Biden turning to Trump-era rule to expel Venezuelan migrants
When Joe Biden was running for the White House, he denounced then-President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Biden said Trump’s approach inflicted “cruelty and exclusion at every turn,” including toward those fleeing the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Now, with increasing numbers of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, President Biden has turned to an unlikely source for an election-year solution, taking a page from Trump’s own immigration playbook. Biden has invoked a Trump-era rule that Biden’s Justice Department is fighting in court. Biden wants to deny Venezuelans who are fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.
China’s leader strikes a defiant note in speech to congress
President Xi Jinping of China defended his hard-line reign Sunday, presenting himself to a congress of China’s ruling elite as the leader whose tough policies had saved the nation from the ravages of the pandemic and was now focused on securing China’s rise amid multiplying global threats. Xi, who is poised to claim a groundbreaking third term as leader at the end of the weeklong Communist Party congress, used his opening report to argue that his decade in power had brought historic gains. He warned, however, that the nation must stand behind the party to cope with a world he depicted as increasingly and hostile.
Tens of thousands march in Paris to protest rising living costs
Tens of thousands of people marched in Paris on Sunday to protest rising living costs, amid an increasingly tense political atmosphere marked by strikes at oil refineries and nuclear plants that threaten to spread. The march had been planned long before the strikes by a coalition of left-wing parties eager to capitalize on the cost-of-living crisis and become the leading opposition force to President Emmanuel Macron. But Sunday, organizers signaled that they intended to build momentum from the climate of social unrest to increase pressure on Macron’s government. “We need to be tougher,” said David Guiraud, a lawmaker from France Unbowed, the hard-left party that led Sunday’s protest.
Strikes hit staging ground for troops in Russia’s border region
Russia felt war on its own territory Sunday as more than a dozen explosions ripped through a Russian border region, and a series of blasts severely damaged the offices of Russia’s puppet government in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The strikes in the Belgorod region next to Ukraine and the destruction of the municipal administration building in Donetsk sent a powerful signal that the mayhem of the war is spreading far beyond the front lines. The blasts came a day after two men opened fire on fellow Russian soldiers at a training camp in the Belgorod region, killing 11 and wounding 15 before being killed themselves.
Radioactive waste found at Missouri elementary school
Environmental investigation consultants have found significant radioactive contamination at an elementary school in suburban St. Louis where nuclear weapons were produced during World War II. The report by Boston Chemical Data Corp. has confirmed fears about contamination at Jana Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District in Florissant. The report is expected to be a major topic at Tuesday’s school board meeting. Parents want the district to make sure the radioactive waste is cleaned up. Boston Chemical says inhaling or ingesting the radioactive materials can cause significant injury and recommends remedial action “to bring conditions at the school in line with expectations.”