Internet providers in Myanmar, including state-owned telecom MPT, were blocking access to Facebook Inc.-owned services in the country on Thursday, days after military leaders seized power in a coup.A letter posted online by the Ministry of Communications and Information overnight said Facebook would be blocked until February 7 for the sake of “stability.”Some users in…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden renewed his commitment Wednesday to send $1,400 checks to millions of adult Americans to boost the country’s coronavirus-ravaged economy. But he said he was open to Republican demands to tighten restrictions on who would get the money. In a call to Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives and later at…
read moreDonald Trump is no longer in the White House, but the former U.S. president’s influence is still keenly felt on Capitol Hill, where the January 6 rioting by his supporters has created deep divisions within the Republican Party.House Republicans planned to meet Wednesday to decide the futures of two members of their caucus on opposite…
read moreUNICEF has announced a deal with the Serum Institute of India to produce 1.1 billion doses of AstraZeneca/Oxford and Novavax vaccines at a cost of $3 per dose. “This is, of course, just an initial tranche of COVAX vaccines. More will follow. We will continue to work on the supply agreements to meet the…
read moreIsrael has announced it is opening its coronavirus vaccination campaign to anyone over the age of 16, as one-third of the population has already received the first dose. But in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority has received just 2,000 doses from Israel that went to front-line health care workers. Palestinians hope…
read moreCongressional leaders gathered Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda to pay tribute to Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after being injured during the siege of the Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump on January 6. Sicknick’s remains arrived Tuesday at the Capitol in a solemn ceremony featuring dozens of Capitol Police officers, who…
read moreThe test launch and landing of a SpaceX Starship prototype Tuesday ended in a crash for the second time since December. The bullet-shaped 50-meter-tall SN-9 Starship rocket, a product of entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private space company, lifted off as planned from the southern Texas launch site and traveled 10 kilometers into the sky before making…
read moreMalawi faces a resurgence of COVID-19 that is overwhelming the southern African country where a presidential residence and a national stadium have been turned into field hospitals in efforts to save lives. President Lazarus Chakwera, just six months in office, lost two Cabinet ministers to COVID-19 in January amid a surge that led him to…
read moreDefense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered hundreds of Pentagon advisory board members to resign this month as part of a broad review of the panels, essentially purging several dozen who were appointed last-minute under the Trump administration. During the last two months of his tenure, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller removed a number of…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, paid their respects late Tuesday to Brian Sicknick, the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died defending the Capitol from a pro-Trump mob that stormed the building last month. Sicknick’s remains arrived at the Capitol a short time earlier and dozens of Capitol Police officers stood at…
read moreMexico’s regulatory agency approved emergency use of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, shortly after Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell announced Tuesday the country’s plan to combat the novel coronavirus would involve use of the vaccine. The Associated Press reports Mexico is launching its vaccination program as its capital, Mexico City, is struggling to accommodate a growing number of coronavirus patients and provide adequate oxygen to hospitals. Meantime, Lopez-Gattel said the first batches of the 7.4…
read moreChina put 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, according to new international research, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world and potentially undermining its short-term climate goals. The country won praise last year after President Xi Jinping pledged to make the country “carbon neutral” by 2060.…
read moreThe U.S. Senate confirmed Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday as transportation secretary in President Joe Biden’s administration.The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, tweeted he was “honored and humbled” by the Senate’s 86-13 confirmation vote and that he was “ready to get to work.”Buttigieg, an opponent of Biden during the Democratic presidential primaries, is the first…
read moreThe White House announced Tuesday new measures to increase the rate of vaccinations against COVID-19, including distributing vaccines to select pharmacies across the country. “Building on last week’s announcement, the Biden-Harris Administration will increase overall, weekly vaccine supply to states, Tribes, and territories to 10.5-million doses nationwide beginning this week,” a statement from the White House…
read moreSouth Africa’s president delivered a rare shot of good news to people in the continent’s coronavirus hotspot: the nation’s second wave appears to be abating, and the government will soon launch a vaccination campaign for health workers. The Monday address, delivered live on national television, was a departure from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s usual tone. For nearly…
read moreAmazon.com Inc. on Tuesday said founder Jeff Bezos would step down as CEO and become executive chairman, as the company reported its third consecutive record profit and quarterly sales above $100 billion for the first time. The transition, slated for the third quarter, will make current cloud computing chief Andy Jassy Amazon’s next chief executive officer. Net…
read moreHouse Democratic impeachment managers and lawyers for Donald Trump on Tuesday laid out their arguments in separate briefs ahead of the former president’s Senate trial next week on charges of inciting a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The House Democratic prosecutors charged that Trump’s incendiary words and actions in the run-up…
read moreBritain launched an emergency program of door-to-door testing in several areas Tuesday following the discovery of hundreds of cases of the coronavirus variant, first identified in South Africa, which scientists say could be more resistant to vaccines. Mobile testing units were deployed to several regions, including parts of central and suburban London, while firefighter units…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden is signing executive orders Tuesday to start to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, including an attempt to reunite families that had been separated at the U.S.-Mexican border.In the first hours of his presidency two weeks ago, Biden acted to halt construction of Trump’s $16 billion wall along the…
read moreThe head of the Tokyo Olympics expressed confidence Tuesday the event will go forward this year despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Tokyo 2020 President Yoshiro Mori said discussions should be about how and not whether the Olympics will happen. “We will hold the Olympics, regardless of how the coronavirus [situation] looks,” Mori said. The Summer Games were originally scheduled…
read moreDonald Trump endangered the lives of all members of Congress when he aimed a mob of supporters “like a loaded cannon” at the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats said Tuesday in making their most detailed case yet for why the former president should be convicted and permanently barred from office. The legal brief forcefully links Trump’s…
read moreFormer President Donald Trump hired two new lawyers Sunday (Jan. 31) ahead of his February 9 impeachment trial in the Senate after five members of his legal team quit over the weekend. Trump hired David Schoen of Alabama and Bruce Castor of Pennsylvania to defend him from the charge of incitement of insurrection…
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