Month: December 2020

The dollar was set to end 2020 Thursday around 2-1/2-year lows, allowing currencies from the euro to Chinese yuan to strengthen, while holiday-thinned euro zone bond yields were mostly steady after dropping 30-100 basis points over the year.
 
The prospect of a brighter 2021 has lessened the lure of the safe-haven dollar, while burnishing the attraction of assets overseas, especially in emerging markets.
 
News that British companies would be allowed another three-month transition period for swaps trading on EU platforms, averting the threat of disruptions next week, pressured the greenback further by sending sterling to a new May 2018 high.
 
This week’s data also showed the U.S. trade account hemorrhaging dollars as the goods deficit hit a record $84.8 billion in November. The current account gap also widened to a 12-year high in the third quarter.
 
“I expect the dollar to depreciate further over the next few years as the Fed keeps rates at zero whilst maintaining its bloated balance sheet,” Kevin Boscher, chief investment officer at asset manager Ravenscroft told clients.
 
“The magnitude of the twin-deficits dwarfs any other major economy,” he noted.
 
Against a currency basket, the dollar is around 89.56, just off April 2018 lows of 89.515 for a 2020 loss of 7.2%. A fall past 88.25 will take it all the way to 2014 troughs.
 
The greenback’s weakness boosted the euro above $1.23, the highest since April 2018, with a gain of almost 10% for the year.
 
Against the yuan, the dollar breached 6.4900 for the first time since mid-2018, though Chinese banks were later reported to be buying dollars to limit the drop.
 
Sterling rose as far as $1.3686, while against the euro it rallied 0.6% to a high of 89.76 pence.
 
On sovereign bonds, borrowing costs inched lower in thin liquidity, with this year’s top performer, Italy, seeing 10-year yields slip one basis point to about 0.51%.
 
They started the year at almost 1.5%, only to drop steadily after the ECB’s stimulus explosion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Spanish and Portuguese 10-year yields hovered above 0%, down some 50 bps on the year. Even German yields, already negative back in January, fell around 30 bps.
 
After bumper 2020 returns – 4%-5% on 10-year German, Spanish and Portuguese debt, and over 8% on their Italian and U.S. equivalents – yields could grind gradually higher next year. Yet the improving growth picture should be broadly offset by central bank buying.
 
