China

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Condemns Hunter Biden’s Foreign Business. He’s Quiet on His Own.

      by

      Donald J. Trump has berated Joseph R. Biden Jr. for his son’s overseas deal making, despite plenty of overseas deal making by the Trump family.After his fourth indictment, bringing his total count of felony charges to 91, former President Donald J. Trump last week posted a video online accusing President Biden and his family of being criminals.“The Biden crime family,” he claimed, had received millions of dollars from foreign countries. “I believe we have a compromised president,” Mr. Trump said, adding: “He’s a Manchurian candidate. That’s why Crooked Joe is letting other countries walk all over the United States.”For Mr. Trump, outrage is a selective commodity when it comes to presidential families taking millions of dollars from foreign countries. During his four years in the White House and in the more than two and a half years since, Mr. Trump and his relatives have been on the receiving end of money from around the globe in sums far greater than anything Hunter Biden, the president’s son, reportedly collected.Unlike other modern presidents, Mr. Trump never gave up control of his sprawling business with its interests in multiple countries, nor did he forswear foreign business even as president. He shattered norms in his money making and unabashed boosting of his family’s company. The luxury hotel he opened down the street from the White House, for example, became the favored destination for lobbyists, dealmakers and foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, which paid handsomely for accommodations, galas and more.Mr. Trump also permitted his family to take positions in government that blurred the lines when it came to their private interests. Unlike Hunter Biden, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner both served on the White House staff, where they could shape policies of concern to overseas businesses.Mr. Kushner was heavily involved in setting the administration’s approach to the Middle East and made multiple contacts in the region. After turning in his White House badge, Mr. Kushner started a private equity firm with $2 billion in funds from Saudi Arabia and hundreds of millions more from other Arab countries that stood to benefit from U.S. policies and have an interest in a possible second Trump administration.“The Trump family foreign commercial entanglements were far more numerous, involving dozens of foreign business conflicts,” said Norman Eisen, a lawyer who led unsuccessful court challenges to the former president’s practice of taking foreign money while in office.The entanglements “implicated those like Jared and Ivanka who were actually working in government, whereas Hunter never did,” Mr. Eisen added. “Indeed, Trump himself openly benefited, whereas there’s not a shred of evidence that Biden the elder ever did.”Hunter Biden’s business dealings have raised concerns because testimony and reports have indicated that he traded on his family name to generate lucrative deals. A former business partner has told congressional investigators that the younger Biden parlayed “the illusion of access to his father” to win over potential partners.Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law, started a private equity firm with $2 billion in funds from Saudi Arabia.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesNo hard evidence has emerged that Mr. Biden, while vice president, personally participated in or profited from the business deals or used his office to benefit his son’s partners.But Mr. Biden’s statements distancing himself from his son’s activities have been undercut by testimony indicating that Hunter put his father on speakerphone with international business associates; the future president talked about casual things like the weather, not business, according to testimony, but it seemed intended to impress Hunter’s associates.All of which would typically generate scrutiny in Washington, where relatives of presidents have long taken advantage of their positions to make money. Access and celebrity are coins of the realm in the nation’s capital, and a relative who frequents Camp David, enjoys a good seat at a state dinner or rides Air Force One can get phone calls returned. This tradition has turned off many Americans, and even Democrats privately voice discomfort at Hunter Biden’s activities.“If he traded on his father’s influence, he should be held accountable for that,” Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, said on MSNBC recently. “And I’m emphasizing this because you never, ever heard a Republican say the same thing about Donald Trump or his family.”Republicans investigating the Bidens say they made more than $20 million from foreign sources in China, Ukraine and elsewhere, but a Washington Post analysis of congressional memos indicated that most of the money went to business associates, with $7 million going to the Bidens themselves, mainly Hunter.“What both Hunter and Jared have in common is that they are the well-educated sons of prominent people, and that their familial ties certainly helped them in business,” said Don Fox, a former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. “That is where the similarities end.”“Hunter never held public office, and a fair amount of his work involving Ukraine occurred when his father was out of office,” Mr. Fox continued. The amount of money that Mr. Kushner could earn from the funds invested by the Saudis, he added, “dwarfs what anyone ever paid Hunter.”The analogy to Hunter Biden rankles Mr. Kushner, who had a long track record in business before joining government and takes pride in negotiating the Abraham Accords, the diplomatic agreements normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab neighbors.People close to him argue that the investments from the Saudis and other Arabs were based on trust that he could make money for them, not out of gratitude for policies he promoted. And they noted that the Biden administration has not reversed those policies but instead sought to build on the Abraham Accords.“There is no factual comparison between Hunter and Jared,” a representative for Mr. Kushner said in a statement. “Jared was a successful businessman before entering politics, achieved historic peace and trade agreements, and like many before him, he re-entered business after serving for free in the White House, where he fully complied with the Office of Government Ethics rules.”Chad Mizelle, the chief legal officer for Affinity Partners, Mr. Kushner’s firm, said in a statement: “Partisan politics aside, no one has ever pointed to a specific legal or ethical guideline that Jared or Affinity has violated.”One of the few Republicans to criticize the Trump family’s blending of government service and foreign business has been Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor running against the former president for next year’s Republican nomination. “The Trump family have been involved in grifting for quite some time,” he said on CNN in June.Mr. Christie, who as a U.S. attorney prosecuted Mr. Kushner’s father, singled out the business dealings of the former president’s son-in-law.“Jared Kushner, six months after he leaves the White House, gets $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund,” he said. “What was Jared Kushner doing in the Middle East? We had Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo as secretaries of state. We didn’t need Jared Kushner. He was put there to make those relationships, and then he cashed in on those relationships when he left the office.”While in the White House, Mr. Kushner bolstered ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia, convincing his father-in-law to make the kingdom his first foreign destination as president, helping broker billions of dollars in arms sales and forging a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.Mr. Kushner defended Prince Mohammed after Saudi operatives murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Post and United States resident. The C.I.A. concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the 2018 killing. In 2021, Prince Mohammed’s sovereign wealth fund approved the $2 billion investment in Mr. Kushner’s new firm despite objections from the fund’s own advisers.Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the House Oversight Committee that is investigating the Bidens, acknowledged concerns with Mr. Kushner’s Saudi deal.“I think that what Kushner did crossed the line of ethics,” Mr. Comer said when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month. “What Christie said, it happened after he left office. Still no excuse, Jake. But it happened after he left office. And Jared Kushner actually has a legitimate business. This money from the Bidens happened while Joe Biden was vice president, while he was flying to those countries.”Mr. Trump has attacked President Biden for his son Hunter Biden’s overseas deal making.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn fact, as Mr. Comer’s committee reports indicate, some of Hunter Biden’s overseas money came while his father was vice president, but a significant share came afterward.Spokesmen for Mr. Comer and Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Trump has never been allergic to foreign money. Even as a candidate in 2016, he secretly pursued a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow until after he had effectively secured the Republican nomination. One of his lawyers reached out to the Kremlin for support for the project, the same Kremlin that Mr. Trump would interact with a few months later as president.To address concerns about foreign financial interests, Mr. Trump promised not to pursue new business overseas while in office, but he did not give up his many existing moneymaking ventures in other countries and his company, formally run by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, continued to expand operations abroad.During Mr. Trump’s four years in the White House, the Trump Organization received 66 foreign trademarks, according to a report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, with most of them coming from China but others from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Peru, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union.Foreign entities were good customers for Mr. Trump. While in office, 145 foreign officials from 75 governments visited Trump properties and foreign governments or affiliated groups hosted 13 events at his hotels and resorts, according to the ethics group report.While Mr. Trump in last week’s video described Mr. Biden as a puppet of the Chinese, falsely claiming that “China has paid him a fortune,” his own family has had significant financial ties to Beijing. Beyond the trademarks, Forbes calculated that a Trump business during his presidency collected at least $5.4 million in rent from the state-controlled Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.Mr. Kushner’s family negotiated with Chinese and Qatari entities to rescue its debt-saddled Manhattan tower at 666 Fifth Avenue, eventually brokering a $1.1 billion lease deal with an American company whose investors included Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. (By that time, Mr. Kushner had sold his share of the tower to a family trust of which he was not a beneficiary, and people involved in the deal said the Qataris did not know about the deal before it was made.)Ivanka Trump, for her part, initially kept her own clothing and accessories line while serving on the White House staff and received approval for 16 trademarks from China in 2018 before later deciding to shut down the business.Despite lawsuits by Mr. Eisen and others alleging violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, none of the Trump family’s overseas deal making was ever determined to be illegal by any authority. Nor has any of Hunter Biden’s.But in Mr. Trump’s telling, one is enough to compromise a president and the other is not something to talk about. More

