У листі з погрозами щодо «мінувань» згадувалися журналістки Радіо Свобода Ірина Сисак та Валерія Єгошина, а також фрілансерка Юлія Химерик
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За даними служби, він передавав розробки генеральному директору одного із російських машинобудівних заводів
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Washington — The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 2.8% annual rate from July through September, with consumers helping drive growth despite the weight of still-high interest rates.
Wednesday’s report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — did slow slightly from its 3% growth rate in the April-June quarter. But the latest figures still reflect surprising durability just as Americans assess the state of the economy in the final stretch of the presidential race.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, accelerated to a 3.7% annual pace last quarter, up from 2.8% in the April-June period. Exports also contributed to the third quarter’s growth, increasing at an 8.9% rate.
On the other hand, growth in business investment slowed sharply on a drop in investment in housing and in nonresidential buildings such as offices and warehouses. But spending on equipment surged.
The report is the first of three estimates the government will make of GDP growth for the third quarter of the year. The U.S. economy has continued to expand in the face of the much higher borrowing rates the Federal Reserve imposed in 2022 and 2023 in its drive to curb inflation. Despite widespread predictions that the economy would succumb to a recession, it has kept growing, with employers still hiring and consumers still spending.
In a sign that the nation’s households, whose purchases drive most of the economy, will continue spending, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index posted its biggest monthly gain since March 2021. The proportion of consumers who expect a recession in the next 12 months dropped to its lowest point since the board first posed that question in July 2022.
At the same time, the nation’s once-sizzling job market has lost some momentum. On Tuesday, the government reported that the number of job openings in the United States fell in September to its lowest level since January 2021. And employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month so far this year — a healthy number but down from a record 604,000 in 2021 as the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession, 377,000 in 2022 and 251,000 in 2023.
On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report that the economy added 120,000 jobs in October. That gain, though, will probably have been significantly held down by the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and by a strike at Boeing, the aviation giant, all of which temporarily knocked thousands of people off payrolls.
Wednesday’s report contained some encouraging news on inflation. The Fed’s favored inflation gauge — called the personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE — rose at just a 1.5% annual pace last quarter, down from 2.5% in the second quarter and the lowest figure in more than four years. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core PCE inflation was 2.2%, down from 2.8% in the April-June quarter.
Despite the continued progress on inflation, average prices still far exceed their pre-pandemic levels, which has exasperated many Americans and posed a challenge to Vice President Kamala Harris’ prospects in her race against former President Donald Trump. Most mainstream economists have suggested, though, that Trump’s policy proposals, unlike Harris’, would worsen inflation.
At its most recent meeting last month, the Fed was satisfied enough with its progress against inflation — and concerned enough by the slowing job market — to slash its benchmark rate by a hefty half percentage point, its first and largest rate cut in more than four years. When it meets next week, the Fed is expected to announce another rate cut, this one by a more typical quarter-point.
The central bank’s policymakers have also signaled that they expect to cut their key rate again at their final two meetings this year, in November and December. And they envision four more rate cuts in 2025 and two in 2026. The cumulative result of the Fed’s rate cuts, over time, will likely be lower borrowing rates for consumers and businesses.
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New York — On a drizzly day in New York’s Chinatown, journalist April Xu suggested stopping at a bakery for a snack.
“But not Fay Da,” she said, referring to a bakery on the nearby corner.
Xu doesn’t go to Fay Da Bakery anymore. Not since she reported on how New York’s largest Chinese bakery chain had allegedly stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages from its employees.
Many people feel connected to the famous bakery, Xu told VOA. “When they saw the news, they were shocked,” she said.
In April, the bakery agreed to a $940,000 settlement to resolve claims by former and current employees.
It was a big story — the kind that the nonprofit media outlet Documented, where she works, likes to tell. Under-covered stories on issues such as wage theft and housing are the focus of this immigrant-focused news outlet.