“Financial repression is very much intact and bond yields will be kept low across the maturity range in order to force investors further up the risk scale in a search for yield,” Boscher added.
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Another 787,000 U.S. workers filed for unemployment compensation last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday, as the coronavirus crisis continues to stress the American labor market nine months after the pandemic swept into the country.The latest weekly total was 19,000 fewer than the revised seasonally adjusted figure from the week before but consistent with the number of claims over recent months.The recent weekly figures are well below the 6.9 million record number of claims filed in late March as the pandemic took hold in the U.S. but remain above the highest pre-pandemic level in records going back to the 1960s.Nearly 10 million of the 22 million workers who lost jobs remain unemployed in the U.S. The jobless rate was 6.7% in November and many economists say the figure could remain elevated for months. Hiring in November slowed for a fifth straight month, with employers adding the fewest jobs since April.  803K File for Unemployment Benefits, Keeping US Claims Historically High Claims were lower than last week as coronavirus crisis continues to weaken American labor market U.S. employers have called back millions of workers who were laid off during business shutdowns earlier this year, yet some hard-hit businesses have been slow to ramp up their operations again or have closed permanently, leaving workers idled or searching for new employment as coronavirus cases are surging by tens of thousands a day.Some state and municipal officials have imposed new restrictions on businesses, forcing owners to once again lay off workers.  However, unemployed workers in the U.S. are in line soon to get some financial relief.    President Donald Trump last Sunday signed into law a $900 billion coronavirus relief deal that includes $300-a-week federal unemployment benefits for the next 11 weeks on top of less generous state jobless benefits.President-elect Joe Biden, who is set to be inaugurated January 20, has called the aid package “a down payment” and says he will propose more spending when he takes office.But it took months for lawmakers and the White House to agree on how much money to spend in the relief deal Trump approved and to decide who would get it, an indication that even more assistance Biden wants would be difficult to negotiate.The aid pact Trump signed includes $600 payments to more than 80% of adult Americans, excluding the biggest wage earners. Trump has called for increasing the amount to $2,000. While the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives quickly approved the Republican president’s request, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, balked at more spending and the possibility of the extra stipend appears doomed.While the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, has regained strength since the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic, growth has slowed in the last three months of 2020. The U.S. has now recorded 342,000 coronavirus deaths and 19.7 million infections, both figures more than in any other country, according to Johns Hopkins University.Economists, meanwhile, expect the U.S. economy’s recovery to gain momentum in the second half of 2021, after passage of the latest stimulus package and as millions of people are eventually inoculated against the disease.More than 2 million Americans have been vaccinated so far, but the figure is far short of the 20 million that the Trump administration predicted would get the shots by the end of December.
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Health officials in the U.S. state of California said a patient there has been infected with a coronavirus variant first detected in Britain, and that it is likely more cases will be identified in the United States.California is the second state with the COVID-19 variant strain, following a case in Colorado earlier this week.As was true with the Colorado case, the California Department of Public Health said the person infected there also had no known travel history.California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly called the development “concerning” and stressed the importance of known methods of preventing coronavirus spread, such as wearing masks, social distancing, staying home and avoiding travel.”It appears that this particular mutation does make the virus better at transmitting from one person to another,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease specialist.During an online discussion Wednesday with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Fauci said virus mutations are normal, and that he was “not surprised” additional cases of the COVID-19 variant would be found in the country.He also said the variant is not believed to cause more severe illness than earlier forms, and that vaccines already being deployed should be just as effective against it.The United States has begun vaccinations of frontline health care workers and high-risk populations such as those living in nursing homes using two vaccines given emergency use authorization.The vaccines will then be made available to other groups in the coming months.Fauci said if the vaccination program progresses as it should through May, June and July, then by early fall there will be “enough good herd immunity to be able to really get back to some strong semblance of normality – schools, theaters, sports events, restaurants.”The United States has recorded 342,000 COVID-19 deaths, including more than 3,700 on Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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Two crucial Senate runoff elections will be held in the southern state of Georgia next week, with inflammatory accusations still circulating about the state’s handling of last month’s presidential election. As Mike O’Sullivan reports, the rhetoric about election fraud has reached dangerous levels, casting a cloud over the Jan. 5 runoffs.
