Tag Archives: US

MNA International Desk: The United States will not take part in the launching of a global initiative on Friday to speed the development, production and distribution of drugs and vaccines against COVID-19, a spokesman for the US mission in Geneva says. “There will be no US official participation”, he said in an email reply to a query, reports Reuters. “We look forward to learning more about this initiative in support of international cooperation to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 as soon as possible,” the spokesman added. US President Donald Trump has announced a suspension of funding to the World Health ...

MNA Editorial Desk: US researchers gave the first shots in a first test of an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday, leading off a worldwide hunt for protection even as the pandemic surges. With careful jabs in the arms of four healthy volunteers, scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle began an anxiously awaited first-stage study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed in record time after the new virus exploded out of China and fanned out across the globe. “We’re team coronavirus now,” Kaiser Permanente study leader Dr Lisa Jackson said on the eve of the experiment. “Everyone wants ...

MNA International Desk: A war of words between China and the United States showed no signs of let up on Monday, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a phone call with a top Chinese diplomat expressing ‘strong US objections’ over what Washington sees as Beijing’s efforts to shift blame for the spread of the coronavirus. Ties between the world’s top two economies, already complicated due to issues including trade, intellectual property rights as well as press freedoms, have further been tested by the outbreak of coronavirus, which causes the sometimes fatal, highly contagious respiratory illness COVID-19, reports Reuters. ...

MNA International Desk: The US State Department summoned the Chinese ambassador to the United States on Friday to protest against comments by Beijing suggesting the US military might have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, as tensions between the two global powers over the outbreak intensified. David Stillwell, the top US diplomat for East Asia, delivered a very “stern representation” to China’s ambassador Cui Tiankai, a State Department official said, adding that Beijing’s envoy was “very defensive.” The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said China was seeking to deflect criticism of its role in “starting a global ...

MNA International Desk: Two more people succumbed to the novel coronavirus in Washington state, officials said on Saturday (local time), bringing the nationwide toll to 19, while the number of confirmed cases in New York rose to 89 and a cruise ship with infected passengers remained stranded outside San Francisco. More than half of all US states have reported cases of the coronavirus, which originated in China last year and causes the sometimes deadly respiratory illness COVID-19. As the outbreak takes root, daily life has become increasingly disrupted, with concerts and conferences cancelled and universities telling students to stay home ...

MNA International Desk: The Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the United States and Israel, including those relating to security, after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented by US President Donald Trump, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday. Abbas was in Cairo to address the Arab League, which backed the Palestinians in their opposition to Trump’s plan. The blueprint, endorsed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calls for the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state that excludes Jewish settlements built in occupied territory and is under near-total Israeli security control. “We’ve informed the Israeli side … that ...

MNA International Desk: President Donald Trump on Wednesday tempered days of angry rhetoric and suggested Iran was “standing down” after it fired missiles at US forces in Iraq, as both sides looked to defuse a crisis over the US killing of an Iranian general. Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to hit back after Iran’s attack on military bases housing US troops in Iraq, itself an act of retaliation for the January 03 US strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. Trump said no Americans were hurt in the overnight attacks. The Pentagon said Iran had launched ...

MNA Editorial Desk: Iran launched a missile attack on US-led forces in Iraq in the early hours of Wednesday in retaliation for the US drone strike on an Iranian commander whose killing has raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East. Tehran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles from Iranian territory against at least two Iraqi facilities hosting US-led coalition personnel at about 1:30 a.m. local time, the US military said on Tuesday. US President Donald Trump said in a tweet late on Tuesday that an assessment of casualties and damage from the strikes was under way ...

MNA Editorial Desk: US acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells and US Agency for International Development (USAID) Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick arrive in Dhaka on Tuesday to discuss bilateral, regional and global issues, including the Rohingya crisis. Though Wells and Glick are coming on the same day, they will have separate engagements here during their three-day stay, officials said.They will also visit Rohingya camps to observe the conditions of the Rohingyas and host communities during their three-day visit. Bangladesh is now hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas who have fled their homeland in Rakhine State after ...

