Category: Foreign

Our Reporter

President-elect Joe Biden has chosen his longtime adviser Ron Klain to reprise his role as his chief of staff, installing an aide with decades of experience in the top role in his White House.

Klain will lead a White House likely to be consumed by the response to the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to spread unchecked across the nation, and he’ll face the challenge of working with a divided Congress that could include a Republican-led Senate. Klain served as the coordinator to the Ebola response during the 2014 outbreak.

In a statement Wednesday night, Biden suggested he chose Klain for the position because his longtime experience in Washington had prepared him for such challenges.

“His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again,” Biden said.

Klain served as chief of staff for Biden during Barack Obama’s first term, was chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore in the mid-1990s and was a key adviser on the Biden campaign, guiding Biden’s debate preparations and coronavirus response. He’s known and worked with Biden since the Democrat’s 1987 presidential campaign.

READ ALSO: Biden to Trump: I don’t need your help to take over the presidency

The choice of Klain underscores the effort the incoming Biden administration will place on the coronavirus response from Day One. Klain has experience in public health as the Ebola response coordinator and played a central role in drafting and implementing the Obama administration’s economic recovery plan in 2009.

“I’m honored by the President-elect’s confidence and will give my all to lead a talented and diverse team in a Biden-Harris WH,” Klain tweeted.

Choosing Klain is also likely to assuage some concerns among progressives who had been gearing up for a fight over one of the first and biggest staff picks Biden will make as he builds out his White House team. The chief of staff is typically a gatekeeper for the president, crafts political and legislative strategy and often serves as a liaison to Capitol Hill in legislative negotiations.

Progressives had expressed concerns that Biden would pick one of his other former chiefs of staff: Steve Richetti, who faces skepticism for his work as a lobbyist, or Bruce Reed, who is seen as too much of a moderate to embrace reforms pushed by the party’s base. But progressives see Klain as open to working with them on top priorities like climate change and health care.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Our Reporter

An Israeli soldier reported missing this week was found dead near a military checkpoint close to East Jerusalem, the Israeli military said.

The body of Corporal Sagi Ben David, who had been missing since Tuesday, was located near the Hizma checkpoint.

“Earlier today (Thursday), combined forces of the IDF (Israeli military) and the Israeli police located the body of an IDF soldier, the late corporal Sagi Ben-David, near the Hizma checkpoint,” the military said.

READ ALSO: Israel frees two Syrian prisoners after return of soldier missing since 1982

His family has been notified, said the army.

The soldier was serving Anatot base near Jerusalem, where he was last seen. He apparently turned off his phone when he left the base.

Israel’s military and police were investigating the circumstances of his death but sources said it appears his death was not a result of a nationalistic act.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Agency Reporter

Sources on Thursday said an asteroid discovered by Chinese astronomers would make a near-Earth pass next week posing no threat to the planet.

Sources with the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences made the announcement, adding that the asteroid was first spotted by the observatory on Nov. 6.

The observation stations in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, and the U.K. had since kept a close eye on it, confirming its existence and determining its orbit.

The Minor Planet Centre under the International Astronomical Union on Sunday confirmed the asteroid discovery and designated it 2020 VA1.

The closest distance the newly discovered object would be from the sun was about 145 million km.

READ ALSO: UNN hosts young astronomers programme

According to the observatory, the asteroid is heading toward Earth and is expected to make a flyby at 08:08 a.m., Beijing Time on Nov. 20.

Zhao Haibin, an astronomer with the observatory, said the asteroid is expected to approach a distance of 4.48 million km from Earth’s surface, or about 11.7 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

“Given the huge distance, the asteroid will pose no threat to Earth,’’ Zhao said.

The Chinese observatory’s Near-Earth Object Telescope enables China to carry out long-term asteroid monitoring and warning tasks, qualifying the country to join the International Asteroid Warning Network.

(Xinhua/NAN)

President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit in Michigan yesterday as part of its long-shot legal strategy to upend Joe Biden’s Nov. 3 election win, even as the former vice president focused on laying the foundation of his incoming administration.

The Republican president’s team went to federal court to try to block Michigan, a Midwestern battleground state that he won in 2016 but lost to the Democrat in media projections, from certifying the results.

Trump trailed by roughly 148,000 votes, or 2.6 percentage points, in unofficial Michigan vote totals.

Trump has declined to concede the election to Biden, instead lodging a flurry of lawsuits in pivotal states to try to back up his unsupported claims of widespread voting fraud. The Michigan lawsuit also made allegations of misconduct in the voting, with the focus on the Democratic stronghold of Wayne County, which includes Detroit.

Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, said the Trump campaign was promoting false claims to erode public confidence in Michigan’s elections.