    • 200 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      The US and China must unite to fight climate change, not each other | Bernie Sanders

      by

      Climate change is a global crisis and cannot be solved by any one country alone. If the United States, China and other industrialized countries do not come together to dramatically decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world we leave our children and future generations will become increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable. Tragically, the cooperation required to address this existential threat is being undermined by hawks in both the United States and China who are moving us toward a disastrous cold war.Now is the time for a radical rethinking of geopolitics to reflect the reality that international cooperation is not only in the best interests of all countries, but is absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet.Here’s the reality. The last eight years have been the eight hottest on record. This year is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, and this past July was the hottest month on record. Across the United States, July broke more than 3,200 daily temperature records and dozens of American cities broke or tied their previous daily temperature records three or more times. Phoenix experienced 31 days in a row at or above 110F (43.3C), 13 days longer than the previous record. El Paso, Miami, Austin and many other places also suffered under record-breaking stretches of extreme heat.Smoke from unprecedented wildfires in Canada enveloped US cities and drifted halfway around the world, causing dangerously unhealthy air quality. Vermont, my home state, experienced floods that damaged 4,000 homes and 800 businesses, the state’s worst natural disaster since 1927. In Maui, Hawaii, rapidly moving fires destroyed 2,700 structures in historic Lahaina and took more than 100 lives, making it the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than a century.But it’s not just the US that is dealing with record-breaking heatwaves and enormous climate-caused devastation. China experienced record-high temperatures last month, including the country’s all-time temperature record of 126F (52.2C), and recent flooding has killed about 100 people, destroyed nearly 200,000 homes, displaced some 1.5 million people and caused more than $13bn in damage.From Tokyo to Rome to Tunis to Tirana, cities across Asia, Europe and north Africa experienced their hottest days on record. In Iran, the heat index hit 158F (70C), testing the limits of human survival. In our own hemisphere, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador all saw temperature records fall. It’s winter right now in South America, but that hasn’t stopped temperatures from exceeding 100F (37.7C) in some places, a heating event a climate historian labeled “one of the extreme events the world has ever seen”.And it’s not just that temperatures have been soaring on land. Our oceans have never been warmer. Right now, 44% of the world’s oceans are experiencing a marine heatwave. The Mediterranean Sea is experiencing its hottest temperatures on record, more than 9F hotter than average in some places. Off the coast of Newfoundland, waters are as much as 18F above normal. South of Miami, waters reached 101F (38.3C). You’re supposed to find temperatures like that in a hot tub, not the ocean. This warming could further devastate coral reefs, fisheries and marine ecosystems around the world.In the midst of this global crisis, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is that recent years have seen long-overdue steps to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels into more efficient and renewable energy sources. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act included an unprecedented $300bn in investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, which could help increase US solar energy by 500% and more than double wind energy by 2035, reducing carbon emissions by roughly 40%.Other countries have also made major investments. China spent $546bn on clean energy last year and continues to manufacture and deploy more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined. By 2030, China may deploy enough renewable energy to essentially power the entire US electrical grid three times over. The European Union has laid out a plan to invest more than $1tn over the next decade in renewables and energy efficiency, aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% compared with 1990.Importantly, large sections of the corporate world have turned away from investments in fossil fuels and are now spending hundreds of billions on sustainable energy. Altogether, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the global community to invest $1.6tn in wind, solar power, electric vehicles, batteries, and electric grids this year, compared with just $1tn in fossil fuels. This progress has led the IEA to forecast that renewables will surpass coal to become the largest source of global electricity generation by early 2025, much faster than previously predicted.The bad news is that we are still falling well short of the kinds of investments needed to deal with this crisis. We are still not moving fast enough to save our planet. The latest report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that without more urgent action, the world will pass the key 1.5C (2.7F) threshold by the early 2030s, risking a far deadlier future for our children and future generations. The science is clear: if the US, China, and the rest of the planet do not act with greater urgency to dramatically cut carbon emissions, our planet will face enormous and irreversible damage.Let’s be clear: since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the US has put more carbon into the atmosphere, by far, than any other country. While the new technologies sustained by fossil fuels improved our standard of living, we laid the groundwork for the climate calamity the planet is now experiencing.In recent years, the rapidly growing Chinese economy has eclipsed the US as the world’s major carbon emitter. Right now, China is building six times as many coal-fired power plants as the rest of the world combined – the equivalent of two new coal plants every week. Last year, they quadrupled the number of new coal plants approved compared with 2021. Current plans will see China add as much new coal to its grid as used in all of India, the second largest coal user, and five times more coal capacity as the US.It is no great secret the Chinese government is undertaking many policies that we and the international community should oppose. They are cruelly repressing and interning the Uyghurs, threatening Taiwan and stifling freedom of expression in Tibet and Hong Kong. China has bullied its neighbors, abused the global trading system, stolen technology and is building out a dystopian surveillance state.The US is rightly organizing its allies to press Beijing on these and other issues. But organizing most of our national effort around a zero-sum global confrontation with China is unlikely to change Chinese behavior and will alienate allies and partners.Most importantly, it could doom our planet by making