Further tensions erupt between Addis Ababa and Cairo, as Egyptians are held in Ethiopia on their way to Kuwait, for traveling with a tourist visa.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Ethiopia’s detention of Egyptians escalates tensions between the two countries
Bahrain's longtime prime minister dies at 84
Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa was among the world's longest-serving prime ministers.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Bahrain's longtime prime minister dies at 84
Sa'ar 6: The new backbone of Israel's Navy for decades to come
The Sa’ar 6 was built knowing that the enemy now fights in an asymmetric way and that the missile ships must deal with threats from the shore
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Sa'ar 6: The new backbone of Israel's Navy for decades to come
Benjamin Netanyahu unlikely to get plea deal to avoid trial
A-G Avichai Mandelblit seems only likely to agree to deal with jail time, a sharp break from previous position; PM demands indictment be amended
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Benjamin Netanyahu unlikely to get plea deal to avoid trial
Dutch Senate calls to affirm Jewish ties to Temple Mount
This is not the first time that lawmakers in The Hague called on their government to vote with Israel at the UN.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Dutch Senate calls to affirm Jewish ties to Temple Mount
Bahrain names Crown Prince as new Prime Minister
Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa named Crown Prince Salman al-Khalifa as the new prime minister, state news agency BNA reported on Wednesday, citing a royal decree.Developing.
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Bahrain names Crown Prince as new Prime Minister
Coronavirus: Gov't considering opening more stores, night curfew
Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said that nothing more should be opened until the country reaches the necessary indices.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Coronavirus: Gov't considering opening more stores, night curfew
Joe Biden wins US presidency: All you need to know about the 77-year-old politician
Days before he left the White House in 2017, President Barack Obama surprised Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, declaring his septuagenarian, white-haired lieutenant “the best vice president America’s ever had,” a “lion of American history.”The tribute marked the presumed end of a long public life that put Biden in the orbit of the Oval Office for 45 years — yet, through a combination of family and personal tragedy, his own political missteps and sheer bad timing, had never allowed him to sit behind the Resolute Desk himself.It turns out the pinnacle would not elude Biden after all. His moment just hadn't yet arrived.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., 77, was elected Saturday as the 46th president of the United States, defeating President Donald Trump in an election that played out against the backdrop of a pandemic, its economic fallout and a national reckoning on racism. He becomes the oldest president-elect and brings with him a history-making vice president-elect in Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve in the nation's second-highest office.There are no sure paths to a post held by only 44 men in more than two centuries, but Biden’s is among the most unlikely — even for a man who had aspired to the job for more than three decades, twice running unsuccessfully and passing on a third bid to try to succeed Obama four years ago.The president-elect’s allies, though, say it is that delayed, circuitous route that prepared him for 2020, when he could finally offer himself not just as another senator or governor with 10-point plans and outsize ambition. Instead, from launch on April 25, 2019, Biden sold himself as the experienced, empathetic elder statesman particularly suited to defeat a “dangerous” and “divisive” president and then “restore the soul of the nation” in Trump’s wake.“A lot of people dismissed it,” said Karen Finney, a top aide to nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. “But when I saw his opening speech, talking about the fight for the soul of the country, I said, ‘He gets it.’ That’s what a president does. A president looks around the country and understands what’s happening.”“Biden met the moment,” she said.His victory, though, did not come with the usual trappings. He did not bring along a clear Democratic Senate majority, and several Democratic House candidates lost, raising the prospect of a closely divided government likely to test his promise of bipartisanship. State legislatures also did not flip even as Biden was winning the popular vote by about 5 percentage points.In his first public statement as president-elect Saturday, Biden acknowledged the tensions that surely will linger, but called on Americans “to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation ... to unite, and to heal.”Biden first joined a Democratic primary race shaped by nearly two dozen rivals -- most considerably younger -- already deep into an ideological fight over issues from universal health care to taxation of billionaires. Biden took an open lane, settling where he spent his 36 