Trump’s GOP influence - Facebook paying for news - Myanmar UN ambassador fired

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Indiana Rep. Jim Banks laid out a vision for "winning back America" at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, and it doesn't involve abandoning what Trump brought to the party. "The least popular [Republicans] in our party are the ones who want to erase Donald Trump and Donald Trump supporters from our party," Banks said.
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Another major part of the Republican future: pushing back against China and connecting the Chinese Communist Party to the Democrats. "I do not know what the Chinese party and government has on the Democrats, but it is so powerful," McCarthy said.
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The top theme was the expansion of the party and making room for all of those who oppose left-wing priorities being pushed by the Democrats. "We hear a lot about identity politics these days," Banks said. "If you identify as an American, you are welcome in the Republican Party."

Jeremy Lin, the former New York Knicks star guard, spoke out this week about the violence against and harassment of Asian Americans — which has spiked in the United States in the past year. [Lin] was called “coronavirus” on the court. Such an incident fits into a broader surge of anti-Asian slurs and violence, which advocates anticipated would be amplified by former president Donald Trump’s anti­-China rhetoric.
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Stop AAPI Hate, a group that tracks incidents of violence, harassment and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States, reported more than 2,800 incidents from March through December 2020. An 84-year-old man from Thailand died as a result of injuries he suffered after an attack in San Francisco last month.
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Some law enforcement agencies have reported an increase in bias attacks against Asian Americans, including New York City’s hate crime task force, which investigated three such incidents in 2019 but saw a ninefold increase last year.

In his speech before the U.N. [ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun] defied the new military rulers and urged the world body “to use any means necessary to take action against the Myanmar military” and bring back democracy. The ambassador ended his speech with a three-finger salute, a gesture from the “Hunger Games” films that has become a symbol of pro-democratic defiance for protesters in Myanmar.
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Mr. Kyaw Moe Tun’s speech buoyed Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, which has held protests every day since Feb. 1, when the military took control of the country in a coup, and has broadened into a civil disobedience movement with hundreds of thousands of people walking off their jobs.
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The junta sent its newly appointed foreign minister, U Wunna Maung Lwin, to Bangkok to meet with Thailand’s foreign minister, Don Pramudwinai, and Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, who is spearheading efforts among Southeast Asian nations to seek a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Myanmar.

Begum was 15 when she ran away to Syria with two friends; she's now being held in a detention camp in northern Syria. Begum was born in the U.K., but the country revoked her British citizenship two years ago, citing security concerns. She then asked for permission to enter the U.K. to appeal that move, but the government denied her application.
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The U.K. Court of Appeal later sided with Begum, saying she must be allowed to enter the U.K. to fight to restore her citizenship. But the government appealed to the Supreme Court, which today ruled against Begum's return.
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The Supreme Court stated in a summary of its judgment, "the Court of Appeal mistakenly believed that, when an individual's right to have a fair hearing of an appeal came into conflict with the requirements of national security, her right to a fair hearing must prevail. But the right to a fair hearing does not trump all other considerations, such as the safety of the public."

A week after Facebook grabbed eyeballs globally by blocking news publishers and turning off news-sharing on its platform in Australia, the country’s parliament has approved legislation that makes it mandatory for platform giants like Facebook and Google to negotiate to remunerate local news publishers for their content, to take account of how journalism is shared on their platforms.
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On Tuesday Facebook reversed course on its intentionally over-broad news ban after the government agreed to make amendments to the draft legislation — including adding a two-month mediation period to allow digital platforms and publishers to agree to deals before being forced to enter into arbitration. Facebook said this week that it plans to spend at least $1 billion on “supporting” the news media over the next three years.
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Claims by the Australian government that public interest journalism has won are, however, being tempered by critical suggestions that the law will merely end up favoring big media over small publishers. How much of the adtech duopoly’s money ends up trickling down to support smaller publishers and grow media pluralism in Australia isn’t yet clear.