Aung San Suu Kyi and other Myanmar leaders detained as military imposes year-long state of emergency

Bangkok: Myanmar’s military launched a coup Monday, detaining the country’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and her top lieutenants in early morning raids and seizing power from a government established only five years ago.

Officials from the governing National League for Democracy, Suu Kyi’s party, confirmed the detentions Monday morning. Hours later, with politicians and activists alike racing to find out who had been detained, a military television network announced a one-year state of emergency with ultimate authority transferred to the army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

Mobile networks and the internet were down in major cities in Myanmar, and some local journalists went into hiding for fear that their reporting could compromise their safety. Domestic flights were suspended, and the main international airport in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, had been shuttered, according to residents.

Myanmar had been celebrated as a rare case in which generals willingly handed over some power to civilians, honoring 2015 election results that ushered into office the National League for Democracy.

The stalwarts of that party had spent years in jail for their political opposition to the military. Suu Kyi, the political party’s patron saint, spent 15 years under house arrest and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her non-violent resistance to the junta that locked her up.

But the army, led by Min Aung Hlaing, has maintained important levers of power in the country, and the detention of the top government leaders, along with activists and other veteran politicians, Monday appeared to prove the lie in its commitment to democracy.

In addition to Suu Kyi, others who were reported to have been detained by their family, friends and colleagues included President U Win Myint, Cabinet ministers, the chief ministers of several regions, opposition politicians, writers and activists.

“The doors just opened to a different, almost certainly darker future,” said Thant Myint-U, a historian of Myanmar who has written several books about the country. “Myanmar is a country already at war with itself, awash in weapons, with millions barely able to feed themselves, deeply divided along religious and ethnic lines.”

“That it was able to make any progress this past decade toward democracy was a near miracle,” he said. “I’m not sure anyone will be able to control what comes next.”

In a statement late Sunday in Washington, Antony J Blinken, the secretary of state, said that the Biden administration expressed “grave concern and alarm” over the military’s escalation and called on officials to release government and civil society leaders.

“The United States stands with the people of Burma in their aspirations for democracy, freedom, peace, and development,” Blinken said, referring to the country by its former name. “The military must reverse these actions immediately.”

As it began its political evolution, Myanmar was lauded by western governments, including the Barack Obama administration, as a democratic beacon in a world where authoritarianism was on the rise. But the political transition in the Southeast Asian nation was never quite as smooth or as significant as the political fairy tale made it out to be.

The army, which began a political transition toward what it called, confusingly, “discipline-flourishing democracy” in 2011, made sure to keep significant power for itself. One-quarter of Parliament is filled by men in military uniforms. Key ministries are under army control. And in the chaotic years of early democratisation, fire sales of state assets often ended up with military companies or their proxies capturing the choicest prizes.

In 2017, the military stepped up its brutal campaign against the Rohingya, compelling 750,000 members of the Muslim ethnic minority to flee to neighboring Bangladesh in one of the largest global outpourings of refugees in a generation. United Nations officials have said the mass burnings of Rohingya villages, complete with systematic executions and rape, were carried out with genocidal intent.

President Joe Biden’s administration is reviewing whether the United States will officially label the campaign against the Rohingya genocide. Western nations, including the United States, have already slapped financial sanctions on some high-ranking officers implicated in the violence against the Rohingya, including Min Aung Hlaing himself.

The latest turmoil was ostensibly provoked by concerns about fraud in the November elections, which delivered an even bigger landslide to the National League for Democracy than the party enjoyed five years earlier. The governing party secured 396 out of 476 seats in Parliament, while the military’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, managed just 33.

The Union Solidarity and Development Party cried foul, as did political parties representing hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities who were disenfranchised shortly before the vote because the areas where they lived were supposedly too gripped by strife for elections to take place. Rohingya Muslims were also unable to cast their ballots.

But few in Myanmar believed that the detentions Monday, which netted top National League for Democracy officials, were made only over concerns over electoral fraud. Worries that the military might intervene started in October, when the vote was canceled in some of the ethnic minority areas.

“The ominous warning signs had been in plain sight all along,” said U Khin Zaw Win, who runs a policy think tank in Yangon, the commercial capital of Myanmar.

A former political prisoner, Khin Zaw Win had been warning of a possible putsch for months. Even as the military stepped up its complaints against the National League for Democracy, the army’s negotiations with the civilian government languished.

“I would even say this is one coup that could have been averted politically,” Khin Zaw Win said, referring to failed talks between the military and civilian leaders after the November elections. “This doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s a case of not if, but when.”

The military's reassertion of authority will prolong the power of Min Aung Hlaing, who is supposed to age out as army chief this summer. His patronage network, centred on lucrative family businesses, could well have been undermined by his retirement, especially had he not been able to secure a clean exit.

The coup came just two days after António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, warned against any provocations. In a statement late Sunday, a spokesman for Guterres expressed “grave concern regarding the declaration of the transfer of all legislative, executive and judicial powers to the military.”

“These developments represent a serious blow to democratic reforms in Myanmar,” the statement added.

In recent years, Suu Kyi, 75, once celebrated as an international champion of human rights for her campaign of conscience against the junta while under house arrest, emerged as one of the military’s biggest public defenders. Despite a mountain of evidence against the military, she has publicly rejected accusations that the security forces waged a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.

But with her national popularity enduring, and her party receiving another electoral mandate, the generals began visibly losing patience with the facade of civilian rule that they had designed.

Last week, an army spokesperson refused to rule out the possibility of a coup, and Min Aung Hlaing said that the Constitution could be scrapped if the law was broken. Armoured vehicles appeared on the streets of two cities, spooking residents unused to seeing such firepower cruising through urban centres.

On Saturday, the military appeared to step back, releasing a statement saying that as an armed organisation, it was bound by the law, including the Constitution. Another statement on Sunday said that it “was the one adhering to democratic norms.”

The detention of the senior civilian government leaders occurred just hours before Parliament was supposed to begin its opening session after the November election.

The country had buzzed with coup rumors for days, prompting a number of diplomatic missions, including that of the United States, to issue a statement on Friday.

“We oppose any attempt to alter the outcome of the elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition,” the joint diplomatic statement said.

The military, which initially seized power in a coup in 1962, fired back with its own statement on Sunday, urging the diplomatic missions in the country “not to make unwarranted assumptions about the situation.”

The first time guns crackled in pursuit of a coup in Myanmar was in 1962, when Gen. Ne Win overthrew a fragile government that had enjoyed little more than a decade of independence from Britain. During the military’s 49-year direct hold on power, a country that was once one of the richest in Asia fell into disrepair.

The military tried to justify the 1962 putsch as necessary to keep the Union of Burma, as the country was then known, unified in the face of ethnic insurgencies in the country’s borderlands. Minority groups, which make up roughly one-third of the country’s population, suffered widespread persecution during military rule. Children were forced to become minesweepers, and women were subjected to gang rape.

But military-linked abuses were directed against the Bamar ethnic majority, too. Thousands were thrown into jail as political prisoners, and a fearsome military intelligence network convinced many that walls, whether cement or bamboo, had eyes and ears to spy on them.

After a massacre of pro-democracy protesters in 1988, elections were held two years later. The National League for Democracy, the same political force that is in power now, won convincingly, but the results were ignored by the generals. A generation of politicians spent their prime in prison.

In 2015, the National League for Democracy again secured a landslide electoral victory. This time, the military honored the results.

Even though Suu Kyi had vowed to tackle the country’s enduring ethnic conflicts when she emerged from house arrest in 2010, violence has intensified since then. Ethnic armies are engaged in open warfare with the Myanmar military in the country’s vast periphery, as elites fight for control over natural resources. Civilians are again caught in the crossfire.

And rather than holding the Myanmar military to account for its offensives, Suu Kyi, the daughter of the assassinated founder of the country’s modern army, has defended its soldiers. She even argued in their defense at The Hague, where Myanmar, a Buddhist majority nation, has been accused in an international court of genocide against Rohingya Muslims.

A businessman from the north of Myanmar, Ko Thar Htet, lamented the turn of events.

“I’m so angry to see the military threatening people, instead of helping the government for the sake of people,” he said. “They have committed so many crimes.”

Hannah Beech c.2021 The New York Times Company

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World War II veteran Tom Moore hospitalised with COVID-19; Boris Johnson wishes him ‘full recovery’

London: Tom Moore, the 100-year-old World War II veteran who captivated the British public in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic with his fundraising efforts, has been hospitalised with COVID-19, his daughter said Sunday.

Hannah Ingram-Moore revealed in a statement posted on Twitter that her father, widely known as Captain Tom, has been admitted to Bedford Hospital because he needed “additional help” with his breathing.

She said that over the past few weeks her father had been treated for pneumonia and that he had tested positive for the coronavirus last week.

She said he is being treated in a ward, not in an intensive care unit.

“The medical care he has received in the last few weeks has been remarkable and we know that the wonderful staff at Bedford Hospital will do all they can to make him comfortable and hopefully return home as soon as possible,” she said.

