Taiwan’s Lai says ‘confident’ of deeper cooperation with Trump

Update Taiwan’s Lai says ‘confident’ of deeper cooperation with Trump
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te insisted that Taiwan and China were ‘not subordinate to each other.’ (Reuters)
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Updated 06 December 2024
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Taiwan’s Lai says ‘confident’ of deeper cooperation with Trump

Taiwan’s Lai says ‘confident’ of deeper cooperation with Trump
  • The United States does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan
  • ‘Taiwan is confident that it will continue to deepen cooperation with the new [US] government’

KOROR, Palau: Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Friday he was “confident” of deeper cooperation with the next Donald Trump administration, a day after his call with US Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson that angered China.
Like other world governments, Taiwan has publicly congratulated Trump on his victory in November’s presidential election as it seeks to get onside with the next US leader.
The United States does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but Washington has long been Taipei’s biggest backer and provider of arms.
Trump caused jitters during his campaign by suggesting Taiwan should pay the United States for its defense and accusing the island of stealing the US semiconductor industry.
“Taiwan is confident that it will continue to deepen cooperation with the new government to resist authoritarian expansion, and create prosperity and development for both countries while making more contributions to regional stability and peace,” Lai told reporters in Palau.
Lai arrived in the tiny Pacific island nation on Thursday after visiting the American territory of Guam where he spoke with Johnson – the highest-level US contact the Taiwanese leader has had during his week-long trip.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and opposes any international recognition of the island. Beijing especially bristles at high-level official contact between Taipei and Washington.
A 2022 visit to Taiwan by then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi prompted China to launch military drills around the self-ruled island.
Beijing on Thursday urged the United States to “stop sending wrong signals” following the Lai-Johnson call, warning of the “serious danger that separatist acts of Taiwan independence pose to peace and security across the Taiwan Strait.”
In response to a question about possible Chinese military drills around Taiwan this weekend, Lai said “raising your fists is not as good as opening your hands.”
Lai also insisted that Taiwan and China were “not subordinate to each other.”
“No matter how many military exercises, warships and aircraft China sends to coerce neighboring countries, it cannot win the respect of any country,” Lai said.
Lai’s Pacific tour – his first overseas trip since taking office in May – is aimed at fortifying ties in the Pacific where China has been poaching its allies.
Palau is among 12 nations that still recognize Taiwan’s claim to statehood, after China convinced others to sever diplomatic relations with Taipei in favor of Beijing.
Earlier, Lai and his Palau counterpart Surangel Whipps Jr watched a joint rescue exercise involving the Taiwan’s largest coast guard patrol ship and two vessels donated by Taiwan to Palau.
Before that, Lai attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new “one-stop” government services building in Palau that Taiwan helped fund.
Lai hailed the building project “a model of successful bilateral cooperation” and said the Taiwan-Palau alliance was “rock solid.”
The dispute between Taiwan and China goes back to 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces were defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and fled to the island.
While Taiwan calls itself a sovereign nation, with its own government, military and currency, Beijing insists the island belongs to China and has not ruled out the use of force to bring it under its control.
Taiwan faces the constant threat of a military attack by China, which regularly deploys fighter jets and warships around the island to press its claims, and it relies heavily on US arms sales to boost its defenses.
On the eve of Lai’s Pacific tour, the United States approved a proposed sale to Taiwan of spare parts for F-16s and radar systems, as well as communications equipment, in deals valued at $385 million in total.
Speaking during a two-day visit to the US state of Hawaii on Saturday, Lai said there was a need to “fight together to prevent war,” warning there were “no winners” from conflict.
From Palau, Lai flies to Taipei on Friday, wrapping up a trip that also included visits to Taiwan’s other Pacific island allies the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.


China families appeal to free relatives held by scam gangs in Myanmar

China families appeal to free relatives held by scam gangs in Myanmar
Updated 15 sec ago
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China families appeal to free relatives held by scam gangs in Myanmar

China families appeal to free relatives held by scam gangs in Myanmar

BEIJING/BANGKOK: The abduction and cross-border rescue had all the makings of the kind of action script struggling Chinese actor Wang Xing had hoped to land —  only not as a reality star.

