By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Brian Swint, David Goodman
U.K. job cuts jumped to the highest on record in the three months through October, raising more questions over Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s refusal to extend job support programs until hours before they expired.
Redundancies increased by a record 217,000 in the period, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday. The number of people on payrolls was 819,000 below pre-pandemic levels in November, with over a third of the fall coming from the hospitality sector.
The figures will amplify criticism that Sunak acted too late when he expanded programs to protect jobs and businesses hit by the worst downturn in 300 years. After insisting for months the payouts would be scaled back, the chancellor eventually extended furlough on Oct. 31 — the day the program had been due to expire — as the government announced a second lockdown.
The aid was eventually extended until March, but many firms had already taken the decision to ax jobs. U.K. unemployment increased by 241,000 in the three months through October, taking the jobless rate to 4.9%, the highest since 2016.
It followed an increase of 243,000 in the third quarter, a rise last seen in the financial crisis of 2009.
While the jobless rate in the latest three months was lower than economists predicted, for most of October it was above 5%, the ONS said. The government expects the rate to rise to 7.5%, or around 2.6 million people, and a potential no-deal exit from the European Union’s single market will make it even harder for the economy to bounce back.
A breakdown of payrolls lost during the pandemic shows that hospitality and retail accounted for more than half. Job losses probably continued during the second lockdown in November and restrictions in place across the country in December.
Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is cutting more than 5,000 jobs this year as reduced air travel hammers its aerospace engine business. Heathrow Airport, Britain’s busiest, says it’s trying to avoid reducing staff by implementing wage cuts, prompting more than 1,000 employees to go on strike earlier this month.
The Bank of England also added stimulus in November, increasing its bond-buying program by $198 billion (150 billion pounds) and predicting contraction in the fourth quarter. Its next policy announcement is due Thursday.
Since October, the emergence of vaccines for the virus have raised hopes that the U.K. economy can start getting back to normal in 2021, albeit with new barriers to trade from Brexit.
Bloomberg Economics now sees unemployment peaking at 7% next year, instead of 7.3%. Nevertheless, the Confederation of British Industry doesn’t see output returning to pre-pandemic levels until the following year.
Russia’s Putin, Mexico’s López Obrador recognize Biden’s win, more than a month after the election
InternationalDec 16. 2020Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López
By The Washington Post · Isabelle Khurshudyan, Kevin Sieff
MOSCOW – More than a month later than most world leaders, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory, a delayed recognition that could affect future relations.
“In his message Vladimir Putin wished the president-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, can, despite their differences, effectively contribute to solving many problems and meeting challenges that the world is facing today,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
It went on to say that Putin relayed to Biden that he is “ready for interaction and contact” and suggested cooperation between the two countries based on “equality and mutual respect.”
López Obrador, in a letter to Biden, said he appreciated Biden’s position of “supporting Mexico’s and the world’s migrants” and urged him to “maintain good bilateral relations based on collaboration, friendship and respect for the sovereignty of our respective countries.”
The Russian and Mexican leaders were among the last heads of state to acknowledge Biden’s win; Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un have yet to extend congratulations to Biden. Biden’s victory advanced another step Monday when 306 electors voted for him.
Other leaders didn’t wait for the electoral college; they reached out to Biden after U.S. television networks called the race for him, as is customary. In 2016, Putin congratulated Donald Trump within hours of his acceptance speech. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this year differed because Trump hasn’t conceded and threatened legal action to contest the count in several swing states. Peskov said the Kremlin would wait until the result became “official,” without specifying what that meant.
In an interview with Russian state television on Nov. 22, more than two weeks after the networks called the race for Biden, Putin referred to him as “the presidential candidate” and said the delay was due to the “internal political standoff” in the United States and “not that we like or dislike someone.”
But analysts viewed Putin’s silence as an attempt to grant legitimacy to Trump’s baseless claims that the election was marred by fraud.
Even before Election Day, officials in Moscow expressed pessimism that either result would improve the countries’ strained relationship. But Biden is expected to take a harder line on Russia, particularly now that Russian government hackers are believed to be behind the recent digital spying operation that hit the Department of Homeland Security, the State, Treasury and Commerce departments and the National Institutes of Health.
