The U.S. has blacklisted six entities in China that it says are linked to aerospace programs, including balloons, used by the military for intelligence.
The big picture: The move, which comes after the U.S. last week downed a Chinese balloon that's suspected of being used for surveillance, will likely only increase the tension between the two countries.
Five days after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, a UN liaison officer is warning that the two countries are nearing the end of the search and rescue window.
Driving the news: The possibility of finding survivors is decreasing as the hours pass, Belit Tasdemir of the AKUT Search and Rescue Association said in an interview with CNN on Saturday. His comments come as rescue workers persist in efforts to locate and safely extract people trapped amid the devastation.
President Biden will travel to Poland later this month to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the White House said on Friday.
The big picture: During the visit, which is scheduled from Feb. 20-22, Biden will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda and other NATO leaders, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. He will also deliver remarks ahead of the anniversary of the war on Feb. 24.
Moldova's pro-Western Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița unexpectedly resigned on Friday, citing a string of crises that have rocked her 18-month tenure.
Driving the news: Moldova, a country of about 2.5 million that borders Ukraine and EU and NATO member Romania, has struggled to cope with soaring inflation, an energy crisis and an influx of Ukrainian refugees who fled to the small Eastern European country after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago.
Russia launched dozens of rocket, cruise missile and kamikaze drone attacks across Ukraine on Friday, including against Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.
Driving the news: The strikes come just two weeks before the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Strengthening democracy could be a rallying point for President Biden and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, when they meet at the White House on Friday, experts say.
Driving the news: It's been a month since thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro attacked Brazil's Supreme Court, Congress and Presidential Palace.
Australian scientists announced Friday they've discovered a protein in the lung that sticks to the COVID-19 virus like Velcro and forms a natural protective barrier in a person's body to block infection.
Why it matters: The study, published in the journal PLOS Biology on Friday, "opens up an entirely new area of immunology research" around this receptor protein, LRRC15, and "offers a promising pathway to develop new drugs to prevent viral infection from coronaviruses like COVID-19 or deal with fibrosis in the lungs," per a statement from the University of Sydney announcing their findings.