Moore became an emblem of hope in the early weeks of the pandemic in April when he walked 100 laps around his garden in England for the National Health Service to coincide with his 100th birthday. Instead of the 1,000 pounds ($1,370) aspiration, he raised around 33 million pounds ($45 million).

Moore, who rose to the rank of captain while serving in India and Burma during the war, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in July for his fundraising efforts.

Best wishes came in from far and wide, including from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said in a tweet that Moore had "inspired the whole nation, and I know we are all wishing you a full recovery.”

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Joe Biden invites 10 Republican senators to White House to discuss coronavirus relief measures

Washington: US President Joe Biden has agreed to meet a group of 10 Republican senators who have proposed spending about one-third of the $1.9 trillion he is seeking in coronavirus aid, though congressional Democrats are poised to move ahead without Republican support.

Sunday's invitation to the White House came hours after the lawmakers sent Biden a letter urging him to negotiate rather than try to ram through his relief package solely on Democratic votes. The House and Senate are on track to vote as soon as this week on a budget resolution, which would lay the groundwork for passing an aid package under rules requiring only a simple majority vote in the closely divided Senate.

The goal is for passage by March, when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid expires. The meeting offered by Biden would amount to the most public involvement for the president in the negotiations for the next round of virus relief. Democratic and Republican lawmakers are far apart in their proposals for assistance.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that Biden had spoken with the leader of the group, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Though Biden is wanting “a full exchange of views," Psaki reiterated that he remains in favor of moving forward with a far-reaching relief package. A meeting could come in a matter of days.

“With the virus posing a grave threat to the country, and economic conditions grim for so many, the need for action is urgent, and the scale of what must be done is large," Psaki said.

In challenging Biden to fulfill his pledge of unity, the group said in its letter that its counterproposal will include $160 billion for vaccines, testing, treatment and personal protective equipment and call for more targeted relief than Biden’s plan to issue $1,400 stimulus checks for most Americans.

Winning the support of 10 Republicans would be significant for Biden in the 50-50 Senate where Vice President Kamala Harris is the tie-breaker. If all Democrats were to back an eventual compromise bill, the legislation would reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome potential blocking efforts and pass under regular Senate procedures.

“In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a COVID-19 relief framework that builds on prior COVID assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support,” the Republican senators wrote. “Our proposal reflects many of your stated priorities, and with your support, we believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support.”

The plea for Biden to give bipartisan negotiations more time comes as the president has shown signs of impatience as the more liberal wing of his party considers passing the relief package through a process known as budget reconciliation. That would allow the bill to advance with only the backing of his Democratic majority.

The Republicans did not provide many details of their proposal. One of the signatories, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, said that it would cost about $600 billion.

“If you can't find bipartisan compromise on COVID-19, I don't know where you can find it,” said Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who also signed the letter.

But even as Biden extended the invitation to the Republican lawmakers, Psaki said that $1,400 relief checks, substantial funding for reopening schools, aid to small businesses and hurting families, and more “is badly needed."

“As leading economists have said, the danger now is not in doing too much: it is in doing too little," Psaki said. “Americans of both parties are looking to their leaders to meet the moment.”

Biden also spoke on Sunday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are facing a growing push from the more liberal Democratic members to move forward with Biden's legislation with or without Republican support.

The other GOP senators invited to meet with Biden are Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Todd Young of Indiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Brian Deese, the top White House economic adviser who is leading the administration’s outreach to Congress, said earlier Sunday that administration officials were reviewing the letter. He did not immediately commit to a Biden meeting with the lawmakers.

But Cedric Richmond, a senior Biden adviser, said the president “is very willing to meet with anyone to advance the agenda." When asked about the senators' plan, Richmond said, “This is about seriousness of purpose.”

Deese indicated the White House could be open to negotiating on further limiting who would receive stimulus checks. Portman suggested the checks should go to individuals who make no more than $50,000 per year and families capped at $100,000 per year.

Under the Biden plan, families with incomes up to $300,000 could receive some stimulus money.

“That is certainly a place that we’re willing to sit down and think about, are there ways to make the entire package more effective?” Deese said.

As a candidate, Biden predicted his decades in the Senate and his eight years as Barack Obama's vice president gave him credibility as a deal-maker and would help him bring Republicans and Democrats to consensus on the most important matters facing the country.

But less than two weeks into his presidency, Biden showed frustration with the pace of negotiations at a time when the economy exhibited further evidence of wear from the pandemic. Last week, 847,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits, a sign that layoffs remain high as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.

“I support passing COVID relief with support from Republicans if we can get it. But the COVID relief has to pass — no ifs, ands or buts,” Biden said on Friday.

In the letter, the Republican lawmakers reminded Biden that in his inaugural address, he proclaimed that the challenges facing the nation require "the most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity.”

Cassidy separately criticized the current Biden plan as “chock-full of handouts and payoffs to Democratic constituency groups."

“You want the patina of bipartisanship ... so that’s not unity," Cassidy said.

Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said Biden remains willing to negotiate but that officials needed to see more details from Republicans. At the same time, Bernstein pressed the administration's argument that doing too little to stimulate the economy could have enormous impact on the economy in the near- and long-term.

“Look, the American people really couldn’t care less about budget process, whether it’s regular order, bipartisanship, whether it’s filibuster, whether it’s reconciliation," Bernstein said. “They need relief, and they need it now.”

Portman and Deese were on CNN’s “State of the Union,” and Deese also was interviewed on NBC's “Meet the Press.” Cassidy and Bernstein appeared on ”Fox News Sunday" and Richmond was on CBS' “Face the Nation."

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Sixteen Chinese COVID-19 vaccines undergoing clinical trials for national, global supply

As the demand for the COVID-19 vaccine intensified around the world, China said that it has increased the number of vaccines undergoing clinical trials to 16 from 11 to step up supplies at home and abroad. China is conducting clinical trials of 16 COVID-19 vaccines, seven of which have entered phase-III trials and one has conditionally hit the market, Wu Yuanbin, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology, was quoted as saying by the state-run CGTN TV.

Wu made the comments during a haematology conference on Saturday.

Yang Sheng, Deputy Director of China's National Medical Products Administration's drug registration bureau, said last month that a total of 11 Chinese vaccine candidates are in different stages of testing at home and abroad.

Currently, China is vaccinating people at home and some countries abroad with two vaccines. The Chinese government has given conditional approval to Sinopharm while the results of the phase-3 trial is yet to be released.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is reviewing the trials of both the vaccines.

China has said that so far 46 countries have expressed their desire to import the China-made vaccines.

Respiratory-disease expert Zhong Nanshan said on Sunday that the mass inoculation of homegrown COVID-19 vaccines underway in China shows the vaccines are safe and effective.

The two vaccines currently in use in China – the China National Biotec Group (CNBG) COVID-19 vaccine and the CoronaVac vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd – are both inactivated vaccines that are relatively safe, Zhong said at the launch ceremony of an event in south China's Guangdong province.

According to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), more than 24 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in China till Sunday, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

"The rate of the vaccines' mild adverse reactions, which include fever, soar arms and other symptoms, is six per 100,000 people," Zhong said.

The rate of severe adverse vaccine reactions is one in a million, only one third of that of flu vaccines, he said.

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Donald Trump names two new lawyers to lead defence team ahead of 8 February impeachment trial

Washington: Donald Trump announced Sunday that a former county prosecutor and a criminal defence lawyer with a background in civil rights work will lead his impeachment defence team, one day after it was revealed that the former president had parted ways with an earlier set of attorneys.

The two representing Trump will be defence lawyer David Schoen, a frequent television legal commentator, and Bruce Castor, a former district attorney in Pennsylvania who was criticized for his decision to not charge actor Bill Cosby in a sex crimes case.

Both attorneys issued statements through Trump's office saying that they were honored to take the job.

“The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always,” said Castor, who served as district attorney for Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2008.

The announcement Sunday was intended to promote a sense of stability surrounding the Trump defence team as his impeachment trial nears. Several South Carolina lawyers had been set to represent him at the trial, which starts the week of 8 February.

Trump, the first president in American history to be impeached twice, is set to stand trial in the Senate on a charge that he incited his supporters to storm Congress on 6 January as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Republicans and Trump aides have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument in the trial: Trump’s trial is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. “The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country," Trump adviser Jason Miller has said.

Many legal scholars say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House. One argument is that state constitutions that predate the US Constitution allowed impeachment after officials left office. The Constitution’s drafters also did not specifically bar the practice.

Castor, a Republican who was the elected district attorney of Pennsylvania’s third-most populated county, decided against charging Cosby in an alleged 2004 sexual encounter. He ran for the job again in 2015, and his judgment in the Cosby case was a key issue used against him by the Democrat who defeated him.

Castor has said that he personally thought Cosby should have been arrested, but that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

In 2004, Castor ran for state attorney general unsuccessfully. In 2016, he became the top lieutenant to the state’s embattled attorney general — Kathleen Kane, a Democrat — as she faced charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lying to a grand jury about it. She was convicted, leaving Castor as the state’s acting attorney general for a few days.