In an interview with “60 Minutes” before the election, Biden called Russia “the biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up our security and our alliances.”
During the Trump administration, U.S.-Mexico relations were tumultuous, with the White House threatening tariffs on Mexican goods if Mexico didn’t crack down on migration, a protracted renegotiation of NAFTA and, most recently, the U.S. Justice Department’s arrest of a former Mexican defense secretary. Still, relations between Trump and López Obrador were mostly warm – both men fashioning themselves as populists, lambasting the news media and their political predecessors.
López Obrador explained his reluctance to congratulate Biden as an effort to promote a noninterventionist foreign policy while the United States sorted out its domestic political issues. But many Mexican analysts saw an attempt to avoid offending Trump, and upsetting the fragile bilateral relationship.
In doing so, López Obrador appeared willing to risk offending the incoming Biden Administration, which will work closely with Mexico on a range of issues, from migration to trade to security. On migration in particular, the two leaders will consider how to unwind some of the Trump administration’s most controversial policies, including one that has sent tens of thousands of non-Mexican asylum applicants back to Mexico to wait for their U.S. court dates.
InternationalDec 16. 2020When William Barr steps down, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen becomes the nation’s top law enforcement officer for Donald Trump’s final month in office. Rosen is shown on March 29, 2017, as Trump’s deputy transportation secretary nominee during a Senate Transportation, Science and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Chris Strohm
Attorney General William Barr’s imminent departure will leave the Justice Department in the hands of his handpicked deputy, who could quickly find himself under pressure from Donald Trump to sustain his false claims of election fraud and pursue his political enemies.
When Barr steps down on Dec. 23 after increasingly sharp criticism by the president, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen becomes the nation’s top law enforcement officer for Trump’s final month in office. He’s seen in legal circles as a institutionalist, someone who’s managed the department’s internal operations while Barr focused on high-profile issues like the law-and-order response to racial justice protests and a review into the origins of the 2016 Russia probe.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a leading supporter of Trump and Barr, said Monday in a statement that Rosen is “a good man and will be an ethical leader and a steady hand at the Department of Justice.”
That doesn’t mean Rosen will be able to avoid the president’s frustration over losing the 2020 election.
Trump’s closest allies have vowed to press for any possible means to pursue his claims of widespread voter fraud even after the electoral college confirmed Biden’s victory on Monday. In addition, some Republicans have called for a special counsel to be named to ensure a continuing investigation of Hunter Biden, the president-elect’s son, who’s been the subject of federal probes, at least one of which is ongoing.
Barr said in his departure letter on Monday — posted by Trump on Twitter – – that allegations of election fraud “will continue to be pursued.” That could make the next few weeks fraught for Rosen.
Trump praised his new acting attorney general as “an outstanding person” and called the incoming deputy attorney general, Richard Donoghue, “highly respected.” The coming weeks will test Trump’s enthusiasm for the two men, given his long history of demanding “loyalty” from the Justice Department, even when that bucks the institution’s attempts to keep politics at arm’s length.
As acting attorney general, Rosen could appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden before the Jan. 20 inauguration, although some legal experts have questioned whether an appointment under that circumstance would be legal.
Alternatively, Rosen could simply put a senior Justice Department official in charge of overseeing the Hunter Biden matter, a move that wouldn’t provide as much protection to the official but may be more legally sound.
Trump has largely ignored advice from the Justice Department in making decisions on pardoning or commuting sentences, including for former advisers Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. But Trump may push Rosen to voice support for pardons he may issue in his final days in office — and perhaps press for a finding by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel backing him up if he claims the power to pardon himself.
Before serving as Barr’s deputy, Rosen, 62, held government posts including general counsel and later deputy secretary of the Transportation Department and general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
From 2009 to 2017, Rosen was a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where Barr also has held a senior position. After Barr became attorney general in February 2019, he successfully lobbied Trump to pick Rosen as his deputy even though he had never been a prosecutor, a more typical background for the post.
To overcome concerns during Rosen’s May 2019 confirmation hearing, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, cited a letter supporting the nominee from 49 former senior department officials. They said Rosen’s experience made him “highly qualified” for the position.
