Category Archives: World

World

Djokovic must comply with local health rules to compete in Madrid Open, Spain’s prime minister says 

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Austria will implement a wide-ranging Covid-19 vaccine mandate, which includes fines for unvaccinated adults, from February 1.

The government announced last November that a vaccine mandate was necessary to address the low vaccination rate in the country. The first draft of the law was published in December, and a revised draft was published Monday and is now going through parliament. 

Everyone age 18 and over living in Austria must be vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the latest draft. A few groups of people are exempt, such as pregnant people, people recovered from a Covid-19 infection (who are exempt for 180 days from a positive PCR test), and people who cannot be vaccinated without endangering their health. 

“The mandatory vaccination isn’t coming in a sudden way, instead it is coming in a phased approach,” Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer told public broadcaster ORF Sunday.

No fines will be issued during the initial phase, which lasts until mid-March, said Nehammer. From March 15, law enforcement will start checking if people are adhering to the new law, for example by examining their vaccination status during traffic controls.

People face fines of up to €600 ($685) if they don’t possess a vaccine certificate or an exemption. So-called “reminder dates” can also be set, on which people are reminded through a letter to get vaccinated.

In the third stage of the mandate, these reminder dates will be followed up with “vaccine dates.” People who haven’t got shots or an exemption by then will be issued with fines.

There will be two “vaccine dates” each year. A person can be given a maximum of four fines annually, which would total €2,400 ($2,741).

The vaccine mandate is planned to last until January 31, 2024 and it will be continually assessed until then, according to the Austrian health ministry. 

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4th vaccine shot less effective against omicron, Israeli study finds; new Va. governor faces mask pushback: Live COVID updates – USA TODAY

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  1. 4th vaccine shot less effective against omicron, Israeli study finds; new Va. governor faces mask pushback: Live COVID updates USA TODAY
  2. Israeli trial, world’s first, finds 4th dose ‘not good enough’ against Omicron The Times of Israel
  3. Fourth vaccine dose boosts antibodies, researchers say, but likely not enough to prevent Omicron breakthrough infections CNN
  4. Israel Trial Suggests 4th Dose Not Warding Off Omicron Infection Bloomberg
  5. Preliminary study in Israel shows fourth Covid vaccine shots are less effective against omicron CNBC
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Anne Frank may have been betrayed by Jewish notary | Anne Frank

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A Jewish notary has been named by a cold case team led by a former FBI agent as the prime suspect for the betrayal of Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis.

Arnold van den Bergh, who died in 1950, has been accused on the basis of six years of research and an anonymous note received by Anne’s father, Otto Frank, after his return to Amsterdam at the end of the war.

The note claims Van den Bergh, a member of a Jewish council, an administrative body the Germans forced Jews to establish, had given away the Frank family’s hiding place along with other addresses used by those in hiding.

He had been motivated by fears for his life and that of his family, it is suggested in a CBS documentary and accompanying book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank, by Rosemary Sullivan, based on research gathered by the retired FBI detective Vince Pankoke and his team.

Pankoke learned that Van den Bergh had managed to have himself categorised as a non-Jew initially but was then redesignated as being Jewish after a business dispute.

It is suggested that Van den Bergh, who acted as notary in the forced sale of works of art to prominent Nazis such as Hermann Göring, used addresses of hiding places as a form of life insurance for his family. Neither he nor his daughter were deported to the Nazi camps.

Anne Frank hid for two years in a concealed annexe above a canalside warehouse in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam before being discovered on 4 August 1944, along with her father, mother, Edith, and sister, Margot.

The young diarist was sent to Westerbork transit camp, and on to Auschwitz concentration camp before finally ending up in Bergen-Belsen, where she died in February 1945 at the age of 15, possibly from typhus. Her published diary spans the period in hiding between 1942 and her last entry on 1 August 1944.

Despite a series of investigations, the mystery of who led the Nazis to the annex remains unsolved. Otto Frank, who died in 1980, was thought to have a strong suspicion of that person’s identity but he never divulged it in public.

Several years after the war, he had told the journalist Friso Endt that the family had been betrayed by someone in the Jewish community. The cold case team discovered that Miep Gies, one of those who helped get the family into the annexe, had also let slip during a lecture in America in 1994 that the person who betrayed them had died by 1960.

There were two police investigations, in 1947 and 1963, into the circumstances surrounding the betrayal of the Franks. The son of the detective, Arend van Helden, who led the second inquiry, provided a typewritten copy of the anonymous note to the cold case reviewers.

The author of the new book, Sullivan, said: “Vanden Bergh was a well-known notary, one of six Jewish notaries in Amsterdam at the time. A notary in the Netherlands is more like a very high-profile lawyer. As a notary, he was respected. He was working with a committee to help Jewish refugees, and before the war as they were fleeing Germany.

“The anonymous note did not identify Otto Frank. It said ‘your address was betrayed’. So, in fact, what had happened was Van den Bergh was able to get a number of addresses of Jews in hiding. And it was those addresses with no names attached and no guarantee that the Jews were still hiding at those addresses. That’s what he gave over to save his skin, if you want, but to save himself and his family. Personally, I think he is a tragic figure.”