climate cooperation impossible between the world’s two largest greenhouse emitters. We need to move in a bold new direction. Recent history provides some instructive examples.In 1962, when the US and the Soviet Union stood on the verge of nuclear war, President John F Kennedy and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, came together to prevent mutual destruction. Just a few months later, with the nuclear crisis as the background, President Kennedy proposed to the Soviet Union an arms reductions plan which would change the confrontational dynamic that had brought the world to the brink. Even arch anti-communists like Nixon and Reagan made bold gambits to reduce tensions, fearful of global annihilation. We face a similar dynamic today, facing collective catastrophe if we do not change course.Here is the insane dynamic that must be changed. In recent years, both the US and China have greatly increased their military budgets. The US now spends some $900bn on the Pentagon, more than the next 10 nations combined. China, with the world’s second largest military budget, spends almost $300bn. Despite spending these huge amounts on “defense”, both countries are losing the war against the climate ccrisis. The US has experienced massive floods, fires, drought and extreme weather disturbances, which have cost us hundreds of billions. The recent flooding in China alone will cost that government tens of billions. Into the future, scientists tell us that great cities like Shanghai and New York will be underwater if we do not act effectively against the climate crisis.So here’s a “radical” idea. Instead of spending enormous amounts of money planning for a war against each other, the US and China should come to an agreement to mutually cut their military budgets and use the savings to move aggressively to improve energy efficiency, move toward sustainable energy and end our reliance on fossil fuels. They should also provide increased support for developing countries who are suffering from the climate crisis through no fault of their own.Now, I know that establishment politicians in both countries will tell me how naive and unsophisticated I am to offer such a suggestion and they will provide a million reasons as to why it can’t be done. My response is this: go talk to the people in Vermont who have lost their homes because of unprecedented flooding and the families in Hawaii who lost loved ones in the recent fires. Go talk to the more than 1 million people in China who have been displaced by catastrophic floods. Go talk to the people in southern Africa who are starving because of the terrible drought and floods they are experiencing or farmers around the world who can no longer grow their crops because of water shortages.Perhaps most importantly, go talk to the hundreds of millions of young people in every country on earth who are losing hope, wondering whether they should even have children of their own, given the enormous challenges the climate crisis poses for a normal life.Nelson Mandela famously remarked; “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” If we are to save the planet, now is the time for bold action. Let’s do it.
      Bernie Sanders is a US Senator and chairman of the health, education, labor and pensions committee More

    • 213 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      The Camp David summit signals a new cold war – this time with China | Observer editorial

      by

      If it sounds like a new cold war and looks like a new cold war, then it probably is a new cold war. For what other interpretation is to be placed on US president Joe Biden’s latest ramping up of diplomatic, economic and military pressure on China?Western officials tend to avoid the term, recalling as it does decades of hair-trigger confrontation with the former Soviet Union. They talk instead about enhanced security and defence cooperation and the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. But such bland generalisations belie the fact that Biden is now pushing back hard at a repressive, authoritarian regime in Beijing that he and many Americans believe is determined to overthrow the international democratic, geopolitical and legal order safeguarded by the US. Last week’s groundbreaking Camp David summit hosted by Biden for Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, perfectly fitted this agenda. It produced a series of measures aimed squarely at China and its “dangerous and aggressive behaviour”.They include a trilateral mechanism to deal with perceived security threats; expanded military exercises; and increased ballistic missile cooperation – despite the risk that China could retaliate in like fashion or use economic sanctions, as in the past, to punish export-dependent Tokyo and Seoul.For Japan, the Camp David agreement marks another significant stage in its journey away from postwar pacifism towards becoming a fully fledged, fully armed member of the US-led western democratic alliance. It will add to Tokyo’s sense of growing confrontation with China.For South Korea, the trilateral pact may come to be seen as the moment it finally moved on from the bitter feud with Japan over the latter’s 20th-century colonisation of the peninsula. Credit is due to Yoon, who has taken to describing Tokyo as a “partner” with shared values and interests.Biden’s success in bringing old enemies together is a notable achievement, too. He is hoping to pull off a similar feat with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The contrast with Donald Trump’s fatuous attempts to woo Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s nuclear-armed dictator, is striking.Improved three-way cooperation in facing down the threat posed by Pyongyang may be another benefit of Camp David. Defying UN sanctions, Kim has stepped up his intimidatory missile “tests” this year. China, disappointingly, has done little to stop him. Beijing’s ally, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, is positively encouraging him.While US officials are careful how they frame the new agreement, China is in no doubt it is aimed directly at itself. It follows Biden’s upgrading of the so-called Quad, which groups the US, India, Japan and Australia; the creation of Aukus, a security pact with Australia and the UK; and a raised US naval and air force profile in the Philippines, South China Sea and around Taiwan. In another message to Beijing, Biden will visit India next month.The numerous, ill-judged actions of President Xi Jinping’s regime have brought much of this down on its own head. Nevertheless, Beijing blames the west whose nefarious aim, it says, is containment designed to stifle China’s development. State media described Camp David as the launch of a “mini Nato” that will threaten regional security and exacerbate tensions.US officials reject the analogy. But the claim brings us back to the question of a new cold war. China evidently believes one has already begun. Is this really what Biden, the UK and regional allies want? If that is the case, they should have the courage to say so in terms – and explain what they plan to do if it turns “hot”. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. Seals Security Pact With Japan and South Korea as Threats Loom

