Man who livestreamed US Capitol riot arrested in Garner
The FBI arrested a man in Garner for participating in the riots at the US Capitol last month.
While the casual outerwear and mittens Sen. Bernie Sanders donned at Biden’s inauguration became a viral sensation, not everyone was cheering.
As the U.S. turned the page on the deadliest month since the coronavirus pandemic began, the nation's top infectious disease expert urged Americans to get vaccinated to help prevent new variants from emerging.
Min Aung Hlaing rose through the ranks of the army to become commander-in-chief before seizing power.
Thousands are rallying across Russia as nationwide protests in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny continue to grow. For the second straight weekend, Russians took to the streets on Sunday in the Far East and Siberia as Moscow geared up for the rally with a strict security lockdown. Defying minus 20 degrees temperatures, more than 6,000 people marched across Russia’s third-largest city of Novosibirsk on Sunday, chanting “Down with the czar!” after riot police sealed off the main square. In Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean, police pushed the crowds on the frozen Amur Bay where officers chased protesters in the snow. More than 500 arrests were reported across the country by Sunday morning.
An Israeli soldier on Sunday shot dead a Palestinian suspected of attempting an attack on troops in the West Bank, the Israeli army said. The army said in a statement that “an armed assailant with three knives connected to a stick” attempted to attack soldiers at a West Bank junction south of Bethlehem. No soldiers were hurt.
Six Chinese fighter aircraft and a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft entered the southwestern corner of Taiwan's air defence identification zone on Sunday, the island's defence ministry said, in an unusual admission of U.S. military activity. Tensions have spiked over the last week or so after Taiwan reported multiple Chinese fighters and bombers flying into the zone last weekend, in an area close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the northern part of the South China Sea.
Joe Manchin annoyed at vice president plugging Covid relief without his knowledge
President Biden may be willing to listen to the GOP when it comes to passing a COVID-19 stimulus bill, but the rest of his party is moving on without him. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) filed a joint budget resolution for the 2021 Fiscal Year. It's the first step toward Congress introducing a Budget Reconciliation bill, which will allow the party to pass Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan without any support from the GOP. Breaking: Schumer & Pelosi have filed a joint budget resolution, setting up the reconciliation process to streamline passage of Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID package with or without GOP support pic.twitter.com/yEK83L7sya — Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) February 1, 2021 The announcement came not long before Biden was set to meet with 10 Republican senators who have worked out a $618 billion stimulus plan of their own. It lacks local government funding and would distribute smaller, more targeted stimulus checks than the Democrats' proposal. Find a side-by-side comparison of the two bills at The Week. More stories from theweek.comRise of the Barstool conservativesAmerica's overreaction syndromeEric Trump reportedly wagered Election Day that his father would win 320 electoral votes
A U.S. Army Special Forces veteran accused, along with his son, of smuggling former Nissan Motor Co. Chair Carlos Ghosn out of Japan in a box is imploring U.S. officials to block their extradition. In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, days after a judge cleared the way for the pair to be handed over to Japan, Michael Taylor said he fears they will be treated unfairly in the Japanese legal system. Taylor, a former Green Beret and private security specialist from Massachusetts, said he feels betrayed that the U.S. would try to turn him over to Japan after his service to the country.
Hong Kong media tycoon and Beijing critic Jimmy Lai, the most high-profile person charged under the national security law, will remain in custody after the city's top court said it would announce its verdict on his bail application at a later date. Lai had been in custody since Dec. 3, except for when he was released on bail for about a week late last year. His return to custody was related to Article 42 of the security law, which says that "no bail shall be granted to a criminal suspect or defendant unless the judge has sufficient grounds for believing that the criminal suspect or defendant will not continue to commit acts endangering national security".