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Éric Zemmour, French Far-Right Candidate, Convicted for Inciting Racial Hatred

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PARIS — Éric Zemmour, the anti-immigrant far-right pundit who is running in France’s presidential elections, was convicted on Monday on charges of inciting racial hatred and making racially insulting comments after saying on television in 2020 that unaccompanied child migrants were “thieves,” “rapists,” and “murderers.”

Mr. Zemmour, who had stood by his comments and said courts should not police political speech, was fined 10,000 euros, or $11,400, by a criminal court in Paris.

The verdict represented the third conviction and fine for Mr. Zemmour, who has a long history of incendiary comments, mostly about immigration, over the past decade, though he has been acquitted on other occasions.

Mr. Zemmour has repeatedly run afoul of French laws that punish defamation or acts provoking hatred or violence on the basis of race, religion and other factors over the past decade, and he still faces several trials on similar charges.

In a statement announcing that he would appeal Thursday’s conviction, Mr. Zemmour said that the court had issued an “ideological and stupid” ruling against a “free spirit.”

“We want the end of this system that tightens the noose around freedom of expression and democratic debate a bit more each day,” he added.

Mr. Zemmour surged in the polls before even announcing his presidential bid in November, and he has scrambled mainstream French politics with his fiery nationalist rhetoric and apocalyptic tone, but his campaign has lost momentum in recent weeks.

With the elections about three months away, Mr. Zemmour has struggled to get the official backing of at least 500 elected representatives — a requirement to appear on the ballot in the presidential election. He now stands at about 13 percent in the polls, in fourth place, while President Emmanuel Macron, who was elected in 2017 and is widely expected to run to stay in office, is polling first.

Mr. Zemmour has explicitly fashioned himself as a French-style Donald J. Trump, with inflammatory comments and attacks against the news media and French elites that have repeatedly drawn outrage and have fueled his rise to prominence.

The case was rooted in comments that Mr. Zemmour made in September 2020. Appearing on CNews — a Fox-style television network that has grown by giving airtime to right-wing pundits to rail on issues like crime, immigration, climate and Covid — Mr. Zemmour was asked about minors who immigrate to France from Africa or the Middle East without parents or guardians and often end up isolated as they face the hardships of city streets or squalid camps.

“They don’t belong here, they are thieves, they are murderers, they are rapists, that’s all they are,” Mr. Zemmour said. “They should be sent back, they shouldn’t even come.”

Politicians and antiracism groups quickly condemned the comments, and prosecutors opened an investigation based on the laws that prohibit defamation and provocation.

Mr. Zemmour’s lawyer had moved to dismiss the charges, arguing during the trial, held in November, that unaccompanied children migrants were not an ethnic or racial group.

Arié Alimi, a lawyer for the French Human Rights League, a plaintiff in the case, told reporters at the courthouse that Mr. Zemmour’s politics were based on “hatred” and the stigmatizing of people “because of their origins, their religion or their race.”

“It’s an important ruling, because he has to understand that we won’t let it stand,” Mr. Alimi said.

The court also sentenced Mr. Zemmour and the publisher of CNews to pay the plaintiffs 19,000 euros, or about $21,700, in damages.

In 2011, a French court convicted Mr. Zemmour on charges of “inciting racial discrimination” for televised comments in which he suggested that a majority of criminals in France were “Black and Arab,” and said that employers “have the right” to deny employment to those ethnic groups.

Mr. Zemmour was found guilty on similar charges for saying on television in 2016 that France had been subjected to an “invasion” of Muslims, whom he accused of supporting jihadist terrorists.

The Paris Appeals Court is expected to review another case against Mr. Zemmour on Thursday involving charges of disputing crimes against humanity. Mr. Zemmour argued on CNews in 2019 that Marshal Philippe Pétain had “saved” French Jews during World War II — comments that were part of Mr. Zemmour’s repeated attempts to rehabilitate France’s collaborationist wartime regime.

A lower court, ruling he had spoken in the heat of the moment, had acquitted him, but prosecutors appealed.

The verdict comes as Mr. Zemmour tries to breathe new life into his effort for the presidency, which initially upended the campaign. In French presidential elections, any number of candidates can run in the first round of voting, but only the top two vote-getters advance to the second round.

If Mr. Zemmour hopes to challenge Mr. Macron in that round, he will have to beat out Marine Le Pen, the other far-right candidate, who is trying to sanitize her image and embody credibility, and Valérie Pécresse, the mainstream conservative candidate who has taken a hard line on issues like crime and immigration.

Mr. Zemmour has siphoned off some of Ms. Le Pen’s voters, but a study by the Kantar Public polling institute released Monday found that his unabashedly and radically nationalist campaign, which features proposals like requiring parents to give their children “traditional” French names, appeared to have “softened” Ms. Le Pen’s image with the broader electorate.



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Downing Street party: My constituents are 60 to one against Boris Johnson, says Conservative

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The government is facing mounting pressure over several events that are alleged to have been held during lockdowns. Here is what we know about them and the restrictions in place at the time:

Boris Johnson announced a plan to take the “first careful steps” out of the lockdown that began in March 2020. But he said people should continue to “obey the rules on social distancing and to enforce those rules we will increase the fines for the small minority who break them”.