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Does it spread more easily? Make people sicker? Mean that treatments and vaccines won’t work? Questions are multiplying as fast as new variants of the coronavirus, especially the one moving through England and now popping up in the U.S. and other countries.Scientists say there is reason for concern and more to learn but that the new variants should not cause alarm.Worry has been growing since before Christmas, when Britain’s prime minister said the coronavirus variant seemed to spread more easily than earlier ones and was moving rapidly through England. On Tuesday, Colorado health officials said they had found it there. And on Wednesday, California officials reported a case.Here are some questions and answers on what’s known about the virus so far.Q: Where did this new variant come from?A: New variants have been seen almost since the virus was first detected in China nearly a year ago. Viruses often mutate, or develop small changes, as they reproduce and move through a population.Most changes are trivial. “It’s the change of one or two letters in the genetic alphabet that doesn’t make much difference in the ability to cause disease,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist who directs a global health program at Boston College.A more concerning situation is when a virus mutates by changing the proteins on its surface to help it escape from drugs or the immune system, or if it acquires a lot of changes that make it very different from previous versions.Q: How does one variant become dominant?A: That can happen if one variant takes hold and starts spreading in an area, or because “super spreader” events helped it become established.It also can happen if a mutation gives a new variant an advantage, such as helping it spread more easily than other ones that are circulating.Scientists are still working to confirm whether the variant in England spreads more easily, but they are finding some evidence that it does. The variant “out-competes the other strains and moves faster and infects more people, so it wins the race,” Landrigan said.The British variant was first detected in September, WHO officials said. A new South African variant also has emerged.Q: What’s worrisome about the British variant?A: It has many mutations — nearly two dozen — and eight are on the spike protein that the virus uses to attach to and infect cells. The spike is what vaccines and antibody drugs target.Dr. Ravi Gupta, a virus expert at the University of Cambridge in England, said modeling studies suggest it may be up to two times more infectious than the version that’s been most common in England so far. He and other researchers posted a report of it on a website scientists use to quickly share developments, but it has not been formally reviewed or published in a journal.Q: Does it make people sicker or more likely to die?A: “There’s no indication that either of those is true, but clearly those are two issues we’ve got to watch,” Landrigan said. As more patients get infected with the new variant, “they’ll know fairly soon if the new strain makes people sicker.”A WHO outbreak expert, Maria Van Kerkhove, said that “the information that we have so far is that there isn’t a change” in the kind of illness or its severity.Q: What do the mutations mean for treatments?A: A couple of cases in England raise concern that the mutations in some of the emerging new variants could hurt the potency of drugs that supply antibodies to block the virus from infecting cells.Studies on antibody response are under way, Van Kerkhove said.One drugmaker, Eli Lilly, said that tests in its lab suggest that its drug remains fully active.Q: What about vaccines?A: Scientists believe current vaccines will still be effective against the variant, but they are working to confirm that. On Wednesday, British officials reiterated that there is no data suggesting the new variant hurts the effectiveness of the available vaccines.Vaccines induce broad immune system responses besides just prompting the immune system to make antibodies to the virus, so they are expected to still work, several scientists said.Q: What can I do to reduce my risk?A: Follow the advice to wear a mask, wash your hands often, maintain social distance and avoid crowds, public health experts say.”The bottom line is we need to suppress transmission” of the coronavirus, said the WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.”The more we allow it to spread, the more mutations will happen.”  
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U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday accused Ukrainian tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky and another Ukrainian businessman of using misappropriated funds to buy real estate in Ohio, following earlier similar U.S. allegations involving property in Kentucky and Texas.Kolomoisky, one of the most prominent tycoons in Ukraine and regarded as a key political backer of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had denied the previous allegations. Bruce Marks, a U.S. lawyer who represents Kolomoisky, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest complaint.Representatives for the other businessman, Gennadiy Boholiubov, could not be immediately reached for comment. He has not previously commented on the matter.In a statement, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged the two men had used misappropriated funds from Ukraine-based PrivatBank to buy commercial real estate in Ohio and that the U.S. was seeing its forfeiture.U.S. prosecutors said that between 2008 and 2016, Kolomoisky and Boholiubov obtained fraudulent loans and lines of credit, some of whose proceeds they laundered through shell company accounts at PrivatBank’s Cyprus office before transferring the money to the United States.Altogether, the properties in the three U.S. states are worth more than $60 million, the Justice Department said. 
