Month: November 2022

South Africa’s free press has been largely successful at resisting efforts by the Chinese government to influence its content, say analysts, affirming a recent study by the U.S.-based think tank Freedom House.

“In South Africa, we have a deep historical suspicion of state media,” said Anton Harber, professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

South Africa’s wariness of state media, he said, stems from the country’s legacy of apartheid, the former state policy of racial segregation and discrimination that ended in 1994. Under apartheid, the media was censored.

“SA’s media is resilient and will always be skeptical when it comes to certain issues being shaped in a certain line of thought,” said Reggy Moalusi, executive director of the South African National Editors’ Forum.

The Freedom House report, titled “Beijing’s Global Media Influence 2022,” said South Africans as a whole, including journalists, are highly skeptical of Chinese state narratives. It said that, despite success by the Chinese government in building ties with the ruling African National Congress party, “coverage of China in South African media remains overall diverse … and often critical of the Chinese government.”

Areas of concern

Even with a democratic government and free press, the Chinese government still attempts to influence South Africa’s media environment, according to the2022 findings by Freedom House, which studied China’s media influence in 30 countries around the world from January 2019 to December 2021.

A private Chinese company with links to the Chinese Communist Party (CPP), StarTimes Group has invested 20 percent in local satellite provider StarSat, which offers Chinese state media television channels, the report said.

Another example cited in the report is South Africa’s Independent Media group, which publishes some 20 newspapers in the country. Since 2013, the group has been 20 percent owned by a Chinese consortium whose shareholders include state media. Its digital version, Independent Online, is the second most-read news site in the country.

Independent Media regularly publishes content from Chinese newswire Xinhua as well as Chinese state perspectives. “None of its outlets carry much negative commentary on China,” Freedom House said.

The company’s outlets published 16 articles, interviews and speeches by the Chinese ambassador and consul generals between 2020 and 2021, the report found. It also gives print space to local South African academics and political figures who support Beijing’s line.

Its foreign editor wrote an op-ed during the pandemic with false claims about COVID-19’s origins. Independent Media journalists have attended media junkets to China and one freelancer told Freedom House researchers that topics for articles and related links are sometimes directly provided by the Chinese embassy.

One example of China’s apparent influence on independent media took place in 2018 when columnist Azad Essa was abruptly let go after writing an article condemning Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslims.

When contacted by VOA for comment, the group’s editor-in-chief Aziz Hartley responded, “Editors have complete autonomy over their respective publications and their reporters are bound by the principles of unbiased, ethical and objective reporting.”

China’s efforts to influence the media landscape in South Africa were shown to have slowed in recent years, the report found.

The other side

Shao Hesong, second secretary at the Chinese embassy in Washington, referred questions to the Chinese embassy in South Africa, which did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

In a July op-ed published by state media China Daily, Dennis Munene, executive director of the Nairobi-based China-Africa Center at the Africa Policy Institute, made a case for more cooperation between China and African media.

Under the Chinese government’s China-Africa Vision 2035 program, he said, China and Africa “plan to strengthen cooperation in news coverage, creation of audiovisual content, training of media professionals and media technologies.” He argued there is the need for “more in-depth media exchanges’” and said Beijing “can develop technological tools for fact-checking on issues related to Sino-Africa relations.”

Africa findings

While South Africa has a high level of resilience against the Chinese government’s influence due to its diverse media landscape, the study found, the other African nations studied were a mixed bag.

“Our research found that Beijing is trying some of the same tactics in Africa as it does in Western countries, such as signing content-sharing agreements, paid advertorials, or placing ambassador op-eds,” Angeli Datt, a senior research analyst at Freedom House, told VOA.

In Nigeria, attempts at influence from China were “very high” — the fourth highest of all 30 countries surveyed — and while there was some resilience, it was less robust than in the other three. The Chinese embassy in Nigeria has reportedly contacted editors and even paid journalists not to cover negative stories, according to Freedom House.

In Kenya, there were “high” efforts by China to influence the media, but the East African country also had a “notable” level of resilience. For example, a Chinese state-owned company threatened to sue a Kenyan newspaper, The Standard, over its investigative reporting on abuses at a railway run by the firm. The paper refused to retract the story, and the Chinese embassy canceled its advertising with the paper.

Global media influence

Of the 30 countries studied from around the world, Beijing’s efforts at influencing the media were deemed “high” or “very high” in 16 of them, and only half of all those surveyed were found to be resilient to the messaging, the other half vulnerable.

“The Chinese government, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, is accelerating a massive campaign to influence media outlets and news consumers around the world,” the report said.
…

The U.S. central bank could scale back the pace of its interest rate hikes “as soon as December,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday, while warning that the fight against inflation was far from over and key questions remain unanswered, including how high rates will ultimately need to rise and for how long.

“It makes sense to moderate the pace of our rate increases as we approach the level of restraint that will be sufficient to bring inflation down. The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting,” Powell said in a speech to the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

But, in remarks emphasizing the work left to be done in controlling inflation, Powell said that issue was “far less significant than the questions of how much further we will need to raise rates to control inflation, and the length of time it will be necessary to hold policy at a restrictive level.”

While the Fed chief did not indicate his estimated “terminal rate,” Powell said it is likely to be “somewhat higher” than the 4.6% indicated by policymakers in their September projections. He said curing inflation “will require holding policy at a restrictive level for some time,” a comment that appeared to lean against market expectations the U.S. central bank could begin cutting rates next year as the economy slows.

“We will stay the course until the job is done,” Powell said, noting that even though some data points to inflation slowing next year, “we have a long way to go in restoring price stability … Despite the tighter policy and slower growth over the past year, we have not seen clear progress on slowing inflation.”