Legal restrictions at the time said you could not leave your house without a reasonable excuse and government guidance was that you could meet one person outside of your household in an outdoor setting while exercising.

A photo from May 2020 showed the prime minister and his staff with bottles of wine and a cheeseboard in the Downing Street garden. When asked about it, Boris Johnson said, “those people were at work talking about work”.

About 100 people were invited by email to “socially distanced drinks in the No 10 garden” on behalf of the prime minister’s principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds.

Witnesses told the BBC the PM and his wife were among about 30 people who attended.

Boris Johnson has confirmed he attended the event, saying he was there for 25 minutes and “believed implicitly that this was a work event”.

Boris Johnson announced plans for a “significant return to normality” in England by Christmas “through targeted, local action” instead of national lockdowns.

But he added that the timetable relied on “every one of us staying alert and acting responsibly”.

With cases of coronavirus rising again, the prime minister told people in England that “we are once again asking you to stay at home” as a new national lockdown began.

He said people should only leave their homes “for work if you can’t work from home, for education, and for essential activities and emergencies”. Indoor gatherings with other households were banned, unless they were for work purposes.

Sources told the BBC that Downing Street staff members attended a gathering with Carrie Johnson in the flat where she and the prime minister live. A spokesman for Mrs Johnson denies the party took place.

A leaving event was held for No 10 aide, Cleo Watson, where people were drinking, and Mr Johnson made a speech, according to sources.

The second national lockdown ended after four weeks but Boris Johnson replaced those restrictions with “tough tiers to keep this virus down”.

London was placed in tier two, which banned two or more people from different households from meeting indoors, unless “reasonably necessary” for work purposes.

The Department for Education has confirmed it had an office gathering to thank staff for their work during the pandemic. It says drinks and snacks were brought by those who attended and no outside guests or support staff were invited.

The Conservative Party has admitted that an “unauthorised gathering” took place at its HQ in Westminster. It was held by the team of the party’s London-mayoral candidate, Shaun Bailey, who has since stepped down as chair of the London Assembly police and crime committee. The Metropolitan Police is to speak to two people who attended the party.

Image caption The gathering at the Conservative Party headquarters was described as ‘raucous’

Image copyright by Daily Mirror

Multiple sources have told the BBC there was a Christmas quiz for No 10 staff last year. A photo – published by the Sunday Mirror – showed Boris Johnson taking part and sitting between two colleagues in No 10. Mr Johnson has denied any wrongdoing.

Image caption Mr Johnson was pictured in the No 10 library under a portrait of Margaret Thatcher

Image copyright by Sunday Mirror

London moved into the highest tier of restrictions and Matt Hancock, who was health secretary at the time, said it was important “everyone is cautious” ahead of the festive period.

The Department for Transport apologised after confirming reports of a party in its offices that day, calling it “inappropriate” and an “error of judgment” by staff.

A leaving party was held at the Cabinet Office for the outgoing head of the civil service Covid taskforce – the team responsible for drawing up coronavirus restrictions.

Kate Josephs, now chief executive of Sheffield City Council, apologised for the event, saying she was “truly sorry that I did this and for the anger that people will feel as a result”.

Downing Street originally denied a report by the Daily Mirror that a party took place in Downing Street.

However, a video obtained by ITV News showed the prime minister’s then-press secretary Allegra Stratton, joking about reports of an event, saying: “This fictional party was a business meeting and it was not socially distanced.”

Lockdown restrictions were eased in England, with pubs and restaurants allowed to reopen with outdoor service only.

However, working from home continued to be recommended and socialising indoors with people from other households was not allowed. Meeting others outdoors was limited to groups of six people or two households.

Two parties were held by Downing Street staff at No 10, the night before Prince Philip’s funeral.

One of the events was a leaving party for the PM’s then director of communications James Slack, who has apologised for the event and acknowledged it “should not have happened at the time that it did”.

Boris Johnson was not at either party.



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Who Is King of Florida? Tensions Rise Between Trump and Ron DeSantis

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For months, former President Donald J. Trump has been grumbling quietly to friends and visitors to his Palm Beach mansion about a rival Republican power center in another Florida mansion, some 400 miles to the north.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a man Mr. Trump believes he put on the map, has been acting far less like an acolyte and more like a future competitor, Mr. Trump complains. With his stock rising fast in the party, the governor has conspicuously refrained from saying he would stand aside if Mr. Trump runs for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

“The magic words,” Trump has said to several associates and advisers.

That long-stewing resentment burst into public view recently in a dispute over a seemingly unrelated topic: Covid policies. After Mr. DeSantis refused to reveal his full Covid vaccination history, the former president publicly acknowledged he had received a booster. Last week, he seemed to swipe at Mr. DeSantis by blasting as “gutless” politicians who dodge the question out of fear of blowback from vaccine skeptics.

Mr. DeSantis shot back on Friday, criticizing Mr. Trump’s early handling of the pandemic and saying he regretted not being more vocal in his complaints.

