Biden announces deal to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia
CBSN
President Biden and the leaders of two close U.S. allies formally announced Monday that Australia will purchase nuclear-powered attack submarines from the U.S. to modernize its fleet amid growing concern about China's influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Mr. Biden flew to San Diego for talks with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on an 18-month-old nuclear partnership given the acronym AUKUS. The three leaders delivered remarks from Naval Base Point Loma at the entry of San Diego Bay, flanked by U.S. sailors with the USS Sterett destroyer in the background.
"Today, as we stand at an inflection point in history, where the where the hard work of advancing deterrence and promoting stability is going to affect the prospect of peace for decades to come, the United States can ask for no better partner in the Indo-Pacific, where so much of our shared future will be written," Mr. Biden said.
Lawmakers in Poland have voted in favor of measures to ease the country's near-total ban on abortion, setting the stage for a potential clash over women's rights with the country's conservative president. With their vote on Friday, parliamentarians endorsed several proposals to relax the abortion restrictions, including one from newly elected Prime Minister Donald Tusk's party to decriminalize abortions up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy.
The last opportunity for U.S. nationals to flee violence-wracked Haiti on a government-chartered evacuation flight arrived Friday, with no sign of the chaos easing in the tiny Caribbean nation. The U.S. State Department said last week in an email to Americans in Haiti that charter flights were not scheduled to continue after April 12.
London - The wife of Julian Assange said Thursday that her husband's legal case "could be moving in the right direction" after President Biden indicated that the U.S. could drop charges against the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder. It came as supporters in several cities rallied to demand the release of Assange on the fifth anniversary of his incarceration in London's high-security Belmarsh prison.