The Fed’s response to the fastest outbreak of U.S. inflation in 40 years has been a similarly abrupt increase in interest rates. With a half-percentage-point increase expected at its Dec. 13-14 meeting, the central bank will have lifted its overnight policy rate from near zero as of March to the 4.25%-4.50% range, the swiftest change in rates since former Fed Chair Paul Volcker was battling an even worse rise in prices decades ago.

That has made home mortgages and other forms of credit more expensive for consumers and businesses.

It has not, however, caused any appreciable impact on the U.S. job market, where the current 3.7% unemployment rate has led some policymakers to argue they are free to tighten rates further without much risk.

But it has also had no convincing impact yet on inflation, a fact that has left open just how much further the Fed may need to raise rates into what it refers to as “restrictive” territory designed to slow the economy.

Powell said Fed estimates of inflation in October showed its preferred measure still rising at about triple the central bank’s 2% target.

‘Long way to go’

Powell’s remarks ignited a robust rally in equity and bond markets, which have taken a pounding this year on the back of the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes.

The benchmark S&P 500 index .SPX shot into positive territory and was last up by about 1.5% on the day, and bond yields, which move in the opposite direction to their prices, all tumbled. The yield on the 2-year Treasury note US2YT=RR, the maturity most sensitive to Fed rate expectations, dropped to about 4.47% from 4.52%. The dollar .DXY weakened against a basket of major trading partners’ currencies.

In rate futures markets, traders added to the prevailing bets that the Fed would slow its pace of rate hikes at its meeting in two weeks.

“You can’t keep raising rates as quickly as they were doing it,” said Rick Meckler at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey. “That said, investors always like the comfort of hearing it directly from the (Fed) chair.” 

Powell noted that the cost of housing is likely to continue to rise into next year, while key price measures for services remain high and the labor market is tight.

“Despite some promising developments, we have a long way to go in restoring price stability,” he said.
…

President Joe Biden on Tuesday toured a $300 million semiconductor manufacturing facility in Michigan that aims to create 150 jobs and said the U.S. was “not going to be held hostage anymore” by countries like China that dominate the industry. 

“Instead of relying on chips made overseas in places like China, the supply chain for those chips will be here in America,” Biden said to a crowd of more than 400 people who gathered to see him at an SK Siltron CSS facility in Bay City. “In Michigan. It’s a game changer.” 

The company is part of the South Korean SK Group conglomerate, and the facility will make materials for semiconductors that will be used in electric vehicles. 

Biden tied the project directly to the CHIPS and Science Act, which he signed in August. The bill includes about $52 billion in funding for U.S. companies for the manufacturing of chips, which go into technology like smartphones, electric vehicles, appliances and weapons systems. 

Biden also said that China’s president, Xi Jinping, expressed dissatisfaction with the legislation when the two men met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit earlier this month in Bali, Indonesia. 

“And he’s a little upset that we’re deciding we’re going to once again be, you know … we’re talking about the supply chain, we’re going to be the supply chain. The difference is going to be, we’re going to make that supply chain available to the rest of the world, and we’re not going to be held hostage anymore.” 

China has pushed back vocally against the legislation and also against an October move by the administration to impose export controls on chips, a move intended to block China from getting these sensitive technologies.  

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning in October accused the U.S. of “abusing export control measures to wantonly block and hobble Chinese enterprises.” 

This week, in response to a separate proposal through the National Defense Authorization Act aimed at banning government agencies from doing business with Chinese semiconductor manufacturers, she said: “The US needs to listen to the voice calling for reason, stop politicizing, weaponizing and ideologizing economic, trade and sci-tech issues, stop blocking and hobbling Chinese companies, respect the law of the market economy and free trade rules, and defend the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains.” 

But those concerns seemed far away as Biden enjoyed the welcoming crowd and painted his vision of his nation’s technological future.  

“Where is it written,” he said, “that America will not lead the world in manufacturing again?” 
…

U.S. efforts to ease tensions between Turkey and Kurdish fighters in northern Syria appear to be having little effect, with both sides refusing to back down despite warnings that a conflict will only benefit the Islamic State terror group.

U.S. defense and military officials say they have been in constant contact with Turkey, a NATO ally, and with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a key partner in the fight against IS, so far to no avail. 

“We have not seen signs of de-escalation,” a spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition to defeat IS told VOA via email Tuesday, repeating the call for “immediate de-escalation on all sides.” 

“We continue to oppose any military action that destabilizes the region and threatens the safety of the civilian population as well as disrupts our ongoing operations to defeat ISIS,” the spokesperson added, using another acronym for the terror group. 

Despite the repeated pleas, both Turkey and the SDF indicated Tuesday they are bracing for the conflict to grow, with Turkish officials adamant that the SDF be seen not as an ally in the war on terror but as an extension for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Turkey-based terror group.

“Our determination to eliminate this threat against our national security will continue unabated,” said Turkish embassy officials in Washington, communicating on the condition of anonymity.

“We are guided by the ultimate goal of ensuring the protection of the Turkish borders and striking at the root of terrorism,” the Turkish officials told VOA, adding, “Terrorist shelters, hideouts, fortifications, their so-called HQs [headquarters] and training centers constitute legitimate targets.”

But the U.S. has been hesitant to abandon the SDF, crediting the mainly Kurdish force with helping to crush the IS self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019. 

Already, Washington’s inability to broker a lasting understanding between the SDF and Turkey has put some of the 900 U.S. troops in Syria, part of an ongoing counter-IS mission, in harm’s way when a Turkish airstrike hit within 300 meters of U.S. personnel.

And for its part, the SDF is warning that the situation on the ground is about to get worse. 

