What Resources Does the Biden Transition Get?

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The U.S. General Services Administration has determined president-elect Joe Biden is now eligible for certain resources and access as part of a 1964 law enacted to promote an orderly transition of executive power in the United States. Between now and his January 20 inauguration, Biden will be building out his administration, putting in place staff both to begin carrying out his policy vision when his term begins and to be able to immediately handle the national security aspects of the job. The transition team gained access to a government internet domain and email, quickly launching buildbackbetter.gov. Biden will receive information about classified threats tomore

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Colleges Closing Quickly as COVID-19 Cases Rise

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As the Thanksgiving holiday looms, more colleges and universities in the United States continue to abruptly shut down their campuses for the remainder of the fall semester because of increased COVID-19 cases across the country.  At the beginning of the COVID-19 shutdown last spring, colleges and universities scrambled to respond to the pandemic and keep students safe. A George Mason University (GMU) study found that three-quarters of 575 colleges with more than 5,000 students had moved courses online, discouraged campus housing, canceled travel, closed campuses, and worked remotely.  That study, published October 16, analyzed actions colleges had made between Februarymore

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Biden’s Pick for Secretary of State Staunchly Supports International Alliances

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Antony Blinken, who has been tapped to be U.S. secretary of state under President-elect Joe Biden, has decades of foreign policy experience and is known for his staunch support of international alliances and human rights.   Blinken has a close relationship with Biden, and while he is not a household name, he has held important foreign policy positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations.  If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he would become the face of U.S. diplomacy and would be the leading force in the Biden administration’s effort to reshape U.S. alliances after four years in which President Donald Trumpmore

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Biden Chooses Antony Blinken for Secretary of State

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President-elect Joe Biden has announced several of his top cabinet picks, naming his long-time close adviser and former deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken as his choice to be the next secretary of state. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more on Blinken, who is known as a staunch supporter of international alliances, human rights and refugees. Produced by: Barry Unger   …

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Biden Taps Veteran US Diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield as UN Ambassador 

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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has named veteran diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield to join his forthcoming Cabinet as his pick for U.N. ambassador, his transition team announced Monday. The post requires Senate confirmation.Thomas-Greenfield has worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations during her 35-year State Department career. An Africa specialist, she served as U.S. ambassador to Liberia, and held posts in Kenya, The Gambia and Nigeria. Under President Barack Obama, she served as the assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs (2013-2017), developing and managing Washington’s policy toward sub-Saharan Africa. She has also worked in Geneva at the U.S. Mission to themore

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Biden Names His Diplomatic, National Security Team

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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden named his top diplomatic and national security team for his incoming administration on Monday, including one of his closest foreign affairs advisers, Antony Blinken, to be secretary of state.Biden also named a former top U.S. diplomat, one-time Secretary of State John Kerry, to a new position as special presidential envoy for climate while holding a seat on the National Security Council. It was a reflection, the Biden transition said, of the incoming president’s commitment to addressing climate change as an urgent national security issue.Biden is set to become the 46th U.S. president, and at 78, itsmore

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US Rhodes Scholars Chosen Virtually for 1st Time

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The U.S. Rhodes Scholars for 2021 were elected virtually this year for the first time as the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, though that didn’t extinguish enthusiasm among the 32 students who won scholarships to Oxford University.The Rhodes Trust announced the winners early Sunday, which include 22 students of color. Ten are Black, which ties the record for the most Black students elected in a single year. Nine are first-generation Americans or immigrants, according to the Rhodes Trust press release.  Shera Avi-Yonah, a 22-year-old Harvard University student, said she found out about her win Saturday night while she wasmore

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Biden to Name First Cabinet Members Tuesday 

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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden plans to name the first members of his Cabinet on Tuesday, a key aide said Sunday, even as President Donald Trump urged on Republicans to help him in his longshot legal effort to overturn his re-election defeat. Ron Klain, Biden’s incoming White House chief of staff, declined in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” show to say which agency heads Biden would name. But the president-elect said last week he had settled on a new Treasury secretary and that his selection would appeal to “all elements of the Democratic Party… progressive to the moderate coalitions.” While Biden ismore

