Washington (AFP) - US President Joe Biden's pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court is coming under fire from Republicans even before he unveils his pick, a sign of a potentially testy Senate confirmation battle to come.
Biden, during his 2020 presidential campaign, said the nation's highest court should "look like the country" and it was "long past time" an African-American woman served on the bench.
By Tom Balmforth and Jeff Mason
MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Russia has massed enough troops near Ukraine to launch a major invasion, Washington said on Friday, as it urged all U.S. citizens to leave the country within 48 hours.
A Russian attack could begin any day and would likely start with an air assault, while a rapid advance on Kyiv was also possible, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a media briefing.
It remains unclear, Sullivan said, whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had definitively given an order to start an invasion. Sullivan said he expected U.S. President Joe Biden to seek out a phone call with Putin soon on the crisis.
Earlier, as Moscow further stiffened its response to Western diplomacy, commercial satellite images https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/satellite-images-show-new-russian-military-deployments-near-ukraine-2022-02-11 from a private U.S. company showed new Russian military deployments at several sites near the border.
After telling NBC News that things in Ukraine "could go crazy quickly," Biden held a phone call on the crisis with the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Poland and Romania, as well as the heads of NATO and the EU.
Following that meeting and with alarm spreading, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined a handful of other nations in urging their citizens to leave Ukraine.
Johnson told the meeting that he feared for the security of Europe and stressed the need for "a heavy package of economic sanctions ready to go, should Russia make the devastating and destructive decision to invade Ukraine," his office said.
Moscow, meanwhile, said answers sent this week by the EU and NATO to its security demands showed "disrespect".
Biden met his national security advisers overnight, a source familiar with the meeting said. U.S. officials believed the crisis could be reaching a critical point, with rhetoric from Moscow hardening, six Russian warships reaching the Black Sea, and more Russian military equipment arriving in Belarus, the source said.
"We're in a window when an invasion could begin at any time, and to be clear, that includes during the Olympics," said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The Beijing Games end on Feb. 20.
"Simply put, we continue to see very troubling signs of Russian escalation, including new forces arriving at the Ukrainian border."
Russia has denied it plans to invade Ukraine.
Stocks extended declines in the late afternoon, with the S&P 500 index recently down around 1.3%. The dollar, often seen as a destination for nervous investors, was recently up 0.2% against a basket of its peers.
(Reporting by Reuters bureauxWriting by John Stonestreet and Peter Graff, Editing by William Maclean and Rosalba O'Brien)
NATO is planning to increase its troop presence in its eastern flank close to Ukraine, dpa has learned from sources close to the Western military alliance, despite demands from Moscow to do precisely the opposite.
The 30 alliance members signed off a related proposal this week, dpa learned on Friday, after weeks of discussion.
Following Moscow's 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory Crimea, NATO deployed four battlegroups of multinational forces in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
With more than 100,000 Russian troops now stationed near Ukraine's borders and fears over an invasion mounting, plans are afoot to station more NATO troops nearby in states like Romania.
The decision is to be confirmed and announced at a NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels next week, dpa understands, and could be implemented within weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been calling on NATO to reverse its eastward expansion, among other things, so the development may well stoke already sky-high tensions in the region.
The Kremlin accuses NATO countries of scare-mongering about an incursion for which it claims to have absolutely no plans. It says the only way to calm the situation is for the West to agree to its wish list of security demands issued in December.
The Ukrainian government, which has been battling against Russian-backed separatist forces in the eastern Donbas region since 2014, has called on its Western allies to help stave off an invasion.
Slovakia and Bulgaria could also possibly host NATO troops. France has already offered to lead a NATO battlegroup in Romania. "Many other allies" are willing to contribute, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg said Friday.
Hungary - also in the alliance's eastern flank - has said it doesn't see the need to host NATO forces.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Friday that Russian troops could invade Ukraine "at any time."
"We're in a window when an invasion could begin at any time and to be clear: That includes during the Olympics," Blinken said in Melbourne, Australia, following a meeting of foreign ministers from Australia, Japan and India.
Blinken attended the Quadrilateral Security Cooperation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had attended the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing on February 4, together with China's leader Xi Jinping. The Games are due to run until February 20.
"Simply put, we continue to see very worrying signs of Russian escalation," Blinken said.
President Joe Biden said on Thursday that US citizens needed to leave Ukraine "now."
"It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation, and things could go crazy quickly," he told NBC's "Nightly News" programme.
By Moira Warburton and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a bill that would ban companies from forcing employees who allege sexual assault or harassment to settle their claims with an arbiter without the option of filing a lawsuit.
The bill, which the House of Representatives passed earlier this week, was sent to President Joe Biden to sign into law. The Senate approved it in a voice vote, indicating broad bipartisan support in the narrowly divided chamber.
The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act was first sponsored by Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in 2017. It would provide federal protection for employees' right to sue their employers over allegations of sexual harassment or assault, nullifying clauses in employment contracts that force employees to enter arbitration with their employer instead.
An estimated 60 million Americans are subject to forced arbitration clauses that are "especially common in female-dominated industries," Gillibrand said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.
The legislation, she said, would address "a broken system that protects perpetrators and corporations and end the days of silencing survivors."
The forced arbitration clauses are often are accompanied by a non-disclosure agreement, Gillibrand said.
"Instead of being allowed their day in court these survivors are pushed into a system designed by the same corporations they are challenging," she said.
Republican Senator Joni Ernst, in a speech on the Senate floor said the bill will ensure that "survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment ... voices will not be silenced."
She noted that the bill is narrowly written. "This bill should not be the catalyst for destroying pre-dispute arbitration agreements in all employment matters."
The bill is one of the few pieces of legislation passed in a narrowly divided Senate this year, including Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a debt limit increase.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton and Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and David Gregorio)
