USA

05 Aug 2021; MEMO: Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, announced yesterday that Lebanon will receive $860 million from the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDR) Fund, to strengthen the country's depleted reserves and also to help meet the many urgent needs of the Lebanese people.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- The claim that House Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States concluded the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab was dismissed in a fact-check report by the U.S. news magazine Newsweek on Tuesday.

The report said that the claim came after the addendum of the origins of COVID-19 report had been released, which was the result of a committee minority staff investigation led by Michael McCaul, a ranking member of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.

NEW YORK, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 200 million on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The global case count amounted to 200,014,602, with 4,252,873 deaths worldwide, as of 3:21 p.m. local time (1921 GMT), showed the data.

The United States reported 35,292,721 cases and 614,666 deaths, both the highest counts around the world, accounting for nearly 18 percent of the global cases and nearly 15 percent of the global deaths.

DETROIT (AP) — The Biden administration wants automakers to raise gas mileage and cut tailpipe pollution between now and model year 2026, and it has won a voluntary commitment Thursday from the industry that electric vehicles comprise up to half of U.S. sales by the end of the decade.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Four Republicans hoping to claim Gov. Gavin Newsom’s job in a September recall election skirmished in their first debate Wednesday, labeling the incumbent Democrat a failure whose pandemic policies sent the state into a tailspin while housing costs soared on his watch.

Each of the candidates — John Cox, Kevin Faulconer, Kevin Kiley and Doug Ose — made early moves to distinguish themselves from their rivals while heaping criticism on Newsom.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden may have averted a flood of evictions and solved a growing political problem when his administration reinstated a temporary ban on evictions because of the COVID-19 crisis. B ut he left his lawyers with legal arguments that even he acknowledges might not stand up in court.

The new eviction moratorium announced Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could run into opposition at the Supreme Court, where one justice in late June warned the administration not to act further without explicit congressional approval.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. nursing home industry’s resistance to forcing workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 for fear that too many of them might quit began to crack this week when its biggest player announced its employees must get the shot to keep their jobs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is taking the first steps toward requiring nearly all foreign visitors to the U.S. to be vaccinated for the coronavirus, a White House official said Wednesday.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A majority of state Assembly members support beginning impeachment proceedings against Gov. Andrew Cuomo if he doesn’t resign over investigative findings that he sexually harassed at least 11 women, according to an Associated Press count Wednesday.

At least 86 of the body’s 150 members have said publicly or told The AP that they favored initiating the process of ousting the third-term Democratic governor if he doesn’t quit. It takes a simple majority to authorize an impeachment trial.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 04 (APP): As the coronavirus crisis continues to exacerbate restrictions on government spending throughout the world, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has welcomed the decision by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to approve a $650 billion allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to “boost liquidity”.

The UN chief issued a statement Tuesday on the policy change towards SDRs, a type of foreign reserve asset that are IMF defined and maintained, as additional funding that could help to pay down debts.