“It does not change the truth: Michigan’s elections were conducted fairly, securely, transparently, and the results are an accurate reflection of the will of the people,” Rollow said in a statement.

Prominent Republican lawmakers and other Trump allies have backed the president’s strategy, saying he has the right to contest the election results. The suit was filed one day after Biden called Trump’s failure to concede an “embarrassment.”

Judges have tossed out several of the Trump lawsuits, and legal experts say the litigation has scant chance of changing the election outcome.

Biden last Saturday clinched victory in the election as he won a series of battleground states to exceed the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College. Biden was winning the national popular vote by at least five million votes, with some states still counting ballots.

Biden and his wife Jill visited a war memorial in Philadelphia to mark Veterans Day yesterday before returning home to Delaware.

Trump placed a memorial wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, outside of Washington. It was his first public appearance, other than two golf outings, since a White House news conference last Thursday in which he made unsubstantiated election fraud claims.

While Trump made no remarks at the cemetery, in Twitter posts yesterday he kept up his narrative of voter fraud, referring to “a mountain of corruption & dishonesty” while also assailing pollsters.

However, Georgia’s top election official said yesterday that the state will conduct a recount of all paper ballots cast in the presidential election.

“Mathematically, you actually have to do a full hand-by-hand recount of all because the margin is so close,” Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at a news conference. “We want to start this before the week is up.”

 

 

Our Reporter

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will further lay the groundwork for his new administration on Wednesday as President Donald Trump pursues a flurry of lawsuits challenging the U.S. election results in an effort to cling to power.

Trump has declined to concede, instead of lodging unsupported charges of election fraud that have gained little traction. His campaign said on Tuesday it planned to file a lawsuit in Michigan to halt the state from certifying its results, a day after it brought a similar action in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Judges so far have tossed out lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia brought by Trump’s campaign, and legal experts say the litigation has little chance of changing the outcome of the Nov. 3 election.

Some 80 percent of Americans, including half of Republicans, say Biden is the rightful winner, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

Trump suffered another possible setback on Tuesday when Democrats on the House of Representatives Oversight Committee said a postal worker who claimed he witnessed ballot tampering in Pennsylvania had recanted his allegations, according to the Postal Service’s internal watchdog.

READ ALSO: Biden to Trump: I don’t need your help to take over the presidency

The Trump campaign had attempted to use the postal worker’s statement to promote an FBI investigation.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters raised more than $136,000 for him on the fundraising website Go Fund Me, but the page was removed after news broke that he recanted his statement, the Washington Post reported.

Biden plans to meet with advisors on Wednesday who are helping him prepare to take office on January 20, 2021.

He has tapped finance, trade, and banking regulation experts for his transition team that ranges from core Democrats to progressive activists, reflecting ongoing debate within the party about how to address climate change, wealth inequality, and other issues.

Biden is also tapping people who crafted tougher environmental rules while serving under President Barack Obama.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Our Reporter

The Democratic Party secured control of the US House of Representatives but with a slimmer majority after winning at least 218 seats, The Nation learnt

Democrats secured the majority after AP declared three winners late on Tuesday; incumbents Kim Schrier in Washington, Tom O’Halleran in Arizona, and Jimmy Gomez in California.

The 435-member chamber will now be controlled by the Democratic Party for another two years, but with a slimmer margin.

READ ALSO: I was invited to Democratic Party’s convention, says Tinubu

The Democrats went into Election Day with a 232-197 House advantage, along with one independent and five open seats. This will be only the second time since 1995 that they will control the chamber for four consecutive years.

However, the Democrats fell short of their goal of taking a senate majority and lost seats in the House of Representatives, making Republicans well-positioned block major legislative initiatives of President-elect Joe Biden.

Biden’s hopes of enacting major Democratic priorities like expanding healthcare access, fighting climate change, and providing more coronavirus aid will now rely heavily on a pair of US senate races in Georgia in January.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Our Reporter

Multiple people were wounded on Wednesday when an explosive device hit an international ceremony commemorating the end of World War I at a cemetery in the Saudi city of Jiddah, according to French government officials.

Several countries had representatives at the ceremony, held at a cemetery for non-Muslim dead, the officials from the French Foreign Ministry said. The identities of the victims were unclear.

Wednesday’s attack follows on the heels of a stabbing on Oct. 29 that slightly wounded a guard at the French Consulate in Jiddah. The stabbing was carried out by a Saudi man, who was arrested. His motives remain unclear.

France has suffered two deadly attacks by foreign-born Muslims in the past month. A teacher was beheaded outside Paris for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class for a debate on free expression, and three people were later killed in a church in the southern city of Nice.

The depictions of the prophet sparked protests and calls for boycotts of French products among some Muslims in the Middle East and South Asia. France has urged its citizens in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim-majority countries to be “on maximum alert” amid the heightened tensions.