Trump’s tweets about Barr on Monday — “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!” — and the letter he posted from the departing attorney general showed little hint of the breach between them in recent weeks.
The departure of Barr, 70, follows a Dec. 1 interview with the Associated Press in which the attorney general said the Justice Department hadn’t seen “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
A day later, Trump posted a 46-minute taped speech in which he repeated unfounded claims that Democrats had somehow fraudulently engineered his defeat. Then on Dec. 3, the president balked at voicing support for his attorney general.
“Ask me that in a number of weeks from now,” Trump said in response to a question about whether he retained confidence in Barr. “They should be looking at all of this fraud.”
A second blow came when Biden’s transition team announced last week that Hunter Biden was advised that he was under federal criminal investigation. Barr kept information about the probe, which has been going on since 2018, from being announced publicly, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump criticized Barr in an interview Saturday with Fox News, saying the attorney general should have disclosed the tax probe into Hunter Biden before the election.
“All he had to do is say an investigation is going on,” Trump said.
Despite those tensions, Barr offered praise for Trump and his accomplishments in his resignation letter.
“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” Barr wrote to the president. “The nadir of this campaign was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your Administration with frenzied and baseless claims of collusion with Russia.”
When Barr took office in February 2019, he moved aggressively, seeking to restore the department’s stance as strong in support of law enforcement and to pursue his longtime belief that the Constitution justifies a dominant role for the executive branch.
But he was criticized for bending to Trump’s political demands, including becoming personally involved in criminal cases against some of the president’s allies, to the point that some career prosecutors resigned in protest.
Trump and his supporters in Congress also wanted Barr to reveal information from an investigation into whether FBI or intelligence officials committed any wrongdoing in the early stages of their probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and whether anyone associated with Trump conspired in the operation. Barr even echoed Trump’s claim that his campaign had been the victim of “spying.”
But weeks before the election, Barr signaled that the FBI-Russia probe, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, wouldn’t release preliminary findings ahead of the vote.
“To be honest, Bill Barr is going to go down as either the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he’s going to go down as a very sad situation,” Trump said in an interview in October on Fox Business Network.
Yet in what many Republicans will see as a parting gift, Barr revealed that he’s named Durham to serve as special counsel in the continuing FBI-Russia probe, meaning his work is likely to continue into the Biden administration.
Starting next week, Rosen will have oversight of that probe, and the responsibility for dealing with Trump if he demands more.
Biden will arrive in office amid a pandemic. It will be his biggest challenge – but also an opportunity.
InternationalDec 16. 2020Jamie Roderick, 35, a volunteer for MoveOn, helps place 1,000 signs featuring the faces of nurses and other front-line health-care workers, as well as signs calling for more personal protective equipment (PPE), on the lawn in front of the Capitol on April, 17. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein.
By The Washington Post · Amy Goldstein
As President-elect Joe Biden and his team devise a governing strategy to defeat the coronavirus pandemic – the incoming administration’s most urgent priority – they have become centrally focused on instilling broad, bipartisan faith in vaccines.
With the first vaccine against the virus, developed by Pfizer and a German biotech firm, now allowed for public use, the president-elect regards it as imperative to “deweaponize” attitudes toward immunization among his political adversaries, as one member of his coronavirus advisory board put it, speaking on the condition of anonymity about internal matters without permission to discuss them openly.
“We can’t have a repeat of masks,” the member said, referring to the intense partisan polarization over wearing face coverings that President Donald Trump fostered and that public health experts bemoan as one reason the United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths.
Biden has not spoken publicly about behind-the-scenes concern that leading Republicans might foment opposition to the shots, which are expected to slow the virus’s spread significantly if enough people receive them.
Yet he has talked with increasing frequency about vaccines’ capacity to tamp down the virus’s transmission only “if they’re injected into an arm of people, especially those most at risk,” as he said last week at an event in his hometown of Wilmington, Del. And the idea of conquering Republicans’ reluctance about vaccination is one way to understand his oft-stated desire to be “a president for all the people.”
Health-care workers administer coronavirus tests outside a high school in Eau Claire, Wis., on Nov. 21, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Michael S. Williamson.
