Biden sounds ready to seek 2nd term while rallying Democrats

President Joe Biden speaks at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Philadelphia. (AP)
President Joe Biden speaks at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Philadelphia. (AP)
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Updated 04 February 2023
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Biden sounds ready to seek 2nd term while rallying Democrats

President Joe Biden speaks at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Philadelphia. (AP)

PHILADELPHIA: President Joe Biden sounded like a candidate making his case for a second term Friday night as he rallied a raucous meeting of national Democrats who chanted, “Four more years!”
The only thing missing was an official announcement — that’s not expected for at least several weeks.
Speaking to the Democratic National Committee after a strong jobs report, Biden boasted about helping create a strong economy and said his administration had made the country’s most significant federal investments in public works, health care and green technology in decades. He also slammed Republican extremism, suggesting that party is still too beholden to former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
“Let me ask you a simple question. Are you with me?” a grinning Biden asked onstage in Philadelphia as hundreds of party leaders from around the country interrupted him with cries of “Four more years! Four more years!”
He later added, to nearly as loud applause, “America is back and we’re leading the world again.”
Biden has sought to seize the political offensive after a strong midterm election season for his party and as he looks toward 2024, with Trump having already announced another bid for the White House. It’s especially important given mounting pressures in Washington, including a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents and a Republican-controlled House eager to serve as a check against Biden and his agenda on Capitol Hill.
Speaking before Biden on Friday night, Vice President Kamala Harris was just as defiant about the GOP and its staunch opposition to issues like abortion rights.
“There are those who want to stand in the way of our momentum,” she said. “The extremist, so-called leaders, who want to distract and divide our nation as they ban books, as they reject the history of America, as they criminalize doctors and nurses and the sacred right to vote.”
At a DNC fundraiser before taking the stage, Harris referenced Democrats’ holding onto Senate control during fall’s midterms and reminded a smaller crowd: “It’s not the time to pat ourselves on the back. It’s the time to see it through.”
“And that’s going to take as much work, if not more, than everything that everyone here put into where we are today,” she said.
Looking to the future himself, Biden told the same reception: “No matter who is president, things are going to change radically in the next 15 years.”
“Are we going to be leading the pack?” he added. “Or are we going to be the end of it?”
Earlier in Philadelphia on Friday, Biden and Harris visited a water treatment plant and hailed $15 billion in funding to remove lead pipes from service lines around the country. That comes from a bipartisan infrastructure package, which is also bankrolling railway projects the president spent this week trumpeting.
“The issue has to do with basic dignity,” Biden said. “No amount of lead in water is safe. None.”
With the State of the Union address coming next week, Biden has renewed calls for political unity, something he’s acknowledged being unable to achieve despite his promises as a candidate in 2020. But those appeals haven’t tempered Biden’s broadsides against Trump and the former president’s MAGA movement.
“This ain’t your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said, adding that the GOP agenda was so extreme that “we have to keep pointing out what the other team wants.” Of Trump loyalists, he said, “These aren’t conservatives.”
That’s made some Democrats anxious to see Biden stay aggressive in touting his record.
“The president is trying to solve the problems of the nation on infrastructure, on microchips, on gun safety, on health care,” said Randi Weingarten, a DNC member and president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Compare (that) to the GOP, which seems to be on a revenge agenda.”
Biden’s speech comes the day before the DNC is set to approve an overhauled presidential primary calendar starting next year that would replace Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff spot. New Hampshire and Nevada would go second, followed by Georgia and Michigan — a change the president has championed to ensure that voters of color have more influence deciding the party’s White House nominee.
The new calendar would be largely moot if Biden runs again, since party elders won’t want to oversee a drawn-out primary against him. Democrats have been solidly unified in their opposition to the new Republican-controlled House, while no major Democratic challenger is thought to be preparing to run against Biden.
Biden’s advisers haven’t waited for his official reelection announcement, already spending weeks making staffing arrangements and readying lines of political attacks against Republicans seen as early presidential front-runners, including Trump, who launched his campaign in November, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Alan Clendenin, a DNC member from Florida, said Biden has strengthened the economy, reestablished US global standing and promoted inclusive values — the opposite of what Trump and DeSantis stand for.
“They predicted gloom and doom. He’s proved them all wrong,” said Clendenin, who kicked off a DNC Southern caucus meeting by noting that Florida has begun lagging behind other states in key policy areas and joking of its governor, “That’s what happened when you’re led by the devil.”
Biden repeatedly denounced “extreme MAGA Republicans” as a threat to the nation’s democracy in the runup to the midterms and gloated a bit Friday about the results.
“People looked at me like I was nuts,” he said, referring to his repeated emphasis on MAGA Republicans last fall. “They’re nuts. I’m not nuts.”
The president, meanwhile, will have a harder time campaigning on future legislative accomplishments now that the GOP controls the House. A coming fight over extending the nation’s legal debt ceiling may only harden partisan clashes.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he and the White House would continue talking about ways to avoid a debt limit crisis. But, referring to federal spending, McCarthy said, “The current path we’re on we cannot sustain.”
Biden has also suggested that simply bashing Republicans won’t be enough, however, noting that Democrats have seen their support among Americans without a college degree decline. He said Friday night that his party “stopped talking to” blue-collar workers.
“We have to get working-class people to say we see them,” the president added.
In a more lighthearted nod to the coming Super Bowl, Biden declared “Fly, Eagles, fly!” and called fans in Philadelphia “the most informed, obnoxious fans in the world.”
That would ostensibly include his wife, Jill, who is a diehard Eagles supporter.

