WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden will tell Americans that his predecessor, Donald Trump, carries “singular responsibility” for the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol when he marks the first anniversary of the assault on Thursday, the White House said. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, both Democrats, will speak on Thursday morning at the U.S. Capitol, one year after a mob loyal to Trump raided the complex in a failed attempt to stop the certification of Electoral College votes that officially delivered Biden‘s election victory.

Biden and his top aides have been reluctant to talk directly about Trump since the former senator took office last January, even as the Republican former president continued to spread lies about his election loss, and Democrats, historians and civil rights activists have grown increasingly concerned about the future of the nearly 250-year-old representative democracy.

Thursday’s speech comes after Biden spent months encouraging Americans to unite against the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild together after weather disasters.

On Thursday, Biden will “lay out the significance of what happened in the Capitol and the singular responsibility President Trump has for the chaos and carnage that we saw and he will forcibly push back on the lies spread by the former president in an attempt to mislead the American people and his own supporters as well as distract from his role in what happened,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

Trump canceled a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that had been scheduled for Thursday evening, blaming what he called the “bias and dishonesty” of the House of Representatives probe of the attacks and the news media, a favorite target.

Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesperson, said it was “unsurprising” that Biden would spend Jan. 6th “trying to further divide our nation, adding “division is the only thing Democrats know how to do.”

Four people died on the day of the riot, and one Capitol police officer died the day after defending Congress. Dozens of police were injured during the multi-hour onslaught by Trump supporters, and four officers have since taken their own lives https://www.reuters.com/world/us/officer-who-responded-us-capitol-attack-is-third-die-by-suicide-2021-08-02.

The White House said Biden would push back against Trump’s false claims, adopted by many of his followers, that his election defeat was the result of widespread fraud, and attempts to downplay the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812.

Biden has been “clear eyed about the threat the former president represents to our democracy,” Psaki said, “and how the former president constantly works to constantly undermine basic American values and rule of law.”

She added that the president sees the deadly attacks as a “tragic culmination of what those four years under President Trump did to our country.”

Harris will use her remarks to “outline that the American experiment is being tested, and that we must work to secure voting rights, ensure free and fair elections and safeguard our democracy for generations to come,” an administration official said. – Reuters

SEOUL – North Korea fired a “hypersonic missile” this week that successfully hit a target, state news agency KCNA reported on Thursday, its second such test as the country pursues new military capabilities amid stalled denuclearisation talks.

The launch on Wednesday was the first by North Korea since October and was detected by several militaries in the region, drawing criticism from governments in the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

North Korea first tested a hypersonic missile in September, joining a race headed by major military powers to deploy the advanced weapons system.

Hypersonic weapons usually fly towards targets at lower altitudes than ballistic missiles and can achieve more than five times the speed of sound – or about 6,200 km per hour (3,850 mph).

Despite their name, analysts say the main feature of hypersonic weapons is not speed – which can sometimes be matched or exceeded by traditional ballistic missile warheads – but their manoeuvrability.

In Wednesday’s test, the “hypersonic gliding warhead” detached from its rocket booster and manoeuvred 120 km (75 miles) laterally before it “precisely hit” a target 700 km (430 miles) away, KCNA reported.

The missile demonstrated its ability to combine “multi-step glide jump flight and strong lateral manoeuvring,” KCNA said.

The test also confirmed components such as flight control and its ability to operate in the winter, KCNA added.

“The successive successes in the test launches in the hypersonic missile sector have strategic significance in that they hasten a task for modernizing strategic armed force of the state,” the KCNA report said.

While it has not tested nuclear bombs or long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) since 2017, in recent years North Korea has developed and launched a range of more manoeuvrable missiles and warheads likely aimed at being able to overcome missile defences like those wielded by South Korea and the United States, analysts have said.

“My impression is that the North Koreans have identified hypersonic gliders as a potentially useful qualitative means to cope with missile defence,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

NEW MISSILE

Hypersonic weapons are considered the next generation of arms that aim to rob adversaries of reaction time and traditional defeat mechanisms.

Last month the United States completed construction of a massive, $1.5 billion long-range radar for a homeland missile defence system in Alaska that it says can track ballistic missiles as well as hypersonic weapons from countries such as North Korea.

Photos of the missile used in Wednesday’s test show what analysts said is a liquid-fueled ballistic missile with a conical-shaped Manoeuvrable Reentry Vehicle (MaRV) blasting off from a wheeled launch vehicle in a cloud of flame and smoke.

It is a different version than the weapon tested last year, and was first unveiled at a defence exhibition in Pyongyang in October, Panda said.

“They likely set up at least two separate development programmes,” he added. “One of these was the Hwasong-8, which was tested in September. This missile, which shares a few features in common with the Hwasong-8, is another.”