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Two U.S. warships sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Thursday, the U.S. Navy said, the second such mission this month and coming almost two weeks after a Chinese aircraft carrier group used the same waterway.China, which claims democratically run Taiwan as its own territory, has been angered by stepped-up U.S. support for the island, including arms sales and sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait, further souring Beijing-Washington relations.The U.S. Navy said the guided missile destroyers USS John S. McCain and USS Curtis Wilbur had “conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit Dec. 31 in accordance with international law.””The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows.”This is the 13th sailing through the strait by the U.S. Navy this year.Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the ships had sailed in a northerly direction through the strait on what it termed an “ordinary mission.” Taiwan’s armed forces monitored the sailing and the situation is “as normal,” it added.China’s Defense Ministry issued no immediate response.China’s military said it had tailed the last U.S. warship to pass through the Taiwan Strait on Dec. 19, and denounced the mission.The day after that trip, Taiwan’s navy and air force deployed as a Chinese aircraft carrier group led by the country’s newest carrier, the Shandong, sailed through the Taiwan Strait.China said the group was on its way to routine drills in the disputed South China Sea.
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Thirty-five years after he was convicted in the United States of spying for Israel, former U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard arrived Wednesday in Tel Aviv with his wife Esther. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met him at the plane with his new Israeli identity card. Pollard, who served 30 years in a U.S. prison, was on parole for five years before the U.S. allowed him to leave the country.
 US Allows Convicted Spy Pollard to Move to Israel Jonathan Pollard served 30 years for giving away classified US documents
Jonathan and Esther Pollard arrived in Tel Aviv on a private plane owned by American billionaire Sheldon Adelson. After deplaning, Pollard knelt and kissed the ground, and he helped his wife, who is currently undergoing cancer treatment, so she could do the same.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was emotional as he greeted Pollard, telling them, “You are home.”The prime minister said it was an emotional moment for him and then said a blessing thanking God, who frees prisoners. Pollard said he was ecstatic to be in Israel and thanked Netanyahu.He said he and his wife are proud of Israel and hope to quickly become productive citizens and get on with their lives. Pollard said it is a wonderful country with a tremendous future. He said it is the future of the Jewish people and he and his wife are not going anywhere.”Pollard was arrested in the United States in 1985 for giving Israel hundreds of top secret documents that he had access to as a U.S. naval intelligence specialist. According to a CIA report, most of the documents dealt with Arab states in the Middle East and the military support they received from what was then the Soviet Union. The CIA report concluded that Pollard had “put at risk important U.S. intelligence and foreign policy interests.”Many Israelis said that Pollard had been given a harsher sentence for spying for an ally, Israel, than others who had spied for the Soviet Union. Pollard said he did it to support Israel, but he was also paid for the information.He served 30 years of a life sentence before being released on parole. For five years he had to wear an ankle monitor and was not allowed to leave the U.S. His parole ended a month ago.In Israel, many welcomed his release. Pollard and his wife went to a Jerusalem apartment where they will quarantine for two weeks, according to current rules in Israel. 
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Citing the alleged use of forced labor, the United States announced it has banned the import of palm oil from the Malaysian company Sime Darby Plantation Berhad.U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday released a statement saying it has issued a “withhold release order,” allowing it to impound shipments of Sime Darby’ Plantation’s palm oil products made with forced labor.“This Withhold Release Order demonstrates how essential it is for Americans to research the origins of the everyday products that they purchase,” said CBP Acting Commissioner Mark A. Morgan in the statement. “American consumers can help end modern slavery by choosing to buy products they know are ethically and humanely sourced.”Malaysia Palm Oil Producer Vows to Clear Name after US Ban US banned imports of its palm oil over allegations of forced labor and other abuses 
Palm oil is used in many products from food to cosmetics to biodiesel. Indonesia and Malaysia are principal exporters of palm oil, the production of which has been blamed for deforestation. The U.S. imported approximately $410 million of crude palm oil from Malaysia in fiscal year 2020, CNN reported.
 
