Trump orders withdrawal of US troops from Somalia

US President Donald Trump has ordered the withdrawal of nearly all US troops from Somalia by 15 January, the Pentagon has said. The US has about 700 troops in the country helping local forces battle al-Shabab and Islamic State militants. US officials said some of the troops would move to neighbouring countries, allowing for cross-border operations.

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  Trump orders most American troops to leave Somalia

  Associated Press
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  Trump to withdraw most troops from Somalia as part of global pullback

  Reuters

U.S. ends exchange programs with China, calling them 'propaganda'

The U.S. State Department said on Friday it has ended five cultural exchange programs with China, calling them "soft power propaganda tools." The Department said on its website it had "terminated" the Policymakers Educational China Trip Program, the U.S.-China Friendship Program, the U.S.-China Leadership Exchange Program, the U.S.-China Transpacific Exchange Program and the Hong Kong Educational and Cultural Program. It said that the programs had been set up under the auspices of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act - a 1961 law signed by President John F. Kennedy and aimed at boosting academic and cultural exchanges with foreign countries.

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  US ends 5 cultural programs with China in further escalation

  Associated Press
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  US ends China-funded exchange programs, calls them 'propaganda tools'

  AFP

Brexit: How trade deal talks went from optimism to the brink

Michel Barnier is accustomed to being universally praised on his regular tours of the EU's capitals to preach the gospel against Brexit. On Tuesday, he was in the unfamiliar position of coming under friendly fire for the first time in three years as the EU's chief negotiator. It was an uncomfortable moment for Mr Barnier, who was headquartered at the Hotel Conrad in Westminster and is enmeshed in intensive Brexit negotiations with his UK counterpart David Frost.

A bleak outlook for millions facing cutoff of US jobless aid

Sylvia Soliz has had her electricity cut off. Unemployment has forced aching decisions on millions of Americans and their families in the face of a rampaging viral pandemic that has closed shops and restaurants, paralyzed travel and left millions jobless for months. Now, their predicaments stand to grow bleaker yet if Congress fails to extend two unemployment programs that are set to expire the day after Christmas.

Kellyanne Conway breaks from Trump's refusal to concede, saying 'Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail'

Former White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with The 19th that "it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail." Conway's remarks go against President Donald Trump, who is still refusing to concede to Biden and continues to share claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election to undermine the results. With the comment, Conway joins a growing number of Republicans who are acknowledging Biden's victory.

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  Kellyanne Conway: 'It Looks Like Joe Biden And Kamala Harris Will Prevail'

  HuffPost
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  Biden says it's important for the country for Trump to attend inauguration

  Yahoo News Video

Caving to Brussels on fish and level playing field risks leaving UK a 'permanent client state', Boris Johnson warned

Caving to Brussels on fish and the level playing field to secure a post-Brexit trade deal risks turning Britain into a permanent “client state”, senior Conservative MPs have warned Boris Johnson. With the UK on the cusp of reaching an agreement with the European Union, a group of “die-hard” backbenches have urged the Prime Minister not break his promises to Leave voters in last year's election. It comes amid fears that Mr Johnson could be forced to grant a flurry of last-minute concessions after intensive lobbying from French president Emmanual Macron to secure more preferable terms on fishing, state subsidies and non-regression clauses.

California's San Joaquin Valley enacts stay-home order

Faced with a dire shortage of hospital beds, California's San Joaquin Valley was placed under a sweeping new lockdown Saturday in an urgent attempt to slow the rapid rise of coronavirus cases. The Fresno County Department of Public Health announced that the San Joaquin Valley, which includes 12 counties and the city of Fresno in the agricultural Central Valley, will face the new restrictions on businesses and activities starting Sunday. Much of the state, including Southern California, is on the brink of the same restrictions, and some regions have opted to impose them even before the state mandate kicks in.

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  San Joaquin Valley meets criteria for stay-at-home order

  KFSN – Fresno
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  5 Bay Area counties enacting stay-at-home orders

  KGO – San Francisco

Venezuela election: 'There's no opposition here, just God'

"We've come here to show our faces, to tell the truth, to walk the streets with you so you can tell us your problems, and we can solve them," hollered candidate Nicolás Maduro Guerra, addressing a crowd of about 500 on the Caribbean coast of La Guaira. For Nicolasito is the president's son and under Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's once oil-rich economy has crumbled. Every day, millions of people in Venezuela struggle to access enough food, annual inflation is above 5,000% and about five million people have fled the country in search of jobs and more stability.

U.S. Appeals Court rejects bid to block Georgia win for Biden

A federal appeals court on Saturday rejected a bid by a conservative lawyer to block President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Georgia and left in place procedures that will make it easier for voters to cast absentee ballots in January when two Senate seats are up for grabs. U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg, who was nominated by Trump, rejected attorney L. Lin Wood's arguments and found in a Nov. 20 opinion that the lawyer had no standing to sue. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta agreed with the lower court, saying Wood had failed "to allege a particularized injury" and the request was moot anyway since Georgia had already certified the election.

AOC attacked Trump and Republicans on Twitter over rising college costs, arguing that many lawmakers didn't understand students' financial struggles

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Friday attacked Trump and Republicans lawmakers late Friday over rising college costs and a stagnant minimum wage. The congresswoman told conservatives they "sound like folks who speak of the days when Hershey bars were 5¢ at the general store," on Twitter. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez late Friday shot back at President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers, accusing them of being so out of touch with young American workers that they remember when Hershey bars were "5¢ at the general store."

