Wendy Sherman to be US deputy secretary of state
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April 15, 2021
WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Joe Biden’s nominee Wendy Sherman to be deputy secretary of state, the number two position at the department, a British wire service reported.
The Senate backed the nomination by 56-42, as a handful of Republicans joined Biden’s fellow Democrats to vote in Sherman’s favour.
Sherman, 71, a foreign policy veteran, ran into Republican resistance because she helped negotiate the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran, which was fiercely opposed by Republicans as well as some Democrats.
Former Republican President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact in 2018. But the Biden administration has sought to re-engage and Iran and world powers last week held what they described as “constructive” talks to salvage the accord. Sherman had promised a new approach on Iran at her March confirmation hearing, noting that the world has changed since t
The Palm Beach Post on the Florida governor’s banning of COVID-19 ‘vaccine passports’:
Gov. Ron DeSantis says he is taking a bold step toward protecting personal freedom in barring any businesses in Florida from requiring so-called “vaccination passports”. As his argument goes, we don’t want another division in this country, this time between a vaccinated class that gets to go to theme parks - and an unvaccinated class that can’t.
The governor’s argument makes no sense. The issue before us is one of public health. And there is no question that vaccinations are the most effective weapon against COVID-19 yet devised. DeSantis, himself, has been vaccinated - although in private, unlike most of the nation’s governors, who know that modern medicine is nothing to be ashamed of.
Congress poised for battle over reparations for Black Americans Reuters 5 hrs ago
By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, April 15 (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have advanced a bill that could pave the way to reparations for Black Americans as part of a broader effort to address centuries of enslavement and institutional racism.
The House Judiciary Committee late on Wednesday voted 25-17 to create a commission to draft reparation proposals, an idea first proposed in Congress three decades ago. No Republicans voted to support the measure, a committee spokeswoman said. Slavery was this country’s original sin. Our Constitution protected it and we continue to grapple with its effects today, Democratic Representative Steve Cohen, a senior committee member, tweeted late on Wednesday.
US spies still do not know where, when or how Covid was first transmitted in China but are working on theory it came from human contact with infected animals or a laboratory accident , intelligence chief reveals The intelligence community does not know exactly where, when or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially, Avril Haines told a Senate hearing
She noted two theories - that Covid came from animals or a laboratory accident
Many U.S. lawmakers have denounced China - where the virus originated - for failing to be more transparent about the early threat from the coronavirus
The Democratic chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has said he and other legislators are concerned about the administration of President Joe Biden’s decision to go ahead with a weapons sale to the United Arab Emirates and would review the transactions.
The Biden administration has told Congress it was proceeding with more than $23bn in weapons sales to the UAE, including advanced F-35 aircraft, armed drones and other equipment. Rights groups have condemned the sale, saying it would further stoke violence in Yemen, where the UAE is part of a Saudi Arabia-led coalition in fighting that has lead to the deaths of thousands of civilians and what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.