The attempt to pry the party away from Trump’s influence fizzled but support in Congress is greater than it may appear
The Republican rebellion failed: Donald Trump won.
“I was disappointed over the last few weeks to see what seemed like the Republican party waking up,” the Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger observed on NBC’s Meet the Press last week, “and then kind of falling asleep again”.
Continue reading...The US reversal over Yemen marks the country’s welcome re-entry into world affairs
His intentions had been repeatedly trailed in advance. Yet Joe Biden’s first foreign policy speech as president, delivered appropriately at the state department, the home base of American diplomacy, was still a breath of fresh air. The main headlines were an end to US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and a brisk warning to Russia that its easy ride under Donald Trump was over. But the speech also marked a broader policy shift.
Gone were Trump’s trademark “America First” slogans and the ugly isolationism, protectionism and xenophobia that frequently underpinned them. Biden said he was sending “a clear message to the world that America is back”. By this, he meant recommitment to multilateralism, to alliances such as Nato, to UN agencies such as the World Health Organization and to international agreements such as the Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal.
It would be facile to apply terms such as the “Biden doctrine” to what was essentially a restatement, or reassertion, of longstanding American policy objectives after a four-year hiatus. Yet at the same time, the speech was more than a mere touch on the tiller. It signalled a significant change in the means the US will employ to achieve those objectives. Biden’s way is the diplomatic way, not the way of war, arms sales, punishment, tantrums, stunts and threats.
Kate Bingham says ‘the UK had a very strategic approach … to secure vaccines quickly. The European approach … was more about making sure you got the best value for money’
Venetians have celebrated a very different carnival this year, without the usual crowds of tourists, Reuters reported.
“It’s totally surreal,” said 47-year-old carnival-goer Chiara Ragazzon, an office worker. “What hits me most is the silence. You’ve always been able to hear music during the carnival, people having fun. But Venice in the fog - it’s still a magical place.”
Ragazzon and her husband had ventured into Venice from their home around 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.
More than 12 million people in the UK have now received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to government data up to and including 6 February.
Continue reading...Staff memo said Donald McNeil, reporter who used racist slur on student trip, and Andy Mills, Caliphate podcast producer, departed
Two New York Times journalists have left the paper over separate controversies involving racist and sexist behavior, including its high-profile Covid-19 reporter Donald McNeil, following disclosures about his use of a racist slur while on a company-sponsored student trip.
The departures of McNeil and audio journalist, Andy Mills, a co-creator of the Daily podcast and a producer and co-host of the now partially retracted Caliphate podcast, come amid a wider reckoning across over racism and abusive behavior within American newsrooms.
Continue reading...Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Rosa DeLauro first introduced the Family Act in 2013, but it has failed to gain sufficient support
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has said US Congress is in a “unique moment” and “better poised than ever” to pass a paid family and medical leave bill that would make the benefit permanently accessible to all American workers for the first time, as she and congresswoman Rosa DeLauro reintroduced the legislation on Friday.
Currently, the US is the only industrialised nation in the world not to have a national paid family and medical leave policy.
Continue reading...Analysis: From Yemen and the Middle East, to Russia and China, the UK has to step up diplomatically
Joe Biden’s promise that the US is back on the world stage as an advocate of multilateralism holds huge opportunities for the UK so long as it steps up a gear diplomatically, uses its presidency of the G7 well and shifts its stance in the Middle East.
In the short term, Biden’s promise to end support for offensive operations in Yemen has led to calls for the UK to suspend its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including from the Conservative chair of the defence select committee, Tobias Ellwood, and the shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy.
Continue reading...Elon Musk, Steven Spielberg and Nicolas Cage among those who collect rocks that can cost millions
They really are from out of this world, and the prices are astronomical. For those who have everything they need on Earth, what they now want is a little bit of space. Meteorites are attracting the attention of celebrity collectors who have pushed the price of the rocks – which have hurtled through space for hundreds or even thousands of year before crashing into this planet – tenfold over the past decade.
More than 70 of the most spectacular meteorites ever found will go under the hammer at Christie’s auction house next week in a sale that is expected to generate millions of pounds. Included in the Deep Impact auction are meteorites embedded with gem stones and others have suffered such an impact from blasting through the atmosphere at up to 160,000mph that they resemble sculptures by Alberto Giacometti or Henry Moore.
Continue reading...Paul Grisham forgot he lost it until rediscovery during demolition work at McMurdo base
Paul Grisham’s wallet was missing for so long at the bottom of the world he forgot all about it. Fifty-three years later the 91-year-old San Diego man has it back along with mementoes of his 13-month assignment as a US navy meteorologist on Antarctica in the 1960s.
“I was just blown away,” Grisham told the San Diego Union-Tribune after the wallet was returned on Saturday. “There was a long series of people involved who tracked me down and ran me to ground.”
Continue reading...Biden says predecessor shouldn’t have access to briefings, which are traditionally offered to presidents even after leaving office
Joe Biden has said that he doesn’t believe his predecessor, Donald Trump, should have access to any intelligence briefings due to his “erratic behavior”.
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The House has just passed the Senate-approved budget resolution, paving the way for the chamber to take up Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief proposal in the coming weeks.
