China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat

China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivers a speech at a reception to commemorate the 45th anniversary of China-US diplomatic relations at the Diaoyutai Guest House in Beijing on January 5, 2024. (AFP/File)
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Updated 19 September 2024
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China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat

China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
  • “The Cold War pales in comparison to the multifaceted challenges that China presents,” said Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell
  • “It’s not just a military challenge; it’s across the board. It is in the Global South. It is in technology,“ he said

WASHINGTON: China presents the top challenge to the United States in all of its history, surpassing the Cold War, a top US official said Wednesday, as he urged Europe to get tougher on Beijing.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, a key architect of a 15-year push for the United States to reorient its foreign policy toward Asia, also urged greater US investment in advanced technology to compete better with China.
“There is a recognition that this is the most significant challenge in our history,” Campbell told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Frankly, the Cold War pales in comparison to the multifaceted challenges that China presents,” he said.
“It’s not just a military challenge; it’s across the board. It is in the Global South. It is in technology. We need to step up our game across the board.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has been pressing China about technology exports to Russia that US officials say have allowed Moscow to ramp up military production for its war in Ukraine.
“The challenge is, we’ve got to get more support here on this,” Campbell said of US sanctions on Chinese firms, an issue he said he has been raising on visits to Europe.
Campbell said that most of Washington’s European allies shared concerns on China’s ties with Moscow but were still reeling from the “huge shock” of slashing energy imports from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.
“For many of these countries, doing business with China has been a big deal for 15 or 20 years,” he said.
Acting on China, after Russia, could feel like “kind of a one-two punch. You can understand leaders in Europe have some anxieties.”
China argues that, unlike the United States, it is not providing weapons to either Russia or Ukraine, but Washington says Beijing is providing support that has military uses.

Campbell’s tough talk comes despite easing tensions between the United States and China under Biden, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump more frequently speaking in Cold War terms about confronting Beijing.
Biden and his political heir Kamala Harris have supported dialogue with China even as their administration presses ahead with tough measures including a sweeping ban on exports of advanced chips.
Since a summit last year between Biden and President Xi Jinping in California, China has agreed to key US requests of restoring military communications and cracking down on ingredients in fentanyl, the drug behind a US overdose epidemic.
Campbell contended that the Biden administration has strengthened the US position since taking over from Trump, in part by bolstering alliances.
“Four years ago, the general view globally was that China had eaten our lunch, that they were going to surpass us, economically and commercially, that we were in the midst of some sort of hurtling decline,” he said.
“I do not think that is what the general belief is today.”
Meeting another key ask of the Biden administration, China freed an American pastor, David Lin, who had been detained since 2006, the State Department confirmed Sunday.
The United States had raised the case of Lin and other detained Americans with China, including when Secretary of State Antony Blinken met his counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of a meeting in Laos in July.
The State Department considers two other US citizens, Kai Li and Mark Swidan, to be wrongfully detained by China, but activists say far more Americans are behind bars or prohibited from exiting.
The mother of Swidan, detained over drug trafficking charges he denies, told a separate congressional hearing that Biden needs to engage with China on its proposals to free him.
“His case is a clear injustice, yet it continues to be ignored by those with the power to act,” she said in a statement to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
Peter Humphrey, who was detained with his wife in China from 2013 to 2015 and has since become a specialist on such cases, said a “massive number” of Americans cannot publicly raise their cases for fear of retribution by Beijing.
He said he was held with 11 other men in a packed cell with no privacy or furniture, sleeping on the floor and eating from dog bowls pushed under the bars.
He said he lost 22 pounds (10 kilos) while in detention, which he described as “torture designed to crush the human spirit and force out a confession.”


US dockworkers’ union suspend strike until Jan. 15 to allow time to negotiate new contract

US dockworkers’ union suspend strike until Jan. 15 to allow time to negotiate new contract
Updated 23 sec ago
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US dockworkers’ union suspend strike until Jan. 15 to allow time to negotiate new contract

US dockworkers’ union suspend strike until Jan. 15 to allow time to negotiate new contract

DETROIT: The union representing 45,000 striking US dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports has reached a deal to suspend a three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract.
The union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, is to resume working immediately. Both sides also reached agreement on wages, but no details were given, according to a joint statement from the ports and union Thursday night.
The union went on strike early Tuesday after its contract expired in a dispute over pay and the automation of tasks at the ports from Maine to Texas. The strike came at the peak of the holiday shopping season at 36 ports that handle about half the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.
The walkout raised the risk of shortages of goods on store shelves if it lasted more than a few weeks. But most retailers had stocked up or shipped items early in anticipation of the work stoppage.
The strike came at the peak of the holiday shopping season at 36 ports that handle about half of the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.
It raised the risk of shortages of goods on store shelves if it lasted more than a few weeks. But most retailers had stocked up or shipped items early in anticipation of the work stoppage.


Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot
Updated 03 October 2024
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Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

Teen arrested in Germany over alleged anti-Semitic plot

BERLIN: A teenager suspected of plotting an attack against Jews was arrested in September in western Germany, a court source and local media reports said Thursday.
The 15-year-old boy has been placed in pre-trial detention over plans to “commit a crime,” Dusseldorf prosecutors told AFP, without providing further details.
Police had previously detained the suspect in August following intelligence it had received, according to the Bild and Spiegel newspapers.
The teenager was released but arrested again after investigators discovered conversations on his phone with a suspected foreign extremist believed to have tried to talk him into perpetrating a knife attack.
The two allegedly discussed potential targets, including festivals and Jewish communities, and the teenager also reportedly posted videos on TikTok featuring Daesh flags, according to Bild and Spiegel.
The arrest came as Germany has tightened security measures after a knife attack in the western city of Solingen on August 30 that was claimed by the Daesh group.
Three people were killed and several others were injured in the Solingen attack.
A 26-year-old Syrian suspect, who had been slated for deportation but evaded law enforcement, turned himself in after a day on the run and confessed to the attack.
And in June, a German court sentenced a 15-year-old boy to four years in jail for planning an Islamist attack on a Christmas market in the western city of Leverkusen.


Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support
Updated 03 October 2024
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Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

Thousands in Berlin call for end to Ukraine war support

BERLIN: Thousands of people in Berlin on Thursday demonstrated against Germany’s military support for Ukraine as it battles to hold back invading Russian troops.
Participants answered a call by a radical left-wing collective to gather in the German capital and brandished placards reading “Negotiations! No weapons!,” “No to war” and “Pacifism is not naive.” Some also held anti-American signs.
One of their main demands was for Germany to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, which Kyiv desperately needs to defend itself from Russian aggression.
The protest came one week ahead of the first state visit by a US president to the European country since Ronald Reagan in 1985.
Joe Biden is also expected to meet with Ukraine’s allies to discuss military support to the war-torn nation, at the US army base in Ramstein, western Germany.
Far-left populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht, who attended the Berlin protest, has long called for an end to weapon deliveries to Kyiv and opposes a plan to deploy US long-range missiles in Germany.
Germany has been the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine after the United States, but plans to halve its budget for that aid next year.
Wagenknecht’s pro-Russia, anti-NATO stance has contributed to her party’s positive results in three eastern state elections, securing 12 percent of the vote in Brandenburg.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in September stunned the political establishment by winning its first-ever parliamentary vote — in the eastern state of Thuringia — and coming a close second in neighboring Saxony.
The AfD’s platform relied on its usual discourse against asylum-seekers, multiculturalism and Islam, but also on critiques of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s policy of unconditional support for Ukraine.
The state leaders of Saxony and Brandenburg, where AfD came in second, as well as the head of the conservatives in Thuringia, have called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, in an article expected to be published on Friday in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung newspaper.
Germany and the European Union’s dioplomatic efforts so far have been “too indecisive,” they said, urging Berlin to bring Russia to the negotiating table.


Thousands rally in Austria against far right

Thousands rally in Austria against far right
Updated 03 October 2024
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Thousands rally in Austria against far right

Thousands rally in Austria against far right

VIENNA: Thousands of people protested in Austria’s capital Vienna on Thursday against a possible return to power for the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which topped national elections on Sunday.
The FPOe won almost 29 percent of the vote in Sunday’s general election, ahead of the conservative People’s Party (OeVP) with just over 26 percent.
“The Austrian Freedom Party is a danger because it has already said that it wants to govern in the image of Hungary’s Viktor Orban,” said Rihab Toumi, a 26-year-old student, referring to the nationalist leader of Austria’s neighboring country.
Although the FPOe topped the polls, there is no guarantee that their radical leader Herbert Kickl will be given a chance to form a government since no other party is willing to work with him.
“This result was a shock and we cannot let a party that drifts so far to the right garner so much support without saying anything,” said social worker Marianne, 53, who declined to share her surname.
Organizers claimed there were 15,000 to 17,000 protesters in central Vienna, who marched toward parliament.
Demonstrators held up placards saying “Let’s defend democracy,” “No alliances with Putin’s friends” and other anti-FPOe slogans.
Kickl has criticized European Union sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Demonstrators intend to march every Thursday, having similarly done so after the far right formed part of short-lived coalition governments in 2000 and 2017.


US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials
Updated 03 October 2024
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US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

US storm death toll surpasses 200: officials

More than 200 people are confirmed dead after Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through several southeastern US states, officials said Thursday, making it the second deadliest storm to hit the US mainland in more than half a century.
A compilation of official figures by AFP confirms 201 fatalities across North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia. More than half of the deaths were in flood-ravaged North Carolina.
Helene is the deadliest on the US mainland since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,392 people.
Despite hundreds of rescues across six states and an enormous response including more than 10,000 federal personnel assisting local responders, the death toll from the sprawling storm is expected to rise, with many residents still unaccounted for in a mountainous region known for its pockets of isolation.
“We are continuing to find survivors,” North Carolina’s Buncombe County, the epicenter of the tragedy where more than 60 people are confirmed dead, said in its latest update, adding there are residents still cut off from the outside world due to landslides and destroyed bridges.
“Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the families of those that had just experienced this heartbreak and this tragedy,” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp told a briefing n his state, where he said the number of confirmed dead has risen to 33.
US President Joe Biden was undertaking a second straight day of visits to affected states, traveling Thursday to Florida, where Helene blew into the state’s northern Gulf shore last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with wind speeds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour.
Biden took an aerial tour of the coast to survey the devastation, then walked past rows of destroyed homes and buildings in Keaton Beach, near where the storm made landfall.
He next heads to neighboring Georgia.