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@ISIDEWITH submitted…4 days4D
South Korea’s national assembly has voted to block president Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law, as lawmakers and the head of state wrestle for control of the country.In a televised address on Tuesday night, Yoon, whose popularity has sunk to record lows in recent months, announced…
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2wks2W
President Trump announces the nomination of Dr Bhattacharya to Director of the National Institutes of Health.Bhattacharya has called for shifting the agency’s focus toward funding more innovative research and reducing the influence of some of its longest-serving career officials, among other ideas.Trump earlier this month selected Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH and other health agencies. Kennedy has played a central role in choosing top health-care staff and deputies for the next administration, including Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and writer whom Trump announced to lead the Food and Drug Administration, and Dave Weldon, an internal medicine physician and former GOP congressman whom Trump selected to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Bhattacharya emerged as a prominent critic of the federal government’s covid-19 response, co-writing an October 2020 open letter known as the Great Barrington Declaration that called for rolling back coronavirus-related shutdowns while keeping “focused protections” for vulnerable populations, such as older Americans. The proposal won support from Republican politicians and some Americans eager to resume daily life but was rebuked by public health experts, including then-NIH Director Francis S. Collins, as premature and dangerous as the covid-19 virus continued to spread and vaccines were not yet available.Bhattacharya has called for rolling back the power of some of the 27 institutes and centers that constitute NIH, saying that some career civil servants wrongly shaped national policies at the height of the pandemic and did not tolerate dissent. Bhattacharya and other critics have singled out Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious-disease expert who led one of NIH’s centers for 38 years and helped steer the nation’s coronavirus response before leaving the federal government in December 2022.Trump Appoints Controversial Covid Critic Bhattacharya To NIH
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…3wks3W
Donald Trump’s new administration will revive its “maximum pressure” policy to “bankrupt” Iran’s ability to fund regional proxies and develop nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the transition.Trump’s foreign policy team will seek to ratchet up sanctions on Tehran, including vital oil exports, as soon as the president-elect re-enters the White House in January, people familiar with the transition said.“He’s determined to reinstitute a maximum pressure strategy to bankrupt Iran as soon as possible,” said a national security expert familiar with the Trump transition. The plan will mark a shift in US foreign policy at a time of turmoil in the Middle East after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack triggered a wave of regional hostilities and thrust Israel’s shadow war with Iran into the open.Trump signalled during his election campaign that he wants a deal with Iran. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said in September.People familiar with Trump’s thinking said the maximum pressure tactic would be used to try to force Iran into talks with the US — although experts believe this is a long shot. The president-elect mounted a campaign of “maximum pressure” in his first term after abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers, and imposing hundreds of sanctions on the Islamic republic.In response, Tehran ramped up its nuclear activity and it is enriching uranium close to weapons-grade level.The sanctions remained in place during the Biden administration, but analysts say it did not implement them as strictly as it sought to revive the nuclear accord with Iran and ease the crisis.Iran’s crude oil exports have more than trebled in the past four years, from a low of 400,000 barrels a day in 2020 to more than 1.5mn b/d so far in 2024, with nearly all shipments going to China, according to the US Energy Information Agency.
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President-elect Trump announced on Tuesday that he will nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator in January."America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again," Trump said in a statement. "He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.""Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake," the statement added. "Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget."
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…5 days5D
Mexican immigration authorities have broken up two small migrant caravans headed to the U.S. border, activists said Saturday.Some migrants were bused to cities in southern Mexico, and others were offered transit papers.The action comes a week after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened to slap 25% tariffs on Mexican products unless the country does more to stem the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States. Sheinbaum wrote on her social media accounts the same day that “migrants and caravans are taken care of before they reach the border.”Migrant rights activist Luis García Villagrán said the breaking-up of the two caravans appeared to be part of “an agreement between the president of Mexico and the president of the United States.”The first of the caravans started out from the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, on Nov. 5, the day Trump was elected. At its height it had about 2,500 people. In almost four weeks of walking, it had gone about 270 miles (430 kilometers) to Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca.In Tehuantepec, Mexican immigration officials offered the tired migrants free bus rides to other cities in southern or central Mexico.“They took some of us to Acapulco, others to Morelia, and others from our group to Oaxaca city,” said Bárbara Rodríguez, an opposition supporter who left her native Venezuela after that country's contested presidential elections earlier this year.Rodríguez said by telephone she later caught a bus on her own to Mexico City.In a statement Saturday, the National Immigration Institute said the migrants voluntary accepted bus rides “to various areas where there is medical assistance and where their migratory status will be reviewed,” and said “upon accepting (the rides), they said they no longer wanted to face the risks along their way.”
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Israel approved a cease-fire with Lebanon that is intended to bring a halt to more than a year of fighting with the Hezbollah militia and could help defuse a broader regional crisis that has threatened to ensnare the U.S. and other world powers.“I have some good news to report from the Middle East,” President Biden said on Tuesday, announcing a cease-fire that he said would begin at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the agreement earlier in the day, saying it would let Israel focus on the threat from Iran, allow the Israeli military to rest and rearm, and isolate Hamas.“The continuation of the cease-fire will be dependent on what happens in Lebanon. We will enforce the agreement and respond forcefully to every violation,” Netanyahu said.Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, welcomed the agreement, saying it would bring “calm and stability in Lebanon and the return of the displaced to their homes and cities.”The Lebanese cabinet is expected to meet on Wednesday to approve steps to enforce the cease-fire, including sending government security forces to areas of southern Lebanon near the border with Israel.Hezbollah has indicated openness to a deal in recent days. “What concerns us are Lebanese national measures and the protection of sovereignty,” Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Parliament affiliated with the group, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.The announcements came after a day of heavy bombardment of Beirut while Israeli ground forces advanced deeper into Lebanese territory. Minutes after Biden spoke, a series of explosions thundered in Beirut. Northern Israel also came under renewed rocket fire.There was no immediate public comment from Hezbollah on the announced cease-fire.If implemented, the agreement would be a diplomatic success for Biden in the twilight of his administration, after more than a year in which the White House has tried to fend off the possibility of a wider regional war. It could also change the landscape that President-elect Donald Trump will face when he takes office in January.
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