Author: AFP

President Joe Biden is considering preemptive pardons for several prominent names facing possible retribution from the incoming Trump administration, US media has reported. Among those being considered for the historic pardons are Anthony Fauci, the former White House special advisor on Covid-19, and former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, who has become a fierce critic of Donald Trump. The president-elect, who has never acknowledged his defeat in the 2020 elections, has made no secret of his desire to exact vengeance against critics and those he claims stole the election from him. Biden has discussed with advisors the possibility of using his…

TikTok edged closer to being banned in the United States after it lost an appeal on Friday against a law requiring the video-sharing app to divest from its Chinese parent company by January 19. The potential ban could strain US-China relations just as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on January 20. TikTok said it would now appeal to the Supreme Court, which could choose to take up the case or let the DC circuit court’s decision stand. “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do…

A Russian strike on Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region has killed at least nine people, the local governor said Friday. Zaporizhzhia governor Ivan Fedorov said a Russian attack had set a car garage and service station on fire, posting images of a fire blazing with debris strewn across the street. “Nine dead and six wounded,” he said in a post on Telegram, updating an earlier toll of seven fatalities. “Among the wounded are two children, aged four and 11,” he added. In a previous message he had called Russia a “terrorist state”. Some nearby communities had problems with electricity supplies after…

Kyiv on Thursday sanctioned the Georgian prime minister and billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, widely seen as the country’s de facto leader, amid mass pro-EU protests in the Black Sea nation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. “These are sanctions against the part of the government in Georgia that is handing Georgia over to Putin,” Zelensky said in a video message on Telegram.

There are no grounds yet for negotiations on how to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, Russia said on Wednesday, in comments about peace talks that have become more frequent since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential vote in November. “There are no grounds for negotiations yet,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Izvestia newspaper, reiterating Moscow’s long-standing position on the talks. “Many countries have declared their readiness to provide their territory … And we are grateful to all countries for such goodwill, including Qatar.” Qatar has mediated several returns of Ukrainian children taken to Russia from…

NATO chief Mark Rutte said Wednesday that Russia was giving support to North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes in exchange for Pyongyang sending troops to use in the war with Ukraine. “In return for troops and weapons, Russia is providing North Korea with support for its missile and nuclear programmes,” Rutte told journalists after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

More than 30,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to severe flooding in southern Thailand, where the death toll climbed to 29, officials said Wednesday. Days more heavy rain are forecast in the area, which has already been battered by torrential floodwaters, with more than 155,000 households currently affected, according to the Thai government’s public relations department. Five southern provinces have been hit — — Pattani, Narathiwat, Songkhla, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Phatthalung — forcing more than 33,000 people to leave their homes, the spokesperson for Thailand’s ministry of public health said in a statement. The death…

South Korea’s cabinet approved a motion to lift martial law, Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday. The report came minutes after President Yoon Suk Yeol announced that he had withdrawn his bid to impose martial law, and that cabinet was required to lift it.

Ukraine insisted Tuesday that NATO membership was the only “real guarantee” for its security, but foreign ministers from the alliance sidestepped Kyiv’s push for an invite ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency. A dinner of foreign ministers from Ukraine and the alliance’s 32 member states ended without any concrete decision. “There was no progress,” Lithuania’s Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters. Trump has vowed to press for a quick deal to end Russia’s war, leaving Kyiv scrambling to position itself ahead of his January inauguration. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said getting security guarantees from the Western alliance and…

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday rejected calls to resign to break a political impasse in the country, saying such a scenario amounted to “political fiction”. “It doesn’t make sense… it’s frankly not up to scratch to say these things,” Macron, whose government faces a no confidence vote in parliament on Wednesday, told reporters on the sidelines of a visit to Saudi Arabia. “It so happens that if I am before you, it is because I was elected twice by the French people. I am extremely proud of this and I will honour this trust with all the energy that…