Biden invites rivals Putin, Xi to his first major climate talks
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is including rivals Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China among the invitees to the first big climate talks of his administration, an event the U.S. hopes will help shape, speed up and deepen global efforts to cut climate-wrecking fossil fuel pollution, administration officials said.
The president is seeking to revive a U.S.-convened forum of the world’s major economies on climate that George W. Bush and Barack Obama both used and Donald Trump let languish. Leaders of some of the world’s top climate-change sufferers, do-gooders and backsliders round out the rest of the 40 invitations being delivered Friday. It will be held virtually April 22 and 23.
Hosting the summit will fulfill a campaign pledge and executive order by Biden, and the administration is timing the event to coincide with its own upcoming announcement of what will be a much tougher U.S. target for revamping the U.S. economy to sharply cut emissions from coal, natural gas and oil.
The session will test Biden’s pledge to make climate change a priority among competing political, economic, policy and pandemic problems. It also will pose a very public and potentially embarrassing or empowering test of whether U.S. leaders, and Biden in particular, can still drive global decision-making after the Trump administration withdrew globally and shook up longstanding alliances.
Trump mocked the science underlying urgent warnings on global warming and the resulting worsening of droughts, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters. He pulled the United States out of the 2015 U.N. Paris climate accords as one of his first actions. That makes next month’s summit the first major international climate discussions by a U.S. leader in more than four years, although leaders in Europe and elsewhere have kept up talks.
Ethiopia conflict: Ethiopia’s prime minister said Friday that Eritrea has agreed to withdraw its forces from the Tigray region, where witnesses have described them looting, killing and raping civilians.
The statement by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office comes after intense pressure from the United States and others to address the deadly crisis in Tigray.
Abiy’s statement after a visit to Eritrea said that Ethiopian forces will take over guarding the border areas “effective immediately.”
Abiy only in the past week has acknowledged the presence of soldiers from Eritrea, long an enemy of the Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government.
The new statement doesn’t say how many Eritrean soldiers have been in Ethiopia, though witnesses have estimated well in the thousands.
Myanmar death toll: The toll of protesters confirmed killed in Myanmar since last month’s military takeover has reached 320, a group that verifies details of deaths and arrests announced Friday.
Myanmar’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said its tally includes only documented cases, with the actual number of casualties “likely much higher.” It said 11
people were killed Thursday, when it also managed to verify 23 deaths that occurred previously.
Myanmar news agencies, including the Democratic Voice of Burma and Mizzima, reported that three more people had been shot dead by security forces in the city of Myeik in southern Myanmar.
Award for Romney: Sen. Mitt Romney was named the recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Friday for splitting with his party and becoming the only Republican to vote to convict former President Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial.
The award was created by the family of the late president to honor public figures who risk their careers by embracing unpopular positions for the greater good, and is named after Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prizewinning book, “Profiles in Courage.”
“Senator Romney’s
commitment to our Constitution makes him a worthy successor to the senators who inspired my father to write ‘Profiles in Courage,’ ” Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, said in a statement from the JFK Library Foundation.
Romney, 74, said he is inspired by the memory of his late father, George Romney, an automotive executive and governor of Michigan.
“When I think of courage, I think of my dad,” said the Utah Republican, who is also the former governor of Massachusetts. “He did what was right regardless of consequence. I aspire to his example, though I have failed from time to time.”
Trump’s first trial in 2020 focused on the former president’s relationship with Ukraine. Romney became the first senator in U.S. history to vote for the conviction of a president who belonged to his own party, and was subject to intense criticism and
even threats from Trump’s supporters.
Manchin’s wife considered: President Joe Biden is nominating Gayle Manchin, the wife of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, to be the co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission, an economic development partnership involving the federal government and 13 states.
Gayle Manchin, 73, has held multiple government positions linked to education in a state where her husband is a political force.
A former teacher, she was on the West Virginia Board of Education from 2007 to 2015 and served a two-year term as its president. Manchin was also the state’s secretary of education and the arts in 2017 and 2018, but was removed from the post by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice after releasing a statement critical of a bill to dismantle the department.
Her husband is a critical part of the slim Democratic
majority in the Senate, influencing what parts of Biden’s agenda can be passed. He has come out against a $15 minimum wage and ending the filibuster.
Sudan clears debts: The Sudanese government said Friday it cleared all of its overdue payments to the World Bank, a move that gives the highly-indebted country access to new types of international financing for the first time in decades.
This development allows Sudan to resume normal relations with the World Bank after nearly 30 years of suspension, according to a statement by Sudan’s Cabinet. The World Bank said that Sudan will have access to nearly $2 billion in grants for poverty reduction and sustainable development.
Sudan accumulated more than $60 billion in foreign debt under dictator Omar al-Bashir, who ruled until his ouster in 2019. The country is ruled by a joint civilian military government.