Health policy experts say Biden’s capacity to mold bipartisan receptivity to being vaccinated has implications for his broader agenda to expand health coverage and access to affordable care. “If you can’t do this one, you are not going to be able to get buy-in on universal coverage,” said Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University who studies public opinion about health care.
Blendon said GOP candidates this year and officeholders have not indicated they will take a wholesale stand against coronavirus vaccines – but will emulate Trump in rejecting a strong federal role in setting pandemic policy in favor of state and local decisions. Republicans “are going to fight [the government deciding] who gets the vaccine, who distributes it and if there’s any need for [vaccination] requirements before you can go to work, school, get on a plane,” Blendon said.
The political stakes and the consequences for public health are considerable, said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy group.
“The success of Biden’s presidency likely rests in large part on tamping down the pandemic and having a successful vaccine rollout,” Levitt said. “The Biden administration is going to need to bring red America and blue America together. If the vaccine is a repeat of masks, our efforts to end the pandemic will be stymied.”
The transition’s unspoken concern about which Americans will be willing to get vaccinated – and the dangerously uneven embrace of masks – runs through the three parts of a plan Biden introduced this month for starting to control the pandemic during his first 100 days in office.
Biden has said that on the day he is sworn in, Jan. 20, he intends to sign an executive order requiring masks to be worn everywhere the federal government has jurisdiction, including on buses and trains that cross state lines. He also has promised to enable “the majority of our schools” to reopen and stay open, and to distribute “at least 100 million covid vaccine shots” during the 100 days.
Already, the president-elect and his top pandemic advisers are showing wariness about the adequacy of distribution procedures. David Kessler, a co-chairman of the advisory board and a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said that, based on reviews underway of what the Trump administration has set up, “there are elements of a plan that exist to get it shipped to certain locations.”
“But there is a world of difference between a vaccine and a vaccination,” Kessler said in an interview. “Once a vaccine arrives in a state or a city, what happens?”
Paige Thompson, a nurse, checks in on patient Rodney Hopp in the covid-19 ward at Tampa General Hospital in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 19., 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Michael S. Williamson.
Biden has indicated that he thinks the government is not fully prepared. He said last week that “without urgent action by this Congress this month to put sufficient resources into vaccine distribution and manufacturing . . . there’s a real chance that, after an early round of vaccination, the effort will slow and stall.”
His emphasis on bipartisanship and on enhancing equity – he is forming a coronavirus equity task force – is a departure from the Trump administration’s approach to contending with covid-19, the disease caused by the virus that has infected more than 16.5 million people in the United States and killed more than 300,000. It comes on top of his basic view that the federal role should be more assertive. The extent to which these values will infuse his broader health-care agenda remains to be seen, with many policies being discussed within the transition but not yet decided.
Still, much of Biden’s broader goal of expanding health coverage will depend on his ability to persuade congressional Republicans to go along, especially if the Senate remains in GOP control after a pair of runoff elections in Georgia next month.
The pandemic’s primacy among the issues Biden is inheriting was evident in his decision to create the 13-member coronavirus advisory board less than 48 hours after he clinched the election, his first act as president-elect.
According to people familiar with the board’s activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal workings, its three co-chairs have informally divided responsibilities, with small working groups under them. Surgeon General-designee Vivek Murthy is focusing mainly on improving coronavirus testing and the supplies of personal protective equipment. Marcella Nunez-Smith, named to lead the new equity task force, has been focused on global equity issues. And Kessler, one of the people under consideration to lead the FDA again, is working primarily on vaccines.
In tandem with that board, the transition has a health-care policy team, which has been combing through Biden’s campaign promises on the pandemic and other health-care goals, figuring out how to adapt them into policies for governing – which ones still are pertinent, what the sequence should be and whether ideas should be added.
The coronavirus-fighting ideas being evaluated are drawn largely from plans that Biden began to issue in late winter, not long after the crisis started and five months before he became the Democratic presidential nominee.
A March 12 document listed actions Biden vowed to take “on Day One as president,” if Trump hadn’t done them first. The list included restoring a unit within the White House’s National Security Council for global health security and biodefense, an office that President Barack Obama created and that Trump dismantled two years ago.
