Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday that a tax on how far travelers go looks like a promising way to fund President Biden's infrastructure bill.

Biden said during his first solo press conference on Thursday that he will announce the $3 trillion proposal on Friday in Pittsburgh.

The next day, his Transportation head said a mileage tax could be one way to help pay for the plan. Buttigieg said:

"I think that shows a lot of promise. If we believe in that so-called user-pays principle, the idea that part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive.

"The gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it; it's not anymore. So, a so-called vehicle miles traveled tax or a mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be the way to do it."

Buttigieg also said that the use of Build America Bonds, Obama-era municipal bonds that were subsidized by the federal government, looks sound. "Definitely a lot of promise in terms of the way we leverage that kind of financing."

America loves its superhero films, but fiction is fast transforming into fact as China and Russia aspire to lead a real-life Justice League. The comic book series and film of the same name refers to a collection of superheroes who save the world from evil, which is essentially what those countries are trying to do. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday during the latter's two-day visit to the People's Republic that "We should act as guarantors of justice in international affairs." He also added that

"China is ready to promote the international system established by the United Nations, protect the world order based on international law, and abide by universal values such as peace, development, justice, democracy, equality and freedom."

This was preceded by Mr. Lavrov's support the day earlier for their shared Venezuelan partner's earlier proposal to assemble a worldwide anti-sanctions coalition. He said that "We must form a maximally wide coalition of countries that would combat this illegal practice."

Jair Bolsonaro's ultraconservative foreign minister has resigned after a rebellion from diplomats and lawmakers who accused him of demolishing Brazil's international reputation and putting Brazilian lives at risk by vandalizing relations with China and the US during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ernesto Araújo, a 53-year-old career diplomat famed for his bashing of Xi Jinping's China and devotion to Donald Trump, tendered his resignation on Monday, ending what critics call the most calamitous chapter in the history of Brazilian diplomacy.

"One thing's for sure, he's the worst foreign minister Brazil has ever had," said Celso Amorim, who held the post between 2003 and 2011.

Credit Suisse and Nomura warned Monday of "significant" hits to first-quarter results, after they began exiting positions with a large U.S. hedge fund that defaulted on margin calls last week.

While neither Credit Suisse nor Nomura named the fund, it's been widely reported that Archegos Capital Management is the firm connected to the fire sale.

In a trading update before the market open, Credit Suisse said a number of other banks were also affected and had begun exiting their positions with the unnamed firm. The Zurich-based lender's shares closed down nearly 14% on Monday following the announcement.

American tech entrepreneur and businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri came forward last week to claim that she and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson were in a secret four-year relationship while he was the mayor of London. The revelation has sparked questions about the use of the UK's public money Arcuri had benefited from during their purported romance.

The fact that Jennifer Arcuri is unveiling saucy details about her alleged relationship with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson four years after they ended suggest that the woman could be pursuing a "vendetta" against her ex-beau, BoJo's friends are telling The Telegraph.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Boris is guilty of a monumental lapse in taste. At what point is the hawking of a story that is three years old cease to be news and start to look like a vendetta," one of Johnson's allies told the media.

The American people are presently trapped in a Catch-22 situation in that any criticism that is leveled against the U.S. mainstream media is channeled away from social discourse by the very institutions under attack.

A prominent DC circuit judge has delivered a scathing attack on the Democratic Party's "ideological control" of the U.S. media landscape. Yet who will heed the call if legacy and social media are empowered to suppress news and debate at will?

Donald Trump, the first sitting president in U.S. history to have had his voice deliberately blocked from reaching the American people, is not the only one who has a beef with the control-freak liberal media. Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, 85, appointed in 1985 to the U.S. Court of Appeals by Ronald Reagan, thrust the question of liberal media bias into the spotlight during an otherwise ordinary libel case.

Silberman took umbrage against the 1964 court case New York Times v. Sullivan, which made it incumbent upon those parties looking to sue media outlets to prove that the latter's reporting was the result of "actual malice," or a "reckless disregard for the truth." That ruling, critics say, has made it exceedingly difficult to hold media outlets accountable for what Trump regularly denounced as "fake news."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the international community should come together to make a new formal pact governing the use of the internet. It would ban potentially hostile actions in order to maintain peace online.

At a meeting of Russia's security council on Friday, Putin said that

"the global digital space often becomes a platform for harsh confrontation in the information sphere - for unfair competition and cyber attacks. The digital environment is used by international terrorists and organized crime. In a word, there are many potential threats to general, global security and to individual countries, including their sovereignty and national interests."

As a result, the president argued, it is necessary

"to agree to universal international legal treaties aimed at preventing conflicts and building a mutually beneficial partnership in the global information space, for the sustainable development of each state. It would aim to create favorable conditions for scientific research, and enable the rapid implementation of the most advanced technological solutions while preventing potential risks."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that reporters would soon be granted access to Border Patrol facilities sheltering unaccompanied minors.

Psaki's comment came in response to questions from Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday over the administration's lack of transparency around the facilities, which are required, by law, to transfer children to HHS shelters in under 72 hours. In recent weeks, as the number of unaccompanied minors in Border Protection and Health and Human Services custody has swelled to more than 18,000, some children have been held in the processing centers for as long as ten days.

Psaki said that the Biden administration was "absolutely committed" to allowing reporters and cameras into the facilities. "We want to provide access into the Border Patrol facilities. We are mindful that we are in the middle of the pandemic, we want to keep the kids safe, we want to keep the staff safe."

Wallace accused the White House of being "less transparent than the Trump administration" regarding media access at the facilities, to which Psaki responded that the administration is "committed to allowing cameras into Border Patrol facilities."

However, Senator Mike Braun (R., Ind.) on Saturday said a Biden official asked a group of Republican senators who visited the southern border to delete photos they had taken of the overcrowded conditions at a migrant processing and holding center they toured one day earlier in Donna, Texas.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said that President Biden maintains "regular" communication with Barack Obama on a number of issues.

Psaki was asked by a reporter whether Obama had visited the White House and how often the two speak, to which she responded that Obama and Biden have a relationship that is not defined as president and vice president - instead, they are "friends."

"They consult and talk about a range of issues and I would expect that continues through the course of President Biden's presidency. That can be done over the phone it turns out, and I think if President Obama had been here, you would all know."

Psaki declined to give an exact number of times that the powerful pair had spoken, but said they "keep in regular touch" and their respective teams also were in regular touch "about a range of issues."

US diplomats are struggling to contain and control an "increasingly powerful" China, one of Moscow's top politicians has said, warning that Washington's oppositional stance will fall flat with the world's most populous country.

Alexey Pushkov, an influential member of the Russian Senate and former head of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, slammed the recent approach championed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a tweet on Sunday.

According to Pushkov, Washington's top envoy

"will not scare Beijing by stating his intention to address relations with China 'from a position of strength,' but will only make it more wary and push it towards an alliance with Moscow. At the same time, the US does not have the resources to deal with an increasingly powerful China. The new team in Washington is thinking in the old framework of the 20th century."

Moscow and Beijing have been pursuing closer partnerships in recent months, with both expressing concern over potential US sanctions. At a summit with his Chinese counterparts last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that "you cannot do global business by means of ultimatums and sanctions, or force other countries to behave as expected of them."