The United States on Sunday condemned an aerial attack against Saudi Arabia’s capital, saying it appeared to be “an attempt to target civilians.” Saudi state media reported the kingdom intercepted an apparent missile or drone over Riyadh on Saturday. Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen, who have launched numerous cross-border attacks since Saudi Arabia began leading a coalition in support of Yemen’s internationally recognized government in 2015, denied any involvement. The U.S. State Department said attacks like the one Saturday go against international law and “undermine all efforts to promote peace and stability.” “As we work to de-escalate tensions in the region through principled diplomacy, including by bringing an end to the war in Yemen, we will also help our partner Saudi Arabia defend against attacks on its territory and hold those who attempt to undermine stability to account,” it said in a statement. The Saudi-led coalition entered Yemen’s conflict months after the Houthis seized the capital, Sana’a.  It has faced international criticism for airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians and struck non-military targets. The United Nations said Sunday that it along with the International Committee of the Red Cross are facilitating talks on a new prisoner swap between Yemen’s warring sides. The latest effort at some progress in resolving the conflict comes two weeks after the outgoing U.S. administration designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization. Aid groups had warned such a move could seriously harm efforts to get badly needed food and other supplies to civilians in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. A group of 22 groups, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam and Save the Children, warned Sunday of a “potentially catastrophic humanitarian impact” and said the designation should be “revoked immediately.” Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s secretary of state nominee, told lawmakers at a hearing last week that the State Department has launched a review of the matter. 
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Two key U.S. Republican senators — Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney — disagreed sharply Sunday about the merits of the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of former Republican President Donald Trump, who is accused of inciting insurrection in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of his supporters on January 6.At a rally near the White House that day, Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol to fight for him in confronting lawmakers as they debated whether to certify the Electoral College vote showing he had lost reelection to President Joe Biden. Biden was inaugurated last week as the country’s 46th president.Rubio, a Florida lawmaker, told the “Fox News Sunday” show that Trump “bears responsibility for some of what happened.” But Rubio said he opposes the Senate trial after the House of Representatives impeached Trump.FILE – Republican Senator Marco Rubio speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 19, 2021.The mayhem left five people dead, including a police officer whose death is being investigated as a homicide. Trump supporters — roughly 800, according to officials — rampaged past authorities, ransacked some congressional offices and scuffled with police before order was restored and lawmakers in the early hours of January 7 officially declared Biden the winner.
“We’re just going to jump right back into what we’ve been going through for the last five years and bring it up with a trial and it’s going to be bad for the country,” he said. “It really is.”“This is not a criminal trial,” Rubio said. “This is a political process and would fuel these divisions that have paralyzed the country.”    Romney, a senator from Utah and the losing Republican presidential candidate in 2012, told CNN, “I believe incitement to insurrection is an impeachable offense. If not, what is?”Romney said he believes Trump was “complicit in an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”FILE – Supporters of then-U.S. President Donald Trump storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.At the rally before hundreds of his supporters walked 16 blocks to the Capitol, Trump repeated weeks of unfounded complaints that he had been cheated out of reelection by fraudulent votes and vote-counting even though he had lost 60 court challenges to the outcome, including in rulings by some judges he had appointed.“There is no evidence this election was stolen,” Romney said.FILE – Republican Senator Mitt Romney speaks with members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 16, 2020.The Senate trial starts the week of February 8. A two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required to convict Trump. With the Senate politically divided between 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, 17 Republicans would have to turn against Trump for a conviction, assuming all Democrats vote as a bloc against the former president.If he is convicted, a separate, simply-majority vote could bar Trump from holding federal office again.Already, Trump stands as the only U.S. president in the country’s 245-year history to be impeached twice. The House impeached him in late 2019, accusing him of trying to enlist Ukraine to dig up dirt against Biden ahead of the November election, but the Senate acquitted him last February.Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, but several Republicans have said they are open to convicting him of inciting insurrection after the January 6 melee that forced lawmakers to scramble for their safety as the rioters rushed into the halls of Congress.  One of the House Democratic impeachment managers who will present the case in the Senate against Trump, Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, told CNN that they will “put together a case that is so compelling” to confront “the big lie” that Trump had been cheated out of reelection.She called Trump’s incitement of insurrection “an extraordinary, heinous crime. The American public saw what happened.”“This was a terrifying moment … incited by the president,” she said. “This cannot go unanswered.” 
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President Joe Biden on Monday will formally reinstate COVID-19 travel restrictions on non-U.S. travelers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, according to two White House officials.The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, also confirmed Sunday that South Africa would be added to the restricted list because of concerns about a variant of the virus that has spread beyond that nation.Biden is reversing an order from President Donald Trump in his final days in office that called for the relaxation of the travel restrictions as of Tuesday.The decision to reverse the order is not surprising, but the addition of South Africa to the restricted travel list highlights the new administration’s concern about mutations in the virus.The South Africa variant has not been discovered in the United States, but another variant — originating in the United Kingdom — has been detected in several states.Reuters was first to report Biden’s decision to add South Africa to the list.Biden last week issued an executive order directing federal agencies to require international air travelers to quarantine upon U.S. arrival. The order also requires that all U.S.-bound passengers ages 2 and older get negative COVID-19 test results within three days before traveling.