MNA International Desk: The acting head of US Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, has resigned after six months in the post. In a tweet, President Donald Trump said Mr McAleenan wanted to spend more time with his family. He said his replacement would be named next week. Mr McAleenan, 48, is the fourth person to serve as the head of Homeland Security during Mr Trump’s tenure. He has overseen the president’s tough policies aimed at curbing immigration across the Mexican border. However, analysts have described a turbulent relationship between the two and Mr McAleenan has criticised the tone of the immigration ...

MNA International Desk: The Taliban met with a US envoy in the Pakistani capital, a Taliban official said Saturday, the first such encounter since President Donald Trump announced a month ago that a seemingly imminent peace deal to end Afghanistan’s 18-year war was dead. The official offered few details of Friday’s meeting between peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban delegation led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the movement that was ousted in 2001 by the US-led coalition. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the news media. US ...

MNA International Desk: The United States has urged Myanmar to create the conditions that would allow for “voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable” returns of the Rohingya, based on the informed consent of those who have been forcibly displaced. The US also encouraged the government of Myanmar to work with the government of Bangladesh to facilitate the use of the Burmese curriculum to teach Rohingyas in Bangladesh. This will help facilitate the reintegration of Rohingya youth who choose to return to Myanmar, according to US Department of State. The US made the fresh call while announcing more than $127 million in ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump on Monday offered an olive branch to China after days of intense feuding over trade and opened the door to diplomacy on Iran, easing tension on the last day of a strained G7 summit. The leaders of the world’s major industrialized nations, meeting in the French coastal resort of Biarritz, look set to reach an agreement on how to help fight the Amazon forest fires and try to repair the devastation. While they are not expected to leave with a more comprehensive set of agreements or even a joint communique, Trump and his ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump and top White House officials dismissed concerns that economic growth may be faltering, saying on Sunday (local time) they saw little risk of recession despite a volatile week on global bond markets, and insisting their trade war with China was doing no damage to the United States. “We’re doing tremendously well, our consumers are rich, I gave a tremendous tax cut, and they’re loaded up with money,” Trump said on Sunday. But he was less optimistic than his aides on striking a trade deal with China, saying that while he believed China was ...

MNA International Desk: The US Supreme Court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a victory by letting his administration redirect $2.5 billion in money approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the US-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding. The conservative-majority court on a 5-4 vote with the court’s liberals in dissent blocked in full a ruling by a federal judge in California barring the Republican president from spending the money on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorise the funds to be spent on the wall project fiercely opposed by ...

MNA Business Desk: Lead negotiators for China and the United States will meet in Shanghai on Tuesday for two days in the next round of trade talks, China’s commerce ministry confirmed. It would mark the first face-to-face meeting between US and Chinese trade teams since presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed at a G20 summit in Japan to revive talks to end their year-long trade war. The governments of the world’s largest economies have levied billions of dollars of tariffs on each other’s imports, disrupted global supply chains and shaken financial markets in their dispute over how China does ...

MNA Feature Desk: US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl R Miller attended a daylong series of programes at the American Center on Tuesday to mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 Moon landing. In his opening remarks, he referenced Neil Armstrong’s famous quote – “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” – to highlight the achievement as a landmark event for the humanity. Throughout the day, nearly 400 students and visitors participated in 10 programmes, including talks by Bangladeshi-American NASA engineers, female Bangladesh Air Force pilots, a visiting US science envoy, and robotics instructors, UNB reported ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump stepped up his vilification of four liberal lawmakers as un-American at a raucous rally on Wednesday, underscoring that the attacks will form a key part of his strategy for winning re-election in 2020. Despite criticism from Democrats that his comments about the four minority congresswomen are racist, Trump went on an extended diatribe about the lawmakers, saying they were welcome to leave the country if they did not like his policies on issues such as immigration and defending Israel. “So these Congresswomen, their comments are helping to fuel the rise of a dangerous, ...