years as a Delaware senator: a mainstream liberal with an establishment, deal-making core. But his visceral, emotional appeal transcended party identity.When he warned that reelecting Trump “would forever alter the character” of America, Biden was drawing on life and political experience to tell his fellow Democrats they were having a premature debate. In his estimate, they were arguing over where the metaphorical train should go when, in fact, the train was -- and remains -- off the rails.Biden was the presumed front-runner he hadn’t been in 1987, when his first White House bid ended embarrassingly with a plagiarized speech; or in 2008, when he was trounced in the Iowa caucuses by Obama and others; or even in 2016, when the combination of his son Beau’s death in 2015 and Obama’s behind-the-scenes support for Clinton forced him to pass on the race.Yet Biden was a wobbly 2020 favorite. He was well-regarded, even beloved as his party’s “Uncle Joe,” a loyal deputy to Obama, but he faced a river of criticism as too old, too moderate, too white, too wistful, too senatorial.He was not the same figure who'd first gone to Iowa in the 1988 cycle as a young star in his party, a gifted orator whose booming speeches could fill a room while at the same time making a connection with the legacies of the Democratic coalition Franklin Roosevelt built.Though he eventually built out a policy agenda for an ambitious presidency, there was no signature proposal for a grand program like “Medicare for All.” Biden emphasized more personal traits.His empathy -- traced to a debilitating childhood stutter, a 1972 car crash that killed his first wife and infant daughter weeks after his election to the Senate, and then Beau’s death as an adult -- wasn’t something he could easily marshal on a crowded debate stage.Recalling decades on Capitol Hill meant reminiscing about the days of a Senate that still included old Southern segregationists, and it invited scrutiny of his votes for criminal justice laws, trade and tax deals, and war resolutions that are anathema to younger Democrats.Talking so much about his family played into Trump’s efforts to sully Joe Biden and son Hunter as corrupt. Even Biden’s umbrage about Trump’s racist rhetoric highlighted that he was also a white establishment figure, vying to lead a party whose energy comes from women, Black and Latino voters and young people.When the nominating process started, Biden lost badly in both Iowa and New Hampshire, inviting talk about how he might make a graceful exit from the race.He found emphatic redemption, powered by Black voters so vital to any Democratic candidate, by winning the South Carolina primary and resetting the race in his favor. That victory sent a message to Democratic voters in key states that Biden could build a winning coalition.“I endorsed Joe Biden as soon as he announced because I thought he was the only candidate who would ever win” battleground states, said Gwen Graham, a former Florida congresswoman and 2018 candidate for governor. Graham, whose father served with Biden in the Senate, cited the president-elect’s “centrism and experience” as primary reasons, but added another trait she said was critical in the era of Trump.“Joe Biden is just a fundamentally decent man,” she said.House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and South Carolina’s most influential Democrat, leaned on the same assessment when he made his seminal endorsement in February, days ahead of what would become Biden’s first primary victory in 32 years of presidential campaigns.“We know Joe,” Clyburn said with emotion. “But most importantly, Joe knows us.”It's an open question whether the bond Biden formed first with Black voters and then with moderate white Democrats would have expanded into a general election victory if the COVID-19 pandemic -- and Trump’s repeated dismissal of its economic and health threats -- hadn’t come to dominate 2020. And it’s certain the president-elect now faces a different challenge as he seeks to turn his November coalition into a governing alliance.But it’s not debatable that Biden’s core pitch, rooted in his political and personal biography, was the same when he launched his campaign in the spring of 2019 as it was when he won the South Carolina primary in February 2020 and as he closed out his campaign against Trump.Obama, awarding that rare civilian honor to a man he said in 2017 was headed to life as a private citizen, had one thing right: “He’s nowhere close to finished.”Read more:Biden pledges to be president 'for all Americans', says it's time to 'heal'Trump doesn't concede to President-elect Biden, says election 'far from over'Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump, becomes 46th president of United States
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Joe Biden wins US presidency: All you need to know about the 77-year-old politician
Kamala Harris becomes first Black woman, South Asian elected US vice president