 


UK PM Sunak faces party revolt after unveiling new Rwanda asylum plan

UK PM Sunak faces party revolt after unveiling new Rwanda asylum plan
Updated 07 December 2023
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UK PM Sunak faces party revolt after unveiling new Rwanda asylum plan

UK PM Sunak faces party revolt after unveiling new Rwanda asylum plan
  • The Rwanda scheme is at the center of the government’s strategy to stop illegal migration

LONDON: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was battling to keep his party together on Thursday a day after unveiling a plan to disregard some human rights law to send migrants to Rwanda, bringing back to the fore deep divisions in his party.
Facing the biggest challenge to his year-long tenure, Sunak is trying to stop lawmakers on the Conservative Party’s right wing from rebelling over their demand that Britain should quit international treaties to set its own migration policy.
His immigration minister quit on Wednesday and he is facing questions as to whether he can get his key policy through a vote in parliament. Some Conservative lawmakers said on Thursday that Sunak could face a leadership challenge.
The prime minister was due to hold a press conference at 1100 GMT.
One Conservative politician, who reluctantly supports the Rwanda plan, said the last year had shown that his colleagues can be ruthless in removing a struggling prime minister.
“I have a feeling of deja vu,” he said.
The draft legislation comes three weeks after Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that Rwanda was not a safe place to send those arriving in small boats on the southern coast of England, and that the plan would breach British and international law.
The Rwanda scheme is at the center of the government’s strategy to stop illegal migration. The court’s decision was a setback for Sunak who is struggling to revive a weak economy and is heavily trailing the main opposition party ahead of an election expected next year.
Sunak could make the vote in parliament on the new legislation next week a confidence vote — meaning that if he loses, it could trigger a national election — in an attempt to shore up party support.
So far only one Conservative lawmaker has publicly called for a no confidence vote, but she said six of her colleagues have done so privately.
To trigger a leadership challenge, 53 of the 350 Conservative lawmakers in parliament must write letters of no confidence to the chairman of the 1922 Committee.
Sunak suffered his first parliamentary defeat this week as members of parliament voted to establish a compensatory body for victims of the infected blood scandal.
The prime minister has pleaded with his party to get behind the legislation as the best chance to get flights to Rwanda leaving before the next election.
‘IT WON’T WORK’
A poll last month showed immigration was one of the three biggest issues facing the country. Only the economy and National Health Service were seen as more important.
Last year net legal migration hit a record of 745,000 people and around 45,000 arrived illegally.
Rwanda currently only has the capacity to accept a few hundred migrants from Britain, but ministers say the plan will act as a vital deterrent to discourage people from making the crossings.
The new bill will instruct judges to ignore some sections of the Human Rights Act (HRA) and provisions of domestic or international law that might deem that Rwanda was not a safe destination, though appeals by people based on specific circumstances would still be permitted.
The former interior minister Suella Braverman, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick and their allies say that does not go far enough, with some wanting Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights altogether.
“I’m very concerned that the bill on the table will allow a merry-go-round of legal claims and litigation,” Braverman told BBC radio, but said no one was talking about changing the party’s leader.
“The reality is, and the solid truth is, that it won’t work and it will not stop the boats.”