MNA International Desk: The United States has announced sanctions on the Myanmar military’s Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing and other military leaders it said were responsible for extrajudicial killings of Rohingya Muslims, barring them from entry to the United States. The steps, which also covered Min Aung Hlaing’s deputy, Soe Win, and two other senior commanders and their families, are the strongest the United States has taken in response to massacres of minority Rohingyas in Myanmar, also known as Burma. It named the two others as Brigadier Generals Than Oo and Aung Aung. “We remain concerned that the Burmese government has ...

MNA International Desk: President Donald Trump said Friday that Alex Acosta, his embattled secretary of labor, will resign following controversy over his handling of a sex crimes case involving the financier, Jeffrey Epstein, when he was a prosecutor in Florida. Acosta called the president in the morning and informed him of his decision to resign, Trump said, as he left the White House for travel to Milwaukee and Cleveland, reports The New York Times. The resignation comes just two days after Acosta convened a news conference to defend his actions in the 2008 case when he was the US attorney ...

MNA Editorial Desk: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday came down heavily on US Congressman and Chairman of the Asia and Pacific Subcommittee Brad Sherman for his proposal to incorporate Rakhine State of Myanmar into Bangladesh, terming it ‘fulsome and unjust’. “Uttering such words is very much fulsome and unjust,” she said while responding to a question at a press briefing at her official residence Ganobhaban about the outcomes of her recent China visit. The Prime Minister said Bangladesh is happy with its areas of 54,000 square miles or 147,000 square kilometres. “We fully reject the proposal to include other ...

MNA International Desk: US President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to obliterate parts of Iran if it attacked “anything American,” in a new war of words with Iran which condemned fresh US sanctions on Tehran as “mentally retarded.” But Trump later left the door open for talks, saying that Iran should speak to the United States “peaceably” to ease tensions and potentially lift US economic sanctions. The US president on Monday signed an executive order imposing additional, largely symbolic, sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior figures, with punitive measures against Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif ...

MNA Culture & Entertainment Desk: Godzilla: King of the Monsters knocked Disney’s Aladdin off the top of the US box office chart at the weekend, taking an estimated $49m (£38.7m). Despite claiming the top spot, analysts described the debut of the monster remake disappointing. Costing $200m (£158m) to make, reviews have been lukewarm for the film, which stars Vera Farmiga and Kyle Chandler. Its total for the three-day weekend was far off its predecessor’s debut of $93m (£73.6m) back in 2014. The film’s plot centres around a group of eco-terrorists who steal a sonar device developed by scientist Emma (Farmiga) to ...

MNA International Desk: Half of all Americans believe that the United States will go to war with Iran “within the next few years,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll released on Tuesday amid increased tensions between the two countries. While Americans are more concerned about Iran as a security threat to the United States now than they were last year, few would be in favour of a pre-emptive attack on the Iranian military. But if Iran attacked US military forces first, four out of five believed the United States should respond militarily in a full or limited way, the ...

MNA International Desk: President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to protect US computer networks from “foreign adversaries”. He signed an executive order which effectively bars US companies from using foreign telecoms believed to pose national security risks. The order does not name any company, but is believed to target Huawei, reports BBC. The Chinese tech giant said restricting its business in the US would only hurt American consumers and companies. Several countries, led by the US, have raised concerns in recent months that Huawei products could be used by China for surveillance, allegations the company has vehemently denied. ...

MNA International Desk: A Boeing jetliner with 143 people aboard from the US outpost at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, slid off a runway into a shallow river in Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday while attempting to land at a military base there during a thunderstorm, injuring 21 people. There were no reports of fatalities or critical injuries. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter that all 21 of the injured were taken to a hospital, where they were listed in good condition. The plane, a chartered Boeing 737-800 arriving from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with 136 passengers and seven crew ...

MNA Science & Technology Desk: Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are negotiating a possible settlement that would require the company to create an independent privacy oversight committee and take other steps to safeguard users, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing a source. The steps would include appointing a federally-approved privacy official at the highest level of Facebook and creating a privacy oversight committee that may include Facebook board members, the report said. The potential agreement between the company and the FTC is in addition to the $3 billion Facebook said it would set aside last week to cover settlements ...