The House voted 219-209 along mostly partly lines to approve the resolution as amended by the Senate. Jared Golden was the only Democrat to vote against the measure.
The rule for S.Con.Res. 5 – Setting forth the congressional budget for the US Gov't for FY 2021 & setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for FY 2022-2030 was adopted by a vote of 219-209.
S.Con.Res. 5 is hereby passed.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, fresh from being stripped of her committee assignments, seemed unrepentant on Friday morning, as she used a press conference to sum up the intertwining of the Republican party and Donald Trump.
“The party is his – it doesn’t belong to anyone else,” Greene told reporters in Washington this morning.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Trump and the GOP Party:
"The party is his. It doesn’t belong to anybody else." pic.twitter.com/XOL8VzRicW
The US Senate has passed a budget resolution that allows for the passage of Joe Biden’s $1.9tn (£1.4tn) Covid-19 relief package in the coming weeks without Republican support.
The vice-president, Kamala Harris, broke a 50-50 tie by casting a vote in favour of the Democratic measure, which sends it to the House of Representatives for final approval.
It marked the first time Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, had cast a tie-breaking vote after being sworn in as the first female vice-president on 20 January
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.
Continue reading...It’s time to resolve the narrative – otherwise we’ll be stuck in act two for ever, says Veep writer Ian Martin
For a year now, the reality of humanity’s global struggle against the coronavirus has felt oddly fictional. Very much, in fact, like a blockbuster movie.
Covid-19: The Reckoning follows all the movie cliches. The story starts somewhere in the world requiring subtitles. Patient Zero eats a what? An infected bat? OK, maybe it’s a pangolin (what’s a pangolin? Who cares, never mind). Then the contagion spreads like a slow-motion tsunami across the planet as dumbass politicians first play it down, then panic. Or, in America’s case, dismiss it, blame China, promise it’ll go away, ignore it some more, commend the ingestion of light and disinfectant, ignore it again, actually get it, shrug it off, host a series of superspreader events, repeatedly lose an election then scuttle off to become a human pathogen infecting civilian life. Again.
Continue reading...A fiercely divided House removed the congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from both her committees Thursday, an unprecedented punishment that Democrats said she’d earned by spreading hateful and violent conspiracy theories.
During the debate, the House majority, leader Steny Hoyer, exhibited a Facebook post in which Greene is holding a gun next the faces of progressive congresswomen of color
Here’s a recap of the day, from me and Joan E Greve:
Covid is killing Native Americans at a faster rate than any other community in the United States, shocking new figures reveal.
American Indians and Alaskan Natives are dying at almost twice the rate of white Americans, according to analysis by APM Research Lab shared exclusively with the Guardian.
Related: Exclusive: indigenous Americans dying from Covid at twice the rate of white Americans
Continue reading...Germany warns new variants are set to spread; Israel to keep borders closed despite easing lockdown
Slovak regional authorities have quarantined a Roma settlement after a quarter of its residents tested positive for the coronavirus.
The settlement of Sacurov near Vranov nad Toplou in the east of the country, made up of two three-storey apartment blocks and around 70 shacks, is to be closed off for 10 days.
“In a week-and-a-half it grew [from five] to the unreal number of 113, due to a failure to maintain quarantine and isolation,” he said.
More than 80% of people in some developing countries have seen their incomes fall due to the coronavirus pandemic, economists have found, warning that rising poverty could mean poorer countries struggle to curb infections – especially with mass vaccination potentially years away.
“Economic help is part and parcel of fighting the virus,” co-author of the study Shana Warren told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“If you want people to stay home to stop the virus spreading while they wait for vaccines you need to provide them with the economic support to do so.”
Continue reading...Vote largely along party lines serves as rebuke of congresswoman’s incendiary and racist statements
The US House of Representatives has voted to strip the extremist Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from the committees she was assigned to, in a stark rebuke of her incendiary and racist statements.
Related: Republicans take no action against Cheney or extremist Greene after vote
Continue reading...Joe Biden outlined his vision for America’s foreign policy agenda in a speech at the state department. The president reiterated the need for America to strengthen its global alliances after four years of Donald Trump belittling those relationships.
‘We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again - not to meet yesterday’s challenges but today’s and tomorrow’s,’ Biden said. ‘We can’t do it alone.’
Continue reading...Democrats had challenged Trump to explain in next week’s proceedings why he disputed factual allegations
Donald Trump’s legal team has said the former president will not voluntarily testify under oath at his impeachment trial in the Senate next week, where he faces the charge from House Democrats that he incited the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.
The lead House impeachment manager, Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, wrote to Trump asking him to testify under oath before or during the trial, challenging the former president to explain why he and his lawyers have disputed key factual allegations at the center of their charge that he incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol.
Continue reading...US immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) canceled a deportation flight to west Africa because of allegations of brutality by Ice agents in the treatment of the deportees, the agency has said in a statement.
The statement emailed to the Guardian and the cancellation of the deportation flight, so that would-be deportees can be interviewed as witnesses, marks a dramatic change in tone by the agency, which has hitherto deflected and denied earlier allegations of human rights abuses.
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