World not prepared for another pandemic: Moderna chairman

World not prepared for another pandemic: Moderna chairman
Updated 07 December 2023
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World not prepared for another pandemic: Moderna chairman

World not prepared for another pandemic: Moderna chairman
  • Dr. Noubar Afeyan speaks at Advanced Tomorrow 2023 Singapore Summit
  • Development of Moderna’s vaccine against COVID-19 was matter of ‘luck’

SINGAPORE: The world is not prepared to face another pandemic, the co-founder and chairman of Moderna said, as insufficient attention was being paid globally to health system resilience.

Dr. Noubar Afeyan, a biochemical engineer who co-founded the US-based drugmaker in 2010, was speaking at the Advanced Tomorrow 2023 Summit held in Singapore on Dec. 3 to 6.

Organized and co-hosted by the Advanced Tomorrow, or ATOM, initiative and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine of the National University of Singapore, the meeting of global political, business, and academic leaders focused on the future of healthcare amid geopolitical changes and technological advancements.

During a discussion on the ability of health systems to prepare for shocks and global disruptions such as the global outbreak of coronavirus in 2020, Afeyan, whose company’s COVID-19 vaccine became the second one to get cleared for use in the US, said the quick release of jabs may have given “the wrong impression” of resilience.

“We got lucky, because it so happened that this virus was amenable to an intervention that the company that I co-founded, Moderna, had developed a technology for,” he said.

A similar technology was developed by Pfizer, whose vaccine against COVID-19 was the first to receive a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration. But the fact that what both companies worked on at the time ended up being useful in addressing the coronavirus outbreak was accidental and will not help if the next health crisis is caused by a completely different pathogen.

“There will be other threats, for example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, that this technology is not going to work for,” Afeyan added. “We have no good solutions for that right now. So, if there’s a major bacterial outbreak through the food system, through any other means, we’d be really gambling that we can come up with something quickly.”

The problem with preparedness was in both attention and funding worldwide being directed not toward long-term health security but to short-term solutions.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of attention paid to resilience because resilience always gathers momentum after there’s been a failure,” Afeyan said. “As soon as the failure is forgotten, resilience goes out of the window.”

Dr. Armen Sarkissian, former president of Armenia and theoretical physicist who chairs ATOM, said on the sidelines of the Singapore conference that current approaches were like betting on an uncertain outcome, with success depending only on luck.

“We are at a crossroads of a huge number of problems. One problem, for example, is the resistance to antibiotics ... We were lucky that 100 years ago, by accident again, (Scottish physician and microbiologist) Mr. (Alexander) Fleming found penicillin, but we have overused penicillin and related drugs,” Sarkissian told Arab News.

He noted that it was necessary to pay more attention to health security and realize that in the 21st century the ongoing climate crisis and the related problems of food security and water scarcity were not the only ones, with a possible health crisis likely to be even bigger than the former.

“We on this planet need definitely, first of all, a holistic approach to our health. Secondly, raising awareness, money, and support to health-related research — biological, biophysical sciences, and so on — and to accelerate the process to find solutions to many possible problems that we are going to face,” he said.