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China-Sensitive Topics at US Universities Draw More Online Harassment

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Last week, students at Brandeis University hosted an online discussion about China’s controversial Xinjiang policies, hearing experts discuss the detention, abuse and political indoctrination of more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.But as Uighur attorney and advocate Rayhan Asat appeared before the student group last Friday, her screen was taken over as hackers wrote “fake news” and “liar” on it.For some participants, the hacking was unwelcome but unsurprising.James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and a prominent Xinjiang scholar, told VOA that the group had been warned about a potential interruption beforehand.He said some letters had been writtenmore

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US Minorities Push for Diverse Biden Cabinet

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Native Americans are urging President-elect Joe Biden to make history by selecting one of their own to lead the powerful agency that oversees the nation’s tribes, setting up one of several looming tests of Biden’s pledge to have a Cabinet representative of Americans.   O.J. Semans is one of dozens of tribal officials and voting activists around the country pushing selection of Rep. Deb Haaland, a New Mexico Democrat and member of the Pueblo of Laguna, to become the first Native American secretary of interior. Tell Semans, a member of the Rosebud Sioux, that a well-regarded white lawmaker is consideredmore

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Georgia Certifies Recount, Confirming Biden Victory

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Following a hand recount of ballots, officials in Georgia certified U.S. presidential election results in the state, confirming that President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump. Yet the president shows no signs of conceding. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the latest. Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov …

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Trump Makes Late-term Bid to Lower Prescription Drug Costs

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Trying to close out major unfinished business, the Trump administration issued regulations Friday that could lower the prices Americans pay for many prescription drugs.But in a time of political uncertainty, it’s hard to say whether the rules will withstand expected legal challenges from the pharmaceutical industry or whether President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will accept, amend or try to roll them back entirely.”The drug companies don’t like me too much. But we had to do it,” President Donald Trump said in announcing the new policy at the White House. “I just hope they keep it. I hope they have the couragemore

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‘No More Room for Delay’: Biden Wants Emergency COVID-19 Aid

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President-elect Joe Biden is calling on Congress to enact billions of dollars in emergency COVID-19 assistance before the year’s end, according to a senior adviser who warned Friday that “there’s no more room for delay.”Biden transition aide Jen Psaki delivered the remarks before Biden’s first in-person meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer since he was projected the winner of the presidential election. Biden hosted the pair Friday afternoon at his makeshift transition headquarters in a downtown Wilmington, Delaware, theater.Biden sat with Schumer, Pelosi and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, all wearing masks and spaced outmore

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Birthday Time: Biden Turns 78, Will Be Oldest US President

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President-elect Joe Biden turned 78 on Friday. In two months, he’ll take the reins of a politically fractured nation facing the worst public health crisis in a century, high unemployment and a reckoning on racial injustice.     As he wrestles with those issues, Biden will be attempting to accomplish another feat: demonstrate to Americans that age is but a number and he’s up to the job. Biden will be sworn in as the oldest president in the nation’s history, displacing Ronald Reagan, who left the White House in 1989 when he was 77 years and 349 days old.  more

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Biden Adds Obama Administration Veterans to Top Staff

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President-elect Joe Biden is adding four Obama-Biden administration veterans to his top ranks as he continues to build out his White House team.Cathy Russell, who was Jill Biden’s chief of staff during the Obama administration, will serve as director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, evaluating applicants for administration roles. Louisa Terrell, who served as a legislative adviser to the president in the Obama administration and worked as deputy chief of staff for Biden in the Senate, will be director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. Terrell has already been engaged in Capitol Hill outreach asmore

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Mnuchin Denies Trying to Hinder Incoming Administration

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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin denied Friday that by ending several emergency loan programs being run by the Federal Reserve, he was trying to limit the choices President-elect Joe Biden will have to promote an economic recovery.Mnuchin said his decision was based on the fact the programs were not being heavily utilized. He said Congress could make better use of the money by reallocating it to support grants to small businesses and extended unemployment assistance.”We’re not trying to hinder anything,” Mnuchin said in a CNBC interview. “We don’t need this money to buy corporate bonds. We need this money to gomore

