President Biden signed a bill Thursday banning imports from China's Xinjiang region and punishing the Chinese government for its genocide of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, per a White House release.
Why it matters: Human rights activists say the bill will impose the first substantive costs the Chinese government has ever faced for its atrocities in Xinjiang. This could set a precedent for other countries to follow suit, writes Axios' Zachary Basu.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the possibility of Indonesia normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel in meetings with officials in Jakarta last week, Israeli officials say. The Israeli officials stressed that no such step is imminent.
Why it matters: Indonesia is the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world and a major market for Israeli companies, but it has no official diplomatic relations with Israel.
Four senior Israeli officials who attended meetings in Jerusalem with national security adviser Jake Sullivan tell Axios they came away reassured that the U.S. is ready to take a harder line on Iran if necessary and to take Israel’s views into account.
The big picture: Sullivan sketched out three possible near-term scenarios on Iran’s nuclear program in the meetings, two officials say:
National security adviser Jake Sullivan's visit to Ramallah on Wednesday to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas comes amid growing Palestinian frustration with the Biden administration.
Why it matters: President Biden vowed to restore the U.S.-Palestinian relationship after it was severed almost entirely during the Trump administration. But Palestinian leaders are disappointed that he still hasn't implemented his promise to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, Palestinian officials tell Axios.
A short excerpt from my interviews with Donald Trump has created a heated debate in the U.S. in recent days, particularly in the Jewish community.
What Trump said: "People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel. … I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country," Trump said in April during an interview for my book, "Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East."
The Biden administration is loosening restrictions to make it easier for humanitarian groups to provide aid to a devastated Afghanistan, senior administration officials told reporters Tuesday night.
Why it matters: The steps do not address the urgent calls from the Taliban, Afghan protesters, international aid groups and U.S. lawmakers for the U.S. to lift its freeze on Afghan foreign reserves. With most aid stopped and overseas assets frozen, Afghanistan's cash crunch has rendered the economy hardly functional.
The NHL announced Wednesday that the league's players will not participate in the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Why it matters: The move comes amid a surge in coronavirus infections, largely driven by the newly discovered Omicron variant, and after the league announced that it would briefly postpone all NHL games through Christmas.
World Health Organization Europe regional director Hans Kluge said at a briefing Tuesday that governments should prepare for "a significant surge" in COVID-19 cases, driven by the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.
Threat level: "We can see another storm coming — Omicron is becoming, or already has become, dominant in several countries — including in Denmark, Portugal and the United Kingdom, where its numbers are doubling" and "generating previously unseen transmission rates," Kluge said.
Harvard University professor Charles Lieber was convicted Tuesday in connection with lying to U.S. federal authorities about his ties to China.
Driving the news: A federal jury in Boston found the 62-year-old former chair of Harvard University's chemistry and chemical biology department guilty of two counts of making false statements to federal authorities about a Chinese government recruitment program, per a Department of Justice statement.