Kamala Harris made history Saturday as the first Black woman elected as vice president of the United States, shattering barriers that have kept men — almost all of them white — entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for more than two centuries.The 56-year-old California senator, also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, represents the multiculturalism that defines America but is largely absent from Washington's power centers. Her Black identity has allowed her to speak in personal terms in a year of reckoning over police brutality and systemic racism. As the highest-ranking woman ever elected in American government, her victory gives hope to women who were devastated by Hillary Clinton's defeat four years ago.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Harris has been a rising star in Democratic politics for much of the last two decades, serving as San Francisco's district attorney and California's attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator. After Harris ended her own 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Joe Biden tapped her as his running mate. They will be sworn in as president and vice president on Jan. 20.Biden’s running mate selection carried added significance because he will be the oldest president ever inaugurated, at 78, and hasn’t committed to seeking a second term in 2024.Harris often framed her candidacy as part of the legacy — often undervalued — of pioneering Black women who came before her, including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination, in 1972.“We’re not often taught their stories,” Harris said in August as she accepted her party's vice presidential nomination. “But as Americans, we all stand on their shoulders.”That history was on Sara Twyman's mind recently as she watched Harris campaign in Las Vegas and wore a sweatshirt featuring the senator's name alongside Chisholm.“It’s high time that a woman gets to the highest levels of our government,” said Twyman, who is 35 and Black.Despite the excitement surrounding Harris, she and Biden face steep challenges, including deepening racial tensions in the U.S. in the wake of a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on people of color and a series of police killings of Black Americans. Harris' past work as a prosecutor has prompted skepticism among progressives and young voters who are looking to her to back sweeping institutional change over incremental reforms in policing, drug policy and more.Jessica Byrd, who leads the Movement for Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project and The Frontline, a multiracial coalition effort to galvanize voters, said she plans to engage in the rigorous organizing work needed to push Harris and Biden toward more progressive policies.“I deeply believe in the power of Black women’s leadership, even when all of our politics don’t align,” Byrd said. “I want us to be committed to the idea that representation is exciting and it’s worthy of celebration and also that we have millions of Black women who deserve a fair shot.”Harris is the second Black woman elected to the Senate. Her colleague, Sen. Cory Booker, who is also Black, said her very presence makes the institution “more accessible to more people” and suggested she would accomplish the same with the vice presidency.Harris was born in 1964 to two parents active in the civil rights movement. Shyamala Gopalan, from India, and Donald Harris, from Jamaica, met at the University of California, Berkeley, then a hotbed of 1960s activism. They divorced when Harris and her sister were girls, and Harris was raised by her late mother, whom she considers the most important influence in her life.Kamala is Sanskrit for “lotus flower," and Harris gave nods to her Indian heritage throughout the campaign, including with a callout to her “chitthis,” a Tamil word for a maternal aunt, in her first speech as Biden’s running mate. When Georgia Sen. David Perdue mocked her name in an October rally, the hashtag #MyNameIs took off on Twitter, with South Asians sharing the meanings behind their names.The mocking of her name by Republicans, including Trump, was just one of the attacks Harris faced. Trump and his allies sought to brand her as radical and a socialist despite her more centrist record, an effort aimed at making people uncomfortable about the prospect of a Black woman in leadership. She was the target of online disinformation laced with racism and sexism about her qualifications to serve as president.Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington said Harris’ power comes not just from her life experience but also from the people she already represents.California is the nation’s most populous and one of its most diverse states; nearly 40% of people are Latino and 15% are Asian. In Congress, Harris and Jayapal have teamed up on bills to ensure legal representation for Muslims targeted by Trump’s 2017 travel ban and to extend rights to domestic workers.“That’s the kind of policy that also happens when you have voices like ours at the table,” said Jayapal, who in 2016 was the first South Asian woman elected to the U.S. House. Harris won election to the Senate that same year.Harris' mother raised her daughters with the understanding the world would see them as Black women, Harris has said, and that is how she describes herself today.She attended Howard University, one of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority created by and for Black women. She campaigned regularly at HBCUs and tried to address the concerns of young Black men and women eager for strong efforts to dismantle systemic racism.Her victory could usher more Black women and people of color into politics.San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who considers Harris a mentor, views Harris' success through the lens of her own identity as the granddaughter of a sharecropper.