Schoen met with financier Jeffrey Epstein about joining his defence team on sex trafficking charges just days before Epstein killed himself in a New York jail. In an interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times last year, Schoen said he had been approached by Trump associate Roger Stone before Stone's trial and was later retained to handle his appeal. Trump commuted Stone's sentence and then pardoned him.

Neither Schoen nor Castor immediately returned phone messages seeking comment Sunday evening.

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Military takes control of Myanmar for one year; Aung San Suu Kyi and others placed under house arrest

Nay Pyi Taw: Myanmar military television says the military has taken control of the country for one year.

An announcer on military-owned Myawaddy TV made the announcement on Monday morning. The announcement follows days of concern about the threat of a military coup and comes as the country's new Parliament session was to begin.

The Irrawaddy, an established online news service, reported that State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi Suu Kyi, the nation’s top leader, and the country’s president, Win Myint, were both detained in the pre-dawn hours of Monday. The news service cited Myo Nyunt, a spokesman for Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy party.

Its report said that the party’s Central Executive Committee members, lawmakers and regional Cabinet members had also been taken into custody.

A military coup was taking place in Myanmar early on Monday and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi was detained under house arrest, reports said, as communications were cut to the capital.

Phone and internet access to Nay Pyi Taw was lost and Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party could not be reached.

Myanmar lawmakers were to gather Monday in the capital Nay Pyi Taw for the first session of Parliament since last year’s election, with tension lingering over recent comments by the military that were widely seen as threatening a coup.

The US, Australia and others were concerned by the reports and urged Myanmar's military to respect the rule of law.

“The United States is alarmed by reports that the Burmese military has taken steps to undermine the country’s democratic transition, including the arrest of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian officials in Burma,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a statement from Washington. She said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the reported developments.

“The United States opposes any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition, and will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed,” the statement said. Burma is the former name of Myanmar.

Australian foreign minister Marise Payne called for the release of Suu Kyi and others reported to be detained. “We strongly support the peaceful reconvening of the National Assembly, consistent with the results of the November 2020 General Election,” she said.

Myanmar lawmakers were to gather Monday in the capital Naypyitaw for the first session of Parliament since last year’s election.

Online news portal Myanmar Now cited unidentified sources about the arrest of Suu Kyi and the NLD's chairperson around dawn and did not have further details. Myanmar Visual Television and Myanmar Voice Radio posted on Facebook at around 6.30 am that their programs were not available to broadcast regularly.

The 75-year-old Suu Kyi is by far the country’s most dominant politician, and became the country’s leader after leading a decades-long nonviolent struggle against military rule.

Suu Kyi's party captured 396 out of 476 seats in the combined lower and upper houses of Parliament in the November polls, but the military holds 25 percent of the total seats under the 2008 military-drafted Constitution and several key ministerial positions are also reserved for military appointees.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, charged that there was massive voting fraud in the election, though it has failed to provide proof. The State Union Election Commission last week rejected its allegations.

Amid the bickering over the allegations, the military last Tuesday ramped up political tension when a spokesman at its weekly news conference, responding to a reporter’s question, declined to rule out the possibility of a coup. Major-General Zaw Min Tun elaborated by saying the military would “follow the laws in accordance with the Constitution.”

Using similar language, Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing told senior officers in a speech Wednesday that the Constitution could be revoked if the laws were not being properly enforced. Adding to the concern was the unusual deployment of armoured vehicles in the streets of several large cities.

On Saturday, however, the military denied it had threatened a coup, accusing unnamed organisations and media of misrepresenting its position and taking the general’s words out of context.

On Sunday, it reiterated its denial, this time blaming unspecified foreign embassies of misinterpreting the military’s position and calling on them “not to make unwarranted assumptions about the situation.”

US officials at the National Security Council and the state department said they were aware of the reports but could not confirm a coup and detentions had taken place.

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Pro-Alexei Navalny protesters defy vast Russian police ops as signs of Kremlin anxiety mount

Moscow: The Kremlin mounted Russia’s most fearsome nationwide police operation in recent memory Sunday, seeking to overwhelm a protest movement backing jailed Opposition leader Alexei Navalny that swept across the country for a second weekend in a row.

But the show of force — including closed subway stations, thousands of arrests and often brutal tactics — failed to smother the unrest. People rallied for Navalny on the ice of a Pacific bay and in thousands in cities from Siberia to the Ural Mountains to St Petersburg. In Moscow, protesters evaded a warren of checkpoints and lines of riot police officers to march in a column toward the jail where Navalny is being held, chanting, “All for one and one for all!”

By late Sunday evening in Moscow, more than 5,000 people had been detained in at least 85 cities across Russia, an activist group reported, though many were later released. Previously unseen numbers of riot police officers in black helmets, camouflage and body armor essentially locked down the center of the metropolis of 13 million people, stopping passersby miles from the protest to check their documents and ask what they were doing outside.

“I don’t understand what they’re afraid of,” a protester named Anastasia Kuzmina, a 25-year-old account manager at an advertising agency, said of the police. Referring to the peak year of Josef Stalin’s mass repression, she added, “It’s like we’re slipping into 1937.”

The large-scale police response signaled anxiety in the Kremlin over Navalny’s ability to unite Russia’s disparate critics of President Vladimir Putin, from nationalists to liberals to many with no particular ideology at all.

But the show of force also made it clear that Putin has no plans to back down. Shortly after the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, condemned “the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement accusing the United States of backing the protests as part of a “strategy to contain Russia.”

The next test for both sides will come Tuesday, when Navalny faces a court hearing over alleged parole violations related to a six-year-old embezzlement case that could send him to prison for several years. Navalny’s allies — some of whom helped steer the rallies from outside the country via Twitter, Telegram and YouTube — declared Sunday’s demonstrations a success and quickly called for more protests outside the courthouse Tuesday.

“Russia’s citizens again showed their power and strength, and there’s no question that Putin understands this,” Leonid Volkov, a top aide to Navalny coordinating the protests from abroad, said Sunday in a live YouTube broadcast.

But the police sought to project their strength not only in numbers but also with more fear-inducing tactics. Video footage taken in Moscow and St Petersburg showed people who did not appear to be resisting arrest screaming after the police used taser-like devices against them — weapons not reported to have been used at previous protests. There were also reports of tear gas having been used in St Petersburg.

The crackdown on protesters showed that Putin — who has maintained a modicum of freedoms in the country, including an open internet and some independent news media — is ready to ratchet up authoritarianism in order to avert a possible threat to his power. The question is whether more Russians will actively resist such an authoritarian turn, especially as images of police brutality course through social media in the coming days.

“The bolts are tightening,” said Nikolai Babikov, 31, a computer systems analyst in Moscow, gazing apprehensively at the riot police and at the chunky gray police vans that hold detainees. “Freedom is being eliminated, and bit by bit we are becoming the Soviet Union again.”

Putin has faced growing discontent in the general public for several years amid a decline in real incomes and the dissipation of the patriotic fervor that accompanied his annexation of Crimea in 2014. Navalny has long been the Kremlin’s loudest critic, and he accused Putin of trying to kill him via a nerve-agent attack last summer.

Navalny put a match to that built-up discontent two weeks ago when he flew home to Moscow after five months of recovering in Germany from the poisoning, despite facing near-certain arrest upon arrival. Then, with Navalny in jail, his team released a two-hour-long video accusing Putin of having a secret palace built for him on the Black Sea.

The video was seen more than 100 million times on YouTube and energised the protests calling for Navalny’s release. On Sunday, footage from across the country showed some protesters brandishing toilet brushes and chanting, “Aqua disco” — references to an $850 toilet brush and elaborate fountain detailed in Navalny’s report.

The Kremlin has denied the report about the palace and scrambled to contain the public outrage over it. On Saturday, state television broadcast an interview with a friend of Putin, Arkady Rotenberg, who said he was in fact the owner of the property and was planning to turn it into a hotel.

“I am for honesty, nothing else,” said Lyudmila Mikhailovna, an 83-year-old retired pediatric doctor in Moscow who declined to give her last name.

She said she was no great fan of Navalny but had come out to protest after watching his video about the palace.

Sunday’s protests began around noon on Russia’s Pacific coast and rolled across the nation, with its 11 time zones, from east to west. In Vladivostok, a port city on the Sea of Japan, protesters avoided a city center blocked by riot police officers and descended onto the ice covering Amur Bay. Clasping hands, videos showed, they formed chains and danced as they chanted, “Putin is a thief!” and, “Russia will be free!”

Riot officers, initially hesitant to follow on the frozen water, decided to give chase. But it seemed to be a slow-motion chase, with each side moving gingerly on the snow-covered expanse of ice under a gray late-afternoon sky.

It was just one of many remarkable scenes that played out Sunday in eastern Russia, where large-scale protests are rare. In the Siberian city of Irkutsk, where temperatures approached minus 20° Fahrenheit (minus 29° Celsius), the turnout was significantly smaller than the thousands who protested last weekend — and the police presence even more imposing.

Alexey Zhemchuzhnikov, a civic activist, said chains of riot police officers with full body armour and shields were deployed for the first time, cordoning off sections of the city center. Mobile internet access was cut off, he said.