“Their [Turkey’s] preparations are in full swing for an imminent ground offensive,” SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi said Tuesday in a virtual forum hosted by Columbia University. 

Turkish proxy forces in Syria “are now fully prepared,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “The Turkish armed forces have also been amassing a huge number of forces and equipment on the border, too.” 

Turkey launched what it calls Operation Claw-Sword with a series of airstrikes against Kurdish targets in Syria and Iraq earlier this month, describing it as retaliation for a November 13 bombing in Istanbul that killed eight people and injured dozens more. 

The SDF has denied any connection to the terror attack, arguing that suspects currently in Turkish custody have connections to IS. 

Abdi has also argued that IS is hoping to reap the rewards of renewed Turkish-Kurdish hostilities, pointing Tuesday to new intelligence estimates. 

“ISIS is actively preparing to break out many prisoners and are waiting for a Turkish offensive,” he said. “They’re expecting a ground offensive and will carry out their own planning if and when the ground offensive takes place.” 

U.S. officials, likewise, have voiced concern that IS cells in northeastern Syria are benefiting. 

The U.S.-led coalition confirmed Tuesday that anti-IS missions are no longer a priority for the SDF, and in Washington, the Pentagon said the number of patrols aimed at hunting down the terror group’s remnants is shrinking. 

“They [the SDF] have reduced the number of patrols that they’re doing, and so that therefore necessitates us to reduce the patrols,” Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters. 

“Continued conflict, especially a ground invasion [by Turkey], would severely jeopardize the hard-fought gains that the world has achieved against ISIS,” he said. 

On Tuesday, Turkey pushed back against such charges, saying such concerns “cannot be more detached from reality.”

“The fact is, Daesh remains a threat above all to the neighboring countries due to the wrongdoings and ill-advised strategies of those who make these kinds of statements,” Turkey’s ambassador to the United Nations, Feridun Sinirlioglu, told the Security Council, using the Arabic acronym for IS. 

“We have on countless occasions warned against the mistake of subcontracting the fight against Daesh to another terrorist organization, namely the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, which in reality is nothing but the PKK,” he added. 

In a further effort to reduce tensions, the Pentagon said it expected Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to speak soon with his Turkish counterpart. 

SDF officials hope, this time, the message to Ankara will be more forceful. 

“The U.S. position should be stronger,” Abdi told VOA Kurdish in an interview Monday, referring to a 2019 tweet from then-candidate and now U.S. President Joe Biden, which described former President Donald Trump’s support at the time for a Turkish invasion of Syria “a betrayal.” 

“I recently sent a letter to President Biden and reminded him of these things,” Abdi said. “President Biden should keep the promises he made in the past. We hope he will keep them now.” 

Zana Omer of VOA’s Kurdish Service and VOA United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. 
…

As protests continue in cities across China over the government’s harsh “zero-COVID” policy, a separate battle is taking place on social media sites within China and around the world; a fight that is testing the strength of China’s online censorship apparatus, known as the Great Firewall.

Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson said Chinese officials appear to be resorting to “low-tech approaches” to tamp down online speech even as the protesters have become more adept at getting their messages past government censors.

“Literally police stopping people on the streets, on public transportation, and forcing them to hand over their smartphones so that police can inspect them to see if they’ve got chats about the protests, if they’ve taken pictures or videos, or if they’ve sent these kinds of materials to other people,” she told VOA via Skype on Tuesday.

Some protesters in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai are getting information out about the crackdown by using technology and other techniques to circumvent government censors who are believed to be using an automated system to help block prohibited content.

Over the weekend, researchers noted that outside of China, when people on Twitter tried to share tweets about the protests and the ensuing crackdown at the hands of police, Chinese language accounts intervened to block the information from spreading.

“Numerous Chinese-language accounts, some dormant for months or years, came to life early Sunday and started spamming the service with links to escort services and other adult offerings alongside city names,” according to The Washington Post.

Many Chinese citizens have been able to use virtual private networks – or VPNs – to get over the Great Firewall to post photos, messages, videos and other materials on platforms including Twitter.

Ji Feng, a former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, told VOA that students with VPNs are “jumping over the great firewall,” to gain access to information.

Richardson says those postings have been “an extraordinary breach of the firewall” with Chinese authorities likely to crack down on VPN use.

“As of a few years ago, the use of unauthorized VPNs was criminalized,” she says. “And so we are expecting to hear that people will be prosecuted simply on charges of using that kind of technology.”

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that “videos and posts on Chinese social media about protests were deleted by the ruling party’s vast online censorship apparatus.”

Richardson expects a more complete assessment in the next few weeks of “the extent to which authorities will have used basic garden variety surveillance cameras, which are just legion across all urban Chinese areas now, to identify protesters, and possibly they’ll be used as a basis for prosecuting people who were doing nothing more than exercising their right to free speech.”
…

The Biden administration declared the northern long-eared bat endangered on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to save a species driven to the brink of extinction by white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease.

“White-nose syndrome is decimating cave-dwelling bat species like the northern long-eared bat at unprecedented rates,” said Martha Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency is “deeply committed to working with partners on a balanced approach that reduces the impacts of disease and protects the survivors to recover northern long-eared bat populations,” she said.

First documented in the U.S. in 2006, the disease has infected 12 types of bats and killed millions. The northern long-eared bat is among the hardest hit, with estimated declines of 97% or higher in affected populations. The bat is found in 37 eastern and north-central states, plus Washington, D.C., and much of Canada.

Named for white, fuzzy spots that appear on infected bats, white-nose syndrome attacks bats’ wings, muzzles and ears when they hibernate in caves and abandoned mines.

It causes them to wake early from hibernation and to sometimes fly outside. They can burn up their winter fat stores and eventually starve.