Mayo Clinic paramedic Adam Glass, a paramedic with the Mayo Clinic, helps load covid-19 patient Rita Huebner into an ambulance in Eau Claire, Wis., on Nov. 18, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Michael S. Williamson.
On the list, too, is a commitment to “ensure that every person who needs a test can get one” free, including by establishing at least 10 mobile testing sites and drive-through facilities in each state. Biden promised to issue a daily White House report about the number of tests performed and to provide enough protective gear for health-care workers, emergency personnel and others at heightened risk of infection because of their jobs.
And he called for 14 days of paid leave for workers who are sick with the coronavirus or who are caring for ill relatives or other loved ones.
In an update of his plan in late June, Biden said he would form a Pandemic Testing Board, double the number of drive-through testing sites and “increase the numbers until there are no more lines.” He pledged to hire at least 100,000 people nationwide to help build a “contact-tracing workforce.” And he said he would invoke the full powers of the Defense Production Act, a law that gives a president authority to take steps to increase manufacturing for national defense purposes.
According to people inside and outside the incoming administration who are familiar with this process, most of these and other ideas remain works in progress, in part because transition members have gotten a late start in delving into the inner workings of what the Trump administration has and has not accomplished. The president delayed allowing Biden representatives inside federal agencies, as Trump attempts to cling to the presidency for another term despite the election results.
“We need to know more about the Trump plan to get Americans vaccinated,” Kessler said in the interview. “I am in dozens of meetings on vaccine distribution issues” to learn from the current administration exactly what has been set up.
Kessler reflected the concern about whether Republicans will buy into the mass vaccination campaign. “We need everyone across the political spectrum pulling together to get the job done and Americans safely vaccinated,” he said.
Although there is no precise goal for the vaccination effort, Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whom Biden has appointed his chief medical adviser on the coronavirus, recently estimated that vaccinating 75% to 85% of the population would “crush” the outbreak by the end of next year. The White House coronavirus task force said recently that 100 million well-targeted vaccinations could slow the virus’s spread by late spring.
Evidence exists of a partisan divide in attitudes toward getting the Pfizer vaccine or others that could be coming soon, according to public opinion surveys. A Quinnipiac University poll, conducted last week among registered voters just before federal regulators authorized the Pfizer vaccine, found that, overall, about 6 in 10 of those surveyed said they would be willing to receive a coronavirus vaccine if government health officials approved it.
Half of the Republicans surveyed said they would be willing, compared with 8 in 10 Democrats and nearly 6 in 10 independents.
An ABC News/Ipsis poll, conducted after the first coronavirus vaccine was allowed, found a sharper split, with 26% of Republicans surveyed saying they will never receive a vaccine, compared with 6% of Democrats.
In general, polls in past weeks have shown that Americans’ willingness to receive a coronavirus vaccine has risen since early fall but is lower than it was over the summer. And recent surveys by both the Pew Research Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation have found considerable division on how soon people want to get vaccinated, with more preferring to wait than wanting to receive a shot as soon as possible.
“It is absolutely critical for the transition and the new administration to be reaching out to Republicans on this issue of vaccine,” said Dan Mendelson, a Clinton administration budget official who founded Avalere, a health-care consulting firm.
Attitudes about important public health issues, research has shown, can be influenced by high-profile messengers with credibility among groups that identify with them. For that reason, Mendelson said, “you want prominent Republicans endorsing the vaccine and the president-elect’s plans.”
“The complication is Trump is preventing this by continuing this charade that he is going to overturn the election,” Mendelson said. “So you have Republicans from [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell on down [who] you can’t put on a covid transition assignment, because they haven’t even acknowledged that the new government is forming.”
Kessler said: “We understand there are people who have concerns about the vaccine. We will address those concerns in a scientific, evidence-driven manner.” To start, he said, the public must be allowed to see all the effectiveness and safety data that federal regulators and advisers review for each vaccine candidate they are asked to allow.
The Biden coronavirus advisory board member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the country lost the battle over wearing masks because Trump and other senior Republicans have displayed skepticism about their value.
If that partisan schism can be closed for the herculean effort of immunizing a nation against a lethal virus, the member said, “everything else is logistics and tactics.”