“Palm oil is an ingredient in a lot of products that American consumers buy and use. And I think it’s important for manufacturers and importers to be aware of where they’re at higher risk of forced labor, and to demand that their suppliers are adhering to protecting human rights of their workers,” Ana Hinojosa, director of CBP’s Trade Remedy Law Enforcement Directorate, told CNN.
 
Sime Darby Plantation did not immediately respond to the ban announcement.
 
It is the third Malaysian company this year to be slapped with an import ban over allegations of using forced labor.
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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging his colleagues to override President Donald Trump’s veto of a $740 billion defense spending measure in a vote expected this week.    “President Trump has rightly noted this year’s defense bill doesn’t contain every provision that we Republicans would have wanted. I’m confident our Democratic colleagues feel the same way,” McConnell said Tuesday. “But that is the case every year. And yet, for 59 consecutive years and counting, Washington has put our differences aside, found common ground, and passed the annual defense bill.”    The Senate approved the NDAA in an 84-13 vote earlier this month, far more than the two-thirds vote needed to override a veto.  After Trump’s veto, the House of Representatives responded with an overwhelming vote to override it on Monday.  McConnell was hoping to hold the Senate vote on Wednesday. However liberal senators led by Bernie Sanders are blocking action on the defense bill until the Senate votes on a proposal to increase coronavirus relief payments to Americans.  If the Senate approves the override, it would be the first time Congress has gone against a Trump veto during his four years in office. Trump on Tuesday called the defense legislation a “disgraceful act of cowardice and total submission by weak people to Big Tech. Negotiate a better Bill, or get better leaders, NOW! Senate should not approve NDAA until fixed!!!″ The president has criticized the bill on several fronts, including saying it should include the repeal of a provision that protects social media companies from liability over content their users post. Trump has voiced his displeasure that Twitter has frequently labeled his claims that he was defrauded of re-election as “disputed.” He also said the bill restricted his ability to bring U.S. troops home from “foreign lands who do NOTHING for us.”    And Trump has demanded the removal of language that allows the renaming of U.S. military bases that honor leaders of the Confederacy, which seceded from the United States in the early 1860s, before collapsing at the end of the Civil War in 1865.McConnell introduced a measure Tuesday that ties together some of Trump’s complaints about the defense bill and the president’s demand for higher coronavirus pandemic relief payments that were part of a massive funding bill signed Sunday. Trump had harshly criticized that bill as well, before relenting while he demanded the $600 payments be increased. Democrats have long supported the higher payments, and the Democrat-majority House quickly approved them. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer objected to McConnell’s attempt to tie the stimulus money to Trump’s demands on social media companies and allegations of election fraud. “Senator McConnell knows how to make $2,000 survival checks reality and he knows how to kill them,” Schumer said Tuesday.  “If Sen. McConnell tries loading up the bipartisan House-passed CASH Act with unrelated, partisan provisions that will do absolutely nothing to help struggling families across the country, it will not pass the House and cannot become law – any move like this by Sen. McConnell would be a blatant attempt to deprive Americans of a $2,000 survival check.” McConnell blocked Schumer’s attempt Tuesday to force an immediate up-or-down vote on the stand-alone measure authorizing the $2,000 payments. How the Republican-majority Senate will proceed with the two proposals is not clear. Some Republicans have expressed support for the bigger coronavirus payments to those with annual family incomes of up to $150,000, comprising about 81% of all U.S. households. Among the Republican proponents are Georgia’s two embattled senators — David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — who are facing run-off elections against Democratic challengers next week who also favor the bigger payments.   But some Republicans have voiced opposition, saying the bigger payments would be too costly and would not necessarily boost the U.S. economy, which has been staggered by the coronavirus pandemic. 
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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and outgoing President Donald Trump are all planning to campaign in the southern state of Georgia in the final two days ahead of next Tuesday’s crucial Senate runoff elections. Harris is staging a rally Sunday in the Atlantic coastal city of Savannah for the Democratic contenders, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Baptist minister, who is opposing incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, and Jon Ossoff, a television documentary producer who is running against Republican Senator David Perdue. Biden and Trump both have announced rallies for Monday, the day before the Tuesday in-person voting. FILE – Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., speaks as President Donald Trump and Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., listen at a campaign rally at Valdosta Regional Airport in Georgia, Dec. 5, 2020.Biden will rally with the two Democrats in Georgia’s biggest city, Atlanta, while Trump is stumping for Loeffler and Perdue farther north in Whitfield County at the Dalton Regional Airport. Vice President Mike Pence has previously campaigned in the state for the two Republicans, as have two of Trump’s adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. The two runoff elections became necessary because none of the four candidates won a majority in their respective November 3 elections, although Perdue led Ossoff in their two-man race and Warnock topped Loeffler in a 10-candidate field. The latest polling shows both contests too close to suggest who might win either vote. The outcome holds importance in Washington, with political control of the Senate at stake during the first two years of Biden’s presidency after he is inaugurated January 20. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – U.S. President-elect Joe Biden stands between Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ahead of their January 5 runoff elections, at Pullman Yard in Atlanta, Georgia, Dec. 15, 2020.But if both Warnock and Ossoff were to win, there would be a 50-50, Democratic-Republican split in the Senate, giving Harris the opportunity to break tie votes in favor of the Democrats in organizing the committees and controlling the legislative calendar. Republican control would complicate passage of Biden’s legislative agenda over the next two years, likely forcing extensive negotiations on such controversial issues as extending health care benefits, setting immigration controls and establishing climate regulations. Democratic control, if the party’s members vote as a bloc, could ease the path for Biden’s initiatives. Georgia, once a reliable Republican stronghold, narrowly swung to Biden over Trump in the November 3 election by just under 12,000 votes out of the 5 million cast. Despite Trump’s protests that election fraud cost him the state’s 16 electoral votes in the Electoral College that determines the outcome of U.S. presidential elections, a first count of the vote and then two recounts all showed Biden the winner. Biden was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in 28 years, giving the party the hope that Warnock and Ossoff could also win their contests. Voter turnout for the runoffs is expected to be heavy, with more than 2.3 million people having already cast early ballots — 1.5 million in person and 800,000 by mail. Another 500,000 voters have requested mail-in ballots. But the vote count so far is not known since early ballots can only be tallied starting Tuesday. Turnout so far has been highest in some of the heavily populated areas around Atlanta that handed Biden his narrow victory in the state. 
 