The back and forth exposed how far Republicans have shifted to the right on coronavirus politics. The doubts Mr. Trump amplified about public health expertise have only spiraled since he left office. Now his defense of the vaccines — even if often subdued and almost always with the caveat in the same breath that he opposes mandates — has put him uncharacteristically out of step with the hard-line elements of his party’s base and provided an opening for a rival.

But that it was Mr. DeSantis — a once-loyal member of the Trump court — wielding the knife made the tension about much more.

At its core, the dispute amounts to a stand-in for the broader challenge confronting Republicans at the outset of midterm elections. They are led by a defeated former president who demands total fealty, brooks no criticism and is determined to sniff out, and then snuff out, any threat to his control of the party.

That includes the 43-year-old DeSantis, who has told friends he believes Mr. Trump’s expectation that he bend the knee is asking too much. That refusal has set up a generational clash and a test of loyalty in the de facto capital of today’s G.O.P., one watched by Republicans elsewhere who’ve ridden to power on Mr. Trump’s coattails.

Already, party figures are attempting to calm matters.

“They’re the two most important leaders in the Republican Party,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime Florida lobbyist with connections to both men, predicting Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis “will be personal and political friends for the rest of their careers.”

Mr. Trump’s aides also have tried to tamp down questions about the former president’s frustrations, so as not to elevate Mr. DeSantis.

Still, Mr. Trump has made no secret of his preparations for a third run for the White House. And while Mr. DeSantis, who is up for re-election this year, has not declared his plans, he is widely believed to be eyeing the presidency.

Mr. Trump and his aides are mindful of Republicans’ increasingly public fatigue with the drama that trails Mr. Trump. The former president’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election — which Mr. DeSantis has not challenged — and his role in the events leading to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol have some Republicans looking for a fresh start.

Mr. DeSantis is often the first name Republicans cite as a possible Trump-style contender not named Trump.

“DeSantis would be a formidable 2024 candidate in the Trump lane should Trump not run,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor. “He’s Trump but a little smarter, more disciplined and brusque without being too brusque.”

Notably, Mr. Trump, a longtime student of charisma and mass appeal, as well as an avid reader of polling, has refrained so far from publicly attacking Mr. DeSantis, who is a distant but potent second to him in polls on the 2024 G.O.P. field. His restraint is a break from the mockery and bullying he often uses to attack Republicans he perceives as vulnerable. Mr. Trump made no reference to the governor at a rally in Arizona on Saturday.

Mr. DeSantis has $70 million in the bank for his re-election, a war chest he stocked with help from the Republican rank-and-file and donor class, alike. He has raised his profile in the same spaces Mr. Trump once dominated. The governor is ubiquitous on Fox News, where he is routinely met with the sort of softballs that once arced toward Mr. Trump. And he frequently mixes with the well-tanned Republican donor community near the former president’s winter home in South Florida.

It was not always this way.

Mr. DeSantis was a little-known Florida congressman in 2017, when Mr. Trump, who was then the president, spotted him on television and took keen interest. Mr. DeSantis, an Ivy League-educated military veteran and smooth-talking defender of the new president, was exactly what Mr. Trump liked in a politician.

It wasn’t long before Mr. Trump blessed Mr. DeSantis’s bid for governor and sent in staff to help him, lifting the lawmaker to a victory over a better-known rival for the party’s nomination.

Mr. DeSantis survived the general election and has often governed in a style that mirrors his patron, slashing at the left and scrapping with the news media. But that alone doesn’t placate Mr. Trump. As with other Republicans he has endorsed, the former president appears to take a kind of ownership interest in Mr. DeSantis — and to believe that he is owed dividends and deference.

“Look, I helped Ron DeSantis at a level that nobody’s ever seen before,” Mr. Trump said in an interview for a forthcoming book, “Insurgency,” on the rightward shift of the Republican Party, by the New York Times reporter Jeremy W. Peters. Mr. Trump said he believed Mr. DeSantis “didn’t have a chance” of winning without his help.

The former president’s expectation of deference from Mr. DeSantis is a reminder to other Republicans that a Trump endorsement comes with a price, a demand that could prove particularly consequential should he run again and have a stable of Republican lawmakers in his debt.

At times, Mr. Trump has sought to kindle his relationship with Mr. DeSantis. He has suggested the governor would be a strong choice for vice president. Similar courtship has helped win deference from other potential rivals. But Mr. DeSantis has not relented.

“I wonder why the guy won’t say he won’t run against me,” Mr. Trump has said to several associates and advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Mr. Trump began the recent contretemps by attacking the governor’s refusal to acknowledge whether he had received a Covid-19 booster shot.

“The answer is ‘Yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless,” Mr. Trump said in a television interview this month, referring only to “politicians” but clearly alluding to Mr. DeSantis. “You got to say it — whether you had it or not, say it.”

Mr. DeSantis’s response came on Friday in an interview on the conservative podcast “Ruthless.” Speaking in front of an in-person audience near St. Petersburg, Fla., the governor said one of his biggest regrets was not forcefully opposing Mr. Trump’s calls for lockdowns when the coronavirus first began to spread in the spring of 2020.

