A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said China will take “resolute countermeasures” (Reuters) after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that the United States will not send government officials (SCMP) to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Psaki said the U.S. decision was due to the Chinese government’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses” and that the Joe Biden administration fully supports the U.S. athletes who will compete. 

Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom (UK) are reportedly considering joining the diplomatic boycott. The last time the United States imposed a full boycott (NYT) and refused to send both athletes and government officials to the Olympics was in 1980, to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. 

For the second time this year, the Chinese government reduced the amount of reserves (WSJ) banks are required to hold. Beijing seeks to inject liquidity into the economy to ease a housing-market slump and stabilize heavily indebted property developers.

A Rohingya woman in the U.S. state of Illinois filed a class-action lawsuit (WaPo) against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, saying it failed to quickly stop the spread of hate speech and misinformation that contributed to the alleged genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar in 2017.
 
Pakistan/Sri Lanka: The mob killing of a Sri Lankan man in Pakistan who was accused of blasphemy ​sparked protests (BBC) in both countries. More than one hundred people in Pakistan have been arrested in relation to the incident.

Beginning in January, federal government departments and schools will not operate (National) on Saturday and Sunday, with a half day on Friday. They are currently open Sunday–Thursday.
 
Iraq: A blast from a motorcycle rigged with explosives killed at least four people (Al Jazeera) in the city of Basra, military officials said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Amid shortages of medical staff and vaccine hesitancy, around 40 percent of COVID-19 vaccines that have arrived in Africa have not been used (Reuters), according to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a London-based think tank.
 
This In Brief visualizes the uneven distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
 
Ethiopia: In a joint statement (State Dept.), the United States, Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK condemned Ethiopia’s “widespread arrests” of Tigrayans on the basis of ethnicity.
 
For Foreign Affairs, Chris Coons writes that peace is still possible in Ethiopia.

U.S. President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss (CNN) U.S. concerns about Russia’s military activities on its border with Ukraine, among other issues.
 
This Backgrounder unpacks the conflict in Ukraine.
 
Ireland: A European Union fund to mitigate the effects of Brexit will pay more than $1 billion (BBC) to Ireland, the first of several planned payments.

Lawmakers will vote today (Bloomberg) on whether to open impeachment proceedings against President Pedro Castillo under a loosely defined clause regarding “moral incapacity to govern.”
 
Haiti: Three more of the seventeen foreign missionaries captured by a Haitian gang in October were released (WaPo), while twelve remain captured, a U.S.-based aid group said.

The lawsuit alleges (NPR) that the proposed new districts for Texas’s congressional delegation and state legislature put Black and Latinx voters at a disadvantage and thus violate the Voting Rights Act.