“For Irkutsk, this was a first,” Zhemchuzhnikov said of the police response. “They were scared.”

Still, no signs have emerged of support for the protesters within the government, the Parliament, big business or the security services, which all remain firmly in Putin’s grasp. Fissions in the elite, nowhere to be seen — at least on the surface — in Russia, have been pivotal in the success of street movements in other former Soviet states.

In Moscow, Navalny’s team guided protesters on an evasive, zigzagging route to avoid police barricades. It encouraged them to stay together in larger and harder-to-arrest crowds. Well before the protests began, the police sealed off much of the city center to pedestrians and shut down subway stops around the Kremlin — a crowd-control tactic used for the first time in recent years.

“Try not to leave the major streets, and stay in large groups,” Navalny’s team instructed the protesters, using the messaging app Telegram. “Remember, the more of us there are, the more difficult it is for police to do anything.”

The mainly young protesters, following the Navalny social media accounts on their phones, in many cases turned and followed the team’s directions — which led them toward the jail where Navalny was being held. The police, wielding shields and batons, tried to break the crowd into smaller groups and detain protesters after pushing them into walls and fences.

In chaotic scenes, police officers arrested people trying to hide in backyards and in the entryways to apartment buildings. By early evening, the Tass State news agency reported that the police were checking courtyards and apartment buildings for stragglers.

The harsher tactics were redolent of the protests in Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko used fierce police might to put down demonstrations after fraudulent elections last summer. The Russian police on Sunday did not use Lukashenko’s toughest methods — which included stun grenades and rubber bullets — but they seemed to echo his strategy of defusing dissent not by dialogue but by brute force.

In St Petersburg, a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta posted a video of police officers dragging an unconscious protester into a police van after a “harsh detention.” Reports of officers in plainclothes beating protesters surfaced in two provincial cities, Kursk and Volgograd.

On Moscow’s grand Garden Ring, the city centre’s main circular thoroughfare, Mikhailovna, the retired pediatrician, glowered at the phalanx of burly officers in front of her.

She said that she had been going to protests since the Mikhail Gorbachev era and that, despite repeated disappointment, she would continue to “so that my children and grandchildren don’t have to live in a greedy police state. Things now are just intolerable.”

Anton Troianovski, Andrew E Kramer, Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew Higgins c.2021 The New York Times Company

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Military coup underway in Myanmar; Aung San Suu Kyi and others placed under house arrest

Nay Pyi Taw: A military coup was taking place in Myanmar early on Monday and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi was detained under house arrest, reports said, as communications were cut to the capital.

Phone and internet access to Nay Pyi Taw was lost and Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party could not be reached.

Myanmar lawmakers were to gather Monday in the capital Nay Pyi Taw for the first session of Parliament since last year’s election, with tension lingering over recent comments by the military that were widely seen as threatening a coup.

Online news portal Myanmar Now cited unidentified sources about the arrest of Suu Kyi and the NLD's chairperson around dawn and did not have further details. Myanmar Visual Television and Myanmar Voice Radio posted on Facebook at around 6.30 am that their programs were not available to broadcast regularly.

The 75-year-old Suu Kyi is by far the country’s most dominant politician, and became the country’s leader after leading a decades-long nonviolent struggle against military rule.

Suu Kyi's party captured 396 out of 476 seats in the combined lower and upper houses of Parliament in the November polls, but the military holds 25 percent of the total seats under the 2008 military-drafted Constitution and several key ministerial positions are also reserved for military appointees.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, charged that there was massive voting fraud in the election, though it has failed to provide proof. The State Union Election Commission last week rejected its allegations.

Amid the bickering over the allegations, the military last Tuesday ramped up political tension when a spokesman at its weekly news conference, responding to a reporter’s question, declined to rule out the possibility of a coup. Major-General Zaw Min Tun elaborated by saying the military would “follow the laws in accordance with the Constitution.”

Using similar language, Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing told senior officers in a speech Wednesday that the Constitution could be revoked if the laws were not being properly enforced. Adding to the concern was the unusual deployment of armoured vehicles in the streets of several large cities.

On Saturday, however, the military denied it had threatened a coup, accusing unnamed organisations and media of misrepresenting its position and taking the general’s words out of context.

On Sunday, it reiterated its denial, this time blaming unspecified foreign embassies of misinterpreting the military’s position and calling on them “not to make unwarranted assumptions about the situation.”

US officials at the National Security Council and the state department said they were aware of the reports but could not confirm a coup and detentions had taken place.

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Russian Police detain over 1,600 protesters who demanded Opposition leader Alexei Navalny's release

Moscow: Chanting slogans against President Vladimir Putin, thousands of people took to the streets Sunday across Russia's vast expanse to demand the release of jailed Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, keeping up a wave of nationwide protests that have rattled the Kremlin. Over 1,600 were detained by police, according to a monitoring group.

Russian authorities mounted a massive effort to stem the tide of demonstrations after tens of thousands rallied across the country last weekend in the largest, most widespread show of discontent that Russia has seen in years. Yet despite threats of jail terms, warnings to social media groups and notable displays of riot police, the protests again engulfed many cities on Sunday.

The 44-year-old Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator who is the best-known critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on 17 January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations. He was arrested for allegedly violating his parole conditions by not reporting for meetings with law enforcement when he was recuperating in Germany.

On Sunday, police detained more than 1,600 people in protests held in cities across Russia's 11 time zones, according to the OVD-Info, a group that monitors arrests.

In Moscow, authorities introduced unprecedented security measures in the city center, closing subway stations near the Kremlin, cutting bus traffic and ordering restaurants and stores to stay closed.

Navalny's team initially called for Sunday's protest to be held on Moscow's Lubyanka Square, home to the main headquarters of the Federal Security Service, which Navalny claims was responsible for his poisoning. After police cordoned off the area around the square, the protest shifted to another central square a mile away. Police deployed in force at that location too, randomly picking up people and putting them into police buses.

But hundreds of others marched across the city center, chanting "Putin, resign!" and "Putin, thief!" a reference to an opulent Black Sea estate reportedly built for the Russian leader that was featured in a widely popular video released by Navalny's team.

Some later marched to the Matrosskaya Tishina prison where Navalny is being held, but met phalanxes of riot police who chased them back and detained scores.

Over 300 were detained in Moscow, including Navalny's wife, Yulia, who joined the protest.

The city of Novosibirsk in eastern Siberia saw one of the biggest rallies, with several thousand people marching across the city. About 90 protesters were detained.

An estimated 2,000 marched across Russia's second-largest city of St. Petersburg, and occasional scuffles erupted as some demonstrators pushed back police who tried to make detentions.

In the far eastern port of Vladivostok, more than 100 people were detained after protesters danced on the ice and rallied in the city center.

As part of a multipronged effort by authorities to block the protests, courts have jailed Navalny's associates and activists across the country over the past week. His brother Oleg, top aide Lyubov Sobol and three other people were put Friday under a two-month house arrest on charges of allegedly violating coronavirus restrictions during last weekend's protests.

Prosecutors also demanded that social media platforms block calls to join the protests.

The Interior Ministry has issued stern warnings to the public not to join the protests, saying participants could be charged with taking part in mass riots, which carries a prison sentence of up to eight years. Those engaging in violence against police could face up to 15 years.

Nearly 4,000 people were reportedly detained at demonstrations on 23 January calling for Navalny's release took place in more than 100 Russian cities, and some were given fines and jail terms. About 20 were accused of assaulting police and faced criminal charges.

Just after Navalny's arrest, his team released a two-hour video on his YouTube channel about the Black Sea residence purportedly built for Putin. The video has been viewed over 100 million times, helping fuel discontent and inspiring a stream of sarcastic jokes on the internet amid an economic downturn.

Demonstrators in Moscow chanted "Aqua discotheque!," a reference to one of the fancy amenities at the residence that also features a casino and a hookah lounge equipped for watching pole dances.

Putin says that neither he nor any of his close relatives own the property. On Saturday, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime Putin confidant, and his occasional judo sparring partner, claimed that he himself owned the property.

Russia has seen extensive corruption during Putin's time in office even as many ordinary citizens struggle financially.

Navalny fell into a coma on 20 August while on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was transferred to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Novichok nerve agent. Russian authorities have refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, claiming a lack of evidence that he was poisoned.

When he returned to Russia in January, Navalny was jailed for 30 days after Russia's prison service alleged he had violated the probation terms of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money-laundering conviction that he has rejected as political revenge.

On Thursday, a Moscow court rejected Navalny's appeal to be released, and another hearing next week could turn his three-an- a-half-year suspended sentence into one he must serve in prison.

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Police in Russia detain over 1,600 at protests demanding Opposition leader Alexei Navalny's release

Moscow: Thousands of people took to the streets Sunday across Russia's vast expanse to demand the release of jailed Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, keeping up a wave of nationwide protests that have rattled the Kremlin. Over 1,600 were detained by police, according to a monitoring group.

