Kamala Harris is to get presidential powers for a “brief period of time” on Friday while Joe Biden undergoes a routine colonoscopy.
Mr Biden, 78, will have the procedure at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
The president will have to go under anaesthesia, which means he is required to “transfer power” to his deputy under the 25th amendment to the constitution.
“As was the case when President George W Bush had the same procedure in 2002 and 2007, and following the process set out in the constitution, President Biden will transfer power to the vice president for the brief period of time he is under anaesthesia,” Ms Psaki said in a statement.
Image: Vice President Kamala Harris is pictured at the White House with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau on Thursday. Pic: AP
Ms Harris, 57, will not take over the Oval Office and will remain in her part of the West Wing, she added.
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During Mr Biden’s operation she will become the first female president and president of colour in US history.
It has been reported that Donald Trump had a similar procedure while he was president but did not make it public so Mike Pence would not have to replace him.
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Mr Biden’s last full medical exam was just before the coronavirus pandemic in December 2019.
Then doctors found him to be “healthy, vigorous” and “fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency”.
Image: The president and vice president are pictured at the White House on Thursday. Pic: AP
In 2003, while he was senator for Delaware, he suffered an irregular heartbeat, but was given blood thinning treatment that appeared to solve the issue.
He had two brain aneurysms in 1998 that required surgery, but a 2014 examination of the affected arteries showed them to be functioning correctly.
Despite his morning surgery, Mr Biden is scheduled to take part in the annual pardoning of the national Thanksgiving turkey.
Ms Harris will travel to Ohio for an engagement once her boss has resumed his duties.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advert featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea, he also said he had reviewed the commercial and told Ontario Premier Doug Ford not to air it.
“I did apologise to the president,” Mr Carney said on Saturday, confirming earlier comments made by the US president on Friday.
“I told [Doug] Ford I did not want to go forward with the ad,” he added.
The private conversation with Mr Trump happened at a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president on Wednesday.
The commercial, commissioned by Mr Ford, included a quote from Republican former president Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.
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In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”
The ad by the Ontario government has a voiceover of Ronald Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they cause job losses and trade wars.
The video uses five complete sentences from a five-minute weekly address recorded in 1987, but edited together out of order.
The ad does not mention that the former US president was explaining that tariffs imposed on Japan by his administration should be seen as a sadly unavoidable exception to his basic belief in free trade as the key to prosperity.
Meanwhile, Mr Carney said his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday were a turning point in relations after years of tensions.
He also met Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the sidelines of the summit.
Donald Trump has said he is designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” as “thousands of Christians” are being killed there.
Posting on Truth Social, he said radical Islamists are committing “mass slaughter” and Christianity is “facing an existential threat” in the West African nation.
The US president said he was asking officials to “immediately look into this matter, and report back to me”.
Mr Trump quoted figures suggesting 3,100 Christians had been killed in Nigeria, but did not state any source for the numbers or timeframe.
He stated: “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”
Nigeria now joins North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and China on a list of countries “of particular concern” due to violations of religious freedom.
The move is one step before possible sanctions – which could mean a ban on all non-humanitarian aid.
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The Nigerian government has vehemently rejected the claims. Analysts have said that, while Christians are among those targeted, the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in the country’s Muslim-majority north, where the most attacks take place.
Mr Trump’s move follows efforts by Republican senator Ted Cruz to get fellow evangelical Christians to lobby Congress over claims of “Christian mass murder” in Nigeria.
Boko Haram – which kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls in 2014 – is the main group cited in previous warnings by US and international governments.
The group has committed “egregious violations of religious freedom”, according to a 2021 report by the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
It said more than 37,000 people had been killed by Islamist groups in Nigeria since 2011.
Churches and Christian neighbourhoods have been targeted in the past, but experts say Muslims are the most common victims of Boko Haram attacks, which routinely target the police, military and government.
Other groups operating said to be operating in the country include Boko Haram offshoot Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
About half of Nigeria’s population is estimated to be Muslim, who mostly live in the north, with roughly the other half following Christianity.
US travellers are currently urged to “reconsider” travel to Nigeria due to a threat of terrorism, crime, kidnapping and armed gangs. The UK advises its citizens along similar lines.
The US is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will allow into the country to 7,500, and giving priority to white South Africans.
The new figure, announced on Thursday in a memo in the Federal Registry, the official journal of the US administration, is a dramatic reduction from last year’s 125,000, set by former president Joe Biden.
No reason was given for the decrease, but the note said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.
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The notice posted to the register’s website said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.
It is half the 15,000 total set for 2021 during Donald Trump’s first term in office at the height of the COVID pandemic, which reports said was the previous lowest refugee admissions cap.
Refugee rights groups were quick to condemn the proposal, with International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) president Sharif Aly, saying that by “privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicising a humanitarian programme”.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, said: “Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility.”
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Human Rights First president, Uzra Zeya, called it a “new low point” in US foreign policy, which will “further destabilise front-line states that host over two-thirds of the world’s nearly 43 million refugees, undermining US national security in tandem”.
Image: US President Donald Trump showed South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa printed-out articles in the Oval Office. Pic: AP
In May, Mr Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House, claiming white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.
A video purporting to show burial sites for murdered white farmers was played but was later shown to be scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.
The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other white South Africans are being persecuted.
In January, the US president suspended the US Refugee Admissions Programme (USRAP) to, in his words, allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.
During the Oval Office meeting, Mr Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Mr Trump’s] head”.