The disease has spread across nearly 80% of the geographical range where northern long-eared bats live and is expected to cover it all by 2025.

Little brown bat also suffering

Another species ravaged by the fungus is the tricolored bat, which the government proposed to classify as endangered in September. A third, the little brown bat, is being evaluated for a potential listing.

Bats are believed to give U.S. agriculture an annual boost of $3 billion by gobbling pests and pollinating some plants.

The Fish and Wildlife Service designated the northern long-eared bat as threatened in 2015. With its situation increasingly dire, the agency proposed an endangered listing in March and considered public comments before deciding to proceed. The reclassification takes effect January 30, 2023.

“This species is in dire straits, but we never want to give up hope,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist with Bat Conservation International, a nonprofit group. “We can do amazing things when we work hard and have legal protections in place to protect these small colonies that are left.”

In many cases, the service identifies “critical habitat” areas considered particularly important for the survival of an endangered species. Officials decided against doing so for the northern long-eared bat because habitat loss isn’t the primary reason for its decline, spokeswoman Georgia Parham said. Calling attention to their winter hibernation spots could make things worse, she added.

Recovery efforts will focus on wooded areas where the bats roost in summer — usually alone or in small groups, nestling beneath bark or in tree cavities and crevices. Emerging at dusk, they feed on moths, beetles and other insects.

Under the Endangered Species Act, federal agencies are required to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service to be sure projects that they fund or authorize — such as timber harvests, prescribed fires and highway construction — will not jeopardize a listed species’ existence.

For nonfederal landowners, actions that could result in unintentional kills could be allowed but will require permits.

Turbines also a threat

The Fish and Wildlife Service said it will also work with wind energy companies to reduce the likelihood that bats will strike turbines. These collisions are currently a threat in roughly half of the northern long-eared bat’s range, an area likely to grow as wind energy development expands.

The service has approved nearly two dozen plans allowing wind energy and forestry projects to proceed after steps were taken to make them more bat-friendly, said Karen Herrington, Midwest regional coordinator for threatened and endangered species.

Operators can limit the danger by curtailing blade rotation during bats’ migration season and when winds are low.

Research continues for methods to fight white-nose syndrome, including development of a vaccine. The service has distributed more than $46 million for the campaign, which involves around 150 agencies, private organizations and Native American tribes.

“We have to find a cure for white-nose syndrome that is killing our bats and we have to protect the forests where they live,” said Ryan Shannon, senior attorney at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “This endangered listing will help on both counts.”
…

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the right-wing Oath Keepers militia group, was convicted by a jury on Tuesday of seditious conspiracy for last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to overturn then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss — an important victory for the Justice Department.

Rhodes, a Yale Law School-educated former Army paratrooper and disbarred attorney, was accused by prosecutors during an eight-week trial of fomenting a plot to use force to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory over Trump.

Rhodes was the best-known of the five defendants in the most significant of the numerous trials arising from the deadly January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. One co-defendant, Kelly Meggs, was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Tuesday, while three others — Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — were acquitted of that charge.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta has presided over the trial. The jury deliberated for three days.

One of about 900 charged

Rhodes, who wears an eye patch after accidentally shooting himself in the face with his own gun, is one of the most prominent defendants of the roughly 900 charged so far in connection with the attack.

In 2009, Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers, a militia group whose members include current and retired U.S. military personnel, law enforcement officers and first responders. Its members have showed up, often heavily armed, at protests and political events around the United States including the racial justice demonstrations following the murder of a Black man named George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Prosecutors during the trial said Rhodes and his co-defendants planned to use force to prevent Congress from formally certifying Biden’s election victory. Meggs, Watkins and Harrelson all entered the Capitol clad in tactical gear.

The defendants were accused of creating a “quick reaction force” that prosecutors said positioned at a nearby Virginia hotel and was equipped with firearms that could be quickly transported into Washington if summoned.

50 witnesses

Fifty witnesses testified during the trial. Rhodes and two of his co-defendants testified in their own defense. They denied plotting any attack or seeking to block Congress from certifying the election results, though Watkins admitted to impeding police officers protecting the Capitol.

Rhodes told the jury he had no plan to storm the Capitol and did not learn that some of his fellow Oath Keepers had breached the building until after the riot had ended.

Prosecutors during cross-examination sought to paint Rhodes as a liar, showing him page after page of his inflammatory text messages, videos, photos and audio recordings. These included Rhodes lamenting about not bringing rifles to Washington on January 6 and saying he could have hanged U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat reviled by the right, from a lamppost.

Watkins, a transgender woman who fled the U.S. Army after being confronted with homophobic slurs, and Caldwell, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran, also chose to testify.

Watkins admitted to having “criminal liability” for impeding police officers inside the Capitol and apologized. At the same time, Watkins denied having any plan to storm the building, describing being “swept up” just as enthusiastic shoppers behave on “Black Friday” when they rush into stores to purchase discount-price holiday gifts like TVs.

Caldwell, who like Rhodes did not enter the Capitol building and never formally joined the Oath Keepers, tried to downplay some of the inflammatory texts he sent in connection with the attack. Caldwell said some of the lines were adapted from or inspired by movies such as “The Princess Bride” and cartoons such as Bugs Bunny.

Four other Oath Keepers members charged with seditious conspiracy are due to go to trial in December. Members of another right-wing group called the Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio, also are due to head to trial on seditious conspiracy charges in December.
…

President Joe Biden said Tuesday he hopes lawmakers can work together to fund the government, boost spending for Ukraine and avert a crippling rail strike as he hosted congressional leaders at the White House. But Republicans’ pick to be the next speaker of the House served notice that things are “going to be different” once the GOP takes control of the chamber.