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Countries in Southeast Asia, a growing region of more than 650 million people, stand to make lasting deals with the United States and keep China at bay if President-elect Joe Biden works with their prized cross-border dialogue process, analysts in the region believe.Biden’s expected willingness to strengthen a U.S. role in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc will increase confidence among the Asian leaders that Washington will act predictably as a bulwark against China — neither bowing to it nor over-provoking it — as well as a potential source of trade deals, analysts say.Aide John McEntee directs President Donald Trump as he participates in the U.S.-ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines Nov. 13, 2017.Washington worries that its old Cold War foe Beijing is gaining too much control over a disputed Asian sea despite rival claims by four association members — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. U.S. President Donald Trump’s government sends naval ships to the sea as warnings while helping to arm and train militaries in states near China.But Trump’s hands-off approach to ASEAN, a 53-year-old process trusted around Southeast Asia, has given China an opening to influence those governments, said Carl Thayer, University of New South Wales emeritus professor.China is exerting “soft power” in Southeast Asia on issues such as post-pandemic economic relief and climate control, Thayer said. Beijing sends officials to ASEAN events and makes proposals there.“Any multilateral group, ASEAN in particular, needs the full U.S. participation as a counterweight to China,” Thayer said. “Without it, the other members of that multilateral group are put in a position of relative weakness.”U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, center, poses for a group photo with ASEAN leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Singapore, Nov. 15, 2018.Trump’s approach to Asian leaders has come off as “unsettling,” especially when he asked ally South Korea in 2017 to pay for a U.S. military installation there, said Manu Bhaskaran, CEO of the Singapore-based research firm Centennial Asia Advisors. The president’s meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were “sudden decisions” too, Bhaskaran wrote in a November 16 commentary for The Edge Malaysia Weekly news website.Trump attended ASEAN events only in 2017, sending other officials in 2018 and 2019. He spurned multi-country free trade and upset the World Trade Organization this year over a tariff levy against China. Trump’s government withdrew this year from the World Health Organization.Biden is expected to plug back into multilateral organizations because his Democratic Party has a record of doing diplomacy that way, said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school.“At least there’s a framework that the U.S. will work with ASEAN, not go it alone,” Araral said. “It’s a short-term relief, because it reduces the friction and uncertainty and the brinksmanship. At least it buys ASEAN some time, some honeymoon period between U.S.-China.”A screen grab taken from Vietnam Host Broadcaster’s Nov. 14, 2020 live video shows U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, center, addressing ASEAN member states’ representatives.The United States must “engage” ASEAN to resist China as well, said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation in Metro Manila. Despite resentment of China for taking control of islets in the disputed South China sea and passing ships near other countries’ coastlines, Southeast Asian governments look to the Asian superpower for trade and investment.On paper ASEAN sides neither with China nor the United States, but many of its members are decades-old American allies.A more engaged United States could start talks with ASEAN on a trade deal, experts point out. “ASEAN would be receptive to whatever economic overtures that the U.S. would be coming up with,” Rabena said.China and ASEAN, a growing consumer market, agreed in 2009 to form a free trade area. Much of Southeast Asia depends on export manufacturing and values the large U.S. market.As a president-elect “committed to institutional processes”, Biden will probably make policy decisions based on “careful deliberations using expert knowledge”, Bhaskaran writes.Biden will probably hear out the views of Asian leaders too, the CEO adds. The new U.S. government “can take a more proactive step in engaging ASEAN as a whole more in terms of its Indo-Pacific and various other strategies,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. 
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The U.S. Attorney General said Tuesday the United States “stands ready” to try a militant convicted of murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl whose release was ordered by a Pakistani court. The decision by Sindh High Court to release the accused comes months after it sparked outrage for overturning the murder conviction and death sentence of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and acquitted three other men connected to the case. The four are being held under the emergency orders of the local government while an ongoing appeal against their acquittals is heard in the Supreme Court, but defense lawyers argued against their continued detention in the south of the country. “We remain grateful for the Pakistani government’s actions to appeal such rulings to ensure that (Sheikh) and his co-defendants are held accountable,” acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen said in a statement, calling the acquittals “an affront to terrorism victims everywhere.” FILE – Pakistani police escort Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted in the 2002 killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl, as he exits a court in Karachi, Pakistan, March 29, 2002.”If, however, those efforts do not succeed, the United States stands ready to take custody of Omar Sheikh to stand trial here,” the statement said. “We cannot allow him to evade justice for his role in Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder.” Sheikh, a British-born jihadist who once studied at the London School of Economics and had been involved in previous kidnappings of foreigners, was arrested days after Pearl’s abduction and later sentenced to death by hanging. In January 2011, a report released by the Pearl Project at Georgetown University following an investigation into his death made chilling revelations and said that the wrong men had been convicted for Pearl’s murder. The investigation, led by Pearl’s friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown University professor, claimed the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, not Sheikh. Pearl was South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal when he was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story about Islamist militants.  