Biden casts inflation as global problem
President Joe Biden on Friday defended his administration’s efforts to deal with inflation, hours after a report showed a spike in prices. Biden used the Port of Los Angeles as a backdrop to highlight his fight against inflation, delivering a speech about how his team has tried to speed up the delivery of goods disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. The president argued that large price increases in the United States were part of a global problem with inflation and that Americans were in better shape than their counterparts elsewhere because of a strong jobs market and a declining budget deficit.
Report reveals rise in transgender young people in US
About 1.6 million people in the United States are transgender, and 43% of them are young adults or teenagers, according to a new report. The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4% of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3% of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5% of all adults. Those figures revealed a significant rise among younger people: The estimate of transgender people 13 to 25 nearly doubled since the researchers’ previous report, published in 2017, although the reports used different methods.
Biden and Latin American leaders announce migration deal
President Joe Biden and leaders of Latin American countries signed an agreement Friday to confront the consequences of mass migration, making pledges to allow more people fleeing political and economic strife to cross their borders. The agreement commits the United States to taking 20,000 refugees from Latin America during the next two years, a threefold increase, according to White House officials. Biden also pledged to increase the number of seasonal worker visas from Central America and Haiti by 11,500. In return, other countries agreed to step up their efforts to allow the entry of migrants before they reach the United States.
Trump hits back at daughter’s account that she accepted his election loss
Former President Donald Trump discovered a new target Friday: his elder daughter. The morning after the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol played testimony of his daughter Ivanka Trump at its hearing, Trump used his social media website to say she was “checked out” during the final days of his administration. In the testimony, Ivanka Trump said she was influenced by a 2020 statement by William Barr, then the attorney general, that there was no widespread fraud in the presidential election. She testified that she respected Barr and “accepted what he was saying.”
Major tourist draws have become virus hot spots
The three sizable urban centers in the United States where the coronavirus is spreading fastest have something in common: They are major warm-weather tourist destinations. Miami-Dade County, Florida; Honolulu County, Hawaii; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, are all averaging at least 85 new cases a day per 100,000 residents, with test positivity rates above 20%, according to a New York Times database. By contrast, the nation as a whole is averaging 34 newly reported cases a day per 100,000 residents, with a positivity rate of 13%.
Shortage of artillery ammo saps Ukrainian frontline morale
Nearly four months after Russia invaded, the Ukrainian military is running low on ammunition for its Soviet-era artillery and has not received enough supplies from allies to keep the Russians at bay, Ukrainian officials and artillery officers in the field say. The shortage puts Ukrainian troops at a growing disadvantage in the artillery-driven war of attrition in the country’s east, with Russia’s batteries firing several times as many rounds as Ukraine’s. The weapons sent by the West are not arriving fast enough to make up for Ukraine’s dwindling arsenal. The Western weapons — heavy, long-range artillery pieces and multiple-launch rocket systems — are more accurate and highly mobile.
US, Chinese defense officials meet in bid to cool regional tensions
In their first face-to-face talks, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe warned each other about risky moves over the disputed island of Taiwan, even as they sought to strengthen guardrails to prevent regional tensions from escalating. Their meeting, on Friday in Singapore, was only their second bilateral encounter, following a phone call in April, despite the increasing rivalry between the two countries and worries that miscalculation might spiral into crisis. Austin “underscored the importance of the People’s Liberation Army engaging in substantive dialogue on improving crisis communications and reducing strategic risk,” the Pentagon said in a statement after the meeting.
Some 20 million watch primetime hearing of House 1/6 panel
An estimated 20 million people watched Thursday night’s hearing of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The figures released Friday by the Nielsen Company include viewers from 12 television networks that aired the rare primetime hearing. They do not include online viewers or those who watched on PBS. By comparison, the opening day of each of the Trump impeachment trials drew about 11 million viewers. Fox News, which did not air the hearings, drew nearly 3 million viewers during the same timespan.
Judge blocks Texas investigating families of trans youth
A Texas judge has temporarily blocked the state from investigating families of transgender children who have received gender confirming care. The judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order halting the state’s investigations of three families who sued. The order also prevents the state from opening any similar investigations against members of the LGBTQ advocacy group PFLAG Inc. The ruling comes about a month after the Texas Supreme Court allowed the state to investigate parents of transgender youth for child abuse while blocking the investigation of one family that had sued.
White supremacists are riling up thousands on social media
White nationalists and supremacists are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok. The accounts are using coded hashtags and innuendo to rile up thousands of followers on divisive issues like abortion and recent mass shootings. Those are the issues the department of Homeland Security warned Tuesday might drive some extremists to violently attack public places across the U.S. The heightened concern comes just weeks after a white 18-year-old who claims he was radicalized on internet chatrooms entered a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, with the goal of killing Black patrons. He gunned down 10.
New York’s lawsuit against NRA can move forward, judge rules
A New York judge says the state attorney general’s lawsuit against the National Rifle Association is no mere “witch hunt.” A decision issued Friday dismisses the gun rights advocacy group’s claims that the case is a political vendetta. The ruling means the legal fight can continue. Attorney General Letitia James’ 2020 lawsuit accused top NRA executives of financial improprieties. The NRA alleged in a court filing last year that James was retaliating against the group because of its views. Manhattan Judge Joel Cohen says that James’ investigation was prompted by reports of serious misconduct and cannot be written off as a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
By wire sources
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