Biden, Xi to hold talks amid new tensions over Taiwan
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will speak Thursday, according to a U.S. official, their first conversation in four months coming amid new tension between Washington and Beijing over China’s claims on Taiwan.
The planned talks between the two leaders — the fifth in a series of regular check-ins — have been in the works for weeks. But the possibility of a visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top congressional Democrat and second in line of succession to the presidency, has added fresh strain to the complicated relationship.
Beijing is warning that it will take “forceful measures” should Pelosi visit the self-ruled island of Taiwan that China claims as part of its territory.
The U.S. official declined to be identified ahead of the public announcement. The schedule was first reported by Bloomberg.
Pelosi hasn’t confirmed plans to visit Taiwan, but Biden last week told reporters that U.S. military officials believed it was “not a good idea” for the speaker to visit the island at the moment. Biden’s comments came after the Financial Times reported last week that Pelosi planned to visit Taiwan in August, a trip she had originally planned to make in April but postponed after she tested positive for COVID-19.
US economy sending mixed signals: Here’s what it all means
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy is caught in an awkward, painful place. A confusing one, too.
Growth appears to be sputtering, home sales are tumbling and economists warn of a potential recession ahead. But consumers are still spending, businesses keep posting profits and the economy keeps adding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month.
In the midst of it all, prices have accelerated to four-decade highs, and the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to douse the inflationary flames with higher interest rates. That’s making borrowing more expensive for households and businesses.
The Fed hopes to pull off the triple axel of central banking: Slow the economy just enough to curb inflation without causing a recession. Many economists doubt the Fed can manage that feat, a so-called soft landing.
Surging inflation is most often a side effect of a red-hot economy, not the current tepid pace of growth. Today’s economic moment conjures dark memories of the 1970s, when scorching inflation co-existed, in a kind of toxic brew, with slow growth. It hatched an ugly new term: stagflation.
Trump, Pence speeches put stark GOP divide on display
WASHINGTON (AP) — The intensifying rivalry between former President Donald Trump and his once fiercely loyal vice president, Mike Pence, was put on stark display Tuesday as the two gave dueling speeches in Washington on the future of the Republican Party.
Trump, in his first return to Washington since Democrat Joe Biden ousted him from the White House, repeated the false election fraud claims that sparked the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, while Pence, in a separate address, implored the party to move on from Trump’s defeat.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the 2020 election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges he appointed.
“It was a catastrophe, that election,” Trump nonetheless declared to an audience of cheering supporters at the America First Agenda Summit, about a mile from the White House he once called home.
Hours earlier, addressing a student conservative group, Pence said, “Some people may choose to focus on the past, but elections are about the future.”
The AP Interview: Japan minister says women ‘underestimated’
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s minister for gender equality and children’s issues called the country’s record low births and plunging population a national crisis and blamed “indifference and ignorance” in the male-dominated Japanese parliament for the neglect.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Seiko Noda couched the steadily dwindling number of children born in Japan as an existential threat, saying the nation won’t have enough troops, police or firefighters in coming decades if it continues. The number of newborns last year was a record low 810,000, down from 2.7 million just after the end of World War II, she said.
“People say that children are a national treasure. … They say that women are important for gender equality. But they are just talking,” Noda, 61, told the AP in a Cabinet office in downtown Tokyo’s government complex. “The politics of Japan will not move unless (the problems of children and women) are made visible.”
She said there are a variety of reasons for the low birthrate, persistent gender bias and population decline in Japan, “but being in the parliament, I especially feel that there is indifference and ignorance.”
Japan is the world’s third biggest economy, a powerful democracy and a major U.S. ally, but the government has struggled to make society more inclusive for children, women and minorities. There are deep concerns, both within Japan and abroad, about how Japan will reverse what critics call a deep-seated history of male chauvinism that has contributed to the low birthrate.
Strong quake shakes northern Philippines, damages buildings
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A strong earthquake shook the northern Philippines on Wednesday, injuring at least one person, damaging buildings and prompting many people in the capital to run outdoors.
The 7 magnitude quake was centered around Abra province in a mountainous area, said Renato Solidum, the head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
“The ground shook like I was on a swing and the lights suddenly went out. We rushed out of the office, and I heard screams and some of my companions were in tears,” said Michael Brillantes, a safety officer of the Abra town of Lagangilang, near the epicenter.
“It was the most powerful quake I’ve felt and I thought the ground would open up,” Brillantes told The Associated Press by cellphone.
At least one elderly villager suffered a cut in her foot and was treated in a clinic, Brillantes said, adding many houses and building had cracked walls, including some which collapsed.
New studies bolster theory coronavirus emerged from the wild
Two new studies provide more evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a Wuhan, China market where live animals were sold – further bolstering the theory that the virus emerged in the wild rather than escaping from a Chinese lab.
The research, published online Tuesday by the journal Science, shows that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was likely the early epicenter of the scourge that has now killed nearly 6.4 million people around the world. Scientists conclude that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, likely spilled from animals into people two separate times.
“All this evidence tells us the same thing: It points right to this particular market in the middle of Wuhan,” said Kristian Andersen a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research and coauthor of one of the studies. “I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself until we dove into this very carefully and looked at it much closer.”
