Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Robert D Kaplan’s outstanding book makes a strong case for US engagement based on human rights and helping refugees
What adjective should describe “the American” active in foreign policy? Graham Greene chose “quiet”, as his character harmed a country he did not understand. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer used “ugly”.
Robert D Kaplan, one of America’s most thoughtful chroniclers of foreign affairs, proposes “good” to describe Bob Gersony, who in “a frugal monastic existence that has been both obscure and extraordinary” has devoted his life to using the power and treasure of the US to serve others through humanitarian action.
Justice department confirms Joe Biden intends to have WikiLeak’s co-founder stand trial in US
The US government has appealed a UK judge’s ruling against the extradition of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, according to a justice department official.
The appeal made clear that Joe Biden intends to have Assange stand trial on espionage- and hacking-related charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents.
The conversation came hours after the US president announced a new Pentagon taskforce on China
Joe Biden has affirmed the US’s tough line on China’s human rights abuses and regional expansionism in his first phone call with president Xi Jinping since taking office.
Xi defended China’s policies as matters of sovereignty, but told the US leader confrontation would be “a disaster”, and called for the two sides to re-establish the means to avoid misjudgments, according to state media.
The president has signed a number of executive orders during his first weeks in office, ranging from the pandemic to immigration – here’s what they are
Secretary of state to Ronald Reagan who worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to help end the cold war
Many politicians and diplomats from the 1980s lay claim to a pivotal role in ending the cold war, but the former US secretary of state George Shultz, who has died aged 100, had a better claim than most. And he was not shy in letting people know, as he did at length in his 1,184-page account of his years at the state department, Turmoil and Triumph (1993).
When he became secretary of state in 1982 – a job he was to hold for seven years – relations between the US and the Soviet Union were at a dangerous low. The administration of US president Ronald Reagan was packed with anti-Soviet hardliners. Reagan himself in 1983 dubbed the Soviet Union “the evil empire”.
UN welcomes reversal of Trump-Pompeo order as state department says it is purely to alleviate ‘world’s worst humanitarian crisis’
The United States has said it intends to revoke the terrorist designation of the Houthi movement in response to Yemen’s humanitarian crisis – reversing one of the most criticised last-minute decisions of the Trump administration.
The reversal, confirmed by the state department, comes a day after Joe Biden declared a halt to US support for the Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen, widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Joe Biden’s decision to end support for Saudi-led coalition seen as important step towards peace
Yemenis have cautiously welcomed Joe Biden’s announcement that the US is ending its support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in the country’s complex war, saying the decision is an important step on the long road towards finding a peaceful solution to the conflict.
In his first foreign policy speech as president on Thursday, Biden announced a broad reshaping of US relations with the rest of the world, including his predecessor Donald Trump’s unquestioning support for Gulf monarchies with poor human rights records at home and abroad.
Biden said ‘this war has to end’ in state department speech outlining overhaul of Trump’s foreign policies
Joe Biden has announced an end to US support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, as part of a broad reshaping of American foreign policy.
In his first foreign policy speech as president, Biden signaled that the US would no longer be an unquestioning ally to the Gulf monarchies, announced a more than eightfold increase in the number of refugees the country would accept, and declared that the days of a US president “rolling over” for Vladimir Putin were over.
‘History and geography don’t change – I don’t think British destiny is different to ours,’ says French president
Emmanuel Macron has warned that Boris Johnson’s government has to decide who its allies are, insisting that “half-friends is not a concept”.
“What politics does Great Britain wish to choose? It cannot be the best ally of the US, the best ally of the EU and the new Singapore … It has to choose a model,” the French president said, in an interview with the Guardian and a small group of other media.
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.
There’s been a steady stream of activity on Capitol Hill today, paricularly leading up to the swearing-in of the senators for Trump’s impeachment trial.
At a weekly press conference, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber is prepared to work simultaneously to hold an impeachment trial, approve Biden’s cabinet nominees, and pass additional coronavirus relief.
.@SenSchumer says “a vote on a budget resolution could come as soon as next week.” This would give Dems option to use reconciliation for Covid relief package
McConnell doesn’t say if Trump’s actions were impeachable, saying only that he’ll “listen to the arguments” in the trial.
