Joe biden

To slip once may be regarded as a misfortune; twice looks like carelessness. But three times? Well that looks like US President Joe Biden going up the stairs to board Air Force One… Biden was getting on Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews today, as he heads to Atlanta following the massage parlour shooting this week. The Commander-in-Chief and leader of the free world rounded off his trip with a tasteful salute. Style it out Joe, no one saw. Did Vladimir Putin — a ‘killer’, according to Biden this week — slather the steps with Russian oil? We know he would stop at nothing. Hopefully the Democrats can find some

The Joe Biden administration, headed up by a proud son of Ireland, has spent St Patrick’s Day briefing reporters in Washington that it will not be taking a side in the latest Irish border dispute. The new President spoke with the Irish Taoiseach on Wednesday in celebration of the two countries’ history — just as the EU prepares to take the UK to court over the border row.  Perhaps Micheál Martin was planning on lightly nudging Biden to remind him of the more recent past. Six months ago, the Democratic challenger to Trump blasted Boris Johnson for putting the Good Friday Agreement at risk, saying that he couldn’t allow it to become a

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to approach Russia and its irascible President Vladimir Putin with a new sense of toughness and purpose. Now calling the shots in the White House, President Biden appears to have made good on that promise — at least symbolically. On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced several sets of sanctions against Moscow for last summer’s attempted assassination of the Russian activist Alexei Navalny, a plot that involved the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. The sanctions, taken in concert with the European Union’s own measures, included asset freezes and travel bans on seven Russian officials deemed responsible for the poisoning, imprisonment, and prosecution of Navalny.

Today, after pressure from senior US lawmakers and staring at an impending statutory deadline, the Biden administration authorised the release of a declassified intelligence report on one of the most grisly state-sanctioned murders in recent history. The killing of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi may have occurred 16 months ago, but the murder has hung around the US-Saudi relationship like a wet blanket. The US intelligence community’s assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the heir to the throne, was intricately involved in Khashoggi’s death was a bombshell heard around the world. And yet media reactions notwithstanding, MbS’s role in Khashoggi’s demise was hardly a surprise. This

I’m hooked on vaccine data. Barely an hour at my desk goes by without hitting refresh on a website telling me how many doses of Covid-19 vaccines have gone into arms around the world. A good day in either the US, where I live, or the UK, where I’m from, brings a frisson of excitement not dissimilar to what I imagine a gambling addict feels when his number hits. Slow progress sends me into a sulk. Either way, I need my fix. The cause of my addiction is not complicated: I am fed up of this wretched pandemic. And the more aggressive the vaccination drive, the sooner it is over.

Is Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s secretary of state, preparing to abandon Barack Obama’s powder-puff Asian foreign policies? It is now widely agreed that Obama, under whom Blinken served as deputy secretary of state, ceded to China uncontested control of the South China Sea. Obama’s so-called ‘pivot to Asia’ was all talk and no trousers. Blinken, who believes that diplomacy must be ‘supplemented by deterrence’, may be about to implement a more aggressive foreign policy in south-east Asia and elsewhere. In his first speech as general secretary of the Communist party in 2012, Xi Jinping made his intentions clear. He stated his commitment to ‘accepting the baton of history and

‘It’s like being in church’, said my teenage son. It was a bit — two bursts of prayer, a religious song, a long sermon, and a general air of community-reverence, inclusive piety. We were watching Biden’s inauguration last week, grateful for a mid-afternoon break from other screens. These are quasi-religious events — I knew that. But this time it seemed more pointedly religious than ever. Let’s get back to the true faith, after a spell of gold-plated idolatry. And, if you knew how to spy the signs, this ceremony reflected the new man’s Roman Catholicism — a Jesuit leading the prayers, a quote from Saint Augustine, songs from an Italian-American