Russian authorities mounted a massive effort to stem the tide of demonstrations after tens of thousands rallied across the country last weekend in the largest, most widespread show of discontent that Russia has seen in years. Yet despite threats of jail terms, warnings to social media groups and notable displays of riot police, the protests again engulfed many cities on Sunday.

The 44-year-old Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator who is the best-known critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on 17 January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations.

On Sunday, police detained more than 1,600 people in protests held in cities across Russia's 11 time zones, according to the OVD-Info, a group that monitors arrests.

In Moscow, authorities introduced unprecedented security measures in the city center, closing subway stations near the Kremlin, cutting bus traffic and ordering restaurants and stores to stay closed.

Navalny's team initially called for Sunday's protest to be held on Moscow's Lubyanka Square, home to the main headquarters of the Federal Security Service, which Navalny claims was responsible for his poisoning. After police cordoned off the area around the square, the protest shifted to another central square a mile away. Police deployed in force at that location too, randomly picking up people and putting them into police buses. At least 100 were detained.

But hundreds of others marched across the city center, chanting "Putin, resign!" and "Putin, thief!" a reference to an opulent Black Sea estate reportedly built for the Russian leader that was featured in a widely popular video released by Navalny's team.

Some later marched to the Matrosskaya Tishina prison where Navalny is being held, but met phalanxes of riot police who chased them back and detained scores.

Over 300 were detained in Moscow, including Navalny's wife, Yulia, who joined the protest.

The city of Novosibirsk in eastern Siberia saw one of the biggest rallies, with several thousand people marching across the city. About 90 protesters were detained.

An estimated 2,000 marched across Russia's second-largest city of St. Petersburg, and occasional scuffles erupted as some demonstrators pushed back police who tried to make detentions.

In the far eastern port of Vladivostok, more than 100 people were detained after protesters danced on the ice and rallied in the city center.

As part of a multipronged effort by authorities to block the protests, courts have jailed Navalny's associates and activists across the country over the past week. His brother Oleg, top aide Lyubov Sobol and three other people were put Friday under a two-month house arrest on charges of allegedly violating coronavirus restrictions during last weekend's protests.

Prosecutors also demanded that social media platforms block calls to join the protests.

The Interior Ministry has issued stern warnings to the public not to join the protests, saying participants could be charged with taking part in mass riots, which carries a prison sentence of up to eight years. Those engaging in violence against police could face up to 15 years.

Nearly 4,000 people were reportedly detained at demonstrations on 23 January calling for Navalny's release took place in more than 100 Russian cities, and some were given fines and jail terms. About 20 were accused of assaulting police and faced criminal charges.

Just after Navalny's arrest, his team released a two-hour video on his YouTube channel about the Black Sea residence purportedly built for Putin. The video has been viewed over 100 million times, helping fuel discontent and inspiring a stream of sarcastic jokes on the internet amid an economic downturn.

Demonstrators in Moscow chanted "Aqua discotheque!," a reference to one of the fancy amenities at the residence that also features a casino and a hookah lounge equipped for watching pole dances.

Putin says that neither he nor any of his close relatives own the property. On Saturday, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime Putin confidant, and his occasional judo sparring partner, claimed that he himself owned the property.

Russia has seen extensive corruption during Putin's time in office even as many ordinary citizens struggle financially.

Navalny fell into a coma on 20 August while on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was transferred to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Novichok nerve agent. Russian authorities have refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, claiming a lack of evidence that he was poisoned.

When he returned to Russia in January, Navalny was jailed for 30 days after Russia's prison service alleged he had violated the probation terms of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money-laundering conviction that he has rejected as political revenge.

On Thursday, a Moscow court rejected Navalny's appeal to be released, and another hearing next week could turn his three-an- a-half-year suspended sentence into one he must serve in prison.

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Germany threatens legal action as tensions rise between EU and AstraZeneca over COVID-19 vaccine delays

Berlin: Germany's government on Sunday threatened legal action against laboratories failing to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the European Union on schedule, amid tension over delays to deliveries from AstraZeneca.

"If it turns out that companies have not respected their obligations, we will have to decide the legal consequences," Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told German daily Die Welt."No company can favour another country over the EU after the fact," he added.

There has been growing tension in recent weeks between European leaders and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant  AstraZeneca, which has fallen behind on promised delivers of its COVID-19 vaccine. The company said it could now only deliver a quarter of the doses originally promised to the bloc for the first quarter of the year because of problems at one of its European factories.

Brussels has implicitly accused AstraZeneca of giving preferential treatment to Britain in the delivery of its vaccine, at the expense of the EU.

The EU briefly threatened to restrict vaccine exports to Northern Ireland by overriding part of the Brexit deal with Britain that allowed the free flow of goods over the Irish border. It backed down after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson voiced "grave concerns".

AstraZeneca is not the only drugs company in the firing line. Last week, Italy threatened legal action against US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer over delays to promised deliveries of its vaccine.

Top German officials are due to meet with the drugs manufacturers to thrash out the problems over the delays.

On Friday, the European Medicines Agency cleared the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca for use inside the EU, the third COVID-19 vaccine it has approved after Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

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WHO scientists visit Wuhan food market in search of clues for origins of COVID-19

Wuhan: A World Health Organisation team looking into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic on Sunday visited the seafood market in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was linked to many early infections.

The team members visited the Huanan Seafood Market for about an hour in the afternoon, and one of them flashed a thumbs up sign when reporters asked how the trip was going.

The market was the site of a December 2019 outbreak of the virus. Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wild animals sold in the market. The market has since been largely ruled out but it could provide hints to how the virus spread so widely.

“Very important site visits today — a wholesale market first & Huanan Seafood Market just now," Peter Daszak, a zoologist with the US group EcoHealth Alliance and a member of the WHO team, said in a tweet. “Very informative & critical for our joint teams to understand the epidemiology of COVID as it started to spread at the end of 2019.”

Earlier in the day, the team members were also seen walking through sections of the Baishazhou market — one of the largest wet markets in Wuhan — surrounded by a large entourage of Chinese officials and representatives. The market was the food distribution center for Wuhan during the city's 76-day lockdown last year.

The members, with expertise in veterinary medicine, virology, food safety and epidemiology, have so far visited two hospitals at the center of the early outbreak: Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital and the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.

On Saturday, they also visited a museum exhibition dedicated to the early history of COVID-19.

The mission has become politically charged, as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak.

A single visit by scientists is unlikely to confirm the virus’ origins. Pinning down an outbreak’s animal reservoir is typically an exhaustive endeavour that takes years of research including taking animal samples, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies.

One possibility is that a wildlife poacher might have passed the virus to traders who carried it to Wuhan. The Chinese government has promoted theories, with little evidence, that the outbreak might have started with imports of frozen seafood tainted with the virus, a notion roundly rejected by international scientists and agencies.

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Several of Donald Trump's impeachment lawyers quit over disagreement on legal strategy

Washington: Several of former US president Donald Trump's impeachment lawyers have left his team a little over a week before his trial, US media reported Saturday.

CNN cited unnamed sources as saying that five lawyers including two who were thought to be leading the team, had parted ways with the Republican billionaire after disagreeing over his legal strategy.

Trump had wanted the lawyers to continue his baseless claims of mass election fraud rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he has left office, CNN reported, adding that he was "not receptive" to discussion.

The lawyers included Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, expected to lead Trump's defense, CNN and other outlets reported, saying it had been a "mutual decision."

"We have done much work, but have not made a final decision on our legal team, which will be made shortly," tweeted Trump advisor Jason Miller in response to the reports.

The development leaves Trump, who has reportedly been struggling to form a defense ahead of his historic second impeachment trial over the ransacking of the US Capitol this month, facing new hurdles with just days to go.

However, even with his legal team in chaos he looks increasingly likely to dodge conviction.

Nearly all senators from his party have signaled opposition to his trial and fueled efforts to censure him instead.

The trial,  in which Trump faces a charge of "incitement of insurrection", will begin on 9 February.

But with just five Republicans joining all 50 Democrats this week in agreeing that the trial should go forward, it appears unlikely that 17 Republicans would vote against Trump, the minimum number needed to reach the two-thirds threshold for conviction.

A censure would be less severe than expulsion but is a formal statement of disapproval.

It would still need 10 Republicans to go along in order to overcome any blocking tactics set out by Trump loyalists.

While a conviction would lead to a simple-majority vote on whether to bar Trump from holding any future public office, a censure resolution carries no such trigger.

That would leave the door open for Trump to run again in 2024, a prospect that a significant portion of Republicans now support, despite the deadly storming of the Capitol on 6 January by a mob of pro-Trump extremists in an effort to overturn the results of the election.

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Joe Biden makes swift policy changes on COVID-19 and racial justice, but major speed bumps lie ahead

Washington: In the weeks before taking office, President Joe Biden and his aides spent time digging into books about Franklin D Roosevelt, both biographies and volumes exploring his iconic first 100 days, on the theory that no president since then has taken office with the country in a crisis quite so grave.

They devised their own opening-days blitz by essentially compressing 100 days into 10. Biden has now signed about 45 executive orders, memorandums or proclamations enacting or at least initiating major policy shifts on a wide array of issues, including the coronavirus pandemic, racial justice, immigration, climate change and transgender rights.