With immigration a polarizing issue in the U.S. presidential election, the news outlet finds itself balancing its typical coverage with debunking false claims. As racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric is pushed by the far-right, Documented’s team sees their local coverage of immigration as crucial.
The inspiration for Documented came from dissatisfaction with how mainstream media often covered immigration, said co-founder Mazin Sidahmed.
Born in Sudan, Sidahmed worked for The Guardian in New York and other media before helping set up his own outlet in 2018.
“No one was really covering how those big federal policy shifts were playing out at the local level in big cities like New York, where most immigrants actually live,” Sidahmed told VOA at the outlet’s office in the Financial District.
“There was a real hole and a need for a site that was covering how federal immigration policy was playing out locally,” he said.
A commitment to meeting the audience’s needs has been central to Documented’s success, Sidahmed said.
Early on, the outlet launched a needs assessment focused on Spanish-speaking audiences. It was hugely successful in figuring out how to best serve that community, according to Sidahmed.
They found that respondents felt that they were typically portrayed in the media as either criminals or victims, and they wanted news that would help them navigate government resources.
When Documented learned that the community got most of its news from WhatsApp groups, it started a Spanish-language news service on the app.
“Over the past five years, it has really grown into an engine that’s driving a lot of our most powerful journalism,” Sidahmed said. “But getting it to that point was incredibly hard and challenging, and it involved building a lot of trust.”
In addition to English and Spanish, Documented publishes in Mandarin and Haitian Creole. To better serve the Chinese community, Documented operates a news account on WeChat. For the Caribbean community, it uses the platform NextDoor.
“We feel that we can’t ask people to go to our website to consume news every day. We should deliver the news to them,” Xu said.
Platforms like WhatsApp and WeChat are two-way streets. Documented delivers news, and audiences can directly contact reporters with story tips or questions.
That way, said Sidahmed, Documented can produce content that is in service of their needs.
It also publishes content that helps audiences navigate government bureaucracy or access resources.
“I don’t think there’s any mainstream news outlet that is really working with immigrants directly in that way, to serve them, as opposed to just covering them,” said Fisayo Okare. Originally from Nigeria, she writes the outlet’s newsletter.
In 2022, New York City was home to about 3.1 million immigrants — accounting for 38% of the city’s total population — according to a report from the mayor’s office.
Many of Documented’s staffers count themselves among that population. Okare thinks their work is enhanced by the team’s background.
“As an immigrant myself, I tend to understand what other immigrants are going through,” she said. “We pride ourselves on not just writing about immigrants but writing for them.”
More recently, that has included correcting baseless claims about illegal immigration, including conspiracy theories that candidate Donald Trump repeated about Haitians in Ohio.
“Our role during this time has been to put out the right information whenever just completely wrong or inaccurate information is shared,” Okare said.
Documented has also bucked trends in the U.S., where the local news industry has been struggling for years.
Over the past two decades, the U.S. has lost more than one-third of its newspapers, according to a 2024 report by Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative. Almost 55 million people across the country have limited to no access to local news, the report found.
“When a city loses a local news institution, it has all of these other catastrophic effects on the city. People start to see their local issues in this nationalized lens and don’t feel as tethered and connected to their communities,” Sidahmed said.
The journalist is optimistic about the future. Documented is aiming to become the leading news source for the communities it is covering in New York, he said.
“We see an opportunity to rebuild local news and rewrite that contract between local news outlets and the communities that have typically had bad relationships with local news,” he said.
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Beijing — Beijing said Wednesday it had lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organization over the European Union’s decision to impose hefty tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars.
The extra taxes of up to 35% were announced Tuesday after an EU probe found Chinese state subsidies were undercutting European automakers, but the move has faced opposition from Germany and Hungary, which fear provoking Beijing’s ire and setting off a bitter trade war.
China slammed Brussels’s decision on Wednesday morning, saying it did not “agree with or accept” the tariffs and had filed a complaint under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism.