Wang, 22, flew to Bangkok earlier this month after getting an unsolicited offer to join a film that was shooting in Thailand.

There was no movie. Instead, like hundreds of other Chinese men, Wang had been duped by a job offer that he later acknowledged appeared too good to be true, as part of a trap set by a criminal syndicate.

Like others desperate for work, he was kidnapped and put to work in one of the online scam centers that operate just across the Thai border in Myanmar, according to his account and statements by police in China and Thailand.

But unlike most trafficked Chinese whose families wait in quiet anguish, Wang had a powerful advocate back home. His girlfriend, who goes by the nickname Jiajia, broadcast details of Wang’s abduction and started a social media campaign documenting her battle to get him back to China, picking up millions of followers and the support of Chinese celebrities.

When Wang was freed on Jan.7 by Thai police, who said he had been found in Myanmar but gave few details about his release, frustrated families of other Chinese people still detained in the Myanmar scam centers began to post details of their own cases in an attempt to capitalize on the attention. 

Within days, the rare grassroots effort had collected the names of nearly 1,800 Chinese nationals that family members said had been trafficked into Myanmar from border areas of China and Thailand. 


Social media disinformation fueling poor governance, Nigerian foreign minister tells WEF

Social media disinformation fueling poor governance, Nigerian foreign minister tells WEF
Updated 1 min ago
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Social media disinformation fueling poor governance, Nigerian foreign minister tells WEF

Social media disinformation fueling poor governance, Nigerian foreign minister tells WEF
  • Yusuf Tuggar says Sahel countries suffer from foreign state-backed social media campaigns
  • Comments come in WEF panel on what can be done to tackle poor governance

LONDON: Disinformation campaigns on social media, sometimes instigated by external countries, have fueled poor governance in parts of Africa, Nigeria’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Speaking during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Yusuf Tuggar said that while social media could have a positive effect on governance and improving transparency, disinformation spread on its platforms was something Nigeria was having to deal with.

He pointed to countries neighboring or near to Nigeria where foreign powers had been blamed for sophisticated social media campaigns that helped to swell support for military regimes.

Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso underwent military coups in recent years and broke away from the Economic Community of West African States — ECOWAS — last year to form their own alliance.

Disinformation or misinformation had a “deleterious effect on governments and governance, and sometimes it’s even destructive,” Tuggar said during a panel on the threat of poor governance.

“It’s so sophisticated, and then sometimes you also have external interference where you have other states sponsoring such attacks, if you will, on others.”

While he did not name any countries in particular, Tuggar said that this was something Nigeria was contending with in discussions about the three countries leaving ECOWAS. Nigeria is the most powerful member of the economic bloc, which is regarded as having helped to improve financial and political stability in the region.

“That sort of negative campaign sways public opinion one way or the other, and if you’re relying on votes on openness and transparency, then, you know, it’s not a fair game,” Tuggar said.

A study released last year by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which is based at the US Department of Defense, found Russia to be the leading source of disinformation in Africa, with West Africa and the Sahel the most targeted.

Tuggar’s comments came as the panel discussed how leaders could tackle the poor level of governance globally that is blamed for eroding global cooperation and stalling progress on critical social, economic and environmental issues.

Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, said that good governance was about whether people could continue to trust you when you got things wrong.

“Resilience in leadership takes legitimacy as well as effectiveness,” she said. “Legitimacy is about the trust you engender among those you govern or those that you lead in your company.”

Johan Andresen, chairman of the Norwegian private investment company Ferd, said that good governance needed to be handled in two ways — risk and responsibility.

“You have to have management of the risks in the organizations, but you should also try to experiment with how much responsibility can you actually take,” he said.