“Knowing now what I know then, if that was a threat earlier, I would have been much louder,” Mr. DeSantis said. The governor said he had been “telling Trump ‘stop the flights from China’” but argued he never thought in early March 2020 that the virus “would lead to locking down the country.”

Mr. DeSantis then moved quickly to place blame on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who advised Trump on the country’s Covid response, a much safer target with conservatives.

The former president did not immediately respond. Without a Twitter account, his hair-trigger retorts have become less frequent. A spokesman for Mr. Trump also did not respond to requests for comment. An adviser to Mr. DeSantis declined to comment.

Mr. DeSantis, however, has touched on a delicate issue, one of the few on which Mr. Trump is to the left of his party’s hard-liners: the efficacy of the vaccine and deference to public health experts’ advice on how to curb the spread of the virus.

Mr. Trump has begun blasting warning shots at Mr. DeSantis and other aspiring Republicans, signaling he intends to defend the vaccines his administration helped develop. In an interview with Candace Owens, a right-wing media personality, the former president said “the vaccine worked” and dismissed conspiracy theories. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine,” he said.

Mr. DeSantis, though, has been much more eager to focus on his resistance to Covid-19 restrictions, past and present, than to make a robust case for vaccination and booster shots.

Notably, at his rally on Saturday, Mr. Trump did not promote vaccines and criticized so-called Covid “lockdowns.”

Mr. Trump’s loudest antagonists are likely to continue to stoke the tension between the two men. Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator who has fallen out with the former president, delighted in the dust-up this week.

“Trump is demanding to know Ron DeSantis’s booster status, and I can now reveal it,” Ms. Coulter wrote on Twitter. “He was a loyal booster when Trump ran in 2016, but then he learned our president was a liar and con man whose grift was permanent.”

In an email, Ms. Coulter, herself a part-time Florida resident, put a finer point on what makes Mr. DeSantis’s rise unsettling for the former president. “Trump is done,” she wrote. “You guys should stop obsessing over him.”

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

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How’s he doing? Americans weigh in on Biden’s performance

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President Joe Biden took office at a particularly polarized time in American history, so it’s not surprising that citizens are divided on his performance at the one-year mark.

A Georgia history teacher who voted for Biden would give him a “C” grade, faulting the president for not pushing earlier to end the filibuster in the Senate but supportive of his Build Back Better plan.

A retired nurse in Iowa who supported Pete Buttigieg in the Democratic primary says she’s been impressed by the way Biden has upheld the dignity of the office.

A registered independent in Arizona who voted for former President Donald Trump says Biden’s first year has been “pretty bad,” citing the shutdown of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.

Here’s what else Americans have to say about the job Biden has done so far:

THE TRUMP-TO-BIDEN VOTER

Craig Prichard believes Donald Trump should be in jail. But he’s far from your typical anti-Trumper: He voted for him in 2016.

But not in 2020. “No, sir,” says the 65-year-old self-described independent from Des Moines, Iowa.

Prichard is still angry at Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, saying he believes the former president caused it. But it was Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic that led Prichard to vote for Biden in 2020.

“Trump wanted to make it look like COVID was going away,” Prichard says. “That wasn’t the way to take care of it.”

Prichard, who for 40 years built farm machinery, worked construction and eventually retired after a stint at a meatpacking plant last year, says Biden is “handling COVID as well as he can” while juggling a number of other issues.

“Biden, you can tell he’s trying to handle the pandemic, food prices, gas prices, Russia, all at the same time, and he doesn’t seem to care how he looks,” Prichard says. “Because it’s not real good right now for him, even though there’s less people dying than if Trump were there.”

“Trump, turns out, only cared about how he looked,” Prichard says.

___

THE TEACHER WHO GIVES BIDEN A ‘C’ GRADE

Kai Uchimura, a high school history teacher who lives in Decatur, Georgia, voted for Biden in 2020. He’d give him a “C” grade so far.

Uchimura, 26, describes himself as leaning left on most issues, though he is not a registered Democrat. He says he supports Biden’s social policy bill that remains stalled in Congress, but thinks Democrats have done a poor job of explaining its benefits.

“That Build Back Better plan, it seemed like no one knew what was in the bill except for the cost,” he says.

He also faults Biden for not pushing earlier to end the filibuster in the Senate that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. Last week, for the first time, Biden directly advocated eliminating the filibuster in order to debate and vote on election and voting rights legislation.

“I know that when he was coming into office, he had this message of trying to unite the country and extend a hand across the aisle,” Uchimura says. “But I wish he would have recognized earlier that this era of bipartisanship seems to be pretty much on thin ice.”

___

THE BIDEN VOTER WHO DECRIES POLARIZATION

Lynn Manning-John, a school principal on a Native American reservation on the Nevada-Idaho border, is pleased with Biden’s first year in office but worries his presidency has further polarized her community.

At a Walmart in Elko County, Nevada, a ranching region that heavily supported the former president, she’s overheard customers complain about how Biden’s agenda has permeated “Trump country.”

“There is just a reluctance to support the current president,” the 45-year-old independent voter says. “There’s pushback towards anything that he puts forward, even if it’s good and common sense.” She was especially happy with Biden’s nomination of Deb Haaland, a fellow Native American, as interior secretary.

