Mr Schumer balked at the new $600bn proposal from 10 Republican senators on Sunday, suggesting the GOP package wasn't even worth using a starting point on negotiations since Mr Biden wants three times more. They should negotiate with us, not make a take-it-or-leave-it offer,” Mr Schumer told the New York Daily News. Mr Schumer is still haunted by the frustrations of 2009 and 2010, when Barack Obama and some Senate Democrats insisted on using bipartisan legislative processes for an economic stimulus package to help the US recover from the Great Recession as well as an overhaul of the nation's health care system.
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. The Chinese missions coincided with a U.S. aircraft carrier group entering the South China Sea for what the U.S. military termed a routine deployment.
Frustration is building over the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations at long-term care sites, where some homes still await first shots while fending off a virus that can devastate their residents. The major drugstore chains tasked with giving shots in these places are far along in vaccinating nursing home residents and staff. But some other types of group residences won't receive first doses until mid-February or later, despite being among the top priorities for shots.
Australia's two-week run without any cases of community Covid transmission has come to an end, after the infection of a hotel guard in Perth triggered a five-day lockdown. On Sunday afternoon, officials in Western Australia announced that a hotel security guard had tested positive to Covid-19, and speculated that the man may also have been working as a rideshare driver. "I know for many Western Australian, this is going to come as a shock… Western Australians have done so well for so long, but this week it is absolutely crucial that we stay home, maintain physical distancing and personal hygiene, and get tested if you have symptoms,” said Mark McGowan, the premier of Western Australia.
A longtime adviser to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging Republicans on Capitol Hill to purge Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from the party so she has no influence in Washington. Kicking Ms Greene out of the House GOP conference over her right-wing conspiracy theories and past threats against Democratic lawmakers would leave her without any committee assignments, where members typically perform most of their work. Ms Greene is the first member of Congress who openly supported the right-wing QAnon conspiracy movement, which maintained that Donald Trump, as president, was waging a covert war against a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibals comprised of Hollywood elites, Democratic politicians, and others.
Irish freight volumes to and from European Union ports doubled in January, the government said on Monday, as many traders shunned the once-speedier route to the continent through Britain due to Brexit red tape and delays. For decades, the so-called UK landbridge offered exporters the swiftest route between Ireland and mainland Europe. The UK's exit from the EU at the end of 2020 has led to a three-fold rise in direct routes in the last 12 months, mainly to French ports.
After President Joe Biden revoked Keystone XL's presidential permit and shut down construction of the long-disputed pipeline that was to carry oil from Canada to Texas, opponents of other pipelines hoped the projects they've been fighting would be next. The Biden administration hasn't specified what action it might take on other pipelines, but industry experts doubt there will be swift changes like the one that stopped Keystone. They say the Keystone XL move on Biden's first day fulfilled a campaign promise and was symbolic for a president who has made climate change a national security priority and has called for a dramatic increase in cost-competitive renewable and clean-burning energy.
As the Republican Party wrestles with its identity in the wake of former President Trump, an Illinois Republican is out to prove there is a GOP voter base that wants to give up the division and conspiracy theories that he says have come to define the party. “The biggest danger right now is that we've become a party that dabbles — not just dabbles — we traffic in conspiracies and we traffic in lies,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who on Sunday plans to release a video and website, country1st.com, to start the campaign. Kinzinger, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump earlier this month, has been one of the few GOP lawmakers willing to speak out against the former president's actions.
Clinical trial data on two COVID-19 vaccines show that a coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa is lessening their ability to protect against the illness, underscoring the need to vaccinate vast numbers of people as quickly as possible, scientists said. The vaccines from Novavax Inc and Johnson & Johnson were welcomed as important future weapons in curbing deaths and hospitalizations in a pandemic that has infected more than 101 million people and claimed over 2 million lives worldwide. But they were significantly less effective at preventing COVID-19 in trial participants in South Africa, where the potent new variant is widespread, compared with countries in which this mutation is still rare, according to preliminary data released by the companies.
Thousands of Hong Kongers have already made the sometimes painful decision to leave behind their hometown and move to Britain since Beijing imposed a strict national security law on the Chinese territory last summer. Others say China's encroachment on their way of life and civil liberties has become unbearable, and they want to seek a better future for their children abroad. The moves are expected to accelerate now that 5 million Hong Kongers are eligible to apply for visas to Britain, allowing them to live, work and study there and eventually apply to become British citizens.
A former Fox News editor who claims he was recently ousted from the conservative network after being the first to predict President Joe Biden's election victory in Arizona has said the US is suffering from “informational malnourishment” in an Op-Ed published on Thursday. Fox News said that the editor's dismissal was part of a restructuring. Chris Stirewalt had previously served as a politics editor for the network, where he helped forecast the latest election results and made the call for Arizona – which had not voted to elect a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996 – well before the Associated Press and other major news outlets.
The spokesman for Myanmar's governing National League for Democracy said on Monday that the country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior figures from the ruling party have been detained in an early morning raid. The move comes after days of escalating tension between the civilian government and the powerful military that stirred fears of a coup in the aftermath of an election that the army says was fraudulent. The ruling party spokesman told Reuters by phone that Suu Kyi and other leaders had been "taken" in the early hours of the morning, saying "I want to tell our people not to respond rashly and I want them to act according to the law," adding that he also expected to be detained.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -An heiress to the Publix Super Markets chain donated about $300,000 to fund a rally that preceded the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol this month by supporters of former President Donald Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The Journal said the funding from Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a prominent donor to Trump's 2020 campaign, was facilitated by far-right show host Alex Jones. It said her money paid for the lion's share of the roughly $500,000 rally at the Ellipse park where Trump spoke and urged his supporters to "to fight."