The meeting came as Biden looks to lock in more legislative wins before Democrats lose unified control of Washington on Jan. 3 and as the president is dependent on Congress to avoid a government shutdown on Dec. 16. Biden also wants a government funding bill to provide additional money for the COVID-19 response and to bolster U.S. support for Ukraine’s economy and defense against Russia’s invasion.

Biden has also called on Congress to step in and impose a tentative agreement between railroads and workers to avert a potentially crippling freight rail strike on Dec. 9.

Lawmakers are months behind on passing funding legislation for the current fiscal year, relying on stop-gap measures that largely maintain existing funding levels, that federal agencies have warned leaves them strapped for cash.

“We’re going to work together, I hope, to fund the government,” Biden told lawmakers, emphasizing the importance of Ukraine and pandemic funding as well.

The president said the “economy’s at risk” because of the looming rail strike, and he said he is “confident” that Congress could act to avert it. “There’s a lot to do, including resolving the train strike,” he said.

Meeting in the Roosevelt Room, Biden sat at the head of the conference table, flanked on either side by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the two smiling brightly at the start of the meeting.

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sat next to Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was next to Pelosi and appeared more reserved.

As the meeting began, Biden quipped, “I’m sure this is going to go very quickly” to reach agreement on everything. Lawmakers spent a bit more than an hour with the president, who was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and senior aides.

McCarthy is working to become speaker in January, though he must first overcome dissent within the GOP conference to win a floor vote on Jan. 3. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, McCarthy said Biden “got an indication that it’s going to be different” once Republicans take control of the House.

The GOP House leader, who has hardly spoken with Biden during the president’s first two years in office, said “I can work with anybody,” but that the Nov. 8 midterm elections show that “America likes a check and balance.”

Schumer and Pelosi described it as a “good” and “productive” meeting as they left the White House.

“There was good will in the room,” Schumer said, saying they were “trying to have a meeting of the minds.”

All the leaders said their preference was to pass a comprehensive spending bill for the fiscal year, rather than a continuing resolution that largely maintains existing funding levels.

“If we don’t have an option we may have to have a yearlong” stop-gap bill, Pelosi added.

McCarthy, who has promised to look more critically at the Biden administration’s requests for Ukraine aid, told reporters that, “I’m not for a blank check for anything.” He said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to more funding, but wanted to ensure “there’s accountability and audits.”

Congress is also taking up legislation to codify same-sex marriage, raise the debt limit and reform the Electoral Count Act in a bid to prevent another attempt like in 2020 when then-President Donald Trump and allied lawmakers tried to overturn the will of voters in the presidential election he lost to Biden. The Senate is set to take up the marriage bill on Tuesday, and the House will have to approve it before it goes to Biden’s desk.

“We’re going to find other areas of common ground, I hope,” Biden added, “because the American people want us to work together.”

Republicans are set to hold a narrow majority in the House come January, while Democrats are retaining control of the Senate. A runoff election in Georgia next week will determine whether Biden’s party will hold a 51-49 majority or Vice President Harris will be needed to break a 50-50 tie.
…

A Pentagon report warns that China now has more than 400 nuclear warheads, approximately doubling its nuclear arsenal in just two years, while its military has increased “unsafe” and “unprofessional” military behavior toward the United States and its allies in the region, especially Taiwan.

The pace of China’s accelerating nuclear expansion may enable Beijing to field a stockpile of about 1,500 warheads by 2035, according to the Pentagon’s annual “China Military Power” report to Congress that was released Tuesday.

The United States’ nuclear arsenal, with an estimated 3,800 warheads in active status, would still dwarf China’s.

The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) launched approximately 135 ballistic missiles for testing and training in 2021, “more than the rest of the world combined, excluding ballistic missile employment in conflict zones,” according to the report. It also continued to construct three intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silo fields, which will contain at least 300 new ICBM silos.

The Pentagon report was based on information about China’s military capabilities that was collected through December 2021, but it also accounted for some major events in 2022, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, according to a senior defense official.

Bradley Bowman, a veteran and senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the “quantity and quality” of Chinese missiles is “particularly concerning.”

“If one looks at the capability and capacity of China’s missile arsenal, it’s breathtaking,” Bowman said, adding that China’s military modernization has “methodically and deliberately gone after capabilities specifically designed to defeat the United States.”

South China Sea

China also has increased the number of “unsafe and unprofessional” encounters with the U.S. military and its allies and partners in the region, including Australia.

“We’ve seen more coercive and aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region, including some of which we would highlight as being dangerous,” the senior defense official said, citing aircraft aerobatics, lasing and discharging objects as examples.

On Tuesday, China said it had “tracked and dispelled” a U.S. warship from waters near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Beijing considers much of the resource-rich sea its territory — despite the territorial claims of other nations — and has created hundreds of hectares of artificial islands to bolster its claims.

The U.S. Navy confirmed to VOA the USS Chancellorsville guided-missile cruiser conducted a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) near the Spratly Islands Tuesday but described China’s statement about the mission as “false.”

“USS Chancellorsville (CG 62) conducted this FONOP in accordance with international law and then continued on to conduct normal operations in waters where high seas freedoms apply,” the Navy said in a statement.

“The United States is defending every nation’s right to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as USS Chancellorsville did here. Nothing the PRC says otherwise will deter us,” the Navy added, describing China’s claims to the Spratly Islands as “excessive” and “illegitimate.”

The U.S. frequently conducts these operations in the South China Sea to challenge the territorial claims of China and others and to promote free passage through international waters that carry half the world’s merchant fleet tonnage, worth trillions of dollars each year.

An international court ruling in The Hague held that China had no historic title over the South China Sea, but Beijing has ignored the decision.