The superintendent and five out of seven school board members in Elko County resigned last year during protests from parents’ groups opposed to lesson plans about equity and diversity in the parts of the county outside the Duck Valley Indian Reservation.

Manning-John sees the resignations and the parents’ demands as an outgrowth of the backlash to Biden’s 2020 victory.

Biden’s election win is still unreal to many Americans, she says.

“And the absolute revolt that has come about since absolutely goes directly to the school boards,” she says.

___

THE BIDEN VOTER WARY OF LIBERALS

Patrick Sweeney voted for Biden but has been disappointed the president hasn’t pushed back more against the left wing of the Democratic Party.

“I wish he would claim and stake out the middle ground, and be more that, ‘This is what the Democratic Party represents,’” says Sweeney, a 62-year-old retired educator in a Phoenix suburb who is not affiliated with a political party.

“So much of the conversation seems to get focused on the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party and progressive positions,” Sweeney says. “I think he needs to be more front and center in countering that.”

Sweeney is pleased with the infrastructure bill Biden signed into law but wishes he’d stopped there instead of pushing a massive increase in social service spending.

“I was enthusiastic about the original infrastructure plan,” Sweeney says. “I think it’s long overdue, and I was really glad to see it, and I think that could’ve and should’ve been a great accomplishment. Get the bulldozers and shovels rolling and get to work. She adds: “The Build Back Better plan, I think there’s too much in there that I don’t see the need for it, or I don’t know that the federal government is the solution for it.”

___

THE TRUMP VOTER WHO’S NOT IMPRESSED

Eric Ollarsaba says Biden’s presidency has been “pretty bad.” But the 33-year-old Trump voter isn’t surprised.

“He’s pretty much doing exactly what I expected him to do,” says Ollarsaba, a registered independent who lives in Phoenix and works at an online car retailer. “He’s a career politician.”

He is disappointed Biden shut the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and he was appalled by the chaotic U.S. military exit from Afghanistan.

“We’re probably going to be reliant on other countries for energy, which I could potentially see leading to another conflict, or us involving ourselves in another war,” Ollarsaba says. “I think we still needed a U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Not major military operations, but we still need a presence and I think that would make that region — at least for the United States — a little less dangerous.”

The U.S. should not have had to rely on the Taliban’s cooperation to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan, he says. He worries ceding influence there will allow terrorist groups to gain a foothold.

___

THE DEMOCRAT WHO PREFERRED MAYOR PETE

Biden wasn’t Kathleen Paul’s first pick. The 74-year-old retired nurse liked Pete Buttigieg in the Democratic primary.

“I thought Biden was sort of ‘Jokin’ Joe,’” Paul says. “He said things that were so off-the-cuff when (Barack) Obama was president. I thought, ‘Can we really take this guy seriously?’”

Turns out, a bit to her surprise, she can.

“I’ve been really impressed with the way he upholds the dignity of the office, the way he expresses himself,” says Paul, a self-described liberal Democrat from Des Moines, Iowa. “I knew he had experience and had been through tragedy. But I didn’t know he could project the weight of that.”

She credits Biden with following the science in his handling of the pandemic but faults him for his naïve optimism in setting last July 4 as the date by which 70% of the nation’s eligible population would be vaccinated. That goal was reached months later but the percentage has slipped under 70% because younger children were made eligible.

She was also upset by the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan, saying the administration should have foreseen the end result: “Bombs going off, people running down runways after planes.”

“They made the move, and it was not well done,” she says. “If you’re there for 20 years, what’s another six months to pull the Band-Aid off a little more slowly?”

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THE BIDEN VOTER WHO WANTS HIM TO TOOT HIS OWN HORN

Natalie Rawlings, a registered Democrat who voted for Biden, says the president doesn’t get enough credit for all the things that are going right, like the strong job market that has made it easier for workers to switch jobs.

But she thinks that’s partly his own fault.

“I don’t know why he’s having such a hard time with the messaging,” says Rawlings, a 50-year-old Atlanta resident who works for a Fortune 500 company. “Did Biden think his plans were going to sell themselves?”

She also thinks Biden has misjudged his ability to cajole his former colleagues in the Senate to back his agenda.

“Biden has bit off more than he can chew,” she says. “Maybe if he did things more incrementally, but now that would appear like he’s backpedaling.”

It’s still early, but she’s skeptical he’ll be a two-term president.

“I can’t see a clear path for Biden into a second term,” she says.

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THE TRUMP VOTER PLEASANTLY SURPRISED BY SOME BIDEN INITIATIVES

J.J. Goicoechea, a cattle rancher from Eureka, Nevada, voted for Trump and plans to vote Republican again, but he says he’s been pleasantly surprised with the Biden administration’s agricultural initiatives, including those tailored to small family farms and ranches like his.

Farms and ranches have received more than $1 billion in relief dollars since Biden took office. The administration has worked to fund independent processors after beef plants closed during the pandemic and engaged farmers in regards to climate change, working to incentivize them to offset carbon emissions through tactics like planting carbon-capturing crops.