But if Biden has gotten off to the fastest start of any president since Roosevelt, the speed bumps ahead threaten to drain his momentum. He heads into a more grinding February featuring contentious legislative negotiations over his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, a molasses-like process to confirm the rest of his senior team, and the unwelcome and unpredictable distraction of a Senate impeachment trial of his predecessor.

Even as he assembles a government and seeks to sweep away the vestiges of former President Donald Trump’s tenure, Biden finds himself managing the outsize aspirations of the progressive wing of his party while exploring the possibilities of working with a restive opposition that has resisted him from the start — all of which comes as the U.S.'s death toll from the coronavirus will pass 500,000 within weeks and homeland security officials are warning of more domestic terrorism from extremist Trump supporters like those who stormed the Capitol on 6 January.

“The administration is doing a good job of using executive powers quickly to undo some of the damage of the Trump years and send signals about its own priorities,” said Alasdair Roberts, director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has written about Roosevelt’s first 100 days.

The challenge, Roberts said, is redefining expectations so Americans do not assume that a raft of Roosevelt-style major legislation will follow. “The prospects by that standard aren’t good, and they aren’t improved just because the administration got off to a quick start through executive actions,” he said. “FDR governed in a simpler world.”

The most daunting challenge for Biden will be balancing his stated desire for bipartisanship with his sense of urgency to get a large pandemic relief package passed quickly.

Unlike Roosevelt, who had an overwhelming Democratic Congress, Biden has the barest of majorities — and party leaders who would rather roll Republicans than compromise with them. Biden will have to decide how much effort to devote to seeking Republican support at the cost of delaying passage or curtailing its scale.

With enhanced unemployment benefits expiring in mid-March, the White House sees that as a deadline for action. Should the president proceed without bipartisan support, he and his Democratic allies may resort to procedural maneuvers to overcome resistance in the Senate that are likely to enrage Republicans.

In making that decision, Biden and his team are focused on the experience of another president who took office in perilous times, Barack Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president. At the depth of the Great Recession, Obama pushed through a stimulus program 24 days after taking office in 2009 with almost no support from Republicans, who showed little interest in Obama’s ostensibly bipartisan goals.

The lesson Biden and his advisers have taken from that experience was not that Obama failed to compromise enough to win over Republicans but that he compromised too much. While Obama’s economic advisers at the time believed he needed a much bigger program to jump-start the economy, he limited it to $800 billion, figuring it was the most he could get politically. Biden’s team considers that a mistake, making them more committed to sticking to the $1.9 trillion figure.

“We believe that we can move swiftly,” said Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Biden. “He would like to do it with bipartisan support. We believe we should be able to get bipartisan support given the depth of the emergency and the fact that there is a March 15 cliff here because of the unemployment.”

Other White House officials sounded less sanguine on the prospect of bipartisan support for the coronavirus package and noted that there would be other opportunities for across-the-aisle cooperation on issues like infrastructure, the opioid epidemic, rural broadband, mental health and national service.

Aides said Biden had regularly spoken on the phone with congressional Republicans, but because of virus-related restrictions, he had not had them to the White House to signal in a visible way his willingness to consult the other party. And his burst of executive actions drew criticism from Republicans who said such unilateral action hardly represented unity.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and the Republican leader, issued a statement headlined, “Biden Says Compromise But Governs Left.” Even Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., one of the five Republicans who broke with Trump and voted to proceed with an impeachment trial, complained that Biden had “started a record-breaking, left-wing executive order binge that has not stopped.”

Lanhee Chen, a scholar at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who advised Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign, said Biden could not afford to alienate Republicans given his party’s narrow control of Congress. “The danger for Biden is that he squanders whatever goodwill he may have built with some Republicans over these last several months and leaves himself trying to push through partisan legislation with very little margin for error in the Senate,” he said.

The executive actions came with such a fire-hose intensity that individual moves got lost in the crowd. But White House officials said they chose not to spread them out over a longer period to reinforce a message of energy and change. And while they risked appearing scattershot in their approach by taking on so many issues at once, they reversed many Trump administration policies of concern to different liberal interest groups that are part of his coalition.

Among other things, Biden rejoined the Paris climate accord, imposed a moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore waters, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline project, prohibited federal workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, ended Trump’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military, banned the renewal of federal contracts with private prisons, suspended construction of Trump’s border wall, and extended pandemic-related student loan relief and limits on evictions and foreclosures.

Other actions were more symbolic or amounted to intentions to do more down the road. And like Trump, Biden quickly ran into trouble in the courts when a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked his 100-day pause on deportations of immigrants in the country illegally. But liberal leaders expressed support.

“So far, so good,” said Adam Green, a founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a grassroots group that supported Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., over Biden in the Democratic presidential primaries. But the real measure of Biden, he added, is still ahead.

“If the first week was a test of whether Biden was willing to go big,” Green said, “the next couple weeks are a test of the Democratic theory of the fight: Do we preemptively negotiate with Republicans and deny what Americans actually need in order that Mitch McConnell and other congressional Republicans feel good? Or do we put really good proposals on the table?”

While Biden’s talk of unity has yet to actually produce much of it, he has lowered the temperature and has more public support than Trump had at any point during his presidency. Biden’s approval ratings in initial polls range from 54% (Monmouth University) to 56% (Morning Consult) to 63% (Hill-HarrisX). Trump’s rating at a similar point in 2017 was around 46% in the Morning Consult poll.

Yet it is not the overwhelming approval that many new presidents had, a reflection of far more divided times. From Dwight D. Eisenhower to George Bush, every newly elected president was in the 60s or 70s for his first six months, according to figures compiled by polling website FiveThirtyEight. Bill Clinton, however, averaged just 50.5% and George W. Bush just 53.9%. Obama had more lift at 60.2%, but Trump averaged 41.4% — the lowest of any president in the history of polling.

The question is, how long Biden can hang onto Americans who backed him out of opposition to Trump, not out of agreement with his ideology — particularly, so-called Never Trump Republicans, many of whom still prefer conservative policy prescriptions.

“I’m sure at some point Biden will do something I disagree with, but for now their focus on COVID is important and appropriate,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican operative who helped found the Lincoln Project that worked to defeat Trump. “He’s running into the hard edge of a Trump-controlled party, and I suspect the honeymoon was over for the GOP before it started.”

To get ready to tackle the enormous challenges he was inheriting, Biden and his team studied books on Roosevelt like Jean Edward Smith’s “FDR” and Jonathan Alter’s “The Defining Moment” as well as other classics like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s “A Thousand Days” on John F. Kennedy’s abbreviated presidency. Biden has also consulted regularly with historian Jon Meacham, who helped write his inaugural address.

Roosevelt came to office in 1933 after three years of economic calamity and responded with a burst of legislation that transformed America and the government’s role in society, even if it did not fully end the Great Depression. Biden’s executive actions are less permanent because they can be reversed by future presidents. But they emulate Roosevelt’s desire for determined energy.

“Biden’s executive orders are going to be more enduring than Obama’s and more along the lines of a lot of what Roosevelt did early on,” Alter said in an interview. If the administration can vaccinate more than 100 million people for the coronavirus in its first 100 days, Biden will have mobilized a response to the pandemic even faster than Roosevelt’s early New Deal programs responded to the Depression.

“Biden’s mobilization will eclipse that, and if he is seen as having gotten control of the virus by the end of his first 100 days, it will set him up for all sorts of other accomplishments,” said Alter.

But how Biden times his policy initiatives and whether he can frame them under a memorable Rooseveltian rubric like the New Deal will be critical, he added.

“We still don’t know whether the sequencing and the framing will be up to the challenge,” Alter said. “The sequencing is, how do you build on success so that one success builds on another? And if you don’t roll them out in the right order, you can have a problem.” But Alter pronounced himself optimistic. “He really does have a fighting chance.”

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UK to join Asia-Pacific free trade pact CPTPP; move will create enormous opportunities, says Boris Johnson

London: The UK government has announced that it is applying to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), one of the world's largest free-trade areas made up of 11 developed and emerging economies in the Pacific, under its post-Brexit plans.

Joining the CPTPP reflects the UK’s post-Brexit Pacific tilt and is dubbed as a critical part of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson led government’s wider trade strategy, which aims to deepen links with faster-growing parts of the world and partnering with countries who believe in free and fair trade, including India.

The decision to join the CPTPP, comprising Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, marks one year since the UK left the European Union (EU) on 31 January last year and entered a Brexit transition period which concluded at the start of this year.

"One year after our departure from the EU, we are forging new partnerships that will bring enormous economic benefits for the people of Britain,” said UK Prime Minister Johnson.

"Applying to be the first new country to join the CPTPP demonstrates our ambition to do business on the best terms with our friends and partners all over the world and be an enthusiastic champion of global free trade,” he said.

UK International Trade Secretary Liz Truss will speak to Japanese Minister for CPTPP Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is the Chair of the 2021 CPTPP commission, and Damien O’Connor, Minister for Trade and Economic Growth in New Zealand, which stores official documentation for all CPTPP members, on Monday morning to make the official request to join, with formal negotiations for its first major post-Brexit multilateral trading move set to start this year.