‘New normal’ around Taiwan

China has stated it wants to have the ability to control Taiwan, by force if necessary, by 2027, and officials have seen an “elevated level of new, intimidating and coercive activity” around the island. China considers Taiwan a wayward province.

“I don’t see an imminent invasion. I think what we do see is sort of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) establishing kind of a new normal in terms of the level of military activity around Taiwan following the speaker’s visit,” a senior defense official told reporters at the Pentagon.

China executed a high number of missile launches and military demonstrations around the Taiwan Strait during and immediately after Pelosi’s trip, which the speaker said was made to “stand by” the democratic island and honor the U.S. commitment made to Taiwan under a 1979 law.

Since then, China has lowered the number of aggressive actions around Taiwan but has not reduced its aggressive behavior to the level it was prior to her visit.

“Strait centerline crossings have become increasingly, you know, sort of routinized. In contrast, those used to be something that the PRC reserved for relatively rare occasions where they wanted to send sort of more of a political signal,” the senior defense official said.

Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe told U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Cambodia last week that Beijing considers Taiwan to be a “red line,” according to a statement provided by the Chinese Ministry of Defense.

“Taiwan is China’s. Taiwan and the resolution of the Taiwan issue is China’s own affair in which no outside force has the right to intervene,” Wei said, according to the statement.

Russia and beyond

China has continued its military cooperation with Russia. In 2021, a large-scale joint exercise with Russia’s army was conducted on Chinese soil for the first time. The drills were known as Zapad/Interaction.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, a senior defense official said Beijing has not provided direct military assistance to Moscow but has supported Russia by amplifying Russian disinformation and propaganda.

“Russia’s value as a partner to the PRC remains high,” the official said.

China has the world’s largest navy in terms of ship numbers, with a battle force of about 340 ships and submarines. China’s army, according to the report, has 975,000 active duty members, and Beijing’s aviation force is the largest in the region and third-largest in the world, with more than 2,800 aircraft.

The report added that in addition to China’s base in the small African nation of Djibouti, Beijing has considered several other nations for future Chinese military facilities ranging from Cambodia to Tajikistan to Kenya.

Cyber-enabled espionage by China also remains a “sophisticated, persistent threat,” according to the report. The Pentagon accuses China’s military of attempting to take radiation hardened integrated circuits, gyroscopes, syntactic foam trade secrets, military communication jamming equipment, aviation technologies, anti-submarine warfare capabilities, and other technologies.

Responding to VOA at the Pentagon earlier in November, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “China is the one country out there that geopolitically has the power potential to be a significant challenge to the United States.”

He added that China wants to have the top military in the world by 2049 and has made gains in cyber, space, land, sea and air, but stressed that the United States’ military will not let the Chinese military surpass it.

“And as long as we remain No. 1, then we will deter the war that people worry about, a great power war between China and the United States,” Milley said.
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Twitter has rolled back a policy that was aimed at tackling misinformation related to COVID-19 on the social media platform, lending itself to the risk of a potential surge in false claims even as cases rise in China and some parts of the world.

The move also comes amid concerns of Twitter’s ability to fight misinformation after it let go about half of its staff, including those involved in content moderation, under new boss Elon Musk.

“Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” according to an update on its blog page. The update was first reported by CNN on Tuesday.

The specific measures that Twitter will drop were not immediately clear, and the company did not immediately respond to a request to share more information.

At the onset of COVID in 2020, Twitter instated a number of measures including labels and warning messages on tweets with disputed information about the health crisis and a framework to have users remove tweets that advanced harmfully false claims related to vaccines.

Meta Platforms Inc-owned META.O Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s GOOGL.O YouTube services employed similar measures, which are currently in place.

Early this year, Twitter said that since March 2021 it had stopped enforcing a “civic integrity policy” related to lies about the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Billionaire Musk took over Twitter on Oct. 27, paying $44 billion for the company, and has moved quickly to initiate a number of changes to product and staff. Musk said on Oct. 29 he would set up a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump made headlines over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend after it was revealed he hosted two men known for making virulently antisemitic statements for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort.

In the meeting, Trump reportedly sat down with the rapper and fashion designer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, as well as Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist who has promoted people with white nationalist views and has denied the reality of the Holocaust.

Trump later claimed he was not aware that Ye was planning to bring Fuentes to the meeting, but he can hardly have been unaware of the recent antisemitic comments by the rapper that caused major companies, including sporting goods giant Adidas, to sever ties with him.

The meeting took place scarcely a week after Trump officially declared himself a candidate for president in 2024 and harked back to his 2016 campaign when his willingness to associate with fringe figures on the far right made the Republican establishment hesitant to embrace him.

Fringe candidates

Republicans are still stinging from the results of the midterm elections in which they failed to capture the Senate and only eked out a slim majority in their takeover of the House of Representatives. Many blamed the poor showing largely on Trump, whose hand-picked candidates — usually chosen for their willingness to repeat his false claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him — performed poorly.

On Monday, the deadline for counties in the state of Arizona to certify the results of the November 8 election, Trump was still posting false claims of widespread fraud and election irregularities, which he has blamed for his favored candidates’ losses in that state.

Some county-level officials who supported Trump’s claims on Monday refused to certify the election results, though they are expected to be compelled to do so by court challenges, given the lack of evidence of malfeasance.

Now, with Trump seeking the party’s backing for another run at the White House, experts wonder whether his continued association with extremist figures, combined with another unsuccessful election, will finally be too much for the broader GOP.

While the most prominent members of the party have avoided discussing Trump’s association with Ye and Fuentes, others are speaking out.

“President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites,” Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy wrote on Twitter Monday. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.”