Trump tells Putin to make Ukraine deal ‘now’ or face tougher sanctions

Trump tells Putin to make Ukraine deal ‘now’ or face tougher sanctions
Updated 27 min 16 sec ago
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Trump tells Putin to make Ukraine deal ‘now’ or face tougher sanctions

Trump tells Putin to make Ukraine deal ‘now’ or face tougher sanctions
  • “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions,” Trump said
  • Trump said he was “not looking to hurt Russia” and had “always had a very good relationship with President Putin“

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump stepped up the pressure on Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine Wednesday, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war.
Trump’s warning in a Truth Social post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term.
“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump said.
Trump said he was “not looking to hurt Russia” and had “always had a very good relationship with President Putin,” a leader for whom he has expressed admiration in the past.
“All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.”
He added: “Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way — and the easy way is always better. It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL.’“
Russia already faces crushing US sanctions over the war since invading Ukraine in 2022 and trade has slowed to a trickle. Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden’s administration imposed sweeping sanctions against Moscow’s energy sector earlier this month.
But Trump — a billionaire tycoon famed for his book “The Art of the Deal” — and his administration reportedly believe there are ways of toughening measures to press Putin.
The United States imported $2.9 billion in goods from Russia from January to November 2024 — down sharply from $4.3 billion over the same period in 2023, according to the US Department of Commerce.
Top US imports from Russia include fertilizers and precious metals.
It was Trump’s toughest line on Putin since he returned to the White House this week, and comes despite fears that it was Kyiv rather than Moscow that he would strongarm into making a peace deal.
During a White House press conference on Tuesday Trump said only that it “sounds likely” that he would apply additional sanctions if Putin did not come to the table.
The US president however declined to say whether he would continue Biden’s policy of sending billions of dollars in weaponry to help Ukraine.
“We’re looking at that,” he said at the press conference. “We’re talking to (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky, we’re going to be talking to President Putin very soon.”
Trump has also said he expects to meet Putin — with whom he had a summit in his first term in Helsinki — soon.
Prior to beginning his new inauguration on Monday, Trump had vowed to end Ukraine war “within 24 hours” and before even taking office, raising expectations he would leverage aid to force Kyiv to make territorial concessions to Moscow.
But his promised breakthrough has proved elusive.
In unusually critical remarks of Putin on Monday, Trump said the Russian president was “destroying Russia by not making a deal.”
Trump added that Zelensky had told him he wanted a peace agreement to end the war.
Putin congratulated Trump on his inauguration for a second term on Monday.
The Russian leader added that he was “open to dialogue” on Ukraine conflict with Trump’s incoming US administration, adding he hoped any settlement would ensure “lasting peace.”
Trump has repeatedly praised Putin, whose hyper-masculine style and professed attachment to traditional values has increasingly found favor among some US Christian conservatives.
US special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI both investigated alleged collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — which Trump in his post on Wednesday dubbed once again the “Russia hoax.”
Mueller won convictions of six members of the Trump campaign but said he found no evidence of criminal cooperation with Russia by the Trump campaign.


Political will, financial empowerment essential for gender equality: WEF panelists

Political will, financial empowerment essential for gender equality: WEF panelists
Updated 22 January 2025
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Political will, financial empowerment essential for gender equality: WEF panelists

Political will, financial empowerment essential for gender equality: WEF panelists
  • Alicia Barcena Ibarra: When women have economic autonomy, it’s easier for them to participate on many fronts
  • Ibarra: We don’t want only women or only men. We need both because they have complementary visions

DUBAI: Political will is crucial for bridging the global gender gap and protecting women from pressing challenges, a panel of experts told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.

Panelists acknowledged some progress in advancing female political representation, as 15.5 percent of heads of state around the world have been women over the past decade.

However, they called for more concerted efforts to bridge the gender gap in political power. According to WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report, it will take 168 years to reach gender parity, but if every economy had a gender-balanced Cabinet, global gender parity could be within reach in 54 years.

Alicia Barcena Ibarra, Mexico’s secretary of environment and natural resources, stressed that building women’s economic autonomy was key to advancing their political representation.