      by

      While the former president’s name appeared nowhere in the communique issued by three leaders, one of the subtexts was the possibility that he could return to power in next year’s election and disrupt ties with America’s two closest allies in the Indo-Pacific region.The new three-way security pact sealed by President Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea at Camp David on Friday was forged with threats by China and North Korea in mind. But there was one other possible factor driving the diplomatic breakthrough: Donald J. Trump.While the former president’s name appeared nowhere in the “Camp David Principles” that the leaders issued at the presidential retreat, one of the subtexts was the possibility that he could return to power in next year’s election and disrupt ties with America’s two closest allies in the Indo-Pacific region.Both Japan and South Korea struggled for four years as Mr. Trump threatened to scale back longstanding U.S. security and economic commitments while wooing China, North Korea and Russia. In formalizing a three-way alliance that had long eluded the United States, Mr. Biden and his counterparts hoped to lock in a strategic architecture that will endure regardless of who is in the White House next.“This is not about a day, a week or month,” Mr. Biden said at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea. “This is about decades and decades of relationships that we’re building.” The goal, he added, was to “lay in place a long-term structure for a relationship that will last.”Asked by a reporter why Asia should be confident about American assurances given Mr. Trump’s campaign to recapture the presidency on a so-called America First platform, Mr. Biden offered a testimonial to the value of alliances in guaranteeing the nation’s security in dangerous times.“There’s not much, if anything, I agree on with my predecessor on foreign policy,” Mr. Biden said, adding that “walking away from the rest of the world leaves us weaker, not stronger. America is strong with our allies and our alliances and that’s why we will endure.”The meeting at the getaway in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland was a milestone in Mr. Biden’s efforts to stitch together a network of partnerships to counter Chinese aggression in the region. While the United States has long been close to Japan and South Korea individually, the two Asian powers have nursed generations of grievances that kept them at a distance from one another.The alignment at Camp David was made possible by Mr. Yoon’s decision to try to put the past behind the two countries. His rapprochement with Tokyo has not been universally popular at home with a public that harbors long memories of the Japanese occupation in the first half of the 20th century, but both sides made clear they are dedicated to a fresh start.“That’s a long, bitter colonial wound that President Yoon has to jump over, and Kishida as well,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. “That I think is a consonant expression of the degree to which China’s rather belligerent, punitive behavior has driven together allies, partners and friends within Asia.”Mr. Biden hoped to capitalize on that by bringing the Japanese and South Korean leaders together for the first stand-alone meeting between the three nations that was not on the sidelines of a larger international summit. He repeatedly praised Mr. Yoon and Mr. Kishida for “the political courage” they were demonstrating.He chose the resonant setting of Camp David for the talks to emphasize the importance he attaches to the initiative, inviting the leaders to the storied retreat that has been the site of momentous events over the decades, including most memorably Jimmy Carter’s 13-day negotiation in 1978 brokering peace between Israel and Egypt.“This is a big deal,” Mr. Biden said, noting that it was the first time he had invited foreign leaders to the camp since taking office. “This is a historic meeting.”The others echoed the sentiments. “Today will be remembered as a historic day,” Mr. Yoon said. Mr. Kishida agreed, saying the fact that the three could get together “means that we are indeed making a new history as of today.”A stronger collaboration with Japan and South Korea could be a significant pillar in Mr. Biden’s strategy to counter China.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesThe leaders agreed to establish a three-way hotline for crisis communications, enhance ballistic missile cooperation and expand joint military exercises. They issued a written “commitment to consult” in which they resolved “to coordinate our responses to regional challenges, provocations, and threats affecting our collective interests and security.”The commitment is not as far-reaching as NATO’s mutual security pact, which deems an attack on one member to be an attack on all, nor does it go as far as the defense treaties that the United States has separately with Japan and South Korea. But it cements the idea that the three powers share a special bond and expect to coordinate strategies where possible.China has derided the idea of a “mini-NATO” in Asia, accusing Washington of being provocative, but aides to Mr. Biden stressed the difference from the Atlantic alliance. “It’s explicitly not a NATO for the Pacific,” said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.Mr. Biden and his aides maintained that the collaboration sealed at Camp David should not be seen as aimed at China or any other country. “This summit was not about China. This was not the purpose,” the president said. “But obviously China came up.” Instead, he said, “this summit was really about our relationship with each other and defining cooperation across an entire range of issues.”Still, no one had any doubt about the context against which the meeting was taking place. The Camp David Principles issued by the leaders did not directly mention China, but it did “reaffirm the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” a warning against aggressive military actions by Beijing.The documents released were more explicit about nuclear-armed North Korea and the joint efforts they will take to counter its military, cyber and cryptocurrency money laundering threats.Looming in the backdrop was Mr. Trump, whose mercurial actions and bursts of hostility while president flummoxed Japanese and South Korean leaders accustomed to more stable interactions with Washington.At various points, he threatened to withdraw from the U.S. defense treaty with Japan and to pull all American troops out of South Korea. He abruptly canceled joint military exercises with South Korea at the request of North Korea and told interviewers after leaving office that if he had a second term he would force Seoul to pay billions of dollars to maintain the United States military presence.The summit at Camp David was aimed at ending decades of friction between the two Asian countries.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesThe Asian leaders hope that the three-way accord fashioned by Mr. Biden will help avoid wild swings in the future. The president and his guests sought to institutionalize their new collaboration by committing to annual three-way meetings in the future by whoever holds their offices.“There’s definitely risk-hedging when it comes to political leadership,” said Shihoko Goto, acting director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.”By deepening the cooperation below the leader level through various new mechanisms, she said, the governments may be able to maintain functional ties even if a volatile president occupies the White House.“If a new U.S. president were to avoid going to international conferences or had no interest in engaging, the trilateral institutionalization of ties should be strong enough so that working relations between the three countries would continue,” she said. “So it won’t matter if a president didn’t show up since the working-level military or economic cooperation would be well-established.”It is not the first time allies have questioned the United States’ commitment to its partners. Despite Mr. Biden’s promise at the NATO summit last month that Washington would “not waver” in its support for Ukraine and western allies, some leaders openly asked whether the U.S. foreign policy agenda would be upended by the outcome of the next election.Ukraine needed to make military progress more or less “by the end of this year” because of the coming elections in the United States, President Petr Pavel of the Czech Republic warned on the first day of the summit.Mr. Biden in Finland was also asked about whether the U.S. support of NATO would endure. “No one can guarantee the future, but this is the best bet anyone could make,” Mr. Biden said then.At Camp David on Friday, neither Mr. Yoon nor Mr. Kishida mentioned Mr. Trump directly in their public comments, but they seemed intent on ensuring that their agreement persists beyond their tenures. Mr. Yoon said the nations were focused on building an alliance that could last for years to come. The three nations will hold a “global leadership youth summit to strengthen ties between our future generations,” he said.Endurance was a running theme throughout the day. “We’re opening a new era,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters shortly before the meetings opened, “and we’re making sure that era has staying power.”Ana Swanson More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden’s China investment ban: who’s targeted and what does it mean for the 2024 US election?

