Reuters World News Summary

President Joe Biden has threatened new sanctions against the generals who seized power in Myanmar and detained elected leaders including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi early on Monday.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Iran deepens breach of nuclear deal at underground enrichment site

Iran has deepened a key breach of its 2015 nuclear deal, enriching uranium with a larger number of advanced centrifuge machines in an underground plant as it faces off with the new U.S. administration on salvaging the accord. Tehran has recently accelerated its breaches of the deal, raising pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden as both sides say they are willing to come back into compliance with the badly eroded agreement if the other side moves first. U.N. bid to avert oil spill off Yemen uncertain as Houthis mull 'review'

Yemen's Houthi group has advised the United Nations to pause preparations to deploy a team to assess a decaying oil tanker threatening to spill 1.1 million barrels of crude oil off the war-torn country's coast, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday. The tanker Safer has been stranded off Yemen's Red Sea oil terminal of Ras Issa for more than five years, and U.N. officials have warned it could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska. Biden administration indicates in no hurry to engage China

The Biden administration indicated on Tuesday it is in no hurry to engage with China, a strategic rival it has vowed to out-compete, and said it and would do so once it was in "lockstep" with allies and partners. President Joe Biden has spoken to many world leaders since taking office on Jan. 20, but has yet to speak to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a briefing she could not say when a call might take place. UK's record-breaking fundraiser, 'hero' Captain Tom Moore, dies aged 100

Britain's Captain Tom Moore, the World War Two veteran who lifted a nation's spirits by raising millions of pounds for health service workers battling the coronavirus, died on Tuesday aged 100 after he contracted COVID-19. Moore struck a chord with locked-down Britain by walking around his garden with the help of a frame to raise 38.9 million pounds ($53 million) for the National Health Service. U.S. says Myanmar military takeover constitutes coup, reviewing aid

The U.S. State Department will conduct a review of its foreign assistance to Myanmar after determining that the military takeover in the Asian country this week constituted a coup, officials said on Tuesday. President Joe Biden has threatened new sanctions against the generals who seized power in Myanmar and detained elected leaders including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi early on Monday. Noisy anti-coup protest reverberates in Myanmar's largest city

The din of banging pots and honking car horns reverberated through Myanmar's biggest city of Yangon late on Tuesday in the first widespread protest against the military coup that overthrew elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The party of the detained Nobel Peace laureate called for her release by the junta that seized power on Monday and is keeping her at an undisclosed location. It also demanded recognition of her victory in a Nov. 8 election. Italy's president calls on Draghi to save country from crisis

Italian President Sergio Mattarella looks set to ask former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to form a government of national unity to tackle the twin coronavirus and economic crises battering the country. The head of state summoned Draghi for talks on Wednesday at noon (1100 GMT) after hearing that efforts to salvage the collapsed coalition of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had failed. U.S. cool to Iranian idea of synchronized steps on nuclear deal

The United States reacted coolly on Tuesday to an Iranian suggestion that Washington and Tehran take synchronized steps to return to the Iran nuclear deal, saying the U.S. was some ways from talking to the Iranians or entertaining their proposals. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday had said one way to bridge the impasse with Washington was for an EU official to choreograph their steps to restore the 2015 pact abandoned in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump. Russia's Sputnik V vaccine 92% effective in fighting COVID-19

Scientists gave Russia's Sputnik V vaccine the green light on Tuesday saying it was almost 92% effective in fighting COVID-19 based on peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in The Lancet international medical journal. Experts said the Phase III trial results meant the world had another effective weapon to fight the deadly pandemic and justified to some extent Moscow's decision to roll out the vaccine before final data had been released. Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny jailed, declares Putin 'the Underwear Poisoner'

A Russian court jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Tuesday, ignoring the West in a ruling the opposition politician blamed on President Vladimir Putin's personal hatred and fear of him. The Moscow court handed Navalny a three-and-a-half-year sentence, but his lawyer said the anti-corruption blogger would actually serve two years and eight months in jail because of time already spent under house arrest.