But Goicoechea, 47, worries the attempt to strengthen regulations and the Packers and Stockyards Act could have unintended consequences and raise costs in an industry where many ranchers already operate on small margins. He attributes inflation to the government spending and relief programs that the administration has helped push through Congress and says it has raised costs on everything needed to operate a cattle ranch.

“The cost of doing business has just almost doubled over where it was last year,” Goicoechea says, citing the prices of hay, fuel, fertilizer and tires for pickups and tractors. “I’m a little concerned about where that’s going. We keep asking for help, they give us a little monetary help, and that kind of drives inflation up higher.”

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THE SOCIAL WORKER WHO IS RETHINKING HER VOTE

Gina Massiah reluctantly voted for Biden, considering him the better of two bad options. But now the 49-year-old social worker isn’t so sure.

“Yes, there was a lot of division,” the Brooklyn resident says of the Trump era. But with Trump, “you knew what you were getting.”

“Was he a bigot? He was all of that. None of us are perfect. We all come with things, right? But I think he would have gotten a lot more done had he gotten reelected.” She adds: “I absolutely favor him over Biden. And woo, that’s a Black person saying that, right?”

“That might sound insane to some people that I’m saying that,” she says, “but that’s how I feel.”

Massiah, a registered Democrat who doesn’t feel bound to either party, lumps Biden in with other politicians who make big promises but “forget about you” once they get into office.

She’s particularly dismayed by the lack of progress on racial issues. While she said many had held out hope because Vice President Kamala Harris is a woman of color, “we’re still getting gunned down by police. We’re still getting targeted when we go into the stores.”

Massiah is exhausted.

“I’m just fed up. Truly fed up.”

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Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa; Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; Sam Metz in Carson City, Nevada.; and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

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Germany says Russia will pay price if it moves on Ukraine

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By Alexander Ratz and Pavel Polityuk

KYIV (Reuters) – German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Monday that she hoped mounting tensions with Russia over Ukraine could be solved by diplomacy, but she warned that Moscow would suffer if it does attack the country.

“Each further aggressive act will have a high price for Russia, economically, strategically, politically,” Baerbock, in Kyiv on a trip that will next take her to Moscow, told a joint news conference with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.

“Diplomacy is the only way.”

Talks between Moscow and Western states on Russia’s deployment of tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine’s border ended with no breakthrough last week. A cyber attack against Ukraine has further inflamed tensions.

Kuleba said Ukraine and Germany were united in pushing to revive four-way peace talks on ending the war in eastern Ukraine in the so-called “Normandy” format, which includes Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia.

Excluded from much of last week’s talks, Ukraine has repeatedly sought and received reassurances from allies that no decisions would be taken about its future without its involvement and assent.

“It is important for us now that neither Berlin nor Paris makes any decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, and does not play any game behind our backs in relations with Russia. This is the key now,” Kuleba said at the briefing.

“For this I want to thank Annalena for taking such a principled position.”

Germany has supported Ukraine with aid and diplomatic backing in its standoff with Moscow since Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and backed separatists in the Donbass region in 2014.

But there are points of contention. Ukraine opposes Nord Stream 2, a pipeline, yet to open, that would ship Russian gas to Germany, circumventing transit through Ukraine. Baerbock said the pipeline was now on hold and did not comply with European energy law.

Kyiv has also bristled at Berlin’s refusal to sell weapons to Ukraine. Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany called the decision “very frustrating and bitter” in an interview with German media ahead of Baerbock’s visit.

(Reporting by Alexander Ratz, Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets and Emma Thomasson; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Peter Graff)

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China’s Xi says countries must abandon Cold War mentality

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Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Klaus Schwab listens to Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening of the WEF Davos Agenda virtual sessions at the WEF’s headquarters near Geneva on January 17, 2022.

FABRICE COFFRINI | AFP | Getty Images

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday called for countries to move away from a “Cold War mentality,” saying history has repeatedly shown that confrontation only invites disastrous repercussions.

His comments come at a time of simmering tensions between China and the U.S. over Taiwan and as fears escalate over a possible Russian incursion into Ukraine.

Speaking via videoconference at The Davos Agenda virtual event, Xi said: “We need to discard Cold War mentality and seek peaceful co-existence and win-win outcomes.”

“Our world today is far from being tranquil. Rhetorics that stoke hatred and prejudice abound. Acts of containment, suppression or confrontation arising thereof do all harm, not the least good to world peace and security,” he added, according to a translation.

“History has proved time and again that confrontation does not solve problems. It only invites catastrophic consequences. Protectionism and unilateralism can protect no one. They ultimately hurt the interests of others as well as one’s own. Even worse are the practices of hegemony and bullying, which run counter to the tide of history.”

Xi said the “right way forward for humanity is peaceful development and win-win cooperation.”

Beijing and Washington’s tense relationship over Taiwan has been identified as a top risk for Asia this year, while one of the region’s top experts has previously warned China’s “disturbing” crackdown on U.S.-listed China stocks could be interpreted as the early stages of a Cold War.

Economist Stephen Roach told CNBC in July last year that tensions between the U.S. and China could get to levels not seen since the early 1970s.

China claims Taiwan is part of its own territory and has been putting pressure on the democratic island to accept its rule. Taiwan’s leaders, conversely, argue it is a sovereign state.