      by

      Joe Biden has moved to restrict US investment in Chinese technology, signing an executive order which focuses on a few, sensitive hi-tech sectors including semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI).It is the latest in a series of measures taken by the US to restrict China’s access to the most advanced technology and comes as the president has embarked on a multi-state tour of the south-west to tout his plans to revive American manufacturing after decades of decline.The restrictions are expected to take effect next year – and come at a sensitive time in the US-China relationship. The Biden administration has launched diplomatic overtures to Beijing in recent months, seeking to mend ties after a series of incidents, while still attempting to bolster its position against China on military, economic and technological fronts.What are the latest restrictions?As a result of previous Biden administration measures, the US already bans or restricts the export to China of many of the technologies covered in these new measures. The aim of Wednesday’s executive order is to prevent US funds from helping China build its own domestic capabilities, which could undermine the existing export controls.Under the executive order, the US Treasury has been directed to regulate certain US investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.China, Hong Kong and Macau are listed as the “countries of concern”, but a senior Biden official has told Reuters other countries could be added in the future.The rules are not retroactive and apply to to future investments, with officials saying the goal is to regulate investments in areas that could give China military and intelligence advantages.Britain and the European Union have signalled their intention to move along similar lines, and the Group of Seven advanced economies agreed in June that restrictions on outbound investments should be part of an overall toolkit.Biden’s plan has been criticised by Republicans, many of whom say it does not go far enough.Republican Senator Marco Rubio has called it “almost laughable”, adding that the plan is “riddled with loopholes … and fails to include industries China’s government deems critical”, he said.How has China reacted?A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said the White House had ignored “China’s repeated expression of deep concerns” about the plan.The embassy warned that it would affect more than 70,000 US companies that do business in China, hurting both Chinese and American businesses.The country’s commerce ministry said it reserved the right to take countermeasures and encouraged the US to respect the laws of market economy and the principle of fair competition.What part do these measures play in Biden’s re-election bid?As the executive order was made public, Biden was speaking in New Mexico, touting his government’s success in boosting manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy sector.“Where’s it written that America can’t lead the world again in manufacturing? Because we’re going to do just that,” Biden said at the groundbreaking of a new factory manufacturing wind turbine towers in the city of Belon.“Instead of exporting American jobs, we’re creating American jobs and we’re exporting American products,” he added.However, polling shows that for many, the perception of the president’s economic policies – “Bidenomics” as his communications team likes to call them – are at odds with a range of positive indicators. US inflation has dropped to the lowest levels since 2021 and the administration has repeatedly touted months of consistent jobs growth; despite this though multiple polls show that only a minority of Americans support Biden’s handling of the economy.The cornerstone of Biden’s refreshed bid to voters are two major bills he shepherded through Congress and signed into law a year ago: the Chips and Science Act – which pumps huge funding into semiconductor manufacturing, research and development – and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a law for megaprojects boosting green investment.The chips act aims to further freeze China’s semiconductor industry in place, while pouring billions of dollars in subsidies into the US chip industry.Both laws, along with the growing restrictions on Chinese industry, are positioned to win back portions of the working-class vote who felt left behind by globalisation and turned to Donald Trump at previous elections.What’s next?The ban is a step in a broad and ongoing push to undermine China’s efforts to achieve independence in a number of technological areas, in particular the development of advanced semiconductors.In recent months, the US government has signalled it still wants to close some loopholes Chinese businesses are using to get their hands on the most advanced semiconductors.In response to previous chip bans, Nvidia one of the world’s leading chip companies, has started offering a less advanced chip, the A800, to Chinese buyers. But new curbs being considered by Washington would restrict even those products.In possible anticipation of such a move China’s tech giants – including Baidu, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba – have made orders worth $1bn to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the Nvidia to be delivered this year, the Financial Times has reported.The Chinese groups had also bought a further $4bn worth of graphics processing units to be delivered in 2024, according to the report.Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US dispatches warships after China and Russia send naval patrol near Alaska

