Weekly Roundup - 17/01/2021

A new leader for Chancellor Merkel’s party:

Germany’s ruling CDU party picked Armin Laschet to be its new chairman, possibly paving the way for him to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor at elections later this year. Laschet is currently the prime minister of Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region, the most populous federal state in the country. He beat conservative rival Friedrich Merz by 521 to 466 in a vote that was forced online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Born in 1961, he was first elected to the Bundestag (German Parliament) in 1994 and his election is seen as a continuation of Merkel’s policies, as he has pledged to keep the CDU firmly in the “middle of society.” With him as chairman, the CDU will likely stay on message and focus on more climate change policies and environmental topics. But the CDU’s candidate for chancellor will only be determined in the spring. And it’s not certain that the newly-elected chairman will automatically move into Merkel’s role, who has confirmed she will not run for a fifth term in power. Markus Söder, the very popular Bavarian prime minister, and also Jens Spahn, the current health minister, may also join the race to lead Europe’s largest economy.

Second impeachment for Trump:

Donald Trump became the first US president in history to be impeached for a second time as the House of Representatives charged him with “incitement to insurrection” for his role in stirring up a mob of supporters that stormed the Capitol. The House voted 232 to 197 in favour of impeaching the president after the riot that left five people dead, with 10 Republicans breaking ranks to join all Democrats in voting to charge Mr Trump. The single article of impeachment will be sent to the Senate, where the outgoing president faces a trial that will cast a shadow over the start of Joe Biden’s presidency and potentially prevent Mr Trump from running for office in the future. In a statement, Mr Biden described Mr Trump’s impeachment as “a bipartisan vote cast by members who followed the constitution and their conscience”. The Republicans who voted to impeach Mr Trump were led by Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican, who rocked Washington by announcing her intention to move against the president. Members of the National Guard were deployed to the US Capitol ahead of the impeachment vote and are expected to support the police until Mr Biden’s inauguration.

Digital Covid ‘vaccination passport’:

Health and technology groups are working together to create a digital vaccination passport in the expectation that governments, airlines and other businesses will require proof people have been vaccinated against Covid-19. The Vaccination Credential Initiative, a coalition of organisations including Microsoft, Oracle and the US healthcare non-profit Mayo Clinic, aims to establish standards to verify whether a person has had their shot and prevent people falsely claiming to be protected against the disease. The coalition builds on work done by one of its members, The Commons Project, to develop an internationally accepted digital certificate to prove travellers have tested negative for Covid-19. The pass developed by the non-profit, established with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, is now being used by all three major airline alliances. Each country can set its own rules such as, for example, which vaccines it will accept. The system will be charged with keeping the data secure and individuals will hold their record in a digital wallet, or on a paper QR code, so they can control who they share it with. As new variants of the virus spread across the world, The Commons Project says it has seen a substantial increase in interest.

UK eyes one-off COVID-19 grant:

British finance minister Rishi Sunak has proposed giving a one-off 500-pound ($679) grant to recipients of the country’s main unemployment and wage support benefit instead of extending a temporary increase on the welfare payments. British welfare benefits for working-age adults are low compared with elsewhere in Europe, and the government temporarily increased them by 20 pounds per week last year at the start of the coronavirus pandemic as job openings dried up. Sunak will announce future plans at an annual budget on March 3, where he will seek to rein in a budget deficit on track to hit 400 billion pounds, its highest as a share of the economy since World War Two. Sunak had proposed the one-off 500-pound grant to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and welfare minister Therese Coffey, saying it would cost about half as much as extending the weekly increase. Regarding the lockdown, Britain’s government is hoping that it can meet its target for rolling out coronavirus vaccines and be able to consider easing lockdown restrictions by March. “What we want to do is get out of this national lockdown as soon as possible,” Dominic Raab told.

Biden to push $1.9tn stimulus:

Joe Biden pleaded for Congress to “act now” on a new $1.9tn economic rescue plan, setting it up as his top legislative priority as he prepares to enter the White House next week. The plan is expected to mark the first step in Mr Biden’s economic response to the coronavirus downturn. The second stage of Mr Biden’s economic agenda is expected to call for longer-term spending on infrastructure, green energy and education, to be funded at least partially by higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Mr Biden’s $1.9tn plan includes a new payment of $1,400 to most Americans, supplementing the $600 cheques recently received by individuals earning less than $75,000 per year. That would bring the total value of recent direct payments to $2,000, the level backed by both Mr Trump and Mr Biden in recent months. A big component of Mr Biden’s rescue plan is $400bn of new spending to tackle coronavirus, including $160bn for testing and tracing, as well as a national vaccination programme that could help the administration meet its goal of inoculating 100m people within its first hundred days. Mr Biden is also expected to call for Congress to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, a Democratic priority for many years that is backed by labour unions.

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