| |  |  | The Reuters Daily Briefing | Thursday, April 29, 2021 by Linda Noakes | Hello Here's what you need to know. Biden's plan - "blue-collar blueprint" or "socialist dreams"? China seeks to douse population speculation, oil majors leave their pandemic blues behind and in Russia a gaunt Navalny remains defiant | | | | | Today's biggest stories  President Joe Biden addresses a joint session of Congress as Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi applaud at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, April 28, 2021 U.S. President Joe Biden marks his 100th day in office with a trip to Georgia, visiting former President Jimmy Carter and pitching his plans to spend trillions of dollars to rebuild the U.S. economy.
During his speech to Congress yesterday, Biden appealed to Americans to support his "blue-collar blueprint" for change, saying his administration would invest a combined $4 trillion in families and infrastructure to rebuild the middle class
Republicans largely sat silently while Democrats applauded as Biden pushed a vision of more government investment funded by the wealthy. "Our best future will not come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams," Republican Senator Tim Scott said in his rebuttal.
The address broke a historic glass ceiling, as two women - Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - sat behind the president for the first time in history.
Here are the key takeaways from Biden's speech.
|  A priest and a relative of a person who died from COVID-19 pray next to the body before the burial, at a graveyard in New Delhi, India, April 29, 2021 WORLD India's total COVID-19 cases passed 18 million after another world record of daily infections as gravediggers worked around the clock burying victims and rows of funeral pyres were built in parks and parking lots. We talk to a gravedigger working 24-hour shifts.
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, looking gaunt and drained after a hunger strike, denounced Russia's justice system as his team said he faced new criminal charges and that it was disbanding a network of regional campaign offices.
China's population grew last year, the statistics bureau said, in an apparent bid to quash reports that it had fallen - but it stopped short of saying from which year numbers had grown. An unexpected drop in population would pile pressure on Beijing to quickly come up with measures to encourage people to have more children and avoid an irreversible decline.
The Turkish government's decision to ban alcohol sales during a 17-day COVID-19 lockdown that starts today has angered some secular Turks who see it as President Tayyip Erdogan's latest imposition of a religious lifestyle on all of society.
| BUSINESS The Biden administration faces a major dilemma in its dispute with the European Union over Trump-era steel and aluminum tariffs: back down to avoid acute pain for Harley-Davidson and whiskey distillers or stick with the duties even though they are now exacerbating acute shortages for U.S. manufacturers.
Evidence submitted by a retail union that raised objections to Amazon.com's conduct at this month's union election in Alabama "could be grounds for overturning the vote", the National Labor Relations Board says.
Europe's major energy companies profited from a rise in oil prices to report big increases in first-quarter earnings, putting the worst of the pandemic era slump in fuel demand behind them.
It wasn't the introduction to high finance that Adi Patel had once anticipated. The stage fright of walking into the imposing offices of a $607 billion asset manager in the heart of a historic financial district? Pandemic era: a five-day induction on Microsoft Teams. Here’s why banking recruits are fearing for their future.
| | | | | | | | | Video of the day  Rock on - no rise in infections after concert for 5,000 in Barcelona A trial concert in Barcelona where 5,000 people took rapid COVID-19 tests and crammed into a venue without social distancing did not drive up infections, giving a ray of hope to the moribund live-music sector. | | | Thanks for spending part of your day with us. | | | | | |
