WASHINGTON (AP) — No. 3 House Republican Liz Cheney was clinging to her post as party leaders lined up behind an heir apparent, signaling that fallout over her clashes with former President Donald Trump was becoming too much for her to overcome.

Unbowed, Cheney on Wednesday implored her GOP colleagues to pry themselves from a Trump “cult of personality,” declaring that the party and even American democracy were at stake. “History is watching,” she said.

(Reuters) --- The European Union is willing to discuss a proposal, now backed by the United States, to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday.

The head of the EU executive said the bloc's vaccination effort was accelerating, with 30 Europeans inoculated per second, while exporting more than 200 million vaccine doses to the rest of the world.

PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice expressed concern Wednesday about ballot security and potential voter intimidation arising from the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate’s unprecedented private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County.

(Reuters) --- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the West had to be very careful about the exact nature of Chinese investment in Western economies and think very carefully about investments in strategic assets.

China's spectacular economic and military rise over the past 40 years is among the most significant geopolitical events of recent history, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union that ended the Cold War.

COLOMBO, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who also serves as minister of finance, was on Wednesday elected chair of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Board of Governors for the year 2021/2022 during the bank's 54th annual meeting held virtually, a statement from Rajapaksa's office said.

During the meeting, Rajapaksa informed the fellow governors that amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, the time was now right for countries to reflect and re-group as this century was the Asian Century.

BERLIN, May 5 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that the EU-China investment treaty was an "important undertaking" despite "all the difficulties that will certainly arise in the ratification process."

"It is a very important undertaking because it gives us more reciprocity in market access, because we have decided to comply with the labor standards of the International Labor Organization and other things with which trade can be developed to the benefit of both parties," said Merkel at a digital conference of the Union Party parliamentary group.

LIMA, May 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Peru President Francisco Sagasti announced a fresh deal with Pfizer Inc and BioNTech to purchase an additional 12 million doses of their vaccine against COVID-19 as a fierce second wave of the virus ravages the country.

The president said on social media the additional shots would be delivered by year’s end.

Peru’s vaccination drive has been slow to get started and fraught with allegations of corruption, with just under 4 per cent of the population inoculated with at least one dose to date.

NEW YORK (AP) — Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said it pained her to vote against the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan.”

But in the weeks that followed, the first-term Republican issued a news release celebrating more than $3.7 million from the package that went to community health centers in her district as one of her “achievements.” She said she prided herself on “bringing federal funding to the district and back into the pockets of taxpayers.”

Malliotakis is far from alone.

PARIS, May 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — France’s National Assembly approved climate protection legislation that included input from a specially convened citizens’ panel but which activists argue does not go nearly far enough.

The bill, which was passed in the lower house by 332 to 77 votes, bans certain domestic short-haul flights if an alternative train exists whose travel time does not exceed two-and-a-half hours.

CAIRO, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel Aty held talks on Wednesday with U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) built on the Nile River, said the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in a statement.

The Egyptian ministry said the meeting was held "in order to discuss the developments of the GERD file and the Egyptian position in this regard" without adding further details.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Thursday authorized the United States, Canada and Norway to join a major military project aimed at speeding up the deployment of troops and military equipment around Europe.

At a meeting in Brussels, EU defense ministers gave the greenlight for the three to join the 27-nation bloc’s “military mobility” project, led by the Netherlands and aimed at easing bureaucratic procedures that slow troop deployments considerably, whether by land, sea or air.

NEW DELHI, May 6 (Xinhua) -- India's COVID-19 tally surpassed 21 million on Thursday as 412,262 new cases were registered across the country in the past 24 hours, said federal health ministry.

This is the second time this month that over 400,000 cases have been registered in a single day.

Besides, as many as 3,980 deaths, maximum so far, took place in the country since Wednesday morning, taking the total death toll to 230,168, added the health ministry.