WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump reached a required agreement Tuesday with President Joe Biden’s White House to allow his transition staff to coordinate with the federal workforce before taking office Jan. 20.

The congressionally mandated agreement allows transition aides to work with federal agencies and access nonpublic information and gives a green light to government workers to talk to the transition team.

But Trump has declined to sign a separate agreement with the General Services Administration that would have given his team access to secure government offices and email accounts, in part because it would require that the president-elect limit contributions to $5,000 and reveal who is donating to his transition effort.

The White House agreement was supposed to have been signed by Oct. 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act, and the Biden White House had issued public and private appeals for Trump’s team to sign on.

The agreement is a critical step in ensuring an orderly transfer of power at noon on Inauguration Day and lays the groundwork for the White House and government agencies to begin to share details on programs, operations and threats. It limits the risk that the Trump team could find itself taking control of the massive federal government without briefings and documents from the outgoing administration.

As part of the agreement with the White House, Trump’s team will have to publicly disclose its ethics plan for the transition operation and make a commitment to uphold it, the White House said. Transition aides must sign statements that they have no financial positions that could pose a conflict of interest before they receive access to nonpublic federal information.

Harris campaign reflects: The leaders of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign insist they simply didn’t have enough time to execute a winning strategy against Donald Trump, pointing to “ferocious” political headwinds that were ultimately too much to overcome in 107 days after President Joe Biden stepped aside.

Harris’ leadership team, speaking on the “Pod Save America” podcast that aired Tuesday, defended strategic decisions over the campaign’s closing days, some of which have faced scrutiny in the weeks since Trump’s victory. Specifically, they defended Harris’ outreach to Republican voters, her unwillingness to distance herself from Biden, her silence on Trump’s attacks on her transgender policies and her inability to schedule an interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan.

The pointed reflections on Harris’ loss came just before she declared she was “proud of the campaign we ran” during a conference call with supporters as the party begins a painful process of self-examination.

Her campaign raised more than $1.4 billion, a record for U.S. presidential campaigns, but still finished the election in debt.

Myanmar fighting: A powerful rebel group has seized a key trading town in northeastern Myanmar on the China border, taking control of a lucrative rare-earth mining hub in another setback for the military-led government, according to witnesses.

The apparent loss of Kanpaiti to the Kachin Independence Army leaves Myanmar’s military in control of one town with a border crossing, Muse, and deprives it of potential profits from the mines that provide minerals to China that are critical for electric motors, wind turbines, high-tech weapons and a broad range of electronics.

Neither Col. Naw Bu, the KIA’s spokesperson, nor Thet Swe, spokesperson for the military, responded to multiple requests for comment, but several local media outlets reported that Kanpaiti fell last week. The civil war and military restrictions make travel for journalists nearly impossible, but the reports were confirmed by witnesses by telephone.

The military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, triggering intensified fighting with long-established armed militias organized by Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups in its border regions that have struggled for decades for more autonomy.

Philippine VP inquiry: Philippine authorities handed a subpoena to Vice President Sara Duterte’s office Tuesday, inviting her to answer investigators’ questions after she publicly threatened to have the president, his wife and the House of Representatives speaker assassinated if she were killed in an unspecified plot.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. described her threat Monday as a criminal plot and vowed to fight it and uphold the rule of law in the country in a looming showdown between the country’s two top leaders.

The national police and the military expressed alarm and immediately boosted Marcos’s security. National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano said the threats were a national security concern.

Duterte said her remarks were not an actual threat but an expression of concern over her own safety due to unspecified danger to her life. The subpoena ordered the 46-year-old lawyer to appear before the National Bureau of Investigation on Friday to “shed light on the investigation for alleged grave threats.”

World’s oldest man dies: For nearly nine months, John Alfred Tinniswood held the title of world’s oldest man, marking his 112th birthday during his reign.

His record-holding status ended Monday when Tinniswood died in a care home in northwest England near Liverpool, where he was born Aug. 26, 1912, his family said in a statement.

Tinniswood claimed the record this spring after Juan Vicente Pérez of Venezuela died at 114.

Guinness World Records did not identify the new record holder.