| Under pressure | The European Union's very public difficulty in securing Covid-19 vaccines has officials privately worried. What is the bloc's purpose, they wonder, if it is less effective at shielding its citizens than 27 countries going it alone? As Ian Wishart, Alberto Nardelli and Arne Delfs explain, it's a dilemma that officials in Brussels know they have to resolve, and quickly, or risk another existential EU crisis. The glitch | President Joe Biden has ordered the government to buy electric vehicles made in America with union labor. There's just one problem: No such vehicles exist. - The five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will play a pivotal role fulfilling Biden's clean-energy ambitions, including his vow to strip greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector over the next 14 years.
New strains | With more than 30% of its population vaccinated, Israel leads the fight against Covid-19. Yet the emergence of more infectious variants is overwhelming its hospitals, showing the long road ahead for the rest of the world. - The U.K. today banned direct passenger flights from the United Arab Emirates to curb a new virus strain originally identified in South Africa, putting one of the world's busiest international air routes on ice.
- Biden and his top advisers have derided the Trump administration's playbook for distributing vaccines, but so far have made only modest changes to the plan that's meeting their target pace of more than one million shots a day.
 People line up outside a vaccination center at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on Jan. 4. Photographer: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg Challenging time | Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny's battle with President Vladimir Putin faces a test Sunday as his supporters plan further nationwide protests. Authorities are warning against participation and have already detained key Navalny aides. Still, they're worried by the scale of the demonstrations and looking for ways to cool public discontent, three people close to the government said. Virus forever | Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is dismissing scientific recommendations to fight Covid-19 by respecting social distancing and imposing restrictive measures, saying they will "lead nowhere" and that the coronavirus will be with us forever. Brazil has the second-highest death toll from the pandemic, behind the U.S. and ahead of Mexico, whose fatalities surpassed India. What to Watch - Former Italian premier Matteo Renzi, who triggered the collapse of the government, left the door ajar for Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to return to power and avoid new elections.
- Myanmar is facing a crisis just days before its newly elected parliament is set to convene, as tensions between the powerful military and Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government raise fears of a coup.
- U.S. officials will meet next week with Taiwan government and industry representatives and are expected to pressure Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and its peers to ramp up the supply of vital chips to American automakers.
- Former President Donald Trump, in a meeting yesterday with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, agreed to help the GOP retake control of the chamber in 2022.
Pop quiz, readers (no cheating!). In which country does the president disagree with the opposition on which year his term ends? Send your answers to balancepower@bloomberg.net And finally ... For a brief moment, it seemed, America's left and right had finally found common ground on the GameStop affair. After liberal House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to assail the trading curbs imposed on GameStop by Robinhood Markets and other platforms, Ted Cruz, an arch-conservative Trump supporter, retweeted her comments, adding "Fully agree." Then the shoe dropped. Ocasio-Cortez rejected Cruz's overture, accusing him of trying to get her killed by supporting the challenges to the Nov. 3 election that prompted the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
 Source: Twitter | 
Post a Comment