From next year, many Bangkok roads will be free of the ugly power and communication lines that hang overhead at dangerous angles.
Digital Economy and Society Minister Buddhipongse Punnakanta handed over the plan to TOT acting president Morakot Thienmontree on Wednesday morning. The plan requires the reorganisation of communication lines in inner Bangkok, namely in Pathum Wan and Bang Rak districts, including Lang Suan Road, at the top of Soi Saladaeng and Soi Convent.
The minister said this policy supports the goal of turning Bangkok into a smart metropolis and expects the project to be completed by August 2021.
The Pao Tang app crashed on Wednesday after millions tried to register for the second phase of the government’s shopping subsidy scheme.
Close to five million people had registered for the co-payment scheme within two hours, though many complained they were having technical problems.
Later, Krungthai Bank (KTB) announced on its website that it had closed the application temporarily for some tweaks and expects it to start working again after 2.30pm.
After a couple of random brutal attacks over the past two weeks, Udon Thani residents were further shaken when a woman reported that two men charged at her and her mother with a knife on Monday evening.
Chawanlak Phattatrakul, 24, shared her experience on Facebook, which drew the attention of netizens before police stepped in to investigate.
She said she was on a motorbike with her mother when two men on another motorbike approached them, and the man riding pillion pulled out a knife demanding they stop.
However, she said, her mother sped off screaming for help and the offenders fled.
People in the province are concerned about their safety as this is the third time this month that armed men have attacked people in public.
On December 5, a man under the influence of drugs killed two people and injured six, and then again on December 12, a man attacked a Grab employee with a knife on a busy street.
The National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards’ (ACFS) plan to combine accreditation bodies of four ministries and work together as one entity within this year is likely to miss its deadline.
Meanwhile, the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) has suggested that the timeframe be extended so related agencies can adjust their work process and strategy.
ACFS secretary-general Pisal Pongsapich said the plan is to bring together four accreditation entities, namely the Industry Ministry’s Thai Industrial Standard Institute; the Public Health Ministry’s Department of Medical Sciences; the Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Ministry’s Department of Science Service; and the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry’s National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards.
“The merger was to be completed before the end of 2020, with the Industry Ministry as the main responsible agency,” he said.
“However, the project has yet to take shape as the four agencies have always worked independently.”
The objective of the merger is to cut down on overlapping procedures and create a single platform for the accreditation of all industrial and agricultural products, Pisal added. The new entity will work under the supervision of an executive committee, which will comprise high-ranking officials from the four ministries.
Pisal added that the NESDC has said this project requires further discussion among stakeholders and that more time should be granted to the different agencies so they can adjust their strategy and work procedures.
A pick-up truck and a big bike burst into flames when they slammed into each other in Tak province on Tuesday night.
Police were notified of the accident at about 8.30pm and arrived to find the two vehicles burning and the body of the motorbike rider on the side of the road.
The body has been sent to hospital for autopsy.
Police believe the driver of the pick-up managed to jump out in time, but the motorbike rider died from the impact of the crash.
Police found 300 kilograms of ketamine in a warehouse raid in Nonthaburi province on Tuesday, which led them to another location in Bangkok’s Huai Khwang district where 228kg of heroin was hidden.
The Narcotics Suppression Bureau learned the drugs were to be shipped to Taiwan and arrested a 29-year-old woman named Saowapha Nasalee for possessing illegal substances with the intention the sell.
The operation was conducted in collaboration with Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau.
The suspect has allegedly told police that the owner of the house in Huai Khwang had hired her to pack the drugs. Police have learned that this man lives near Prachachuen Road in Bangkok and will trace his connection to the drug trade.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López 
When William Barr steps down, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen becomes the nation’s top law enforcement officer for Donald Trump’s final month in office. Rosen is shown on March 29, 2017, as Trump’s deputy transportation secretary nominee during a Senate Transportation, Science and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer 
Jamie Roderick, 35, a volunteer for MoveOn, helps place 1,000 signs featuring the faces of nurses and other front-line health-care workers, as well as signs calling for more personal protective equipment (PPE), on the lawn in front of the Capitol on April, 17. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein. 
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