อย่างไรก็ตามแอปดังกล่าวก็ยังมีช่องโหว่และถูกวิพากษ์วิจารณ์ถึงมาตรการในการควบคุมห้องแชท เนื่องจากการเปิดกว้างในการสนทนาอาจทำให้กระทบประเด็นอ่อนไหว อย่างเช่นห้องสนทนา “Is there a concentration camp in Xinjiang?” (มีค่ายกักกันในซินเจียงหรือเปล่า?) จนถูกบล็อกในประเทศจีน
Democrats pivot back to Biden’s stimulus with Trump’s trial done
InternationalFeb 17. 2021The Capitol building at dawn in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Stefani Reynolds.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Laura Davison
With Donald Trump’s impeachment trial behind them, Democrats are quickly pivoting back to President Joe Biden’s priorities, particularly his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan and confirming the rest of his cabinet.
Lawmakers face a short turnaround to approve another round of stimulus payments, jobless compensation and funding for schools and vaccines before key benefits from the last round of pandemic aid expire on March 14. In less than four weeks, Democrats must pass a bill out of the House and get all 50 Senate Democrats to back the legislation.
That will likely require amending some provisions, such as the $15 federal minimum wage requirement, that at least two Democratic Senators — Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — say they won’t support. Any changes made in the Senate would mean that the bill would have to go back to the House for another vote.
The eagerness of congressional Democrats to move past Trump was evident from start to end of the shortest Senate impeachment trial in history. The agreement on the trial format between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and GOP leader Mitch McConnell kept the proceedings compressed, and the four days of arguments ended ahead of schedule.
After Senators voted on Saturday to allow witnesses to testify — a surprise result that risked delaying the trial’s conclusion by several weeks — House impeachment managers and the former president’s defense team agreed to enter a public statement into the record. That let the chamber move on to a verdict that day, acquitting Trump.
Although Democrats expressed disappointment in the outcome, they said they are ready to put the former president behind them and focus on Biden’s priorities.
“We in Congress need to move forward with delivering the expanded unemployment checks, the stimulus checks, the reinvestment in our economy that the American people so desperately need and deserve,” Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who is close to Biden, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” program.
Biden continued pushing ahead as the trial was going on, meeting with a group of governors and mayors as well as leading chief executives including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Walmart’s Doug McMillon to rally support for his stimulus plan. With Trump’s impeachment no longer consuming national attention, Biden plans public events this week to refocus the country on fighting the pandemic and bolstering the economy, including a town hall event Tuesday in Milwaukee.
Although seven Republicans joined with Democrats in voting to find Trump guilty — falling short of the 67 votes required for a conviction — it’s unlikely that bipartisan showing will repeat itself on the economic relief legislation.
Ten Republican lawmakers — including Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who all voted to convict Trump — have floated a $618 billion stimulus proposal that keeps Biden’s plans for school and vaccine funding, but pares back unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, and completely eliminates key Democratic priorities, including $350 billion in state and local aid and family tax credits.
These Republicans had a series of meetings with Biden and White House staff on the potential for a bipartisan stimulus approach, but despite both sides calling the meetings productive, there has been little movement to bridge the gap between Biden’s $1.9 trillion proposal and the GOP plan, which is approximately one-third of that.
House committees approved the legislation last week under a fast-track budget reconciliation framework, that will allow them to move the bill with simple majorities in both chambers, thanks to a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris in the Senate. Neither chamber is scheduled to be in Washington this week, but the House Budget Committee is planning to assemble the bills approved in committee to prepare the stimulus package for a vote on the House floor the week of Feb. 22.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she will send the bill to the Senate as soon as it passes the House. Schumer is looking for ways to speed up the process once the bill reaches him, which include bypassing Senate Finance Committee approval for parts of the bill in order to get the legislation to Biden before federal unemployment benefits expire on March 14. Republicans have criticized that approach, saying Democrats should follow the regular legislative process.
Despite several hurdles to clear an economic relief bill in the coming weeks, Democrats have already set their sights on their next move: an infrastructure and jobs bill. Biden has already begun meeting with senators of both parties to discuss potential proposals on physical infrastructure upgrades, rural broadband internet and renewable energy investment.
In a move that could ease negotiations on an infrastructure bill, House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro and Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy’s plan to restore lawmaker-directed spending, known as earmarks, which Congress banned a decade ago. The practice allows lawmakers to insert funding for pet projects into legislation and is seen as a useful tactic to get members to back large ambitious bills, but it has been the source of scandal and abuse by some lawmakers.
DeLauro plans to release details about reinstating earmarks in the coming weeks, House Appropriations spokesman Evan Hollander said. It will include more transparency and limits on the total dollar amounts and recipients.
PARIS – Concern about the spread of coronavirus variants in eastern France has prompted an acceleration of vaccination in that region, as well as calls to suspend the rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to the health care workers there who had been first in line to get it.
AstraZeneca vaccinations in France only began Feb. 6. But the French government’s top vaccine adviser, Alain Fischer, suggested in a weekend interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that health workers in Moselle – where variants first detected in South Africa and in Brazil are suspected to be particularly widespread – should not receive that particular vaccine, one of three authorized in the European Union.
