Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. In parting shot, Trump administration accuses China of 'genocide' against Uighurs

The Trump administration has determined that China has committed "genocide and crimes against humanity" by repressing Uighur Muslims in its Xinjiang region, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday, in an embarrassing blow to Beijing a day before President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office. Pompeo said he made the move - which is certain to further strain already frayed ties between the world's top economies - "after careful examination of the available facts," accusing the Chinese Communist Party of crimes against humanity against the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities since at least March 2017. Uganda accuses U.S. envoy of subversion for trying to visit candidate

Uganda accused the U.S. ambassador on Tuesday of seeking to subvert last week's presidential election by trying to visit the main opposition candidate at his home, which has been surrounded by security forces since the vote. Troops prevented pop star-turned-legislator Bobi Wine from leaving his house shortly after he returned from voting in Thursday's presidential election, in which he ran against incumbent Yoweri Museveni. Biden intelligence pick favors 'aggressive' stance on China threat

The United States should take an "aggressive stance" toward the threat posed by the aggressive and assertive China that it faces today, Avril Haines, President-elect Joe Biden's choice for the top U.S. intelligence job, said on Tuesday. Biden's nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI) also said she thought it would be some time before Tehran returned to strict compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and that the Democratic Biden administration might itself return to the agreement, which outgoing Republican President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018. Guatemala turns more migrants back to Honduras, thinning U.S.-bound caravan

Guatemala on Tuesday pressed on with transporting migrants back to the border with Honduras, further thinning out a U.S.-bound caravan that was halted by security forces at the weekend. Nearly 8,000 people entered Guatemala from Honduras last week, local authorities said. A Reuters witness estimated around a quarter of them, many with children, ended up stuck in the village of Vado Hondo when Guatemalan forces barred passage. Jailed Kremlin critic Navalny makes allegations of Putin wealth ahead of protests

Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic who was jailed at the weekend, on Tuesday released a video in which he and his allies alleged that an opulent palace belonged to the Russian leader, a claim the Kremlin denied. The allegations, which first surfaced in 2010 when a businessman wrote about them to then-President Dmitry Medvedev complaining of official graft, come as Navalny's supporters urge people to join nationwide protests on Saturday. Deep in remote Amazon, indigenous villagers receive coronavirus vaccine

Brazilian military flew medical personnel and 1,000 doses of a Chinese vaccine deep into the Amazon rainforest on Tuesday to start inoculating indigenous people against the coronavirus. Isabel Ticuna, 68, was the first to receive the vaccine in Umariaçu, a village of wooden houses on the banks of the Amazon River. The village is a remote community near the border of Peru and Colombia. EU calls on Biden to take global leadership on COVID-19

The world needs American leadership in the battle against COVID-19, the EU's top diplomat said, urging President-elect Joe Biden to step up after the Trump administration was widely criticised for its slow response to the pandemic. With rich countries contracting far more doses of various coronavirus vaccines than poorer ones, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said it was up to the United States to retake its place as "an engine of the world" and help. Germany warns of border closures amid fear of COVID-19 mutations

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Germany may need to consider border crossing curbs if other European countries do not act to halt the spread of the coronavirus, particularly its new, more transmissible variants. "We can do anything we like, but we will not succeed if others are not working in parallel," Merkel told journalists on Tuesday, two days ahead of a videoconference of European leaders. "We need to make sure that everyone around us is doing the same. Otherwise we have to look at measures such as entry restrictions." Mexico's attorney general escalates fight with U.S. over former minister

Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said on Tuesday he was considering elevating to international courts a dispute with the United States over Mexico dropping an investigation into a former defense minister. Gertz said the U.S. Department of Justice had effectively declared ex-defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos innocent when it sent him back to Mexico and dropped U.S. charges against him after he was arrested in California last year. U.S. exempts U.N., aid groups from effort to cut off Yemen's Houthis

The United States on Tuesday exempted aid groups, the United Nations, the Red Cross and the export of agricultural commodities, medicine, and medical devices from its designation of Yemen's Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist organization. The carve-outs are not enough to allay U.N. fears that Washington's move would push Yemen into a large-scale famine. The United Nations describes Yemen as the world's biggest humanitarian crisis, with 80% of its people in need.

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