A ‘safe and splendid’ Games

Xi’s special address at the World Economic Forum’s virtual event touched on a range of issues, including a call to embrace international cooperation to jointly defeat the coronavirus pandemic and a bid to reassure those concerned about the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Xi said he was confident of a “streamlined, safe and splendid” Games even as the country continues to implement a “zero-Covid” policy. The event is scheduled to start next month.

The Davos Agenda conference is taking place virtually after the World Economic Forum postponed its in-person annual gathering due to health and safety concerns over Covid-19.

— Don’t miss Geoff Cutmore’s discussion with ECB President Christine Lagarde, Brazilian Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, IMF MD Kristalina Georgieva and India’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati at 7.30 a.m. ET Friday. They’ll be discussing the “Global Economic Outlook” at the Davos Agenda. You can watch live here.

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Suspected drone attack in Abu Dhabi kills 3, wounds 6

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A possible drone attack may have sparked an explosion that struck three oil tankers in Abu Dhabi and another fire at an extension of Abu Dhabi International Airport on Monday that killed three people and wounded six, police said.

Abu Dhabi police identified the dead as two Indian nationals and one Pakistani. It did not identify the wounded, who police said suffered minor or moderate wounds.

Police said an investigation was underway.

While Abu Dhabi police did not immediately offer any suspects for the possible assault, Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for an attack targeting the United Arab Emirates, without elaborating. The Iranian-backed Houthis have claimed several attacks that Emirati officials later denied took place.

The incident comes while Yemen’s yearslong war rages on and as an Emirati-flagged vessel found itself recently captured by the Houthis. That’s as Abu Dhabi largely has withdrawn its national forces from the conflict tearing apart the Arab world’s poorest nation while still supporting local militias there.

Abu Dhabi police said preliminary investigations indicated the detection of small flying objects, possibly belonging to drones, that fell in the two areas and may have caused the explosion and fire. They said there was no significant damage from the incidents, without offering further details.

Police described the airport fire as “minor” and said it took place at an extension of the international airport that is still under construction. For years, the airport home to Etihad Airways has been building its new Midfield Terminal, but it wasn’t clear if that was where the fire took place.

The airport and Etihad did not immediately respond to requests for comment, however there were a series of flights delayed Monday morning.

Police said the other blast struck three petroleum transport tankers near a storage facility for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. in the Musaffah area. The neighborhood, 22 kilometers (13 miles) from the center of Abu Dhabi city, also has an oil pipeline network and 36 storage tanks, from which transport trucks carry fuel nationwide.

On Monday, Houthi military spokesman Yahia Sarei said the group launched an attack deep in the UAE. He did not provide further details, saying a statement would be released soon.

The location of the ADNOC storage facility where the tankers caught fire is approximately 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) northeast of Saada, the Houthis’ stronghold in Yemen.

The UAE has been at war in Yemen since early 2015, and was a key member of the Saudi-led coalition that launched attacks against the Iranian-backed Houthis after the group overran the capital of Yemen and ousted the internationally backed government from power.

Although the UAE has decreased the number of troops it has on the ground, it continues to be actively engaged in the war and supports key militias fighting the Houthis. It also cooperates closely with the United States in counter-terrorism operations in Yemen.

The Houthis have come under pressure in recent weeks and are suffering heavy losses as Yemeni forces, allied and backed by the UAE, have pushed back the rebel group in key southern and central provinces of the country.

Yemen’s government-aligned forces, aided by the UAE-backed Giants Brigades and with help from Saudi airstrikes, reclaimed the entire southern province of Shabwa from the Houthis earlier this month and made advances in nearby Marib province.

The incident comes as South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in visits the UAE. During the president’s meeting with Emirati Prime Minister and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on Sunday, the two countries reportedly reached a preliminary deal valued at some $3.5 billion sell mid-range South Korean surface-to-air missiles to the UAE.

The Houthis have claimed previous attacks on Abu Dhabi’s airport, as well as the emirate’s Barakah nuclear power plant – claims that Emirati officials have denied in the past.

The Houthis have used bomb-laden drones to launch crude and imprecise attacks aimed at Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the course of the war. The group has also launched missiles at Saudi airports, oil facilities and pipelines, as well as used booby-trapped boats for attacks in key shipping routes.

Though there have been civilian deaths in Saudi Arabia from some of these attacks, the overwhelming number of civilian deaths have been in Yemen. The war has killed 130,000 people in Yemen – both civilians and fighters – and has exacerbated hunger and famine across the impoverished country.

Torbjorn Soltvedt, an analyst at the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, noted that while suspicion likely would fall on the Houthis, Iraqi-based militias also have threatened the Emiratis with attacks.

“Today’s attack comes only days after Iran-backed groups threatened to strike against Abu Dhabi in response to alleged Emirati interference in Iraqi politics,” he said.

“The attack is another reminder of the highly complex missile and drone threat faced by the UAE and the region’s other main oil producers,” he added. “Unless the Gulf Cooperation Council states can find a solution to diffuse regional tensions, or deter hostility from regional state and non-state actors, they will remain vulnerable to attacks.”

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Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre and Jon Gambrell in Dubai and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

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