“China will… take all necessary measures to firmly protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies,” Beijing’s commerce ministry said.
EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis said Tuesday that “by adopting these proportionate and targeted measures after a rigorous investigation, we’re standing up for fair market practices and for the European industrial base.”
“We welcome competition, including in the electric vehicle sector, but it must be underpinned by fairness and a level playing field,” he said.
But Germany’s main auto industry association warned the tariffs heightened the risk of “a far-reaching trade conflict,” while a Chinese trade group slammed the “politically motivated” decision even as it urged dialogue between the two sides.
The duties will come on top of the current 10 percent on imports of electric vehicles from China.
The decision became law following its publication in the EU’s official journal on Tuesday, and the duties will enter into force from Wednesday.
Once they do, the tariffs will be definitive and last for five years.
The extra duties also apply, at various rates, to vehicles made in China by foreign groups such as Tesla, which faces a tariff of 7.85%.
Chinese car giant Geely — one of the country’s largest sellers of EVs — faces an extra duty of 18.8%, while SAIC will be hit with the highest at 35.3 percent.
Ailing companies
The tariffs do not have the support of the majority of the EU’s 27 member states but in a vote early this month, the opposition was not enough to block them, which would have required at least 15 states representing 65% of the bloc’s population.
The EU launched the probe in a bid to protect its automobile industry, which employs around 14 million people.
France, which pushed for the investigation, welcomed the decision.
“The European Union is taking a crucial decision to protect and defend our trade interests, at a time when our car industry needs our support more than ever,” French Finance Minister Antoine Armand said in a statement.
But Europe’s bigger carmakers, including German auto titan Volkswagen, have criticized the EU’s approach and have urged Brussels to resolve the issue through talks.
The extra tariffs are “a step backwards for free global trade and thus for prosperity, job preservation and growth in Europe,” the German Association of the Automotive Industry’s president Hildegard Mueller said on Tuesday after the announcement.
Volkswagen, which has been hit hard by rising competition in China, has previously said the tariffs would not improve the competitiveness of the European automotive industry.
That warning came weeks before the ailing giant announced plans on Monday to close at least three factories in Germany and cull tens of thousands of jobs.
Retaliatory moves
Talks continue between the EU and China, and the duties can be lifted if they reach a satisfactory agreement, but officials on both sides have pointed to differences.
Discussions have been focused on minimum prices that would replace the duties and force carmakers in China to sell vehicles at a certain cost to offset subsidies.
“We remain open to a possible alternative solution that would be effective in addressing the problems identified and WTO-compatible,” Dombrovskis said.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce to the EU urged Brussels and Beijing “to accelerate talks on establishing minimum prices and, ultimately, to eliminate these tariffs.”
The EU could now face Chinese retaliation, with Beijing already saying on October 8 it would impose provisional tariffs on European brandy.
Beijing has also launched probes into EU subsidies of some dairy and pork products imported into China.
Trade tensions between China and the EU are not limited to electric cars, with Brussels also investigating Chinese subsidies for solar panels and wind turbines.
The EU is not alone in levying heavy tariffs on Chinese electric cars.
Canada and the United States have in recent months imposed much higher tariffs of 100 percent on Chinese electric car imports.
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BEIJING — China’s stimulus efforts could come with a cost and they must be carried out alongside reforms to ensure sustainable economic growth, Liu Shijin, a former central bank adviser, said in remarks published Wednesday.
“Stimulus could come with a cost and we should combine stimulus with reforms,” Chinese media outlet Yicai quoted Liu as saying at a forum on Tuesday. Liu said funds should be used for enhancing areas that are critical for long-term economic development.
China should prioritize improving basic healthcare services for the country’s 300 million internal migrant workers as it faces a significant public healthcare shortfall, Liu said.
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that China is considering approving next week new debt issuance of more than 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) to help tackle hidden local debt and fund buybacks of idle land and reduce a giant inventory of unsold flats, in coming years.