In a call with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the North Korea missile launch and discussed cooperation to achieve complete denuclearization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

Talks aimed at persuading North Korea to surrender its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile arsenal have been stalled since a series of summits between leader Kim Jong Un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump broke down with no agreement.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is open to talking to North Korea, but Pyongyang has said American overtures are empty rhetoric without more substantive changes to “hostile policies” such as military drills and sanctions.

The latest test came just hours before South Korean President Moon Jae-in attended a groundbreaking ceremony for a rail line he hopes will eventually connect the divided Korean peninsula, casting doubts over his hopes for an eleventh-hour diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea before his five-year term ends in May. – Reuters

NEW YORK – Pfizer Inc expects the latest results from a clinical trial for kids under the age of 5 of the COVID–19 vaccine it developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE by April, a top company scientist said on Wednesday.

“The study has been amended to give a third dose to everybody who’s less than five at least eight weeks after their last vaccination,” Dr. Alejandra Gurtman, a Pfizer vaccine researcher said at a meeting of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). She said the company aims to have data for the age group by the end of March or the beginning of April.

In December, Pfizer said it was changing the design of the trial because children between the ages of 2 and 4 who were given two 3-microgram doses of the vaccine did not have the same immune response that a larger dose of the vaccine generated in older children.

Gurtman also said the company was studying a third dose of its vaccine in children ages 5 to 11, six months after their second dose.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is authorized in the United States for people age 5 and older. On Wednesday, ACIP backed booster shots of the vaccine for ages 12 to 15. – Reuters

JAKARTA – Aji Tri Atmojo lives in a traditional Javanese house with wooden walls on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, but his rustic home got a modern touch after he installed a row of solar panels on his roof.

Since putting them up in 2020 at a cost of 10 million rupiah ($702.25), he has halved his monthly electricity bill and within five years the investment should break even.

With a patchy track record on renewables, Indonesia‘s energy mix is still heavily dependent on coal but if early signs of a jump in the take up of solar are sustained, it could have a transformative impact on Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

“Because nearly all electricity generation in Indonesia … comes from coal. This way (my family) can reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Aji told Reuters. Indonesia aims to wean itself off coal and become carbon neutral by 2060 or sooner.

Despite being a tropical archipelago of 17,000 islands blessed with year-round sunshine, Indonesia ranks last for solar power capacity among the G20 nations.

But demand is starting to pick up in the world’s fourth-most populous country, driven by policy changes, a steep fall in the prices of Chinese-made photovoltaic cells (PV) and environmentally conscious middle-class consumers such as Aji, an engineer at a dairy company.

From the end of 2018 to November 2021, the number of private rooftop solar panel users has risen more than sevenfold to about 4,500, with an installed capacity of 44 megawatts (MW), up from just 1.5 MW, according to state-owned power utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN).

RISING ELECTRICITY NEEDS

The Indonesia Solar Energy Association (ISEA) predicts installed capacity for rooftop solar panels could top 1,000 MW next year and rise by between 3,000 MW and 5,000 MW per year starting in 2025.

“People are becoming more aware about the importance of renewable energy,” said Amarangga Lubis, co-founder of engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firm SolarKita. “Since the pandemic, the work from home culture has been established and electricity needs at home are rising.”

Lubis predicts massive growth in solar power installations over the next five years. “People will be more picky and they will invest in things that are more beneficial” for the environment, he said.

To be sure, solar remains a minor energy source in Indonesia, the world’s biggest exporter of the thermal coal used in power plants.

Coal powers about 60% of Indonesia‘s 73,000 MW of electric generation capacity, compared with solar‘s 180 MW, which includes solar farms and private rooftop PV cells.

But, Indonesia has the potential for 400,000 MW of solar power, its energy ministry has forecast.

Falling prices for Chinese PV cells has driven the rise in private installations since the solar power produced from the panels is cheaper than power sold from PLN.

The systems from western countries that were the only ones previously available were also 10 times more expensive, said Ilham Rizky, founder of solar installer Batara Energi.

New financing methods, such as solar panel leasing for commercial users, have also helped businesses invest in solar, said Solarkita’s Lubis.

CARBON MARKET

Regulatory changes have also spurred growth, with PLN reducing its minimum energy charges in late 2019, which lowers the amount of time for solar users to recoup their installation costs.

Commercial solar users can also fully export their excess power to PLN as of August, up from only 65% previously, and they can participate in an Indonesian carbon market due to launch in 2025.

These changes, as well as agreements by multinational companies to curb carbon emissions, mean higher solar demand from companies, factories and commercial buildings in coming years, said Fabby Tumiwa, the ISEA executive director.

In addition to the commercial demand, Tumiwa also expects at least 2% of PLN’s 77 million household customers to put up solar PV cells in the next three to five years. – Reuters