Bedugul Coffee: Friday Briefing: Biden and Harris shifting focus of Georgia trip after Atlanta shooting rampage

Today's top stories

Chauvin trial judge to rule on change of venue, Macron's COVID gamble fails, and China's small tech firms step out of the shadows

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were planning to promote the newly enacted $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package when they visited Georgia today, but the deadly shooting rampage in the state has changed their plans.

Biden and Harris will meet community leaders and state lawmakers from the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community to hear concerns about the killings and discuss a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes.

The judge in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of George Floyd, will rule this morning on whether to grant Chauvin's request to move the trial to another county. His lead lawyer has complained that publicity around the trial has tainted the jury pool in and around Minneapolis.

The first high-level U.S.-China meeting of the Biden administration got off to a fiery start, with both sides leveling sharp rebukes of the others’ policies in a rare public display that underscored the level of bilateral tension. But quips about translators offered a brief moment of levity.

↑ U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (2nd R), joined by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (R), speaks while facing Yang Jiechi (2nd L), director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office, and Wang Yi (L), China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister, at the opening session of U.S.-China talks at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, March 18, 2021

WORLD

↑ A woman walks with her shopping trolley in a street in Cambrai in France, March 19, 2021

French President Emmanuel Macron met with top officials on January 29 and revealed a surprise: despite the urgings of some senior ministers and independent scientists, he would try to steer the country out of the pandemic without locking it down again. But the tactic is now unraveling - Paris is in lockdown.

Myanmar security forces shot dead nine opponents of the coup, as Indonesia urged an end to the violence and the restoration of democracy, in an unusually blunt call from a neighbor. We look at one Myanmar doctor’s journey from a remote village to leading a revolution.

Gunmen have killed at least 13 Mexican police in an ambush a short distance outside the capital, in one of the worst mass slayings of security forces to rock the country in recent years.

When Syrian teenager Basheer Abazed was arrested a decade ago for scrawling anti-government graffiti on his school wall, he never imagined an uprising would flare that would devastate his country. Now, he mourns the terrible human cost of the revolt.

Business

U.S. corporations are fighting harder this year to keep activist shareholder proposals off the ballot at their annual meetings, partly because of a proliferation of investor demands for racial justice reforms.

Biden’s green fuel push using edible oils is helping drive up vegetable oil prices that are already near record highs, hitting key cost-sensitive consumers in India and Africa and stoking global food inflation fears.

British Airways is considering selling its headquarters building due to the switch to homeworking. The shift over the last year has already prompted some of Britain’s biggest companies, such as banking giants Lloyds and HSBC, to make changes to their office footprints.

One firm's loss is another's gain. China's smaller technology companies and investors are eager to seize the day as a sweeping crackdown by anti-monopoly regulators on the country's internet giants creates a wealth of new opportunities.