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• Trump says US terminating relationship with WHO, UN sets up privately funded 'independent' organization to deal with coronavirus
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• US to send $450 million in rocket systems from DoD's own stock as part of $40 billion aid package to Ukraine
• Missiles for US-made HIMARS destroyed - Moscow
• American weapons will ensure more deaths in Ukraine, but won't change the conflict's eventual outcome

Russia claims its air defenses fended off an attack on the nation's capital by five Ukrainian drones on Tuesday. Officials now claim the attack would not have been possible for Ukraine without assistance from Western allies.

"These attacks would not be possible without the help provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and its NATO allies," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, according to the Agence France-Presse.

The ministry went on to say the West is "training drone operators and providing the necessary intelligence to commit such crimes."

The relationship [between Biden and Freeh] raises questions about Hines' impartiality. Justice Department rules state that he should be prohibited "from participating in a criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution, or any person or organization which he knows has a specific and substantial interest that would be directly affected by the outcome of the investigation or prosecution."

"The Justice Department seems to be bending the law to benefit the Bidens," Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told The Post.

"Whistleblower testimony revealed the DOJ refused to follow certain evidence, tipped off Hunter's attorneys, and set the President's son up for a sweetheart plea deal. It's clear that politicization and misconduct at the DOJ and IRS during the investigation into Hunter Biden reveal a two-tiered system of justice and unequal application of the law. The House Oversight Committee will continue to conduct rigorous oversight of the Biden family's web of business schemes and hold bad actors accountable."

• White House says US will seek to restore military contacts with China
• China hits back at Biden over 'dictator Xi' comments
• Blinken and Xi pledge to stabilize US-China relations in rare Beijing talks
• Make a choice between 'dialogue and confrontation', China tells US
• No room to concede or compromise on Taiwan question, China lieutenant general says in response to US Sec of Defense speech
• Biden's next move to box China out on sensitive tech

The United States' unwavering support for Israel has enabled and emboldened the right-wing Israeli government's escalating violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, analysts say.

As Israeli forces targeted the densely populated Jenin refugee camp with air attacks and ground raids involving hundreds of troops on Monday, the White House again underscored what it called Israel's "right to defend" itself.

"We support Israel's security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups," the White House National Security Council said in a brief statement.

Experts say that response reflects US President Joe Biden's unwillingness to rein in his country's top ally in the Middle East despite a pledge to centre human rights in US foreign policy - and as concerns around the scale of the Israeli attack in Jenin are mounting.

"I think we will continue to see - as has happened in the past - the US administration run cover for the Israelis and let them get away with doing whatever they want," Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project think tank, told Al Jazeera in a television interview on Monday.

The Biden administration doesn't want the situation in the West Bank to blow up, but it won't risk its relationship with Israel, Levy said. "And that's why in particular things have gotten so bad."

[...]

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, said the US policy on the conflict keeps getting worse.

"The Biden administration has leaned into its role as a complicit enabler of the Israeli occupation to the point it has all but abandoned even symbolic talking points of 'supporting a two-state solution'; or calls for calm," Kenney-Shawa told Al Jazeera in an email.

"The US has shown, implicitly and explicitly, that it fully endorses Israel's actions no matter the consequences and that it holds Israel on a pedestal that exempts it from the same human rights norms and international standards that Washington holds the rest of the world to."