“When women have economic autonomy, it’s easier for them to participate on many fronts because when they are dependent on economic terms, that’s when they are vulnerable to corruption, dependency and abuse,” Ibarra said.

In Mexico, the first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was elected in October last year in a historic moment for the country. Under law, Congress now has to include 50 percent women, paving the way for the the first woman to lead the country’s Supreme Court, as well as the first female governor of the central bank.

While these strides on the political level have reflected positively on women’s social participation and inspired a young generation of Mexicans, Ibarra said that it revealed the pressure on women to perform.

Complementing her sentiments, Francois Valerian, chair of Transparency International, said that the lack of financial resources for women compared to men made females more vulnerable to abuses of power, state corruption and climate change.

“Pakistan’s floods, for example, left many women and children in need to receive aid,” said Valerian, calling for parity in political power to solve these issues at the community level.

Even during elections, women needed more financial resources for their campaigns “because they have less money, they are outsiders, and need to convince people they are to be trusted. Also, they need money for their safety in many countries,” Valerian said, as he urged governments to empower women to run for election through dedicating funds for this.

Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, minister of state and minister of foreign affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, stressed that gender parity was necessary in all sectors to advance peacemaking and peacebuilding initiatives. So far, women’s inclusion had been achieved at the grassroot level.

She said that women needed to be included in decision-making and negotiating peace at the top level to ensure female concerns were well represented.

“There’s a need to think about how do we make sure that this is a cross-cutting approach and not just women at the local level who then have to own what is decided at the top level,” Wagner said.

At the UN General Assembly last year, only 19 speakers were women, including five heads of state and three heads of government, according to UN figures.

Wagner said that the starting point should be international organizations reflecting the progress on gender equality, and called for a female UN secretary-general.

“I think all our eyes are shifting toward Latin America because of the geographic rotation, with a lot of expectations that a continent that has distinguished itself with so many women that have assumed positions of leadership will also help us achieve that important milestone,” she said.

In peacemaking, the role of both genders was necessary for progress. “We don’t want only women or only men. We need both because they have complementary visions,” Mexico’s Ibarra said.


At least 12 rail passengers killed in western India after jumping onto tracks over fire alert

At least 12 rail passengers killed in western India after jumping onto tracks over fire alert
Updated 22 January 2025
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At least 12 rail passengers killed in western India after jumping onto tracks over fire alert

At least 12 rail passengers killed in western India after jumping onto tracks over fire alert
  • Accident occurred in Maharashtra State, near Pardhade railroad station 410 km southwest of Mumbai 
  • Hundreds of accidents occur every year on India’s railways, the largest train network under one management

NEW DELHI: At least 12 train passengers were killed on Wednesday after being hit by another service on an adjacent track in western India after they jumped from their coaches in panic to escape a rumored fire incident, the Press Trust of India reported.
At least six other people were injured and taken to nearby hospitals, the news agency cited police officer Dattatraya Karale as saying.
The accident occurred in Maharashtra State, near the Pardhade railroad station, 410 kilometers (255 miles) southwest of Mumbai, India’s financial capital.
PTI said the victims jumped off the Pushpak Express train, which had stopped after some passengers pulled an emergency chain. Those who disembarked were hit by another express train on the adjacent railroad track, PTI quoted railway spokesman Swapnil Nila as saying.
“Our preliminary information is that there were sparks inside one of the coaches of Pushpak Express due to either ‘hot axle’ or ‘brake-binding’ (jamming), and some passengers panicked. They pulled the chain, and some of them jumped down on the tracks. At the same time, Karnataka Express was passing on the adjoining track,” a senior railway official told PTI.
Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, hundreds of accidents occur every year on India’s railways, which is the largest train network under one management in the world.
In 2023, two passenger trains collided after derailing in eastern India, killing more than 280 people and injuring hundreds in one of the country’s deadliest rail crashes in decades.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focussing on the modernization of the British colonial-era railroad network in India, which has become the world’s most populous country with 1.42 billion.