A graphic video showing his decapitation was delivered to the U.S. consulate nearly a month later.  
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President-elect Joe Biden said he plans to be aggressive in fighting COVID-19 upon taking office, pushing for 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days. Biden also criticized the outgoing administration Tuesday, saying it was falling short in needed vaccinations. “The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is falling far behind,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. He vowed “to move Heaven and Earth to get us going in the right direction” once he takes office on January 20. President-elect Joe Biden speaks at The Queen theater, in Wilmington, Del., Dec. 29, 2020.Biden, after being briefed by experts, said he would undertake the “greatest operational challenge we’ve ever faced as a nation” to inoculate against the coronavirus, which has claimed more than 1.7 million lives globally. COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has killed more than 335,000 Americans and infected 19.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. The Trump administration’s Operation Warp Drive had predicted that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of December. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said as of Tuesday, with three days left in 2020, about 2.1 million had received the first shot of the two-shot vaccine. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert and Biden’s chief medical adviser, told CNN, “We certainly are not at the numbers that we wanted to be at the end of December. We are below where we want to be.” EMT Christian Ventura receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the Chester County Government Services Center, in West Chester, Pa., Dec. 29, 2020.President-elect Biden said with the availability of the vaccine, he was confident the country could return to normality, but not immediately, in 2021. “The next few weeks and months are going to be very tough — a very tough period for our nation, maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic,” Biden said. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that with tens of thousands of new coronavirus cases being recorded in the United States every day, the disease “has just gotten out of control in many respects.” He said January’s caseload could exceed that of December. “You just have to assume it’s going to get worse,” Fauci said, because millions of Americans traveled to visit relatives and friends over the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays, quite likely spreading the virus. Harris vaccinatedEarlier Tuesday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, received their first doses of the coronavirus vaccine. Harris pulled up the left sleeve of her blouse at a community health care center in Washington and told a nurse, “OK, let’s do it.” Harris, who is Black and Indian American, received the first of her two required shots at a facility that primarily serves African Americans, a televised reminder to minorities, who have been disproportionately hard hit by the coronavirus, to get vaccinated in the coming months. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from nurse Patricia Cummings, at United Medical Center in southeast Washington, Dec. 29, 2020.Biden received his first vaccination shot last week. President Donald Trump has been advised to postpone getting vaccinated because he was treated with monoclonal antibodies during his recent hospitalization with COVID-19. Fauci said Biden, by “showing leadership from the top,” could make an impact in fighting the virus — a comment that appeared to be implicit criticism of outgoing Trump, who has often belittled the impact of the virus and said little publicly about it since losing reelection to Biden last month.  “What he’s saying is that let’s take at least 100 days and everybody, every single person put aside this nonsense of making masks be a political statement or not,” Fauci said of Biden. “We know what works. We know social distancing works. We know avoiding congregant settings works. For goodness sakes, let’s all do it, and you will see that curve will come down.”  Biden has pledged to distribute 100 million vaccine shots in his first 100 days in office and said he wants to secure money for measures to safely open as many schools as possible. He said he will sign an executive order requiring masks to be worn on federal property.  New variantAlso, the Mountain state of Colorado reported the first U.S. case of the COVID-19 variant that had been found in Britain, state Governor Jared Polis said Tuesday. A state health official said a man in his 20s, who had no travel history, tested positive for the virus and was being isolated southeast of Denver, the state capital. British scientists said the new COVID-19 variant is more contagious than previously identified strains of the coronavirus. The discovery of the new variant led the CDC to issue new rules on Christmas Day for travelers arriving to the U.S. from Britain, requiring they show proof of a negative COVID-19 test. Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
 