 
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The U.S. government’s effort to vaccinate millions of Americans against the coronavirus pandemic is lagging, new health officials in President Joe Biden’s administration conceded Sunday. But they held out hope that the campaign to curb the virus will markedly improve within three months.“The plane is in a nosedive and we’ve got to pull it up,” Xavier Becerra, Biden’s choice as health and human services chief, told CNN about the vaccination progress.“What we inherited didn’t work, and now we’ve got to make it work,” Becerra said.He said problems won’t be fixed quickly, but that “we can do better…we can get us back to real normality.”Before leaving office last week, President Donald Trump praised his administration’s efforts to combat the pandemic.  Biden has set a goal of administering 100 million vaccination shots in his first 100 days in office. Last week, he signed orders to ramp up the production of more doses of two vaccines now approved for use and other medical equipment needed to treat those who have contracted COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the virus.  That pace of vaccinations is now roughly on track to be met, which would inoculate about 67 million people, some with their initial shot and some with both of their required shots. Some critics say the pace should be quicker.Becerra said, “Getting 100 million shots out there in 100 days is incredibly important. It’s ambitious, it’s bold, it’s doable. We have to do it.” Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” show, the number was “a floor, not a ceiling.”Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the “Fox News Sunday” program, “We have to go faster,” but that the lack of a sufficient supply of the vaccine may prevent that.  “The supply is probably going to be the most limiting constraint,” she said. “We’re really hoping that after that first 100 days we’re going to have much more production.”“I’m hopeful we’ll get an increase in supply, not a stagnating one. We don’t have as many doses now that we would like,” she said. Walensky said she hopes that changes by the end of March.“One of the biggest problems we have right now is that I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have,” she said. Walensky said that if she cannot tell state governors and health officials how much vaccine they will be receiving, “then they can’t plan…they can’t figure out how many appointments to make.”People wait in line at a COVID-19 vaccination site in Paterson, New Jersey, Jan. 21, 2021.“The fact that we don’t know today, five days into this administration, and weeks into planning, how much vaccine we have, just gives you a sense of the challenges we’ve been left with” by the former Trump administration.The United States has now recorded 25 million coronavirus infections and more than 417,000 deaths, both more than in any other country, according to the Johns Hopkins University.As he signed orders last week to combat the virus, Biden said, “Things are going to continue to get worse before they get better,” with the U.S. death toll likely to top a half million by next month as tens of thousands of new cases are recorded daily.“We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and it’s going to take months for us to turn things around,” Biden said.On Saturday, the U.S. reached one milestone – 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered, a figure the Trump administration had hoped to reach by the end of last month. But the disease control center said that is just shy of half (49.6%) the number of doses delivered to states to be administered.It is not clear why there is a lag.Fauci told CNN last week, “What I think we really need to do is we’ve got to go into the trenches” to try to figure out why some states are not administering the doses they have while other states are desperate for more. “You’ve got to get into the local area and find out, ‘What’s going on here? What’s wrong? Let’s try and fix it.'”Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump’s White House coronavirus response coordinator, praised Biden’s initial actions to combat the virus in an interview on CBS, while attacking the Trump effort.In the Trump White House, Birx said, “I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made. Someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.”    She said that last April, when Trump suggested that the virus could be treated with a disinfectant, “I wasn’t prepared for that. I didn’t even know what to do in that moment.” 
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in his first directive since taking office, has given his senior leaders two weeks to send him reports on sexual assault prevention programs in the military, and an assessment of what has worked and what hasn’t.Austin’s memo, which went out Saturday, fulfills a commitment he made to senators last week during confirmation hearings. He had vowed to immediately address the problems of sexual assault and harassment in the ranks.“This is a leadership issue,” Austin said in his two-page memo. “We will lead.”Senator after senator demanded to know what Austin planned to do about the problem, which defense and military leaders have grappled with for years. Reports of sexual assaults have steadily gone up since 2006, according to department reports, including a 13% jump in 2018 and a 3% increase in 2019. The 2020 data is not yet available.The 2018 increase fueled congressional anger over the issue, and lawmakers have repeatedly called for action, including changes in the Code of Military Justice.“You do agree that we can’t keep doing the same thing that we’ve been doing for the past decade?” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said during Austin’s confirmation hearing. “Do I have your commitment to be relentless on this issue until we can end the scourge of sexual violence in the military?”Austin agreed, telling senators, “This starts with me and you can count on me getting after this on Day One.”Technically, the directive came on Day Two. Austin arrived at the Pentagon on Friday shortly after noon, but he spent his first hours as defense chief in meetings with key leaders as he began the transition to his new job. He was in the Pentagon again Saturday, making calls to defense counterparts around the world, and he signed the memo.In his hearing and in the memo, Austin acknowledged that the military has long struggled with the problem but must do better.The directive calls for each leader to submit a summary of the sexual assault and harassment measures they have taken in the last year that show promise, and an assessment of those that didn’t. And he asked for relevant data for the past decade, including efforts to support victims.“Include in your report the consideration of novel approaches to any of these areas,” he said, adding that “we must not be afraid to get creative.”And Austin said he plans to host a meeting on the matter with senior leaders in the coming days.Nate Galbreath, the acting director of the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, said last April that he was cautiously optimistic that the lower increase in 2019 suggested a trend in declining assaults. But he said it’s too difficult to tell because sexual assaults are vastly under-reported.Galbreath and military service leaders have repeatedly rolled out new programs over the years, including increased education and training and efforts to encourage service members to intervene when they see a bad situation. Last year officials announced a new move to root out serial offenders.Many victims don’t file criminal reports, which means investigators can’t pursue those alleged attackers. Under the new system, victims who don’t want to file a public criminal report are encouraged to confidentially provide details about their alleged attacker so that investigators can see if they have been involved in other crimes.Galbreath and others also have contended that, at least early on, the increase in reports was a good sign in that it showed that victims were more willing to come forward, suggesting they were getting more confident in the justice system. 
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