As states were formulating plans to vaccinate their residents against COVID-19 last fall, top Trump administration officials pushed Congress to deny the state governments any extra funding for the vaccine rollout, Stat News reported Sunday. The officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and White House Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought, disregarded "frantic warnings from state officials that they didn't have the money they needed to ramp up a massive vaccination operation," focusing instead on $200 million the states had not yet spent, Stat reports. Vought was "obsessed" with the fact that states hadn't already spent the allocated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a Republican Senate aide told Stat, adding that even staunch fiscal conservatives in Congress knew states needed more than $200 million to inoculate 300 million Americans. But "much of the lobbying push came from Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services," Stat reports, citing a Democratic congressional aide and Mango himself. "A lot of them had shut down their economies and they weren't getting tax revenue," Mango told Stat. "I'm sure they could use money — that's not in dispute — what's in dispute is whether they needed money given all they hadn't used to actually administer vaccines." The National Governors Association and the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) both warned the Trump administration last fall that more funding was needed to prepare for the soon-to-be-approved vaccines, and former CDC Director Robert Redfield had asked Congress for $6 billion for the states' efforts. Mango told Stat that Redfield was "lobbying Congress for money behind our back" to "help their friends at the state public health offices." State health departments note they were not vaccinating anyone in October and said they were drawing down sources of money that were set to expire before tapping the $200 million, especially because it wasn't certain Congress would allocate anymore. Congress did approve $4.5 billion in December, but the funds didn't start arriving in states until January. Read more about the lobbying effort, what effect it may have had on the slow rollout, and the schism between the Trump political appointees and public health officials at Stat News. More stories from theweek.comRise of the Barstool conservativesAmerica's overreaction syndromeEric Trump reportedly wagered Election Day that his father would win 320 electoral votes
France and Germany threatened legal action against AstraZeneca on Sunday as they scrambled to explain their shortages in vaccine supplies and warned that any firm which favoured UK orders for the jabs would be penalised. Clement Beaune, the French Europe minister, threatened sanctions against the Anglo-Swedish firm, which produces the Oxford vaccine, if it emerged that Britain had been given priority. "If there is a problem and that other countries have been favoured - for example the UK over us - then we will defend our interests," Mr Beaune said on Sunday. "Contracts are not moral commitments, they are legal commitments. Penalties or sanctions can be triggered in every contract." It came as Berlin and Rome issued similar threats to vaccine providers, in the latest stage of a bitter row in Europe over delays in the production and delivery of Covid jabs. "If we find out that individual companies are not maintaining their side of the bargain then we'll have to make a decision on legal measures," Peter Altmaier, the German economy minister, told Die Welt newspaper. Mr Altmaier, a close confidant of Chancellor Angela Merkel, also warned vaccine producers that "it is in no way acceptable that another country is retrospectively favoured over the EU." AstraZeneca says it will deliver 4.6 million doses to France by the end of March, which is half the amount that was initially agreed upon. It has also significantly reduced its delivery targets for the EU for the first quarter of the year, leading to a furious response from Brussels, which accuses the company of offering preferential treatment to the UK. Among the sanctions being considered by France include withholding payments, cancelling subsequent orders and seeking compensation for a breach of contract. Mr Beaune said an investigation into vaccine deliveries to Britain by EU-based factories was already underway. As the third wave of coronavirus spreads across the continent, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is resisting calls to impose a third lockdown and has instead tightened existing restrictions. "When you're French, you have everything you need to succeed providing you dare to try," he is said to have told ministers on Friday, though the refusal to declare a full lockdown went against his own scientific advisers' recommendations. Polish police launched tear gas and stun grenades over the weekend as they shut down illegal discos and parties in the cities of Wroclaw and Rybnik. As in other European cities, some businesses have opened for trade in defiance of the rules while protests over Covid restrictions have broken out in the Netherlands, Spain, France and Denmark. Dutch police arrested at least 30 people in Amsterdam on Sunday as they struggled to prevent a fresh outbreak of anti-lockdown rioting. Thousands of protesters also took to the streets of Vienna over the weekend, taking part in an anti-lockdown demonstration organised by a far-Right group. Similar scenes unfolded in Hungary where a group of 100 restaurants said they would reopen despite facing threats of heavy government fines. It also emerged over the weekend that Boris Johnson forced the EU into making two u-turns on vaccines after Brussels tried to prevent doses in a Belgian factory from reaching the UK, and moved to impose a hard border in Northern Ireland for the same purpose. During two phone calls with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, Mr Johnson is said to have persuaded the EU chief to abandon both proposals, the Mail on Sunday reported. Micheál Martin, the taoiseach (Irish prime minister), told the BBC on Sunday that they were "blindsided" by the EU threat to seal off the frontier. "The problem is the commission took the wrong mechanism in revoking Article 16 of the protocol to deal with it," he said, adding that there were "a lot of lessons to be learned" over vaccine supplies. On Sunday night, Ms von der Leyen announced on Twitter that the EU would ramp up vaccine supplies this week. "[AstraZeneca] will deliver 9 million additional doses in the first quarter (40 million in total) compared to last week’s offer & will start deliveries one week earlier than scheduled. The company will also expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe," she wrote.