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Minneapolis’ mayor and police chief on Tuesday announced changes in the city’s disciplinary processes for police officers in an effort to make it easier to hold them accountable for bad behavior. Mayor Jacob Frey and Chief Medaria Arradondo, in their latest initiative to change department practices in the wake of George Floyd’s death, said the city attorney’s office would be more deeply involved in misconduct investigations as soon as they begin, helping to guide them and to analyze evidence.  Frey said more than 50% of all disciplinary cases are either reduced or overturned, with arbitrators typically citing due process concerns such as faulty investigation. He called that unacceptable. “We want to take every reason that stems from City Hall for overturning a disciplinary decision off the table,” Frey said. The city attorney’s office will also offer the chief legal advice on disciplinary decisions, and work with the department’s training unit to make sure it is “fostering a culture of accountability and professionalism.”  Conflicting rolesMichelle Gross, of Communities United Against Police Brutality, was skeptical that the newest change would make much difference. She suggested the city’s need to minimize exposure to civil litigation over an officer’s actions would be a strong disincentive to the city attorney’s office in investing an allegation of misconduct. “A lot’s going to depend on whether they can figure out their conflicting roles,” she said. City Attorney Jim Rowader rejected that, saying his office “has a fidelity to truth and to the integrity of our institutions, not to individual officers.” The head of the city’s police union didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Tracy Fussy, the city’s mitigation manager, said the new initiative should cut through some of the bureaucracy by having “someone consistently birddog the process” and by putting the emphasis on the quality, rather than speed, of an investigation. “When misconduct goes unchecked, everybody suffers,” Fussy said. “So let’s stop that.” Minneapolis police have come under heavy pressure to reform since Floyd’s death in May, after an officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes, ignoring his cries of distress. The officer, Derek Chauvin, and three others on the scene were fired and charged in Floyd’s death, with trial scheduled in March. Critics said Floyd’s death was just one more instance of brutality in a department long unable to change its culture. Activists have attacked a system that rarely disciplines problem officers. Chauvin had 17 complaints against him and had been disciplined only once.A Minneapolis Star Tribune analysis the month after Floyd’s death found that statewide, more than 80 police officers had fought their firings in arbitration over the past 20 years, and about half got their jobs back. The newspaper’s analysis of decisions by the state’s mediation office included 10 cases involving Minneapolis police officers, with eight of them getting their jobs back. Public safety unit rejectedIn the months since Floyd’s death, the city has struggled over how to reshape the department, with an unsuccessful push by several City Council members to do away with it entirely in favor of a new public safety unit. Frey and Arradondo, who opposed that move, have launched several initiatives since Floyd’s death. Those including limiting the use of so-called no-knock warrants, revising use-of-force policies and requiring officers to report on their attempts to de-escalate situations. The city is in the midst of negotiating a new contract with the union. Arradondo announced in June that the city was pausing negotiations for a review of ways the deal could be restructured to give more flexibility, including on how discipline is handled. Frey declined Tuesday to give an update on where those negotiations stand. The city this month announced an agreement with an outside law firm, Jones Day, for free assistance that could include involvement in the negotiations. 
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