Analysts expect such efforts to be a stabilizer for the economy rather than the instant growth booster that markets have craved.
China is struggling to tackle a debt overhang from previous stimulus. In 2008-2009, a 4 trillion yuan ($575 billion) spending package largely shielded China’s economy from the global financial crisis but saddled local governments with mountains of debt.
Liu said last month that China could issue ultra-long-term treasury bonds within two years to generate at least 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) worth of stimulus to the economy, according to state media.
At a key meeting in July, Chinese leaders outlined reform steps ranging from developing advanced industries to improving local government finances, but it remains unclear on how quickly such steps will be implemented.
China needs to expand its middle class group from around 400 million, currently about a third of the population – to 800-900 million in the next decade by speeding up urbanization and addressing disparities in urban-rural public services, Liu said.
But Liu cautioned against stimulus through “helicopter money,” or direct cash handouts for residents, arguing this would primarily benefit wealthier residents, while low-income groups would see minimal relief given their basic needs.
WASHINGTON — Powered by consumer spending, the U.S. economy likely kept expanding at a healthy pace from July through September despite the pressure of still-high interest rates.
The Commerce Department is expected to report Wednesday that the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — grew at a 2.6% annual pace last quarter, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. That would be down from a 3% annual rate in the April-June period. But it would still amount to a solid pace as Americans ponder the state of the economy in the final stretch of the presidential race.
Wednesday’s report is the first of three estimates the government will make of GDP growth for the third quarter of the year. The U.S. economy, the world’s biggest, has shown surprising resilience in the face of the much higher borrowing rates the Federal Reserve imposed in 2022 and 2023 in its drive to curb inflation. Despite widespread predictions that the economy would succumb to a recession, it has kept growing, with employers still hiring and consumers still spending.
In a sign that the nation’s households, whose purchases drive most of the economy, will continue spending, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index posted its biggest monthly gain since March 2021. The proportion of consumers who expect a recession in the next 12 months dropped to its lowest point since the board first posed that question in July 2022.
At the same time, the nation’s once-sizzling job market has lost some momentum. On Tuesday, the government reported that the number of job openings in the United States fell in September to its lowest level since January 2021. And employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month so far this year — a healthy number but down from a record 604,000 in 2021 as the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession, 377,000 in 2022 and 251,000 in 2023.
On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report that the economy added 120,000 jobs in October. That gain, though, will probably have been significantly held down by the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and by a strike at Boeing, the aviation giant, all of which temporarily knocked thousands of people off payrolls.
At its most recent meeting last month, the Fed was satisfied enough with its progress against inflation — and concerned enough by the slowing job market — to slash its benchmark rate by a hefty half percentage point, its first and largest rate cut in more than four years. When it meets next week, the Fed is expected to announce another rate cut, this one by a more typical quarter-point.
The policymakers have also signaled that they expect to cut their key rate again at their final two meetings this year, in November and December. And they envision four more rate cuts in 2025 and two in 2026. The cumulative result of the Fed’s rate cuts, over time, will likely be lower borrowing rates for consumers and businesses.
Inflation, which reached a four-decade high of 9.1% in June 2022, has tumbled to 2.4%, barely above the Fed’s 2% target. But average prices still far exceed their pre-pandemic levels, which has exasperated many Americans and posed a challenge to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential prospects in her race against former President Donald Trump.
Most mainstream economists have suggested, though, that Trump’s policy proposals, unlike Harris’, would worsen inflation.
«Спальники, каремати, фляги та інші речі залишатимуться у бійців. Їм більше не доведеться думати про їх здачу»
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У регіоні зафіксували 31 вибух у Хотінській, Юнаківській, Миропільській, Андріяшівській громаді
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CAMP VERDE, Ariz. — U.S. forest managers have finalized a land exchange with the Yavapai-Apache Nation that has been decades in the making and will significantly expand the size of the tribe’s reservation in Arizona’s Verde Valley, tribal leaders announced Tuesday.
