Good morning.
Joe Biden is to sign into law a bill to rescind the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for members of the US military and provide nearly $858bn for national defense after it passed in the Senate yesterday.
The bill provides for about $45bn more for defense programs than Biden requested and roughly 10% more than last year’s bill as lawmakers look to account for inflation and boost the country’s military competitiveness with China and Russia. It includes a 4.6% pay raise for servicemembers and the defense department’s civilian workforce.
The Senate passed the defense policy bill by a vote of 83-11. The measure also received broad bipartisan support in the House last week.
To win GOP support for the 4,408-page bill, Democrats agreed to Republican demands to scrap the requirement for service members to get a Covid-19 vaccination. The bill directs the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, to rescind his August 2021 memorandum imposing the mandate.
What else was passed? The Senate passed legislation to fund the government for an additional week as lawmakers race to finish work on a full-year spending package before they head home for the holidays and a new Congress is sworn in.
Twitter suspends accounts of several journalists who had reported on Elon Musk
A number of prominent journalists who have reported on Twitter and its new chief executive, Elon Musk, appear to have been suspended or banned from the platform.
In a series of evening tweets, Musk wrote that sharing his real-time location on Twitter was forbidden, and accused journalists who he alleged had been sharing information about his location of posting “assassination coordinates”.
Accounts of tech journalists at CNN, the Washington Post, Mashable and the New York Times were suspended in quick succession on Thursday evening. All had recently published articles about Musk’s suspension of a Twitter account that had shared publicly available data about the movements of his private jet. Each of these articles had highlighted the tension between Musk’s stated commitment to “free speech” and his choice to ban an account that he personally disliked.
The Twitter account for rival social media company Mastodon – to which some Twitter users have migrated after Musk’s takeover of Twitter – also appeared to have been suspended.
What have the news publications said? The Washington Post said in a statement that the suspension of their technology reporter, Drew Harwell, “undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech”. Meanwhile, CNN said: “Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern to everyone who uses the platform.”
Will they be reinstated? While the journalists had reported that the suspensions were permanent, in multiple tweets Musk said the suspensions would be for seven days. “Some time away from Twitter is good for the soul …” Musk tweeted.
Russia begins mass airstrike in apparent move to destroy Ukraine’s power grid
The second mass air attack in days has been launched by Russia across Ukraine, with a barrage of rockets fired at several regions across the country.
The aim of the mass attack, authorities said, appeared to be to destroy the Ukrainian power grid in the hope that damaging Ukraine away from the frontline would enable Russia to make gains on the battlefield.
Two people had died and a further fivewere injured, including two children, after a rocket hit a residential building in the southern city of Kryvyi Rih, the head of the Dnipro region, Valentyn Reznichenko, said on Telegram. The injured are being treated in hospital. The building’s entrance was destroyed in the attack, he added.
In the capital, Kyiv, explosions were heard in the south-western district of Holosiivskyi, as well as the eastern districts of Dniprovskyi and Desnyanskyi, according to the city’s mayor.
How has Ukraine’s energy infrastructure been affected? The authorities have said there is damage but have not specified what has been hit or the extent of it. The Ukrainian energy company DTEK said emergency power outages would be introduced in Kyiv because of the missile attack.
What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 296 of the invasion.
In other news …
The US National Archives on Thursday released thousands of documents related to the 1963 assassination of then president John F Kennedy shortly after Joe Biden issued an executive order authorizing the release that also kept hundreds of other sensitive records secret.
A landslide killed at least 12 people while they slept at a Malaysian campsite near Kuala Lumpur early on Friday, officials said, as search teams scoured thick mud and downed trees for more than 20 people still missing. A child and a woman had been found among the dead, authorities said.
Ten people, including five children, have reportedly been killed after a fire broke out this morning at a residential building in Vaulx-en-Velin, near the French city of Lyon. Another four people are in a critical condition, while 10 others, including two firefighters, have been injured.
The sister of one of the children killed in the Uvalde school shooting earlier this year, as well as the city’s only pediatrician, pleaded for stricter gun laws during a congressional hearing on gun violence yesterday. At the hearing, Faith Mata, whose 10-year-old sister, Tess, was killed asked: “When is enough enough?”
Harvard University announced yesterday that Claudine Gay would become its 30th president, making her the first Black person and the second woman to lead the Ivy League school. Gay, who is a dean at the university and a democracy scholar, will become president on 1 July.
Stat of the day: US botched 35% of execution attempts this year
As 2022 draws to a close, a new grim distinction can be attached to it: in America it was the year of the botched execution. In its annual review of US capital punishment, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reveals the astonishing statistic that 35% of the 20 execution attempts carried out this year were visibly problematic. Several were agonisingly drawn out as officials tried to secure a vein through which to inject lethal drugs, leading lawyers to describe the process as a form of torture. Others were carried out in violation of state protocols. Some went ahead even though there were defects in those protocols themselves.
Don’t miss this: why are so many women living in separate homes from their partners and kids? Because it’s a win-win situation
The model coupling – the dream, if you will – was always Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton, or Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag: maintaining a marriage, de facto or real, across two separate households, so that you got all the benefits with none of the gross bits, writes Emma Brockes. You could keep the magic alive, extend the honeymoon period indefinitely and, by protecting your space and rationing your time together, create a scenario in which you were actually happy to see each other. Overlooking the small matter of money, what, exactly, is there not to like? Or rather, what is there not to like for the women in any given couple?
Climate check: Lula calls on rich nations to give more to protect Earth’s ecosystems
Brazil’s incoming president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has backed calls for rich countries to provide more money to protect Earth’s ecosystems at Cop15, as talks restarted after a series of walkouts. More than 100 environment ministers have arrived at the biodiversity summit in Canada before a weekend of negotiations on this decade’s UN targets to protect the natural world. Lula’s incoming administration has written to the summit to underscore the need for more money for biodiversity in echoes of his speech at Cop27, where he pledged to make sure rich countries made good on their $100bn (£82bn) climate commitments to the global south.
Last Thing: Trump mocked after announcing superhero card collection
Donald Trump walked into a comic-book universe of internet mockery yesterday, when in a carefully trailed announcement he introduced his “official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card” collection with a picture of himself in superhero costume, cape and “Trump Champion” belt. “GET YOUR CARDS NOW!” the 76-year-old former president commanded, above the picture of himself, muscles rippling under a red leotard and wearing high blue boots. “Just when you thought this grifter couldn’t humiliate himself any more than he already has,” wrote John Kiriakou, a CIA whistleblower turned author, “there’s this. THIS is what the big announcement was.”
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