      by

      The US dispatched four navy warships as well as a reconnaissance airplane after multiple Chinese and Russian military vessels carried out a joint naval patrol near Alaska last week.The combined naval patrol, which the Wall Street Journal first reported, appeared to be the largest such flotilla to approach US territory, according to experts that spoke to the outlet.“It’s a historical first,” Brent Sadler, a retired Navy captain and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Journal.He also said the flotilla’s proximity to Alaska was a “highly provocative” maneuver given Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and political tensions between the US and China over Taiwan. The flotilla has since left.The US Northern Command confirmed the combined Chinese and Russian naval patrol, telling the Journal: “Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada. The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat.”The command did not specify the number of vessels which made up the patrol or their exact location. But US senators from Alaska said the flotilla in question was made up of 11 Chinese and Russian warships working in concert near the Aleutian Islands.Four destroyers and a Poseidon P-8 patrol airplane made up the US response to the Chinese and Russian flotilla.In a statement to the Journal, the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Washington DC, Liu Pengyu, said that the patrol “is not targeted at any third party”.“According to the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries, naval vessels of the two countries have recently conducted joint maritime patrols in relevant waters in the western and northern Pacific ocean,” Pengyu said. “This action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation.”The Journal reported that the US destroyers sent to track the flotilla were the USS John S McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon.Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have since responded to the joint Chinese and Russian patrol that came close to the Aleutian Islands by saying they are monitoring the situation closely for their constituents.Murkowski said: “We have been in close contact with leadership … for several days now and received detailed classified briefings about the foreign vessels that are transiting US waters in the Aleutians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is a stark reminder of Alaska’s proximity to both China and Russia, as well as the essential role our state plays in our national defense and territorial sovereignty.”Sullivan echoed the sentiments of his fellow Republican Murkowski, saying: “The incursion by 11 Chinese and Russian warships operating together – off the coast of Alaska – is yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow.”He went on to compare the situation to one last September, when a single US coast guard cutter spotted a total of seven Chinese and Russian naval ships near Alaska.“Last summer the Chinese and Russian navies conducted a similar operation off the coast of Alaska,” Sullivan said. “Given that our response was tepid, I strongly encouraged senior military leaders to be ready with a much more robust response should such another joint Chinese-Russian naval operation occur off our coast.“For that reason, I was heartened to see that this latest incursion was met with four US Navy destroyers, which sends a strong message … that the United States will not hesitate to protect and defend our vital national interests in Alaska.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Canadian Politicians Who Criticize China Become Its Targets