In an appearance on CNN Sunday, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with (an) avowed racist or antisemite. And so, it’s very troubling and it shouldn’t happen, and we need to avoid … empowering the extremes.”

Not all Republicans came down hard on Trump. Politico reported that South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds said he wouldn’t “condemn anybody” even though Fuentes is “not somebody that I would have a meeting with.”

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley told Politico, “It’s a free country, [Trump] can do whatever he wants.”

Another political ‘fumble’

“Trump has long played footsie with people who espouse horrifying, bigoted beliefs,” Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA. “This dinner is only the latest incidence of what is a very familiar trend. Trump is now a candidate seeking a third straight Republican presidential nomination. We’ll just have to see if enough Republicans are tired of him and prefer to go with a different option.”

“The private dinner with [Ye] West could have generated attention in the mainstream press and lots of likes from the trollish quarters of the nationalist right, even if it would have further alienated some Jewish supporters,” Chris Stirewalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA.

Stirewalt, the former political editor of Fox News Channel, added, “But even if it was just because of indifferent or sloppy staff work, hosting Fuentes at exactly the moment that mainstream Republicans are reconsidering their relationship with Trump following the bad turn he gave the GOP in midterms was yet another in a series of fumbles by the former president.”

Blaming Ye

On Sunday, Trump was still dealing with the fallout from the meeting and used a post on his social networking site, Truth Social, to point the finger at Ye for bringing Fuentes to his home unannounced.

Accounts of what went on in the meeting included Ye asking Trump to consider running with him, in the role of vice-presidential candidate in 2024.

“So, I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice,'” Trump wrote.

“He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY!”

Easy access

Taking Trump at his word that he didn’t expect Ye to bring Fuentes, analysts still see the fact that a known Holocaust denier made it in to see the former president as indicative of the kind of organization Trump tends to run, whether in office or out of it.

“It reflects the fact that at Mar-a-Lago, as in the Oval Office, there’s virtually no screening process to determine who gets in to see the ‘great man,'” William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, told VOA. “And that is by design, because Donald Trump mistrusts people who try to manage him or screen the people he meets with or talks with.”

Galston said Trump might be willing to continue associating with Ye out of a belief that the relationship will eventually benefit him.

“He has a long history of not deserting people that he thinks may be helpful to him down the road,” Galston said.

In the case of Ye, he said, that might be in Trump’s search for a larger share of the African American vote.

“Trump has this persistent fantasy that he’s enormously popular among Black men,” Galston said. “And that the Black men he anoints are influencers and thought leaders within that group.”
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The United States should end its prosecution of Julian Assange, leading media outlets from the United States and Europe that had collaborated with the WikiLeaks founder said on Monday, citing press freedom concerns.

“This indictment sets a dangerous precedent and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press,” editors and publishers of The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País said in an open letter.

Assange is wanted by U.S. authorities on 18 counts, including a spying charge, related to WikiLeaks’ release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables. His supporters say he is an anti-establishment hero who has been victimized because he exposed U.S. wrongdoing, including in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Monday marked 12 years since those media outlets collaborated to release excerpts from over 250,000 documents obtained by Assange in the “Cablegate” leak.

The material was leaked to WikiLeaks by the then-American soldier Chelsea Manning and revealed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy around the globe. The documents exposed “corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale,” the letter said.

In August, a group of journalists and lawyers sued the CIA and its former director, Mike Pompeo, over allegations the intelligence agency spied on them when they visited Assange during his stay in Ecuador’s embassy in London.

Assange spent seven years in the embassy before being dragged out and jailed in 2019 for breaching bail conditions. He has remained in prison in London while his extradition case is decided. If extradited to the United States, he faces a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum-security prison.

His legal team has appealed to the High Court in London to block his extradition in a legal battle that has dragged on for more than a decade.

“Publishing is not a crime,” the media outlets said in their Monday letter.
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The Supreme Court is making a fuller reopening to the public following more than two and a half years of closures related to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Beginning Thursday, the high court will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to the Supreme Court’s website. The high court closed to the public in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

In October, the high court began allowing the public to attend arguments in the courtroom again on the approximately six days a month the court hears arguments, but the court building remained closed to visitors at other times. 

The high court initially postponed arguments because of the pandemic, then started hearing arguments by phone. The justices began hearing arguments in the courtroom again in October 2021 but without the public present. 
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“We the People” is Jill Biden’s holiday theme with White House decorations designed for “the people” to see themselves in the tree ornaments, mantel displays, mirrors and do-it-yourself creations that have turned the mansion’s public spaces into a winter wonderland.

“The soul of our nation is, and has always been, ‘We the People,'” the first lady said at a White House event honoring the volunteers who decorated over Thanksgiving weekend. “And that is what inspired this year’s White House holiday decoration.”

“The values that unite us can be found all around you, a belief in possibility and optimism and unity,” Jill Biden said. “Room by room, we represent what brings us together during the holidays and throughout the year.”

Public rooms are dedicated to unifying forces: honoring and remembering deceased loved ones, words and stories, kindness and gratitude, food and traditions, nature and recreation, songs and sounds, unity and hope, faith and light, and children.

A burst of pine aroma hits visitors as they step inside the East Wing and come upon trees adorned with mirrored Gold Star ornaments bearing the names of fallen service members.

Winter trees, woodland animals and glowing lanterns placed along the hallway help give the feeling of walking through snow.

Likenesses of Biden family pets — Commander and Willow, the dog and cat — first appear at the end of the hallway before they are seen later in the Vermeil Room, which celebrates kindness and gratitude, and the State Dining Room, which highlights children.

Recipes contributed by the small army of volunteer decorators spruce up the China Room’s mantel. Handwritten ones — for apple crisp and pizzelle, an Italian cookie — are family recipes shared by the first lady.

