Ukraine Envoy, Facebook Whistleblower to Sit With Jill Biden

Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, and Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who exposed what the company may have known about damage caused by its social media platforms, will sit with Jill Biden for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the White House said Tuesday.

Also sitting with the first lady are Patrick Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel Corp., and several people she met during the past year of traveling around the country on behalf of the Biden administration. They include a community college student-parent, a military spouse, a middle school student, a nurse, a member of a Native American tribe and a labor union member.

The guest list marks a big change from last year when Biden delivered a speech — not called a State of the Union address — to a joint session of Congress a few months after he took office in 2021.

The coronavirus pandemic was raging at the time and attendance for the annual presidential appearance in the House chamber in the U.S. Capitol was severely limited so that lawmakers, who were required to wear face coverings, could spread out and be socially distant.

Guests that lawmakers usually bring to the speech were barred last year because of the pandemic. The first lady attended alone, after having a virtual meeting with a group of guests.

But the COVID-19 situation has improved in the year since.

The federal government recently made mask-wearing optional in much of the U.S., including Washington, and congressional leaders invited all members of the House and Senate to attend, thought a negative COVID-19 test result was required.

Lawmakers were not allowed to bring guests this year, but that prohibition apparently did not extend to the first lady.

Jill Biden followed up on her public show of support for Ukraine on Monday — when she wore a white mask with a sunflower, the country’s national flower, to a public event at the White House — by inviting Markarova to sit with her for the nationally televised speech.

Tradition holds that the first lady invite guests who help personify policies and positions that are important to the administration. President Biden has rallied Western nations in opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision last week to launch a war against its smaller neighbor, Ukraine.

Haugen has said Facebook’s systems amplify online hate and extremism and fail to protect young people from harmful content, and said the company lacks any incentive to fix the problems. Her revelations last year shed light on an internal crisis at the company that provides free services to 3 billion people.

Haugen backed up her claims with a series of disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission that were also provided to Congress in redacted form by her legal team. The redacted versions given to Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.

Gelsinger joined President Biden at the White House in January to announce that his company would build a $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility near Columbus, Ohio. The plant will help the U.S. produce semiconductor chips that are in high demand and short supply, contributing to supply chain disruptions. The plant will also create thousands of jobs, Biden and Gelsinger said.

The president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, will also sit in the first lady’s box.

But at least a half-dozen lawmakers were not expected in the House chamber after they reported positive COVID-19 tests. They include Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., both members of the committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot, and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, cited a different reason for staying away from the speech.

“I’m just not taking any more COVID tests unless I’m sick,” he said.

China Appoints New Special Envoy for Turbulent Horn of Africa Region

China has appointed senior diplomat Xue Bing as its new special envoy for the Horn of Africa, a region that is currently troubled by conflict including in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.

Xue has previously worked as China’s Ambassador to Papua New Guinea and has experience working in Africa, America and Oceania, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

His task will be to work to promote China’s “peaceful development” plan for the region which aims to help countries in the region “achieve long-term stability, development and prosperity,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a daily briefing in Beijing.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi announced in January during a trip to East Africa that such an appointment had been planned.

China’s interests in the Horn include its naval base in Djibouti, overlooking a key global shipping route. Beijing has granted large loans to landlocked Ethiopia, which relies on Djibouti’s port for trade.

The region is also threatened by instability in South Sudan, where China has substantial oil investments, and spillover from Somalia that has brought deadly attacks in neighboring Kenya.

China's UN Envoy Says Choice of Uyghur Torchbearer Not Meant to Deflect Western Criticism

China’s United Nations envoy has rejected his U.S. counterpart’s remark that China’s choice of an ethnic Uyghur as a torchbearer for the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics was an attempt to distract from his country’s alleged rights abuses against Muslim minorities.

Ambassador Zhang Jun said in a statement on the embassy’s website that China “sternly refutes” the “unwarranted accusations” made by U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield in an interview with CNN.

Zhang said that Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross country skier born in Xinjiang, is “among the best” of the 20 athletes from nine ethnic minorities competing for Team China at the Winter Games.

“She is the pride and excellent representative of the Chinese people. Where does the U.S.’ inexplicable anger over this come from, and what intentions does it harbor?” Zhang said.

Dinigeer was selected as one of the last two torchbearers at the opening ceremony. Many Western nations have imposed a diplomatic boycott of the Games over China’s treatment of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.

U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly from the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps in Xinjiang since 2016.

China rejects accusations of abuse, describing the camps as vocational centers designed to combat extremism, and in late 2019 it said all people in the camps had “graduated”.

International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said on Saturday that Dinigeer was not chosen because of where she comes from.

Chinese organizers of the Games said the torchbearers who entered the stadium with the flame had been picked based on their birth dates, with each having been born in a different decade, starting from the 1950s through to the 2000s.