Today it is about the rivalry between the USA and China, the delivery problems with corona vaccines - and Bodo Ramelow's failed trip to the clubhouse.
EU advises on vaccine problems
You need strong nerves to wait for the vaccine against the coronavirus.
Practically every day there is new news, which again does not work with deliveries or with the allocation.
Today the EU Commission wants to
ask
representatives of the British-Swedish company
Astrazeneca
to pray.
They should provide information about possible delivery problems.
The commission had signed a contract with Astrazeneca last summer for up to
400 million doses of
its corona vaccine.
However, the company said late last week that it could initially deliver less than agreed to the EU after the vaccine was approved.
The EU Commission is angry, also because those responsible don't want to stand up for the mess themselves.
"We expect the contracts that the pharmaceutical industry has signed to be kept," said Council President
Charles Michel
.
Above all, one must be clear about the reason for the delay.
If necessary, legal means will also be used.
The EU actually assumes that the member states will be able to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the adult population with the vaccines it has bought by the end of the summer.
Michel now admitted that this goal would be difficult to achieve.
Seriously ill and disabled people complain against Spahn's vaccination sequence: "They completely forgot people like me"
Joe Biden's China Problem
Icon: enlarge
The American aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt
Photo: US NAVY / REUTERS
The new American President Joe Biden is hardly in office, as it already becomes clear which topic will concern him most in the coming years: the rivalry between the USA and the Asian giant China.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to a new UN report, China has overtaken the USA as the most important location for foreign direct investment.
While direct investments in the USA fell by 49 percent in 2020, China recorded growth of four percent despite the corona pandemic, according to the newspaper.
At the same time there are new tensions in the South China Sea.
The Biden government has let Beijing know that it is determined to curb Chinese influence in the region.
Foreign Office spokesman Ned Price assured Taiwan the "rock solid" support of the US.
Washington follows "with concern" how the
People's Republic of China
tries to "intimidate its neighbors, including Taiwan."
The government in Taipei had previously reported that numerous Chinese bombers and fighter jets had breached Taiwan's airspace.
In
a telephone conversation with his Japanese counterpart
Nobuo Kishi
, the
new US Secretary of State,
Lloyd Austin,
emphasized
that the US would support his country in repelling claims by the Chinese on the Sekaku Islands in the South China Sea.
The islands are under Japanese administration.
To prove that the new US administration is not to be trifled with, Washington launched the aircraft carrier
USS "Theodore Roosevelt"
plus escort ships into the South China Sea
at the weekend
.
The ships should secure the "freedom of the seas" there, it said from the US side.
The Beijing tour will have got the message.
Whether or not she will be impressed by this is a completely different question.
The world is suffering, the People's Republic is gaining strength: can China's march through still be stopped?
Trump is playing the Trump game
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Political pensioner Donald Trump in Florida
Photo: CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS
The second impeachment proceedings against ex-President Donald Trump are entering the next phase.
Today the House of Representatives will officially forward the indictment against Trump to the Senate and read it out.
The official trial against Trump is scheduled to start on February 8th.
Several US media reports that Trump and numerous influential allies of the ex-president are trying to put massive pressure on the Republican senators.
The aim is to prevent a two-thirds majority in the Senate to condemn Trump.
It's the typical Trump game.
Those who are not for him should be intimidated and threatened, ideally with the prospect of an early end to their own political careers.
In order to scare as many Republicans as possible, Trump has spread in the past few days that he is planning to found a new party of his own if he is convicted by the Senate: the "Patriots" or "Make America Great Again Party".
The idea behind it: Such a third party could politically marginalize the Republicans.
In the meantime, Trump is said to have rejected this plan again.
He would rather work now to politically finish off congressmen who turn away from him.
Among other things, the MP
Liz Cheney
, who voted for Trump's impeachment in the House of Representatives, is to be punished.
Trump and his followers wanted to send a competing candidate against Cheney in the Republican primary for the next congressional election, it said.
There are apparently similar plans in Alaska, where Senator
Lisa Murkowski
had distanced herself from Trump.
She, too, should be overthrown with the help of an opposing candidate in the next area code.
Potential Investigations: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Trump Years
Clubhouse or clubhouse?
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Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow
Photo: Martin Schutt / dpa
Anyone who was clever enough not to spend their time on social media at the weekend may have missed this topic: The American app "Clubhouse" is causing a stir in Germany and the Thuringian Prime Minister
Bodo Ramelow
is in a lot of trouble.
Ramelow had called Chancellor Angela Merkel "Merkelchen" in a discussion at "Clubhouse" and said that he liked to play
"Candy Crush"
during the meetings of the Prime Minister's Conference on the corona pandemic
.
The remarks immediately landed on Twitter and in the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” because an editor of the paper had been busy writing.
It's embarrassing for Ramelow, of course, but maybe not so great for Clubhouse either.
Because the app works on the principle of exclusivity: users should have the feeling of being able to participate in very special, confidential debates in the app's online panels.
With the Ramelow flop, it should now be ensured that politicians and other important people in Germany at Clubhouse will only recite the same formulas that the audience already knows from television.
Clubhouse would of course no longer be really fancy.
The beautiful German word club home would then perhaps be more suitable for the app.
Thuringia's Prime Minister: Ramelow gets lost in the clubhouse
Loser of the day ...
... is the "businessman"
Tse Chi Lop
.
The Chinese-born Canadian was arrested at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands over the weekend.
He is considered the most powerful drug boss in Asia, where he is called the Asian Pablo Escobar.
Tse Chi Lop is said to be head of a worldwide syndicate called "The Company".
How exactly the spectacular arrest in Amsterdam came about is still unclear.
The law enforcement agencies from 20 countries are said to have been on the trail of the drug lord for years, but he has always been successful in the underground.
His organization is estimated to make about $ 17 billion a year in drug trafficking.
The latest news from the night
Trump's "sad" Mar-a-Lago, the members run away:
Donald Trump lives in Mar-a-Lago again - and wants to continue to earn money with the exclusive private club.
But according to an expert, the ex-president and his estate have rapidly lost their appeal
"Torture, mistreatment and targeted undersupply":
The conditions in Egyptian prisons are staggering ten years after the Arab Spring, according to Amnesty International.
A particular problem in Corona times: the hopeless overcrowding
"I was the skunk at the picnic":
Anthony Fauci was Donald Trump's most important corona advisor, but the relationship between the two was still difficult.
Now the virologist has revealed details from his everyday life in the White House - nickname included
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I wish you a good start to the day.
Your Roland Nelles