"Joining CPTPP will create enormous opportunities for UK businesses that simply weren’t there as part of the EU and deepen our ties with some of the fastest-growing markets in the world,” said Truss.

"It will mean lower tariffs for car manufacturers and whisky producers, and better access for our brilliant services providers, delivering quality jobs and greater prosperity for people here at home. We’re at the front of the queue and look forward to starting formal negotiations in the coming months,” she said.

The government says the CPTPP would deepen the UK’s access to fast-growing markets and major economies, including Mexico, Malaysia and Vietnam, for the benefit of British business.

The Department for International Trade (DIT) hopes joining the 9 trillion-pound partnership will cut tariffs for UK industries, including food and drink and cars, while also creating new opportunities for modern industries like tech and services, ultimately supporting and creating high-value jobs across the UK.

Unlike EU membership, joining does not require the UK to cede control over our laws, borders, or money, it highlights.

"This ambition marks a new chapter for our independent trade policy. As one of the largest free trade agreements in the world, these 11 countries contribute over 100 billion pounds to our economy,” said Lord Karan Bilimoria, the President of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

"Membership of the bloc has the potential to deliver new opportunities for UK business across different sectors. The CBI will continue to work with the government to ensure that firms get the most out of an agreement that will create jobs and deliver wide-ranging benefits to communities across the country," he said.

According to official statistics, UK trade with the group was worth 111 billion pounds last year, growing by 8 per cent a year since 2016.

The benefits of CPTPP membership highlighted by the DIT include: modern digital trade rules that allow data to flow freely between members, remove unnecessary barriers for businesses, and protect commercial source code and encryption.

Also, eliminating tariffs quicker on UK exports including whisky (down from 165 per cent to 0 per cent in Malaysia) and cars (reducing to 0 per cent in Canada by 2022, two years earlier than through the UK-Canada trade deal);“Rules of Origin” that allow content from any country within CPTPP to count as “originating”, for example which would mean that cars made in the UK could use more Japanese-originating car parts, such as batteries; and also easier travel for businesspeople between CPTPP countries, such as the potential for faster and cheaper visas.

"The UK has been a major beneficiary of the rise of digital trade with over 67 per cent of service exports worth 190.3 billion pounds being digitally delivered. CPTPP will open up new markets for innovative tech SMEs [small and medium enterprises] looking to grow and expand beyond our borders,” said Julian David, CEO of techUK.

"Crucially, at the very heart of this agreement is an SME chapter, something that we have lobbied for the inclusion of in every FTA [free trade agreement], ensuring that no business is left behind.This is truly a world-leading agreement and one that will genuinely help small firms to thrive and succeed more than ever," added Mike Cherry, Chair of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

The UK says its membership will complement the bilateral FTAs it has already concluded or is negotiating with nine of the CPTPP members, including Japan and Canada.

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Britain opens visa scheme for Hong Kong citizens fleeing China's crackdown

Hong Kong: A new visa scheme offering millions of Hong Kongers a pathway to British citizenship will go live later on Sunday as the city's former colonial master opens its doors to those wanting to escape China's crackdown on dissent.

From Sunday afternoon, anyone with a British National (Overseas) passport and their dependents will be able to apply online for a visa allowing them to live and work in the United Kingdom. After five years they can then apply for citizenship.

The immigration scheme is a response to Beijing's decision last year to impose a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong to snuff out huge and often violent democracy protests.

Britain has accused China of tearing up its promise ahead of Hong Kong's 1997 handover that the financial hub would maintain key liberties and autonomy for 50 years. London argued it has a moral duty to protect its former colonial subjects.

"We have honoured our profound ties of history and friendship with the people of Hong Kong, and we have stood up for freedom and autonomy," Prime Minister Boris Johnson said of the scheme this week.

China has reacted with fury to the visa offer.

On Friday it announced BN(O) passports would no longer be recognised as a legitimate travel or ID document.

The move was largely symbolic as Hong Kongers tend to use their own passports or ID cards to leave the city.

But Beijing said it was prepared to take "further measures", raising fears authorities might try to stop Hong Kongers from leaving for Britain.

Applications soar
It is not clear how many Hong Kongers will take up the offer, especially as the coronavirus restricts global flights and mires much of the world, including Britain, in a painful economic malaise.

But a BN(O) passport is available to a huge number of people – about 70 percent of Hong Kong's 7.5 million population.

Applications for BN(O) passports have skyrocketed more than 300 percent since the national security law was imposed last July, with 733,000 registered holders as of mid-January.

Britain predicts up to 154,000 Hong Kongers could arrive over the next year and as many as 322,000 over five years, bringing an estimated "net benefit" of up to £2.9 billion ($4 billion).

The BN(O) passport is a legacy of Hong Kong's return to authoritarian China.

Many Hong Kongers at the time wanted Britain to grant them full citizenship but China was opposed to the move.

The BN(O) was a compromise, allowing Hong Kongers born before 1997 the right to stay in Britain for six months at a time, but with no working or settling rights.

Now it has become one of the few ways out for Hong Kongers hoping to start a new life overseas as authorities conduct mass arrests against democracy supporters and move to purge the restless city of dissenting views.

'A lifeboat'
Stella, a former marketing professional, plans to move to Britain imminently with her husband and three-year-old son.

"The national security law in 2020 gave us one last kick because the provisions are basically criminalising free speech," she told AFP, asking to use just her first name.

Under the visa scheme, those hoping to move have to show they have enough funds to sustain both themselves and their dependents for at least six months.

Hong Kongers already in Britain who are involved in helping others relocate say many of the early applicants tend to be educated middle-class people, often with young families, who have enough liquidity to finance their move.

"Most people we spoke with are families with primary school or nursery age kids," Nic, an activist with a group called Lion Rock Hill UK, told AFP, asking for anonymity.

Some Hong Kongers began leaving the city even before the new scheme went live.

Earlier this week Britain said around 7,000 people moved over the last six months under a separate Leave Outside the Rules (LOTR) system. They will also be able to apply for the pathway-to-citizenship visas.

"The BNO is definitely a lifeboat for Hong Kongers," Mike, a medical scientist who recently relocated with his family to the city of Manchester, told AFP.

He said many Hong Kongers feared China might stop residents leaving the territory.

"So it is better to leave as soon as possible," he added.

 

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Justice eludes Daniel Pearl's family as Pakistan SC acquits key accused; all you need to know about 2002 murder case

Pakistan Supreme Court's decision this Thursday to allow a man named Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh to walk free has created ripples reaching out as far as the United States. Sheikh, a British-born man of Pakistani origin, was convicted for the 2002 abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl after the former had reportedly admitted to his involvement in the scribe's kidnapping.

The White House has expressed 'outrage' and strong concerns over the decision, calling it an affront to terrorism victims everywhere.

It has asked the Pakistan government to promptly review its legal options or allow the US to extradite Pearl's murderers and prosecute them on US soil.

The US Secretary of State Tony Blinken has also called up Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Saturday and expressed the need to hold killers and terrorists accountable for their actions.

Sheikh was indicted in the US in 2002 for hostage-taking and conspiracy to commit hostage-taking, resulting in the murder of Pearl, as well as the 1994 kidnapping of another US citizen in India, Blinken said in a statement.

What was a tragic case of a journalist's brutal murder and the West's confrontation with extremist forces festering in South Asia has now become a hurdle in the US-Pakistan relationship under the presidency of Joe Biden. Here is all you need to know about the case:

Daniel Pearl's murder

Pearl, South Asia bureau chief of WSJ, had come to South Asia in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. He was researching for a story about Islamist militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan during his deputation in India.

He had been investigating the link between Pakistani militants and Richard Reid, dubbed the “shoe bomber” after his attempt to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes.

Pearl travelled to Pakistan in January 2002 expecting to conduct an interview with a hard-line cleric Sheik Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani. But apparently, it was a trap.

According to the prosecution, Sheikh, posing as a staunch follower of Gilani met Pearl at a hotel in Rawalpindi and then conspired with militants for his abduction on the pretext of getting him the interview at a further meeting in Karachi. However, Sheikh's lawyers deny he was ever present at the meeting or that a conspiracy was hatched.

What authorities did confirm at the time was that Pearl was abducted in the southern port megacity of Karachi in Sindh province on 23 January 2002. Four days later, various US media organisations received their first emails confirming Pearl's abduction, accusing him of being a Mossad agent.

Nearly a month later, after a string of ransom demands — varying from fighter jets for Pakistan to release of all Pakistani prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — a graphic video showing his decapitation was given to officials.

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.

He was later sentenced to death by hanging after he told a Karachi court that Pearl had already been killed days before the gruesome video of the journalist's beheading had been released.

The brutality of Pearl's killing shocked many in 2002, years before the Islamic State group began releasing videos of their militants beheading journalists.

An autopsy report told the gruesome details of the Wall Street Journal reporter’s killing and dismemberment. Pearl’s body was discovered in a shallow grave soon after a video of his beheading was delivered to the US Consulate in Karachi.