Her #MeToo trial's making history in China and sparking rare solidarity

Zhou Xiaoxuan, 27, more widely known by her nickname Xianzi, became a pioneer of China's #MeToo movement in 2018, when she accused Zhu Jun of groping and kissing her in a dressing room in 2014. Despite police warnings, pressure on her family, online censorship and harassment, Zhou has persisted — one of the few to make it into court on claims of sexual misconduct, which China did not recognize as grounds for legal recourse until last year. A young woman pulled out her lipstick to write #MeToo on another woman's mask.

Kuwait votes for parliament amid economic, virus challenges

Kuwait voted Saturday for its National Assembly, the first election since the death of its longtime ruling emir and as the oil-rich nation faces serious economic problems under the coronavirus pandemic. This tiny country's hundreds of thousands of voters selected lawmakers for 50 seats in the parliament, the freest and most-rambunctious assembly in the Gulf Arab countries. However, Kuwait's parliament has tamped down on opposition to its ruling Al Sabah family since the 2011 Arab Spring protests that saw demonstrators storm the chamber.

Joe Biden officially secures enough electors to become US president

California certified its presidential election on Friday and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for Democrat Joe Biden, officially handing him the Electoral College majority needed to win the White House. Secretary of State Alex Padilla's formal approval of Mr Biden's win in the state brought his tally of pledged electors so far to 279, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Although it's been apparent for weeks that Mr Biden won the presidential election, his accrual of more than 270 electors is the first step toward the White House, said Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University.

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  Biden officially secures enough electors to become president

  Associated Press
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  Biden officially has enough electoral college votes to win the presidency after California became the latest state to certify its election results

  Business Insider

U.S. government ordered to reinstate protections for 'Dreamers'

In a rebuke to President Donald Trump's administration, a judge on Friday ordered the U.S. government to reopen to first-time applicants a program that protects from deportation and grants work permits to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who live in the United States unlawfully after arriving as children. The action by U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn centered on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by Trump's Democratic predecessor Barack Obama in 2012. The Supreme Court in June blocked Trump's 2017 bid to end DACA.

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  U.S. government ordered to fully reinstate DACA

  Reuters Videos
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  Judge: Trump administration must take new DACA applications

  Associated Press

NASA took a photo of China's moon rock-collecting robot on the lunar surface before it rocketed back toward Earth

NASA images have confirmed the landing of China's Chang'e 5 moon robot. China's space agency said the lander collected more than 4 pounds of moon rocks. If successful, it will be the first time a country has brought home moon rocks in more than 40 years.

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  Chang’e 5, Chinese spacecraft carrying lunar rocks, lifts off from moon

  Yahoo News Video
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  Chinese spacecraft leaves the Moon carrying pieces of lunar surface

  The Independent

Healthy Scots warned they may not get Covid vaccine doses until second half of 2021

Scots who are not at a high risk of dying from Covid-19 have been urged to be patient in waiting to be vaccinated, after they were warned they may not be offered inoculations until the second half of 2021. In an attempt to clear up confusion around when all 4.4 million adult Scots will receive a vaccination, John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister, confirmed on Friday that a spring target date applied only to priority groups, such as the elderly and frontline healthcare workers. Jeane Freeman, the health secretary, had told parliament last month that the entire vaccination programme could be finished by the spring while Nicola Sturgeon said on Thursday that she “very much hoped” all eligible people would have received it within the timeframe.

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  WHO hopes to have 500 million vaccine doses via COVAX scheme in first quarter of 2021, chief scientist

  Reuters
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  Norway to use three vaccines to stop COVID-19 from early 2021

  Reuters

China, U.S. need to proceed together with 'good will': Chinese envoy

China and the United States need to proceed together with "good will" to improve relations, the Chinese ambassador to Washington said on Saturday, as ties remained fraught between the world's two biggest economic powers. On Friday, a Chinese state media editorial said ties are being shifted to "a dangerous path". "In order to put the relations on the right track, to have real improvement of the relations, both sides have to proceed with good will and good faith," Ambassador Cui Tiankai told the Annual Conference of the Institute for China-America Studies via video link.

Hayabusa-2: Rocks from an asteroid set for delivery to Earth

A capsule containing the material was released by Japan's Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on Saturday morning (GMT), as it approached our planet. Hayabusa-2 grabbed the cosmic treasure trove from Ryugu, one of the primitive building blocks of our Solar System. Scientists say that studying the material from Ryugu could provide insights into how life itself began.

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  Japan spacecraft approaches Earth to drop asteroid samples

  Associated Press
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  Japan capsule carrying asteroid samples lands in Australia

  Associated Press

China creating 'biologically enhanced soldiers', claims US intelligence chief

China is conducting "human testing" to create "biologically enhanced soldiers," the head of US intelligence has claimed as he warned that Beijing poses the biggest threat to America's national security. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, warned that the US must be prepared for an "open-ended" confrontation with China which he likened to the Cold War. Mr Ratcliffe, who oversees America's intelligence agencies, said he believed China's intention was to "dominate" the planet in every sense: economically, militarily and technologically.

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  US intelligence director says China is top threat to America

  Associated Press
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  China has done human testing to create biologically enhanced super soldiers, says top U.S. official

  NBC News

Bahrain says it won't allow imports from Israeli settlements

Bahrain will not allow the import of Israeli goods produced in settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, state news agency BNA reported, disavowing comments made by the Gulf state's trade minister earlier this week. Bahrain's Industry, Commerce and Tourism Minister Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani had voiced openness to settlement imports, adding that Manama would make no distinction between products produced in Israel or in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights. "The minister's statement was misinterpreted and that the ministry is committed to the Bahraini government's unwavering stance regarding adherence to the resolutions of the United Nations," BNA said late on Friday, quoting an official source from the ministry of industry, commerce and tourism.