      by

      The polls predicted a re-election victory, maybe even a landslide.But a couple of weeks before the vote, Kenny Chiu, a member of Canada’s Parliament and a critic of China’s human rights record, was panicking. Something had flipped among the ethnic Chinese voters in his British Columbia district.“Initially, they were supportive,” he said. “And all of a sudden, they just vanished, vaporized, disappeared.”Longtime supporters originally from mainland China were not returning his calls. Volunteers reported icy greetings at formerly friendly homes. Chinese-language news outlets stopped covering him. And he was facing an onslaught of attacks — from untraceable sources — on the local community’s most popular social networking app, the Chinese-owned WeChat.The sudden collapse of Mr. Chiu’s campaign — in the last federal election, in 2021 — is now drawing renewed scrutiny amid mounting evidence of China’s interference in Canadian politics.Mr. Chiu and several other elected officials critical of Beijing were targets of a Chinese state that has increasingly exerted its influence over Chinese diaspora communities worldwide as part of an aggressive campaign to expand its global reach, according to current and former elected officials, Canadian intelligence officials and experts on Chinese state disinformation campaigns.Canada recently expelled a Chinese diplomat accused of conspiring to intimidate a lawmaker from the Toronto area, Michael Chong, after he successfully led efforts in Parliament to label China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim community a genocide. Canada’s intelligence agency has warned at least a half-dozen current and former elected officials that they have been targeted by Beijing, including Jenny Kwan, a lawmaker from Vancouver and a critic of Beijing’s policies in Hong Kong.After Jenny Kwan, a member of Parliament, began speaking out against Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uyghurs, invitations from some organizations dried up.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesThe Chinese government, employing a global playbook, disproportionately focused on Chinese Canadian elected officials representing districts in and around Vancouver and Toronto, experts say. It has leveraged large diaspora populations with family and business ties to China and ensuring that the levers of power in those communities are on its side, according to elected officials, Canadian intelligence officials and experts on Chinese disinformation.“Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has doubled down on this assertive nationalist policy toward the diaspora,” said Feng Chongyi, a historian and an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney. China’s role in Canada mirrored what has happened in Australia, he added.Chinese state interference and its threat to Canada’s democracy have become national issues after an extraordinary series of leaks in recent months of intelligence reports to The Globe and Mail newspaper by a national security official who said that government officials were not taking the threat seriously enough.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has been criticized for not doing enough to combat reported interference by China, is under increasing pressure to call for a public inquiry.Current and former elected officials interviewed by national security agents said some of the intelligence appeared to stem from wiretaps of Chinese diplomats based in Canada. The Globe has said that it has based its reporting on secret and top-secret intelligence reports it has viewed.In Vancouver and two surrounding cities — Richmond and Burnaby — that are home to Canada’s largest concentration of ethnic Chinese, the reach of the Chinese Consulate and its allies has grown along with waves of immigrants from China, said longtime Chinese Canadian activists and politicians.Richmond, a city south of Vancouver, has one of Canada’s highest populations of ethnic Chinese and is believed to be a focus of China’s interference in Canadian politics.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesThe Chinese Benevolent Association, or C.B.A. — one of Vancouver’s oldest and most influential civic organizations — was a longtime supporter of Taiwan until it turned pro-Beijing in the 1980s. But it has recently become a cheerleader of some of Beijing’s most controversial policies, placing ads in Chinese-language newspapers to support the 2020 imposition of a sweeping national security law that cracked down on basic freedoms in Hong Kong.The association and the Chinese Consulate publicize close ties on their websites.A former president of the C.B.A., Hilbert Yiu, denied that the organization had any official ties to Chinese authorities, but acknowledged that the association tended to support China’s policies, arguing that Beijing’s human rights record was “a lot better” than in the past.Mr. Yiu, who remains on the C.B.A.’s board, said stories of Chinese state interference in Canadian politics were spread by losing candidates.“I think it doesn’t exist,” Mr. Yiu said, adding instead that Western nations were afraid of “China being strong.”Mr. Yiu, who as a host on a local Chinese-language radio station also pushes pro-Beijing views, was an overseas delegate in 2017 to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the Chinese government that Beijing uses to win over and reward supporters who are not members of the Communist Party.The leaders of the C.B.A. — whose opinions hold sway, especially among immigrants not fully comfortable in English — say their organization is politically neutral.But in recent years, it and other ethnic Chinese organizations have excluded politicians critical of Beijing from events, including Ms. Kwan, the Vancouver lawmaker. A member of the left-leaning New Democratic Party, Ms. Kwan has represented, first as a provincial legislator and then at the federal level, a Vancouver district that includes Chinatown since 1996.But after Ms. Kwan began speaking out in 2019 against Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uyghurs, invitations dried up — including to events in her district, like a Lunar New Year celebration.“Inviting the local member of Parliament is standard protocol,” Ms. Kwan said. “But in instances where I’ve not been invited to attend — whether or not that’s related to foreign interference are questions that I have.”Fred Kwok, another former C.B.A. president, said Ms. Kwan was not invited to the Lunar New Year celebration because the coronavirus pandemic forced organizers to hold the event virtually and there was “limited time.”Later that year, a couple of months before the federal election, Mr. Kwok held a luncheon for 100 people at a well-known seafood restaurant in Chinatown to support Ms. Kwan’s rival. Mr. Kwok said he was acting on his own behalf and not as the C.B.A.’s leader.Richard Lee, a councilor in Burnaby and a former provincial legislator, faced far worse.Mr. Lee, who immigrated to Canada from China in 1997, and was elected in 2001 to the provincial legislature, became known for supporting local businesses and never missing ribbon-cutting events. He also faithfully attended an annual commemoration of the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989.Richard Lee, a city councilor in British Columbia, said he was asked by a former Chinese consul general why he attended an event marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Alana Paterson for The New York TimesIt was once a low-key event, but with Mr. Xi in power, many participants started wearing masks to hide their identities, fearing reprisals from Beijing.Mr. Lee’s attendance became an issue at a barbecue party in the summer of 2015 when he said that the consul general at the time, Liu Fei, asked him, “Why do you keep attending those events?”Later, in November, Mr. Lee and his wife, Anne, flew to Shanghai. At the airport, he said he was separated from his wife and detained for seven hours while the authorities searched his personal cellphone and a government-issued Blackberry.He asked why and said he was told: “‘You know what you have done. We believe you could endanger our national security.’”He and his wife were put on a plane back to Canada.In Burnaby, the political climate shifted. He was no longer invited to some events because organizers told him that the consul general did not want to attend if Mr. Lee was also present. Longtime supporters started keeping their distance. Mr. Lee said he believed the icy treatment contributed to the loss of his seat in 2017, after 16 years in office.A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa did not reply to questions about the consulate’s alleged actions in Vancouver, saying only that “China never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs” and that accusations of interference were an “out-and-out smear of China.”But China’s former consul general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, boasted in 2021, according to The Globe, about helping defeat two Conservative lawmakers, including one she described as a “vocal distractor” of the Chinese government: Kenny Chiu.After arriving from Hong Kong in 1992, Mr. Chiu settled in Richmond, where more than half of the population of 208,000 is made up of ethnic Chinese. He was elected to Parliament in 2019 as a Conservative.Mr. Chiu, 58, quickly touched on two issues that appeared to put him in the cross hairs of Beijing and its local supporters: criticizing Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and proposing a bill to create a registry of foreign agents, inspired by one established by Australia in 2018.Mr. Chiu proposed a bill to create a registry of foreign agents, among the issues that put him in the cross hairs of China and its supporters.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesThe anonymous attacks against him on Chinese social media amplified criticism of the bill among some Canadians that it would unfairly single out Chinese Canadians.A month before the federal election in September 2021, the polls instilled confidence in Mr. Chiu’s campaign staff.But in the final 10 days, Mr. Chiu relayed growing concerns to his campaign manager, Jordon Wood: cooling response from ethnic Chinese voters and increasingly hostile and personal anonymous attacks. The attacks, which were going viral on WeChat, painted his bill as a racist assault on Chinese Canadians and Mr. Chiu as a traitor to his community.Mr. Wood recalled a frantic late-night call from Mr. Chiu after a searing meeting with Chinese Canadian voters.“‘Our community is more polite than this,’” Mr. Wood recalled Mr. Chiu telling him. “Even if you don’t like someone, you don’t go after them in this way. This was a level of rudeness and attack beyond what we would expect.”The attacks on WeChat drew the attention of experts on disinformation campaigns by China and its proxies.The attacks were driven by countless, untraceable human and artificial intelligence bots, said Benjamin Fung, a cybersecurity expert and a professor at McGill University in Montreal.Their proliferation made them especially effective because ethnic Chinese voters depend on WeChat to communicate, said Mr. Fung, who assessed Mr. Chiu’s case shortly after the vote.Less than a week before the vote, a Canadian internet watchdog, DisinfoWatch, noted the attacks against Mr. Chiu on WeChat.“My assumption was that this was a coordinated campaign,” said Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing and senior fellow at an Ottawa-based research group behind DisinfoWatch.Mr. Chiu made last-ditch efforts to save his campaign, including meeting a group of older people who echoed the attacks against him and his bill on WeChat.“Why would I subjugate my grandchildren to generations of persecution and discrimination?” Mr. Chiu recalled being asked.The next day, he saw social media photographs of the same people publicly backing his main rival from the Liberal Party, Parm Bains, the eventual winner. Mr. Bains declined to comment.Mr. Chiu asked allies to reach out to local leaders who had suddenly dropped him, including prominent members of a Richmond-based umbrella group, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations. Its leader, Kady Xue, did not respond to messages seeking comment.Chak Au, a veteran city councilor nicknamed the “Chinese Mayor of Richmond” and a longtime ally of Mr. Chiu, pressed ethnic Chinese leaders about the sudden erosion of support.“There was a kind of silence,” Mr. Au said. “Nobody wanted to talk about it.”He added, “They didn’t want to create trouble.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Your Thursday Briefing: Biden Vows Not to ‘Waver’ After NATO Summit