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Trump, Allies Take Frantic Steps to Overturn Biden’s Victory

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President Donald Trump and his allies are taking increasingly frantic steps to subvert the results of the 2020 election, including summoning state legislators to the White House as part of a longshot bid to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.   Among other last-ditch tactics: personally calling local election officials who are trying to rescind their certification votes in Michigan, suggesting in a legal challenge that Pennsylvania set aside the popular vote there and pressuring county officials in Arizona to delay certifying vote tallies.     Election law experts see it as the last, dying gasps of the Trump campaign and saymore

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Venezuelan President Blames Rival for Trump’s Apparent Election Defeat

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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is blaming his rival, opposition leader Juan Guaido, for U.S. President Donald Trump’s apparent reelection defeat.Maduro said Thursday, he received a message from someone in the United States he refused to identify, that if Trump had trusted Maduro instead of Guaido, the election result would have been different.Maduro seemed to mock Trump for recognizing Guaido as Venezuela’s self-proclaimed interim president saying, “You preferred to bet on an imbecile and that imbecile led you to defeat.”Maduro’s comments might also be a public rebuke of Trump and his administration, which has long favored Guaido, who was also backedmore

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Joe Biden Wins Georgia, Flipping State for Democrats

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Joe Biden has won Georgia, scoring a rare win in a Southern state that hadn’t backed a Democrat for president in nearly 30 years.The Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of Georgia and its 16 Electoral College votes Thursday, after state election officials there said a hand tally of ballots cast in the presidential race confirmed the former vice president led President Donald Trump by roughly 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million counted.The AP declared Biden president-elect after he clinched the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Georgia raised the Democrat’s electoral vote total to 306.The AP didmore

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Biden Conducts Virtual Meeting with State Governors

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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden continues his transition to power, meeting virtually on Thursday with leading state governors even as President Donald Trump continues his long-shot legal efforts to overturn the election results and retain the presidency.Biden, two months ahead of his inauguration on January 20, is meeting with Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and other state leaders from his home city of Wilmington, Delaware.Their discussions are likely to center on Biden’s plans when he takes office to control the surging number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. and what can be done before hemore

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Biden Expected to Reverse Many of Trump’s Immigration Policies

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President-elect Joe Biden is expected to reverse many of President Donald Trump’s landmark immigration policies after he takes office next year. Though untangling some immigration guidelines most likely will take time, Biden has vowed to reverse limits on temporary workers, loosen visa restrictions on international students, halt border wall construction and end private immigration detention centers.As VOA recently reported, Biden is expected to prioritize restoring DACA — an Obama-era program that protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation — rescind travel restrictions on 13 countries and put in place a 100-day freeze on deportationsmore

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Millennial Life: Eat, Sleep, Work, Screens

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Would you give up nearly a decade of your life looking at your cellphone?Calculated by today’s usage, the average person spends a little over 76,500 hours – or 8.74 years – on a smartphone over a lifetime, according to a FILE – Marilu Rodriguez checks a news website on her smartphone before boarding a train home at the end of her workweek in Chicago, March 13, 2015.This widespread usage of smartphones has sparked worries among teens themselves, with 54% of U.S. teens saying they spend too much time on their phones. And 52% have also reported trying to take stepsmore

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3 US Senators Seek to Stop Trump’s $23B in Arms Sales to UAE 

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Three U.S. senators said Wednesday that they would introduce legislation seeking to stop the Trump administration’s effort to sell more than $23 billion of drones and other weapons systems to the United Arab Emirates, setting up a showdown with the president just weeks before he is due to leave office.Democratic Senators Bob Menendez and Chris Murphy and Republican Senator Rand Paul will introduce four separate resolutions of disapproval of President Donald Trump’s plan to sell more than $23 billion worth of Reaper drones, F-35 fighter aircraft and air-to-air missiles, and other munitions to the UAE.The huge sale could alter themore

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