He says he hasn’t spoken to Trump since the day after he declared Biden had “obviously” won the election (that was 12/15).
Tim Ryan tells reporters on Zoom presser that the order among Capitol Police on Jan. 6 was to not use lethal force unless lives were threatened, as was standard for USCP (he'd asked about it during this morning's closed-door briefing)
Vice presidentKamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, received her second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
Twenty-eight days after receiving her first shot, Harris removed her jacked, rolled up her sleeve and extended her left arm for the jab.
The US and Russia have agreed to extend an arms control treaty limiting their deployed nuclear warheads after Joe Biden’s first phone call as president with Vladimir Putin.
At the same time, Biden took a firm position on Russian actions that Donald Trump largely ignored, raising concerns about the poisoning and arrest of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, warning Putin that the US supported Ukraine against Russian “aggression”, complaining about Russian interference in last year’s US presidential election, and the “Solar Winds” cyber attack on US government agencies last year.
Chinese foreign ministry announced sanctions against Mike Pompeo and 27 others as Biden was taking presidential oath
China has said it wants to cooperate with Joe Biden’s new US administration, while announcing sanctions against the “lying and cheating” outgoing secretary of state Mike Pompeo and 27 other top officials under Donald Trump.
The move was a sign of China’s anger, especially at an accusation Pompeo made on his final full day in office that China had committed genocide against its Uighur Muslims, an assessment that Biden’s choice to succeed Pompeo, Anthony Blinken, said he shared.
European leaders have voiced relief at Joe Biden’s inauguration, hailing a “new dawn” for Europe and the US, but warned that the world has changed after four years of Donald Trump’s presidency and that transatlantic ties will be different in future.
“This new dawn in America is the moment we’ve been awaiting for so long,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, told MEPs. “Once again, after four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House.”
Analysis: the west has been hampered by the fatal ambiguity of Trump’s US policy towards Moscow
Joe Biden’s accession to the US presidency has spawned a huge body of literature about his intentions towards China, but in his four years out of office Biden has in fact made Russia his primary focus in combatting authoritarianism.
Now, just days from coming into office, the arrest of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has suddenly presented him with a test case, which may also lead to friction with two of his closest allies: Germany and the UK.
The secretary of state has laid political booby traps for Biden in a diplomatic onslaught – with the aim of winning the White House
While all eyes are on Donald Trump and his Capitol Hill mob, a would-be heir and successor is running riot all by himself, storming citadels, wagging the flag and breaking china. No, it’s not Donald Jr, or Ivanka, or Ted Cruz, and certainly not poor, conflicted Mike Pence.
Mike Pompeo may not strike many people as presidential material. But Trump lowered the bar. Make no mistake. America’s snarly, bully-boy secretary of state is focusing not on Joe Biden’s inauguration this week but on how to beat him or any other Democrat in 2024.
Trump’s foreign policy chief has pursued confrontation with Iran and other perceived enemies, but his efforts to disrupt diplomacy will end in failure
The finale of Mike Pompeo’s reign at the state department has been as controversial and clamorous as the rest of his 32-month tenure, but it is unclear what traces will remain after he has gone.
The last days of Pompeo have been played out in a blizzard of self-congratulatory tweets, at the rate of two dozen a day, as he seeks to write his own first draft of history.
Mike Pompeo cites US fugitives and support for Venezuela
Move will heap sanctions on Havana before Biden inauguration
Donald Trump has reclassified Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” in a last-minute move that could complicate efforts by Joe Biden’s incoming administration to re-engage with Havana.
The controversial step was announced by secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Monday, at the start of Trump’s final full-week in office, and places Cuba alongside Iran, North Korea and Syria.
Trump administration’s 11th-hour decision greeted with dismay by aid agencies working in Yemen
The Trump administration has made an 11th-hour decision to designate Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organisation in a move that is likely to severely worsen the war-torn country’s humanitarian crisis.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, announced the decision late on Sunday, despite bipartisan opposition and months of warnings from UN officials and aid organisations that the designation – part of the White House’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran and its allies – would lead to shortages and delays for aid and commercial shipments and undermine the peace process.