“It’s time that we look inside ourselves, care about ourselves alongside the planet. So, I will put together, with climate care, healthcare, climate security with health security. And the international community has to come together, under the United Nations, in the form of a COP (the Conference of the Parties, which is the annual Climate Change Conference), and we’ll see what we can do together.”


Russian lawmakers set presidential vote for March 17, 2024

Russian lawmakers set presidential vote for March 17, 2024
Updated 07 December 2023
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Russian lawmakers set presidential vote for March 17, 2024

Russian lawmakers set presidential vote for March 17, 2024
  • Vladimir Putin widely expected to announce his intention to run again in coming days
  • The March election clears the way for him to remain in power at least until 2030

MOSCOW: Russian lawmakers on Thursday set the date of the 2024 presidential election for March 17, moving Vladimir Putin closer to a fifth term in office.
Putin, 71, hasn’t yet announced his intention to run again, but he is widely expected to do so in the coming days now that the date has been set.
Under constitutional reforms he orchestrated, he is eligible to seek two more six-year terms after his current one expires next year.
Having established tight control over Russia’s political system, Putin’s victory is all but assured. Prominent critics who could challenge him on the ballot are either in jail or living abroad, and most independent media have been banned.
Neither the costly, drawn-out military campaign in Ukraine, nor a failed rebellion last summer by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appear to have affected his high approval ratings reported by independent pollsters.
The March election clears the way for him to remain in power at least until 2030.


EU’s von der Leyen tells Xi differences must be addressed

EU’s von der Leyen tells Xi differences must be addressed
Updated 07 December 2023
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EU’s von der Leyen tells Xi differences must be addressed

EU’s von der Leyen tells Xi differences must be addressed
  • China and the EU ramp up diplomatic engagement this year in attempt to steer post-pandemic recovery and repair damaged ties
  • The bloc says it hopes the meetings will provide a chance to discuss areas of common interest

BEIJING: EU President Ursula von der Leyen told Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday that the bloc and its biggest trading partner must address their differences, as they began the first in-person EU-China summit in over four years.
China and the EU have ramped up diplomatic engagement this year in an attempt to steer post-pandemic recovery and repair damaged ties, with a number of its commissioners visiting Beijing to restart high-level dialogue.
And in opening remarks, von der Leyen, flanked by European Council President Charles Michel and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, thanked Xi for the “warm welcome” on what is her second trip to China this year.
“But there are clear imbalances and differences that we must address,” she said.
“At times our interests coincide,” she said, pointing to EU-China cooperation on artificial intelligence and climate change.
“And when they do not, we need to address and responsibly manage the concerns that we have,” she said.
Michel, in turn, said the bloc was seeking a “stable and mutually beneficial” relationship with China.
But, he said, the EU would also “promote our European values including human rights and democracy” at the summit.
The bloc says it hopes the meetings will provide a chance to discuss areas of common interest.
In his opening remarks, President Xi told his European visitors they must “jointly respond to global challenges.”
Thursday’s talks are set to address more touchy topics too, from human rights and Beijing’s continued ties with Russia despite its war in Ukraine to the yawning EU-China trade gap.
Von der Leyen warned this week that the bloc would “not tolerate” that imbalance indefinitely.
“We have tools to protect our market,” she told AFP.
Beijing hit back on Wednesday, saying the bloc’s efforts to curb exports of sensitive tech to China while balancing trade didn’t “make sense.”
European officials have said repeatedly this year they aim to “derisk” their economic ties to China after the war in Ukraine exposed the continent’s energy dependence on Russia.