Aides say she was inspired by people she met while traveling around the country and by the nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

A copy of the Declaration of Independence is on display in the library, while the always-show-stopping 300-pound (136 kilogram) gingerbread White House this year includes a sugar cookie replica of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the documents were signed.

The executive pastry chef used 20 sheets of sugar cookie dough, 30 sheets of gingerbread dough, 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of pastillage, 30 pounds (14 kilograms) of chocolate and 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of royal icing to create the gingerbread and sugar cookie masterpiece.

A new addition to the White House collection this year is a menorah, which is lit nightly during the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah. White House carpenters built the menorah out of wood that was saved from a Truman-era renovation and sterling silver candle cups.

Some 50,000 visitors are expected to pass through the White House for the holidays, including tourists and guests invited to nearly a month’s worth of receptions. Among them will be French President Emmanuel Macron, who will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House Thursday and be honored at a state dinner, the first of the Biden administration.

More than 150 volunteers, including two of the first lady’s sisters, helped decorate the White House during the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The decorations include more than 83,000 twinkling lights on trees, garlands, wreaths and other displays, 77 Christmas trees and 25 wreaths on the White House exterior. Volunteers also used more than 12,000 ornaments, just under 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) of ribbon and more than 1,600 bells.

Some of the decorations are do-it-yourself projects that the first lady hopes people will be encouraged to recreate for themselves, aides said. They include plastic drinking cups turned into bells and table-top Christmas trees made from foam shapes and dollar store ramekins.

Groupings of snowy trees fill corners of the East Room, which reflects nature and recreation, and scenes from four national parks are depicted on each fireplace mantel: Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah.

In the Blue Room, the official White House Christmas tree — an 18 1/2-foot (5.6-meter) Concolor fir from Auburn, Pennsylvania — is decorated to represent unity and hope with handmade renderings of the official birds from all 57 territories, states and the District of Columbia.

The State Dining Room is dedicated to the next generation — children — and its trees are decorated with self-portrait ornaments made by students of the 2021 Teachers of the Year, “ensuring that children see themselves” in the décor, the White House said.

Hanging from the fireplace in the State Dining Room are the Biden family Christmas stockings.

“We the People” are celebrated again in the Grand Foyer and Cross Hall on the State Floor, where metal ribbons are inscribed with the names of all the states, territories and the District of Columbia.

As part of Joining Forces, her White House initiative to support military families, Jill Biden was joined by National Guard leaders from across the country, as well as National Guard families. Her late son, Beau Biden, was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard.

She met before the event with children from National Guard families, telling them she wanted to hear their stories because “you have served right alongside of your parents and you deserve to have your courage, and your sacrifice, recognized, too.”

The White House noted that the holiday guidebook given to visitors was designed by Daria Peoples, an African American children’s book author who lives in Las Vegas. Peoples is a former elementary school teacher who has written and illustrated a series of picture books to support children of color, including those who have experienced race-based trauma.
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday called on Congress to intervene to avert a potential rail strike that could occur as early as December 9, warning of a catastrophic economic impact if railroad service ground to a halt.

Biden asked lawmakers to adopt the tentative deal announced in September “without any modifications or delay – to avert a potentially crippling national rail shutdown” and added that up to 765,000 Americans “could be put out of work in the first two weeks alone.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers would take up legislation this week “to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt.”

On Monday, more than 400 groups called on Congress to intervene in the railroad labor standoff that threatens to idle shipments of food and fuel and strand travelers while inflicting billions of dollars of economic damage.

A rail traffic stoppage could freeze almost 30% of U.S. cargo shipments by weight, stoke inflation and cost the American economy as much as $2 billion per day by unleashing a cascade of transport woes affecting U.S. energy, agriculture, manufacturing, health care and retail sectors.

“A rail shutdown would devastate our economy,” Biden said. “Without freight rail, many U.S. industries would shut down … Communities could lose access to chemicals necessary to ensure clean drinking water. Farms and ranches across the country could be unable to feed their livestock.”

Biden hailed the contract deal that includes a 24% compounded wage increase over a five-year period from 2020 through 2024 and five annual $1,000 lump-sum payments.

Workers in four unions have rejected the tentative deal, while workers in eight unions have approved it.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have been involved in discussions with the rail industry, unions and agriculture industry stakeholders.

Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Commerce Committee, praised Biden’s call to Congress to act and said no one side was fully happy with the compromise contract deal “but the responsible thing to do is avoid the strike.”

The Association of American Railroads said “congressional action to prevent a work stoppage in this manner is appropriate … No one benefits from a rail work stoppage – not our customers, not rail employees and not the American economy.”

In a letter on Monday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, National Retail Federation, American Petroleum Institute, National Restaurant Association, American Trucking Associations and other groups warned that impacts of a potential strike could be felt as soon as December 5.

Biden said Congress “should set aside politics and partisan division and deliver for the American people. Congress should get this bill to my desk well in advance of December 9th so we can avoid disruption.”

“The risks to our nation’s economy and communities simply make a national rail strike unacceptable,” says the letter to congressional leaders first reported by Reuters, warning a strike could halt passenger railroad Amtrak and commuter rail services that “would disrupt up to 7 million travelers a day.”

Biden’s Presidential Emergency Board in August released the framework for the tentative deal forged in September between major railroads and a dozen unions representing 115,000 workers. Those carriers include Union Pacific, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Kansas City Southern.

Unions and railroads have until December 9 to resolve differences. If they do not, workers could strike or railroads could lock out employees — unless Congress intervenes. But railroads would halt hazardous materials shipments at least four days ahead of a strike deadline.
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