Wednesday marks the 102nd anniversary of the armistice ending World War I and is commemorated in several European countries. The French officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, condemned the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion and Saudi officials have not commented on the attack.

A few hours later, Saudi state television broadcast from outside the cemetery and acknowledged that an attack involving an explosive device took place, but stressed that things were under control and the security situation was now “stable.” The report said an official statement about the cause and casualty details was sketchy.

Jiddah, the Red Sea port city, saw its Ottoman troops surrender to the local troops backed by the British in 1916 amid the war. That sparked the start of the Kingdom of Hejaz, which later became part of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: France in fresh lockdown over surge of virus

Jiddah’s Non-Muslim Cemetery sits nears this port city’s docks, hidden behind trees alongside a major thoroughfare in the city. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission shows just one soldier buried at the cemetery, Pvt. John Arthur Hogan, who died in June 1944.

Across France, which was particularly devastated by years of trench warfare in World War I, ceremonies were held Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the armistice but also to honor all those who have died for France, including during the Second World War and in current military operations abroad and at home, where troops are deployed to protect against terrorist attacks.

Diplomatic posts have been targeted in the past in Saudi Arabia. A 2004 armed assault on the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah blamed on al-Qaida killed five employees. In 2016, a suicide bomber blew himself up near that same U.S. Consulate, wounding two guards.

Meanwhile, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has come under particular scrutiny among some Muslim leaders for his description of the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad as a protected cornerstone of free speech and France’s secular ideals. This has riled some Muslims who view the depictions as incitement and a form of hate speech.

Saudi Arabia’s monarch and top clerics have condemned the depictions, but top Saudi clerics have also called for calm and urged people to follow the prophet’s example of “mercy, justice, tolerance.”

King Salman is scheduled to deliver an annual address to the nation on Wednesday, laying out policy priorities for the coming year.

(www.newsnow.co.uk)

Our Reporter

Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, who served as Bahrain’s prime minister since 1971, is dead at the age of 84, the royal court announced on Wednesday.

King Hamad bin Isa bin Salman mourned the late premier, who died at the Mayo Clinic hospital in the U.S state of Minnesota, the court said, according to the official BNA news agency.

The funeral will proceed once his body arrives home. Only a limited number of relatives will be allowed to attend.

The king ordered a week of national mourning and flags to be flown at half-mast.

Work at government departments will be suspended for three days starting from Thursday.

(dpa/NAN)

A Vatican report has found that two recent popes and Church officials ignored allegations about an American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, later found guilty of sex abuse.

McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington DC, was expelled from the priesthood after the Vatican concluded its investigation last year.

It has now issued a report into how he was able to rise through the ranks, despite allegations going back decades.

It argues that credible evidence only surfaced in 2017.

The current Pope, Francis, then ordered the investigation and last year McCarrick, now 90, was found to have sexually abused a teenage boy in the 1970s.

His abuses may have taken place too long ago for criminal charges to be filed because of the U.S. statute of limitations.

The 450-page report includes testimonies from 90 witnesses, and dozens of letters and transcripts from Vatican and U.S. Church archives.

McCarrick served as archbishop of Washington DC from 2001 to 2006.

The report finds that the late Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, was told of his abuses but chose to believe American bishops who instead concealed the information and McCarrick himself, who denied it all.

It also finds that Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in 2013, probably rejected the idea of an investigation because there were “no credible allegations of child abuse”.

The report acknowledges that, in hindsight, the Vatican’s investigations into the allegations against McCarrick were of a “limited nature”.

In July 2018, McCarrick became the first person to resign as a cardinal since 1927. Pope Francis suspended him from all priestly duties the following February.

He is among hundreds of members of the clergy accused of sexually abusing children over several decades.

“We publish the report with sorrow for the wounds that these events have caused to the victims, their families, the Church in the United States and the universal Church,” said the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

He is alleged to have assaulted a teenager in the early 1970s, while working as a priest in New York. The claims were made public by the current Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

Cardinal Dolan said an independent forensic agency had investigated the allegations. A 2018 review board, including legal experts, psychologists, parents and a priest, then found the allegations “credible and substantiated”.

At the time, McCarrick said he had “no recollection of this reported abuse” and believed in his innocence.

Several men have since accused him of sexual misconduct at a beach house in New Jersey, where he allegedly took them while they studied for the priesthood as adult seminarians. One man said he was assaulted while still a minor.

It also emerged that financial settlements were reached in at least two cases of alleged sexual misconduct involving McCarrick.

They involved “allegations of sexual misconduct with adults decades ago” while he was working as a bishop in New Jersey, bishops in the state told US media.