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Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9tn coronavirus relief proposal, aimed at urgently combating the pandemic and the economic crisis it has triggered. The ambitious, wide-ranging plan includes $160bn to bolster vaccination and testing efforts, and other health programs and $350bn for state and local governments, as well as $1tn in relief to families, via direct payments and unemployment insurance.
The government of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte collectively resigned on Friday over its mismanagement of childcare subsidies, national broadcaster NOS reported. The inquiry report said around 10,000 families had been wrongfully forced to repay tens of thousands of euros of subsidies, leading to unemployment, bankruptcies and divorces. It described such mismanagement over a decade as an “unprecedented injustice”.
At least nine people were left needing hospital treatment after a bus fell 49ft off a bridge and into an underpass in New York. The articulated passenger transport – like a bendy bus – crashed at about 11pm local time on Thursday. Photos from the scene showed the blue bus with its front half broken through a railing and touching the tarmac below.
North Korea displayed new submarine-launched ballistic missiles under development and other military hardware in a parade that underlined leader Kim Jong Un’s defiant calls to expand the country’s nuclear weapons program. State media said Kim took center stage in Thursday night’s parade celebrating a major ruling party meeting in which he vowed maximum efforts to bolster the nuclear and missile program that threatens Asian rivals and the American homeland.
The leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan has issued a decree urging the group’s leaders and commanders to forego taking multiple wives, which he said was inviting “criticism from our enemies”. Muslim men can be permitted by religion to have up to four wives at a time and polygamy is still legal in Afghanistan, Pakistan and some other predominantly Muslim nations.