House when many there were coming down with Covid-19 late in Donald Trump’s presidency.
Fauci is 80 years old and said that as such he was acutely aware that he was at high risk of suffering a “serious outcome” if he became infected by coronavirus, he told Axios in an interview clip posted online.
Continue reading...The country began the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure, leading to more deaths than other high-income countries
The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.
Almost 470,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far, with the number widely expected to go above half a million in the next few weeks. At the same time some 27 million people in the US have been infected. Both figures are by far the highest in the world.
Continue reading...President decries Trump administration that ‘literally ripped children from the arms of their families’ as he signs executive orders
Joe Biden plans to create a taskforce to reunify families separated at the US-Mexico border by the Trump administration, as part of a new series of immigration executive actions signed at an Oval Office ceremony on Tuesday.
Biden condemned Donald Trump’s immigration policies as a “stain on the reputation” of the US.
Continue reading...Trump-appointed judge ruled against president’s 100-day suspension, raising questions over whether Ice will resist reform
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is preparing to resume deportations of asylum seekers after a Trump-appointed Texas judge ruled against a 100-day suspension ordered by Joe Biden.
The ruling, in response to a challenge from a leading figure in the Republican effort to overturn the election result, marks the first shot in a legal rearguard action by Trump loyalists intended to stymie the Biden administration’s agenda.
Continue reading...Analysis: Pompeo’s replacement, Antony Blinken, has pledged to put experts at the center of diplomacy and listen dissenting views
No statues were toppled at the state department after Mike Pompeo’s departure. It was a changing of the guard, rather than regime change. But in one case at least, his legacy was brought down quickly and visibly.
On the day of the inauguration, workmen brought down a giant placard about “professional ethos” that the former secretary of state had erected at the main entrance to mark his first year in office.
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