Sheikh was convicted of helping lure Pearl to a meeting in Karachi, during which he was kidnapped. Meanwhile, Pearl's killing was attributed to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and not Sheikh.

The conclusion was reached at by an independent inquiry into the case, called The Pearl Project, which was led by Pearl's friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown University professor.

The Pentagon in 2007 released a transcript in which Mohammed appears to have admitted to killing pearl.

“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl,” the transcript quoted Mohammed as saying.

Mohammed first disclosed his role while he was held in CIA custody and subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture. He remains in the US prison in Guantanamo Bay and has never been charged with the journalist's death.

Meanwhile, Sheikh had long denied any involvement in Pearl’s death, but the Supreme Court on Wednesday heard that he acknowledged writing a letter in 2019 admitting a minor role — raising hopes for some that he might remain behind bars. Faisal Siddiqi, the Pearl family lawyer, had expected it would advance his case. Still, Siddiqi had previously said winning was an uphill battle.

Sheikh has been on death row since his conviction — even after his subsequent acquittal — and is currently being held in a Karachi jail. A three-judge Supreme Court ruled 2 to 1 to uphold Sheikh’s acquittal and ordered him released, according to the Pearl family lawyer.

A lawyer for Sheikh said the court also ordered the release of three other Pakistanis who had been sentenced to life in prison for their part in Pearl’s kidnapping and death. The three — Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil and Salman Saqib — all played lesser roles, such as providing a laptop or internet access to send pictures of Pearl, with a gun to his head. Yet, at the original trial, all four were charged with the same crimes.

All accused had previously been acquitted in April by the Sindh High Court on the grounds that the initial prosecution’s evidence was insufficient. During the appeal of that acquittal, Siddiqi unsuccessfully tried to convince the Supreme Court of Sheikh's guilt on at least one of the three charges he faced, specifically the kidnapping charge, which also carries the death penalty in Pakistan. The court is expected to release a detailed explanation for Thursday's decision in the coming days.

Siddiqi said the only legal avenue available now is to ask for a review of the court's decision to uphold Sheikh's acquittal. However, he said the review would be conducted by the same court that made the decision. “In practical terms,” that means the case is closed in Pakistan, he said.

Omar Sheikh, the British-born terrorist who traded LSE stint for life in prison

Sheikh, the militant who spent close to 19 years behind bars for masterminding Pearl's abduction, traded privilege and scholarship for a life of jihad, kidnappings, and ultimately a prison cell.

Born in London in 1973 to a prosperous Pakistani garment merchant, Omar was given the best education, including enrolment at a private primary school in London, a stint at Lahore’s prestigious Aitchison College, and a brief tenure at the London School of Economics (LSE).

He abandoned his comfortable Western upbringing after just a year at LSE, reportedly travelling to Bosnia during the brutal Balkans war in the early 1990s, where his jihadist zeal sprouted after coming into contact with Pakistani militants.

The former boxer and arm wrestling enthusiast is believed to have returned to Pakistan to spend several months in a militant training camp and travelled to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir to fight Indian forces.

In India, he carried out his first kidnapping, abducting an American and three British tourists in 1994. The police captured him in a shootout, initially thinking he was one of the British hostages because of his clipped accent and Western bearing. He was jailed in New Delhi but never charged.

In prison, he met Pakistani jihadist Maulana Masood Azhar, who went on to form the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed. India freed Azhar, Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar in 1999 when the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane demanded his release in exchange for their hostages.

With inputs from agencies

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France shuts borders to non-EU countries to halt spread of new COVID-19 variants

Paris: France says it's closing its borders to people arriving from outside the European Union starting Sunday to try to stop the growing spread of new variants of the virus and avoid a third lockdown.

French prime minister Jean Castex announced the new measure Friday night after an emergency government health security meeting at the presidential palace, warning of a "great risk" from the new variants.

All those arriving from other EU countries will be required to produce a negative virus test, he said.

France already had limits on cross-border travel because of the virus, and imposed tougher checks in airports and ports last week. International tourism to France has slowed to a trickle because of the pandemic, and restaurants and tourist sites have been closed since October along with many hotels.

France will also close all large shopping centers starting Sunday and limit travel to, and from, its overseas territories.

Castex ordered stepped-up police checks of those who violate France's 12-hour-a-day curfew, hold secret parties or reopen restaurants in defiance of a closure order in place since October.

Virus infections, hospitalizations and deaths have been rising steadily but not sharply in France in recent weeks, and many doctors have been urging a new nationwide shutdown like those imposed in several other European countries.

Citing the economic devastation of such measures, Castex said: "Our duty is to put everything in place to avoid a new lockdown, and the coming days will be decisive."

France has reported among the world's highest virus COVID-19 fatalities, at 75,620, and more than 60 percent of its intensive care beds are occupied by virus patients.

"More than ever we should do everything to respect the rules," Castex said.

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US detected first instance of COVID-19 disease from South African SARS-CoV-2 variant

A new variant of the coronavirus emerged Thursday in the United States, posing yet another public health challenge in a country already losing more than 3,000 people to COVID-19 every day. The mutated version of the virus, first identified in South Africa, was found in two cases in South Carolina. Public health officials said it’s almost certain that there are more infections that have not been identified yet. They are also concerned that this version spreads more easily and that vaccines could be less effective against it.

The two cases were discovered in adults in different regions of the state and do not appear to be connected. Neither of the people infected has traveled recently, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control said Thursday.

“That’s frightening,” because it means there could be more undetected cases within the state, said Dr Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases physician at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. “It’s probably more widespread.”

The arrival of the variant shows that “the fight against this deadly virus is far from over,” Dr Brannon Traxler, South Carolina’s interim public health director, said in a statement. “While more COVID-19 vaccines are on the way, supplies are still limited. Every one of us must recommit to the fight by recognizing that we are all on the front lines now. We are all in this together.”

Viruses constantly mutate, and coronavirus variants are circulating around the globe, but scientists are primarily concerned with the emergence of three that researchers believe may spread more easily. Other variants first reported in the United Kingdom and Brazil were previously confirmed in the U.S.

As the variants bring a potential for greater infection risks in the U.S., pandemic-weary lawmakers in several states are pushing back against mask mandates, business closures and other protective restrictions ordered by governors.

States including Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky and Indiana are weighing proposals to limit their governors’ abilities to impose emergency restrictions. Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Assembly had been expected to vote to repeal Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ mask mandate, but lawmakers abruptly called off the vote Thursday in the face of broad criticism and out of concern it would jeopardize more than $49 million in federal aid. Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering a constitutional amendment to strip the governor of many of his emergency powers.

Governors argue that they need authority to act swiftly in a crisis, and limitations could slow critical emergency responses.

Meanwhile, Nebraska health officials said the state could be days away from lifting restrictions on indoor gatherings, citing a low percentage of COVID-19 hospitalizations. Other states seeing declining infections are also loosening limitations on restaurants and other businesses, though experts have warned the public to stay vigilant about masks and social distancing or risk further surges.

In South Carolina, the state health agency said the variant was found in one person from the state’s coastal region and another in its northeastern corner. The state gave little other information, citing privacy concerns, though Traxler said neither of the people was contagious any longer.

“Both were tested very early in the month, and my understanding is that both are doing well,” Traxler said.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, loosened most of the state’s remaining pandemic restrictions in the fall. Spokesman Brian Symmes said McMaster does not plan to order new restrictions based on the discovery of the variant.

“This is important information for South Carolinians to have,” McMaster said in a tweet, “but it isn’t a reason for panic.”

Scientists last week reported preliminary signs that some of the recent mutations may modestly curb the effectiveness of two vaccines, although they stressed that the shots still protect against the disease. There are also signs that some of the new mutations may undermine tests for the virus and reduce the effectiveness of certain treatments.

The coronavirus has already sickened millions and killed roughly 4,30,000 people in the United States.

While the rollout of vaccines has been slow, President Joe Biden has pledged to deliver 100 million injections in his first 100 days in office — and suggested it’s possible the U.S. could reach 1.5 million shots a day.

While some European countries do extensive genetic testing to detect these variants, the U.S. has done little of this detective work. But scientists have been been quickly trying to do more, which has revealed the more contagious variants.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported at least 315 cases of the U.K.-discovered variant in the United States. Those reports have come from at least 28 states, and health officials believe it could become the dominant strain in the U.S. by March. That variant has been reported in at least 70 countries.

The first U.S. case of the variant found in Brazil was announced earlier this week by health officials in Minnesota. It was a person who recently traveled to that South American nation. That version of the virus has popped up in more than a half-dozen countries.

The variant first found in South Africa was detected in October. Since then, it has been found in at least 30 other countries.

Some tests suggest the South African and Brazilian variants may be less susceptible to antibody drugs or antibody-rich blood from COVID-19 survivors, both of which help people fight off the virus.

Health officials also worry that if the virus changes enough, people might get COVID-19 a second time.

Biden on Monday reinstated COVID-19 travel restrictions on most non-U.S. travelers from Brazil, the U.K. and South Africa. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Americans avoid travel.

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