| Greetings, QuickTake readers! In this edition: ICE drops international student visa ban, Biden unveils $2 trillion climate plan, and a Covid-19 vaccine shows promising immune response.  Trump signs order rebuking China President Trump ordered an end to Hong Kong's special status with the U.S. on Tuesday and signed legislation to sanction officials responsible for China's crackdown on political dissent in the city. "No administration has been tougher on China than this administration, Trump said at the White House after spending weeks blaming Beijing for the coronavirus pandemic and its treatment of minority groups. Under a 1992 pact with Hong Kong, the U.S. treats the semi-autonomous region differently than the mainland in trade and commerce. Both will now be treated the same, Trump said of the order, which would also penalize banks for doing business with officials involved in the new national security law that erodes the "one country, two systems" framework. Trump told reporters that he hasn't spoken with President Xi Jinping and "has no plan to speak to him." Earlier Tuesday, China announced it will impose unspecified sanctions on defense contractor Lockheed Martin after the U.S. approved a possible $620 million deal to supply missile parts to Taiwan. $ignificant figures $2 trillion. Joe Biden unveiled his plan to create a clean energy economy that would lead to millions of union jobs building sustainable homes, wind turbines, and electric vehicles to achieve carbon-free power by 2035. 132. Florida posted a record number of Covid-19 deaths Tuesday and the biggest daily case increase with 9,194 new infections, concentrated mostly in Miami, leading experts to call it the new "epicenter of the pandemic." 17. The U.S. carried out its first execution after that many years Tuesday, killing by lethal injection Daniel Lewis Lee, a man convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in 1996. Another execution is set for Wednesday. Highly quotable "Return to the status quo." The U.S. rescinded a rule requiring international students to take at least one in-person class, backing down from lawsuits from Harvard and MIT and another filed by 17 states. "Substantial actual risk." A judge denied Ghislaine Maxwell's request for bail after she pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges, ordering her to remain in custody until July 2021, out of concern she'd flee the U.S. "This is good news." Anthony Fauci lauded Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine that produced antibodies in all patients in an initial safety trial, considered an "essential building block" toward proving it actually works, experts said. This is not normal Virus fallout. A 10th of the planet was undernourished in 2019, and adult obesity has become "its own global pandemic," the UN found, as Covid-19 pushes billions of people into poverty without access to healthy food.  The future is now Renewable H20. U.S. firm Zero Mass Water is turning moisture from the air into pure drinking water via sun-powered hydropanels in the Arabian Desert, aiming to become the world's first seller of bottled water-from-air.  What's good Empowered. Meghan Markle urged young women to speak out at the UN Girl Up summit, saying executives, lawmakers, and world leaders "depend on you more than you will ever depend on them—and they know this."  Now that you're caught up... Tell your friends to sign up to receive our newsletter five days a week. Follow QuickTake on Twitter , YouTube , Instagram, and Facebook . BTW: The Comet Neowise won't be seen for another 6,800 years, but this timelapse captured it streaking across the night sky in Washington. Thanks for reading!
-Andrew Mach | 
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