Instead, Fischer recommended administering either of the two authorized mRNA vaccines, developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and by Moderna, as a “precautionary measure” because they allow individuals to obtain protection more quickly.
According to the paper, Fischer also cited the preliminary South African research finding that the AstraZeneca vaccine provided “minimal protection” against mild to moderate coronavirus cases caused by the variant known as B.1.351. The South African researchers left open the possibility that the vaccine may still prevent severe cases of the disease caused by the variant, but the South African government paused its rollout of the vaccine last week.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have claimed their vaccines are effective against more contagious variants of the virus.
The eastern region of France announced Monday that it would receive 30,000 additional vaccine doses from the government – all of them from Pfizer-BioNTech, according to France’s public broadcaster. It was not clear whether the choice was a deliberate response to the recommendation by the government’s top adviser. The French health ministry confirmed that it was sending additional doses to the region but did not immediately respond to a request for further details.
French health minister Olivier Véran said last week that he continued to support the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying it provided sufficient protection against “nearly all the variants.”
The AstraZeneca vaccine – which is not yet authorized in the United States – remains a key component of Europe’s immunization strategy, and Fischer defended its use elsewhere in France, saying Monday that he did not want to imply that “it’s not good.”
But whereas the European drug regulator authorized it for all adults last month, French authorities had recommended it only for people under 65, citing a lack of sufficient data for its efficacy among older people.
And now, the suggestion that its use should be further limited has prompted additional questions in a country that already had one of the highest rates of vaccine skepticism in the world.
“It seems unwise to immunize caregivers” with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Jérôme Marty, president of the UFML health care workers union, said Tuesday. He cited doubts over its efficacy against the variant first found in South Africa but also more general objections.
Health care workers tend to be exposed to particularly high viral loads, Marty said, and are disproportionately likely to transmit the virus to vulnerable people. His union has demanded that health care workers across France receive preferred access to the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, which have a higher efficacy.
In the eastern French region that has seen a surge in suspected variant cases, union representative Monique François said Monday that only a few health workers appeared to have signed up to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“It proves that some have questions,” François told BFM TV, calling for additional BioNTech-Pfizer shots.
Between 4 and 5% of new coronavirus cases across France are estimated to be caused by the variants first detected in South Africa and in Brazil, according to the French health ministry, and both strains are believed to be highly transmissible.
Officials have expressed growing concern over the spread in the east, along the German border. Officials said they had detected 300 suspected new cases of the South African and Brazilian variants within four days last week, though that figure had not yet been confirmed through detailed sequencing.
France has opted to speed up vaccinations in the region – a deviation from the approach pursued in some other countries, where harder-hit areas have not received more vaccines per capita than other places.
The strategy shift was welcomed by doctors unions this week. “We need to act quickly in the areas that are most affected by variants,” Marty said.
French doctors are also concerned that the South African variant could more easily reinfect people who already had covid-19. In what appears to be one of the first such cases, a 58-year old man is in a critical condition in a French hospital after being reinfected with the South African variant, according to a study published last week.
The government in France hopes that accelerated vaccinations and a nationwide 6 p.m. curfew will keep the variants in check. But the country has been among the slowest and most cautious in Europe to roll out its vaccination programs. And like the rest of Europe, it now faces a shortage of doses.
The French government has resisted calls for a local lockdown, even as politicians in neighboring Germany pondered possible border closures.
มีกระแสข่าวตั้งแต่ปีที่แล้วว่าเกาหลีเหนือส่งกองทัพแฮกเกอร์ล้วงความลับเรื่องวัคซีนจากบริษัทที่พัฒนาวิธีรักษาโควิด-19
ทำความรู้จักแอปพลิเคชันใหม่สุดฮิต อีลอน มัสก์ถึงกับต้องชวนปูตินมาเล่นด้วย
ภาพข่าวสถานการณ์การระบาดของตั๊กแตนในแอฟริกาที่หวนกลับมาระบาดีอครั้งหลังจากที่ปีที่แล้วถล่มพื้นภาคตะวันออกของแอฟริกาจนเสี่ยงที่จะก่อให้เกิดภาวะอดอยากในวงกว้าง
บริษัทสตาร์ทอัพของอินโดนีเซียรายอื่นๆ ก็กำลังไปได้สวยและกำลังมองหาทางระดมทุนเพิ่มเช่นกัน
กองกำลังติดอาวุธโจมตีอเมริกันในอิรักรับไบเดนขึ้นผู้นำสหรัฐ
นายกรัฐมนตรีเผยจะได้รับวัคซีนต้านโรคโควิด-19 ล็อตแรก 21 ก.พ. นี้ พร้อมเริ่มฉีดให้ประชาชน 5 วันถัดไป
ยอดผู้ติดเชื้อโควิด-19 ทั่วโลกอยู่ที่ 109,451,984 ราย ขณะที่ ยอดผู้เสียชีวิตอยู่ที่ 2,412,843 ราย สหรัฐยังมียอดผู้ป่วยและผู้เสียชีวิตสูงสุดในโลก
The Capitol building at dawn in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Stefani Reynolds.