“African Americans are not far removed from slavery and the horrors of racism in this country, and we’re still feeling the impacts of that with how we’re treated and what’s happening around this racial uprising,” she said. Harris' candidacy “instills a lot of pride and a lot of hope and a lot of excitement in what is possible."Harris is married to a Jewish man, Doug Emhoff, whose children from a previous marriage call her “Momala.” The excitement about her candidacy extends to women across races.Friends Sarah Lane and Kelli Hodge, each with three daughters, brought all six girls to a Harris rally in Phoenix in the race's closing days. “This car is full of little girls who dream big. Go Kamala!” read a sign taped on the car’s trunk.Lane, a 41-year-old attorney who is of Hispanic and Asian heritage, volunteered for Biden and Harris, her first time ever working for a political campaign. Asked why she brought her daughters, ages 6, 9 and 11, to see Harris, she answered, “I want my girls to see what women can do.”Read more:Joe Biden wins US presidency: All you need to know about the 77-year-old politicianBiden pledges to be president 'for all Americans', says it's time to 'heal'Trump doesn't concede to President-elect Biden, says election 'far from over'Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump, becomes 46th president of United States
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Kamala Harris becomes first Black woman, South Asian elected US vice president
Arab world leaders congratulate Joe Biden on US election win
Leaders of the Arab world congratulated Joe Biden on Saturday for winning the US presidential election over incumbent President Donald Trump.Following are their words to Biden in tweets and official statements carried by state news agencies:Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said in a tweet: “Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on winning the US elections. Our sincere wishes for further development and prosperity for the American people. The UAE and USA are friends and allies with a strong historic partnership that we look forward to strengthening together.”Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, UAE's Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai said in a tweet: “Congratulations to the President-Elect of the United States Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. We look forward to strengthening our five-decade enduring and strategic relations.”Jordan's King Abdullah bin al-Hussein said in a tweet: “Congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden and VP-election Kamala Harris. I look forward to working with you on further advancing the solid historic partnership between Jordan and the United States, in the interest of our shared objectives of peace, stability and prosperity.”Iraq’s president Barham Salih said in a tweet: “I extend warmest congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden, a friend and trusted partner in the cause of building a better Iraq. We look forward to working to achieve our common goals and strengthening peace and stability in the entire Middle East.”Oman's sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said expressed in a letter his “sincere congratulations to President-elect Biden for gaining the confidence of the American people,” and wished him “success in leading the friendly American people towards further progress and welfare,” state news agency reported.The Sultan also wished for the “friendship and cooperation” between the Oman and the US to grow.Lebanon's President Michel Aoun wrote to Biden congratulating him for winning the presidential election and for “winning the American people’s trust.” He also wished for the return of balance in Lebanese-American relations during his term, the presidency tweeted.Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi congratulated Biden in a statement and stressed “the aspiration for cooperation and joint action to strengthen Egyptian-American strategic ties.”Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said in a tweet: “On behalf of the Sudanese people, I congratulate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for their election as President and Vice President. Looking forward to working closely with them both to continue building bridges of friendship and cooperation between our two nations and countries.”For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Read more:Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump, becomes 46th president of United StatesTrump doesn't concede to President-elect Biden, says election 'far from over'Joe Biden wins US presidency: All you need to know about the 77-year-old politicianPalestinians welcome Trump exit, but are cautious about newly elected BidenIncoming US President Biden may differ with Israel’s Netanyahu on Iran, settlements
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Arab world leaders congratulate Joe Biden on US election win