      by

      Also, Chinese hackers hit the State Department, ocean temperatures rise and Milan Kundera dies.President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden met yesterday.Doug Mills/The New York Times‘We will not waver,’ Biden says after the NATO summitPresident Biden concluded the meeting of NATO allies by comparing the battle to expel Russia from Ukraine with the Cold War struggle for freedom in Europe. “We will not waver,” he promised in a speech.Biden seemed to be preparing Americans and the allies for a confrontation that could go on for years. He cast the war, which has been going on for almost a year and a half, as a test of wills with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who is intent on fighting. Biden insisted that NATO’s unity would hold.“Putin still wrongly believes he can outlast Ukraine,” Biden said, describing the Russian leader as a man who made a huge strategic mistake in invading a neighboring country. “After all this time, Putin still doubts our staying power. He is making a bad bet.”Ukraine: The alliance has formed a new council intended to give Ukraine an equal voice on issues related to its security alongside member states. China: Beijing criticized a NATO statement that accused it of a military expansion that threatens the West, saying that the alliance was still stuck in a Cold War mentality.Uncertainty in Russia’s top ranks: Gen. Sergei Surovikin, once a Wagner ally, hasn’t been seen publicly since the mutiny last month. A top lawmaker said he was “taking a rest.”Another top commander was killed in an airstrike in Ukraine. And a third former commander was gunned down while out on a jog.Microsoft said the hack was discovered last month.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersChinese hackers targeted the U.S. State DepartmentChinese hackers targeted specific State Department email accounts in the weeks before Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to China last month, U.S. officials said.The hack, which went undetected for a month, comes at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the countries. “The Biden administration is trying to reset relations with Beijing,” Julian Barnes, who covers national security for The Times, told me. “The U.S. does not want that dialogue to end. So there is an interest in downplaying this.”No classified email or cloud systems were said to have been breached, and the hack did not initially appear to be directly related to Blinken’s trip. Still, the attack was sophisticated.The hackers targeted specific accounts, instead of carrying out a broad-brush intrusion, which Chinese hackers are suspected of having done before. U.S. officials did not identify which accounts were targeted. The breach revealed a significant security gap in Microsoft’s cloud, where the U.S. government has been transferring data from internal servers.“We’ve had all these promises that the cloud is not only going to be just as secure, but that it will be more secure,” Julian said. “But here’s an example where basic security was breached and the information was stolen. That has opened us up to a new avenue of attack: Here is the first big cloud attack on the U.S. government email.”Tech: The Biden administration thinks it can slow China’s economic growth and its A.I. industry by cutting it off from semiconductor chips. The plan could handicap China for a generation, but if it backfires it could hasten the very future the U.S. wants to avoid.Elena ShaoAn ocean heat wave threatens marine lifeThe water surrounding Florida is much hotter than most swimming pools in the U.S. are right now. This could pose a severe risk to coral and marine life in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. But the real worry is that it’s only July: Corals usually experience the most heat stress in August and September.The maritime heat wave has pushed water temperatures into the 90s Fahrenheit, or above 32 Celsius. Surface temperatures in these waters are the hottest on record; some beachgoers in Florida even compared the ocean to bath water.The science: When the sea gets too hot, corals bleach, expelling the algae they eat. If waters don’t cool quickly enough, or if bleaching events happen in close succession, the corals die. That can lead to ripple effects across the ecosystem.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldPresident Mahmoud Abbas’s visit was widely reported as his first to Jenin in more than a decade.Nasser Nasser/Associated PressPresident Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority visited Jenin, the West Bank city targeted by Israeli raids last week, in a show of authority.U.S. inflation cooled in June, offering good news for consumers and the Federal Reserve.Black women in Latin America are more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth because of systemic medical racism and sexism, a U.N. report said.“Succession” got the most nominations for the Emmy Awards.Other Big StoriesA former Mozambican official accused in the $2 billion “tuna” scandal, a scheme that defrauded U.S. investors, was extradited to New York.The BBC staff member suspended on allegations of sexual misconduct was identified by his wife as Huw Edwards, an anchor on the network’s flagship nightly news program.International demand for drugs has unleashed a wave of violence in Ecuador that is unlike anything in the country’s recent history.Snow fell in Johannesburg for the first time in more than a decade.A Morning ReadBhuchung Sonam’s publishing ventures have printed dozens of books.Poras Chaudhary for The New York TimesBuchung Sonam fled Tibet in the 1980s. Later, he co-founded a publishing house for Tibetan writing, hoping literature could be a salve for other exiles.As Beijing tightens its crackdown on Tibet, detaining writers and intellectuals, many say Sonam’s press is helping Tibet’s literature become a proxy for the nation-state.“It’s not like I can live my life on Tibetan land,” said Tenzin Dickie, a writer and editor, “but I can live it in Tibetan literature.”ARTS AND IDEASMilan Kundera in 1984.Francois Lochon/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesMilan Kundera dies at 94“It’s hard to overstate how central Milan Kundera was, in the mid-1980s, to literary culture in America and elsewhere,” my colleague Dwight Garner writes in an appraisal of Kundera’s life.Kundera, who died in Paris this week at 94, wrote mordant, sexually charged novels that captured the suffocating absurdity of life. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which was adapted into a film, is his most famous book.“He was the best-known Czech writer since Kafka,” Dwight continued, “and his fiction brought news of sophisticated Eastern European societies trembling under the threat of Soviet repression.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Mix this Thai-style vegetable salad.What to WatchIn “Amanda,” a dark Italian comedy, a delusional graduate befriends an agoraphobic misanthrope.FashionMore men are baring their midriffs in crop tops.Tech TipHow does Meta’s Threads stack up against Twitter? Read our review.Now Time to PlayFill in the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Broke ground in a garden (four letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow! — AmeliaP.S. Alice Callahan will be our new nutrition reporter.“The Daily” is on the U.S. labor market.We’d love to hear from you. Write: briefing@nytimes.com. More