White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked Tuesday if President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ post-election lunch at the White House was ‘awkward.’ Harris returned to the White House complex Tuesday for the first time since her bruising election loss a week ago to former President Donald Trump. Aides stood on the Eisenhower Executive Office Building’s steps to catch a glimpse of the now former Democratic nominee, who told them to keep the faith before she walked over for her lunch with Biden.

Rachel Reeves will today unveil a major pensions shake-up designed to unlock up to £80 billion of investment in British infrastructure and business. In her Mansion House speech tonight, the Chancellor will confirm she is pressing ahead with plans to merge pension schemes to create new ‘megafunds’ capable of investing in major infrastructure projects and emerging industries. Ms Reeves will argue that the move could unlock a wave of private sector investment that will boost her anaemic growth forecasts and ultimately provide better returns for pensioners.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has spoke of his hope to establish ‘common ground’ with Donald Trump on the climate issue. The US president-elect has repeatedly referred to climate change as a ‘hoax’ and has also vowed to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, which commits it to cutting greenhouse emissions as part of the effort to curb global warming. Speaking about the move towards clean energy, Mr Miliband said: ‘What I think is so striking about what’s happening – whether you talk to businesses or talk to other countries – people are getting on with the transition.

A health warning will be printed on every cigarette sold in Australia under strict new laws aimed at stamping out smoking. Under the tobacco regulations, warning messages including ‘poison in every puff’, ‘damages your lungs’, ’causes 16 cancers’, ‘shortens your life’ and ‘toxic addiction’ must be printed on every cigarette by April 2025. ‘We will be one of the first countries in the world to include this new public health measure, again seeking to educate but also dissuade smokers from using this deadly product,’ said health minister Mark Butler when he announced the legislation last year.

Until the day he died in 1995, if you asked my father who he voted for in any presidential election he said ‘Roosevelt.’ It was gospel in our house that Democrats were the party of the people and Republicans were the economic royalists. That was then, and this is now. The majority of Americans don’t necessarily see it that way anymore.

HAITI’S international airport was forced to shut down after gangs opened fire at a passenger plane. The Spirit Airlines flight from Florida was struck by bullets as it went to touch down Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport. A flight attendant was injured as gangs sprayed the plane – which had come from Fort Lauderdale – with gunfire on Monday.