In one study, which incorporated data collected by Chinese scientists, University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey and his colleagues used mapping tools to estimate the locations of more than 150 of the earliest reported COVID-19 cases from December 2019. They also mapped cases from January and February 2020 using data from a social media app that had created a channel for people with COVID-19 to get help.
They asked, “Of all the locations that the early cases could have lived, where did they live? And it turned out when we were able to look at this, there was this extraordinary pattern where the highest density of cases was both extremely near to and very centered on this market,” Worobey said at a press briefing. “Crucially, this applies both to all cases in December and also to cases with no known link to the market … And this is an indication that the virus started spreading in people who worked at the market but then started to spread into the local community.”
Civilian medic commands respect on Ukraine war’s front lines
DONETSK REGION, Ukaine (AP) — All over the Donetsk region, close to the front lines of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Nataliia Voronkova turns up at Ukrainian field positions and hospitals wearing high heels. A colleague bought her running shoes, but Voronkova gave them away.
A helmet and a protective vest aren’t part of her uniform, either, as she distributes first-aid kits and other equipment to Ukrainian soldiers and paramedics. She is a civilian, the founder of a medical non-profit, and looking like one is something no one can take from her, even in a combat zone.
“I am myself, and I will never give up my heels for anything,” Voronkova said of the red strappy sandals, beige pumps and other elegant footwear she typically pairs with full skirts and midi dresses as she makes her dangerous rounds to secret military bases and mobile medical units.
The former adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry with graduate degrees in banking and finance is a familiar sight to officers and troops in eastern Ukraine. For eight years after Moscow seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Voronkova dedicated her life to providing tactical medical training and equipment for Ukrainian forces fighting pro-Russia separatists.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February has created exponentially more need for her organization, Volunteers Hundred Dobrovolia, and new challenges.
North Dakota abortion clinic prepares for likely final day
FARGO, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota’s only abortion clinic is preparing for what could be its final day of performing procedures, with a trigger ban due to take effect Thursday that will likely force patients to travel hundreds of miles to receive care pending the clinic’s relocation across the border to Minnesota.
Barring a judge’s intervention, the Red River Women’s Clinic will provide abortion services Wednesday then shut down. Owner Tammi Kromenaker is building a new clinic in Moorhead, Minnesota, with the aid of nearly $1 million raised through GoFundMe.
Kromenaker has not said when the new clinic will open and she did not respond to messages Tuesday. Planned Parenthood has said it can perform abortions at its own Moorhead facility to fill the gap if needed, but it is not clear if that will happen.
Once North Dakota’s ban takes effect, the nearest abortion clinics will be in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota, a drive of about four hours from Fargo, and in Billings, Montana, which is nearly four hours from North Dakota’s western border.
Destini Spaeth, the volunteer leader of an independent group that helps fund abortions in North Dakota, is investigating temporary solutions until the Moorhead clinic opens. That could include helping to pay for trips to Minnesota and Montana.
Climate disinformation leaves lasting mark as world heats
In 1998, as nations around the world agreed to cut carbon emissions through the Kyoto Protocol, America’s fossil fuel companies plotted their response, including an aggressive strategy to inject doubt into the public debate.
“Victory,” according to the American Petroleum Institute’s memo, “will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science… Unless ‘climate change’ becomes a non-issue… there may be no moment when we can declare victory.”
The memo, later leaked to The New York Times that year, went on to outline how fossil fuel companies could manipulate journalists and the broader public by muddying the evidence, by playing up “both sides” of the debate and by portraying those seeking to reduce emissions as “out of touch with reality.”
Nearly 25 years later, the reality of a changing climate is now clear to most Americans, as heatwaves and wildfires, rising sea levels and extreme storms become more common.
Last week, President Joe Biden announced moves intended to expand offshore wind, though he stopped short of declaring a national climate emergency. A Supreme Court ruling last month limited the federal government’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, meaning it will be up to a divided Congress to pass any meaningful limits on emissions.
Detective: Alex Jones ‘most dangerous’ type of attack denier
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The detective who led the investigation into the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School attack testified Tuesday that there are three types of people who deny that it happened and harass the victims’ families: the mentally ill, those who believed bad or incomplete information, and those who knew the truth but twisted it for their own “power or money.”
Investigators put conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in that final group.
“They were the most dangerous. That’s where we put Alex Jones,” Connecticut State Police Detective Daniel Jewiss told the jury on the first day of testimony in a Texas trial to determine how much Jones, who hosts Infowars, owes for defaming the parents of one of the children who died in the deadliest school shooting in American history.
“It’s absolutely horrific the amount of trauma they’ve had to endure in the wake of having lost a loved one,” said Jewiss, who called supporting the Sandy Hook families the “most honorable” thing he’s ever been part of.
Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was killed in the attack on the Newtown, Connecticut, school, are seeking $150 million for emotional distress and reputational damage that Jones caused them, and more money in punitive damages, their lawyer, Mark Bankston, told the court during his opening statement as Jones looked on, shaking his head at times.