The wife of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny appeared in a Russian court Monday (February 1) for protesting the day before. Yulia Navalnaya was fined $265 for taking part in unsanctioned protests on Sunday (January 31). Addressing the court her lawyer said they'd be appealing the decision. Yulia joined thousands of protesters across Russia marching to call for her husband's release.Braving the bitter cold and threat of prosecution riot police broke up the protests detaining more than 5,300. This protester is shouting for the police to stop electroshocking him. The Kremlin's spokesman on Monday labelled the demonstrators "hooligans and provocateurs," telling reporters on a conference call that dialog with such people would be impossible. Authorities had said in advance that the rallies were illegal and would be broken up.Navalny was arrested on January 17 after returning to Moscow from Germany. He had been recovering from a nerve agent poisoning in Russia last summer. He accuses President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder, which the Kremlin denies.
A military coup in Myanmar and a mass crackdown on dissidents in Russia are presenting early tests for the Biden administration as it tries to reestablish American primacy as a worldwide pro-democracy leader. Having taken office with a pledge to restore ironclad U.S. support for human rights, freedom of speech and political openness, President Joe Biden is being confronted with two serious challenges in two disparate parts of the world that had either been neglected or the subject of inconsistent messaging during the Trump era. After investing decades of time, energy and money into promoting democracy in both Myanmar and Russia, the U.S. now faces challenges in each that could affect the global balance of power, with the Myanmar turmoil potentially strengthening China's hand.
China has temporarily banned entry of foreign nationals travelling from Canada, even if they hold valid Chinese residence permits for work, the Chinese consulate in Toronto said. "All foreign nationals who hold valid Chinese residence permits for work, personal matters and reunion are temporarily not allowed to enter China from Canada," the consulate said in a statement on its website on Saturday. Entry with diplomatic and service visas will not be affected, it said.
Part of Highway 1 in the Big Sur area collapsed after heavy rains and slid into the Pacific.
Last week, New York provided a worrisome breakdown of what's happening in the Brazilian city of Manaus, whose population had previously been thought to have built up widespread protection against the virus last year, only to find itself experiencing another major outbreak. There are theories as to how this happened — community immunity being overestimated, waning antibody protection, the variant becoming more transmissible, or, perhaps most concerning, the virus adapting to evade antibodies. Whatever the case, an increasing number of variants like the one in Brazil could theoretically push the end game back. Axios put it in slightly different terms — the current pandemic may be nearly over, but the variants could spark new ones. Several vaccines have been shown to work well against the main coronavirus strain, and the more transmissible U.K. variant appears quite susceptible to them, as well, but the South African variant looks more resistant. And, New York notes, even a slight dip in efficacy could prevent "population-scale protection through vaccination alone." The New York Times, however, explains that reports on vaccine efficacy often don't tell the whole story. Scientifically speaking, vaccine research considers any transmission a failure, but that may not be the most important thing. Novavax and Johnson & Johnson provided data that showed their vaccine candidates did not stop infections in South Africa as well as they did elsewhere, but they were still very successful at preventing severe disease, hospitalizations, and death. That suggests a possible scenario in which vaccines reduce the coronavirus to a much milder pathogen. But that still may not be enough globally, per New York. Even if vaccines significantly reduce the worst COVID-19 outcomes, the world's poorer countries are not estimated to reach mass immunization until 2024, so while the tide may turn more quickly in the United States, the global pandemic could still be ongoing for years to come, especially if variants impede natural herd immunity. Read more at New York, Axios, and The New York Times. More stories from theweek.comRise of the Barstool conservativesAmerica's overreaction syndromeEric Trump reportedly wagered Election Day that his father would win 320 electoral votes
Recent robberies and attacks have left store owners in Oakland's Chinatown concerned about the futures of their small businesses. A series of crimes: In the past two weeks, more than 20 businesses have suffered from thefts and attacks, ABC7 News reports. Carl Chan, the president of Oakland's Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, claims to have spoken with the store owners affected by the crimes.
President Joe Biden's administration has deported hundreds of immigrants in its early days despite his campaign pledge to stop removing most people in the U.S. illegally at the beginning of his term. A federal judge last week ordered the Biden administration not to enforce a 100-day moratorium on deportations, but the ruling did not require the government to schedule them. In recent days, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported immigrants to at least three countries: 15 people to Jamaica on Thursday and 269 people to Guatemala and Honduras on Friday.
“I see this all the time ... and never knew what it was!”