US V-P Kamala Harris to visit Singapore and Vietnam
United States Vice-President Kamala Harris will travel to Singapore and Vietnam next month to "strengthen relationships and expand economic cooperation with two critical Indo-Pacific partners of the United States", her spokesman announced on Friday.
"During the trip, the Vice-President will engage the leaders of both governments on issues of mutual interest, including regional security, the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, and our joint efforts to promote a rules-based international order," Ms Symone Sanders said in a brief statement that did not mention dates.
"The Vice-President will also affirm and celebrate the strong cultural and people-to-people ties between the United States and these countries," she said.
US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Harris have made it a top priority to "rebuild our global partnerships and keep our nation secure, and this upcoming visit continues that work - deepening our engagement in South-east Asia", Ms Sanders added. "Vice-President Harris will be the first vice-president to ever visit Vietnam."
Hard-won gains at risk as Delta variant spreads, says WHO
The world is at risk of losing hard-won gains in fighting Covid-19 as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads, but WHO-approved vaccines remain effective, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has described the Delta variant of the coronavirus as being as transmissible as chickenpox and cautioned it could cause severe disease, the Washington Post said, citing an internal CDC document.
Covid-19 infections have increased by 80 per cent over the past four weeks in most regions of the world, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
US watchdog rejects Blue Origin protest over Nasa contract
A US government watchdog on Friday sided with Nasa over its decision to pick a single lunar lander provider, rejecting a protest filed by Blue Origin and defence contractor Dynetics.
The companies had challenged the US$2.9 billion (S$3.9 billion) award to Elon Musk's SpaceX for the lander, arguing Nasa was required to make multiple awards.
The Government Accountability Office said it "denied the protest arguments that Nasa acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX."
Double Trump blow with election memo disclosure, tax move
Former president Donald Trump suffered a pair of setbacks on Friday when the Justice Department cleared the way for the release of his tax records and also disclosed a memo showing he urged top officials to falsely claim his election defeat was "corrupt."
Handwritten notes taken by Acting Deputy Attorney-General Richard Donoghue in December and released on Friday by the chair of the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee paint a damning picture of Trump as he desperately sought to get the department to take the unprecedented step of intervening to try to upend his 2020 election loss.
Hours later, the department cleared the way for the Internal Revenue Service to hand over Trump's tax records to congressional investigators - a move he has long fought.
MMA: Victoria Lee, Ritu Phogat carve out dominant wins
Victoria Lee delivered on her pre-match prediction on Friday night, taking just 3min 22sec as she finished China's Wang Lu Ping via submission in the first round of her mixed martial arts (MMA) bout at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
As the younger sister of One world champions Angela Lee and Christian Lee, the 17-year-old knew that the pressure was on going into the women's atomweight fight at the One: Battleground event.
But she rose to the occasion in just her second professional MMA fight to earn a dominant victory over Wang, who was riding a three-fight winning streak.