China recorded more than 2,000 new domestic cases of COVID-19 in January, the highest monthly total since the tail end of the initial outbreak in Wuhan in March of last year. The National Health Commission said Sunday that 2,016 cases were reported from Jan. 1-30. Two people have died in January, the first reported coronavirus deaths in China in several months.
Israel has agreed to transfer 5,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine to the Palestinians to immunize front-line medical workers, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz's office announced Sunday. It was the first time that Israel has confirmed the transfer of vaccines to the Palestinians, who lag far behind Israel's aggressive vaccination campaign and have not yet received any vaccines. The World Health Organization has raised concerns about the disparity between Israel and Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and international human rights groups and U.N. experts have said Israel is responsible for the well being of Palestinians in these areas.
After thousands of arrests last weekend, the authorities jailed more than 150 people mid-week including key activists from Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, many remained in pretrial detention centers. Police continued detaining journalists, bloggers, administrators of Telegram chats, protesters and even random pedestrians on Sunday for covering or organizing the unsanctioned rally. By lunchtime, more than 1,000 people were arrested in 40 cities according to OVD-Info, which is an independent police monitor.
India's prime minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday protesters that stormed New Delhi's Red Fort had caused "insult" to the country, his first public comments on a months-long farmers' agitation that turned violent last week. Tens of thousands of farmers have camped on the outskirts of the capital for more than two months, protesting new agricultural laws they say benefit private buyers at the expense of growers. A tractor parade on Tuesday's Republic Day turned violent when some protesters deviated from pre-agreed routes, clashing with police and breaking into the historic Red Fort complex in the capital.
Now, the man who says he commissioned the art from Savva is asking authorities for help to have it removed and transported to the country's national gallery for all to see. Former Perroquet owner Avgerinos Nikitas, 93, a Greek Cypriot, has appealed to a committee composed of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots that's tasked with protecting Cyprus' cultural treasures on both sides of the divide to help remove the 13 sections. In return, I pledge to cede these pieces to the National Collection as a small contribution to Christoforos Savva's huge body of work,” Nikitas said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press, addressed to the committee as well as Cyprus' education ministry.
One of the scientists who helped develop Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine applauded Johnson & Johnson's new trial results, even though they are not as stellar as her own. J&J announced on Friday its COVID-19 vaccine was 72% effective at curbing symptomatic infections in US trials, while Moderna's was more than 94% effective at the same. A leading coronavirus vaccine scientist who helped develop Moderna's highly effective vaccine says Johnson & Johnson's new trial results, which tout 72% efficacy for the one-shot vaccine in the US, look "darn good."
President Biden may have called for unity but he's also trying to quickly dismantle Trump's legacy. How has his busy first full week gone down with conservative media? "They are coming for us," Newsmax's Greg Kelly warned his viewers this week.
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis thronged a pair of funerals for two prominent rabbis in Jerusalem on Sunday, flouting the country's ban on large public gatherings during the pandemic. The initial funeral procession, for Rabbi Meshulam Soloveitchik, who died at age 99, wended its way through the streets of Jerusalem in the latest display of ultra-Orthodox Israelis' refusal to honor coronavirus restrictions. The phenomenon has undermined the country's aggressive vaccination campaign to bring a raging outbreak under control and threatened to hurt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March elections.
Tom Moore, the 100-year-old World War II veteran who captivated the British public in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic with his fundraising efforts, has been hospitalized with COVID-19, his daughter said Sunday. Hannah Ingram-Moore revealed in a statement posted on Twitter that her father, widely known as Captain Tom, has been admitted to Bedford Hospital because he needed “additional help” with his breathing. “The medical care he has received in the last few weeks has been remarkable and we know that the wonderful staff at Bedford Hospital will do all they can to make him comfortable and hopefully return home as soon as possible,” she said.
In a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Virology, researchers found nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen can reduce the production of antibodies and affect other aspects of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers said the study's results raised the possibility that pain relievers such as ibuprofen could alter the immune response to the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Colleen Kelley, an associate professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, who was not affiliated with the study, speculates that an altered response could be caused by reducing inflammation triggered by the immune system.
Then Thursday, McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and declare that the former president was “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022. Hours later, two of Trump's most enthusiastic lieutenants, his eldest son and Rep. Matt Gaetz, used a rally in Wyoming to highlight one Republican they are committed to helping elect next year: whoever challenges Cheney in her primary. By Saturday, after McCarthy's aides said he would talk to Greene this week about her conduct, the congresswoman put out word that she had just had a conversation with Trump and he encouraged her on.
India has suspended mobile internet services in three areas around the capital, Delhi, where farmers are staging a hunger strike in protest at new agriculture laws. The government said the shutdown would continue until Sunday night to "maintain public safety". Tens of thousands of protesting farmers have been camped out on Delhi's outskirts for more than a month.
“By encouraging this act of terror on our capital, Trump’s legacy is destroyed.”
“Both backers and critics of Trump agreed that he remade the federal judiciary — a change that will impact America for decades.”
“He was largely responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who did not need to die.”
“I do know what the future should hold for this country. That is to say, a policy of Trumpism without Trump.”
“It will be decades before the consequences of his tenure are fully known.”