Beijing’s goal this week will be to “hinder or delay derisking at a minimum cost,” Grzegorz Stec, an analyst at China-focused think tank MERICS, told a media briefing Wednesday.
Beijing will attempt to “project the image of a responsible global actor and to reassure European actors about the direction of the Chinese economy,” Stec said.
But on the eve of the summit, news broke that Italy had withdrawn from China’s vast Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has long been opposed to Italy’s participation in an initiative viewed by many as an attempt by Beijing to buy political influence — and whose economic benefits to Rome were limited.
Also on the agenda at the summit will be the fighting between Israel and Hamas — as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine.
China, which has not condemned Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor, welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing in October, with Xi hailing their “deep friendship.”
Such camaraderie is unlikely in Thursday’s talks with EU leaders, who one analyst said had “zero trust” in Beijing.
“Both sides are unlikely to get what they want from the other side,” Nicholas Bequelin, a senior fellow at Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center, told AFP.


Beijing has said the meeting will “play an important role in building on the past and ushering in the future.”
“China and Europe are partners, not rivals, and their common interests far outweigh their differences,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said this week.
Von der Leyen and Michel’s schedule in the Chinese capital on Thursday will be tight.
The EU chiefs’ meeting with Xi will be followed by a working lunch.
They will then hold talks with Premier Li Qiang before attending an official dinner and a news conference in the evening.
The Europeans have said they will urge Beijing to use its ties with Moscow to push it to end its war against Ukraine.
While China has stopped short of providing military aid to Moscow, it has deepened economic ties as Western powers seek to isolate Russia.
War in the Middle East and tensions over self-ruled Taiwan will also feature prominently in the talks, the bloc has said.


US military grounds Osprey fleet following a deadly crash off the coast of Japan

US military grounds Osprey fleet following a deadly crash off the coast of Japan
Updated 07 December 2023
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US military grounds Osprey fleet following a deadly crash off the coast of Japan

US military grounds Osprey fleet following a deadly crash off the coast of Japan
  • Crash raised new questions about the safety of the Osprey, which has been involved in multiple fatal accidents

WASHINGTON: The military announced late Wednesday it was grounding all of its Osprey V-22 helicopters, one week after eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members died in a crash off the coast of Japan.
The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps took the extraordinary step of grounding hundreds of aircraft after a preliminary investigation of last week’s crash indicated that a materiel failure — that something went wrong with the aircraft — and not a mistake by the crew led to the deaths.
The crash raised new questions about the safety of the Osprey, which has been involved in multiple fatal accidents over its relatively short time in service. Japan grounded its fleet of 14 Ospreys after the crash.
Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, directed the standdown “to mitigate risk while the investigation continues,” the command said in a statement. “Preliminary investigation information indicates a potential materiel failure caused the mishap, but the underlying cause of the failure is unknown at this time.”
In a separate notice, Naval Air Systems Command said it was grounding all Ospreys. The command is responsible for the Marine Corps and Navy variants of the aircraft.
The Air Force said it was unknown how long the aircraft would be grounded. It said the standdown was expected to remain in place until the investigation determined the cause of the Japan crash and made recommendations to allow the fleet to return to operations.
The US-made Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter but can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster, like an airplane, during flight.
Its unique design has been a factor in multiple incidents. While the investigation into last week’s crash has only just begun, it renewed attention on the aircraft’s safety record, particularly on a mechanical problem with the clutch that has troubled the program for more than a decade. There also have been questions as to whether all parts of the Osprey have been manufactured according to safety specifications.
In August, the Marines found that a fatal 2022 Osprey crash was caused by a clutch failure, but the root cause was still unknown. In its report on the crash, the Marines forewarned that future incidents “are impossible to prevent” without improvements to flight control system software, drivetrain component material strength, and robust inspection requirements.”
Air Force Special Operations Command has 51 Ospreys, the US Marine Corps flies as many as 400 and US Navy operates 27.
The Osprey is still a relatively young aircraft in the military’s fleet — the first Ospreys only became operational in 2007 after decades of testing. But more than 50 troops have died either flight testing the Osprey or conducting training flights in the aircraft, including 20 deaths in four crashes over the past 20 months.
An Osprey accident in August in Australia killed three Marines. That accident also is still under investigation.