As part of the arrangement, six parcels of private land acquired over the years by the tribe will be traded to the U.S. Forest Service in exchange for the tribe gaining ownership of 12.95 square kilometers of national forest land that is part of the tribe’s ancestral homelands. The tribe will host a signing ceremony next week to celebrate the exchange, which was first proposed in 1996.
“This is a critical step in our history and vital to the nation’s cultural and economic recovery and future prosperity,” Yavapai-Apache Chairwoman Tanya Lewis said in a post on the tribe’s website.
Prescott National Forest Supervisor Sarah Clawson said in a statement that there had been many delays and changes to the proposal over the years, but the tribe and the Forest Service never lost sight of developing an agreement that would benefit both public and tribal lands.
The federal government has made strides over recent years to protect more lands held sacred by Native American tribes, to develop more arrangements for incorporating Indigenous knowledge into management of public lands and to streamline regulations for putting land into trust for tribes.
The Yavapai-Apache Nation is made up of two distinct groups of people — the Wipuhk’a’bah and the Dil’zhe’e. Their homelands spanned more than 41,440 square kilometers of what is now central Arizona. After the discovery of gold in the 1860s near Prescott, the federal government carved out only a fraction to establish a reservation. The inhabitants eventually were forced from the land, and it wasn’t until the early 1900s that they were able to resettle a tiny portion of the area.
In the Verde Valley, the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s reservation lands are currently comprised of less than 7.77 square kilometers near Camp Verde. The small land base hasn’t been enough to develop economic opportunities or to meet housing needs, Lewis said, pointing to dozens of families who are on a waiting list for new homes.
Lewis said that in acknowledgment of the past removal of the Yavapai-Apache people from their homelands, the preamble to the tribal constitution recognizes that land acquisition is among the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s responsibilities.
Aside from growing the reservation, the exchange will bolster efforts by federal land managers to protect the headwaters of the Verde River and ensure the historic Yavapai Ranch is not sold for development. The agreement also will improve recreational access to portions of four national forests in Arizona.
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The outcome of the U.S. election and the possible changes in Washington’s foreign policy are of special significance to the 3 million American expatriates eligible to vote in next week’s U.S. presidential elections. In few places is that outcome more tangible than in Ukraine, where a few thousand Americans have, for various reasons, chosen to live after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Lesia Bakalets speaks to several expatriates in Ukraine and sends this report from Kyiv.
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NEW YORK — A Kenyan man who plotted a 9/11-style attack on a U.S. building was training as a commercial pilot in the Philippines when his plans were interrupted, a federal prosecutor told a New York jury Tuesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Bodansky told a federal jury in Manhattan that Cholo Abdi Abdullah plotted an attack for four years that he hoped to carry out on behalf of the terrorist organization al-Shabab.
He said Abdullah was almost finished with his two-year pilot training when he was arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines on local charges. He was transferred in December 2020 to U.S. law enforcement authorities, who charged him with terrorism-related crimes.
Abdullah underwent training in explosives and how to operate in secret and avoid detection before moving to the Philippines in 2017 to begin intensive training for a commercial pilot’s license, the prosecutor said.
Abdullah posed as an aspiring commercial pilot even though his true intention was to locate a building in the United States where he could carry out a suicide attack from the cockpit by slamming his plane into a building, Bodansky told the jury.
He said Abdullah was “planning for four years a 9/11-style attack” only to have it thwarted with his arrest.
The defendant, operating from a Nairobi hotel, used the internet to research how to breach a cockpit door and looked up a 2019 terrorist attack that killed some 21 people, Bodansky said. Among those killed in that attack was an American businessman who survived the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Prosecutors have said Abdullah also researched information “about the tallest building in a major U.S. city” before he was caught.
Abdullah, who is representing himself and once pleaded not guilty, declined to give an opening statement and did not actively participate in questioning witnesses Tuesday.
In court papers filed before the trial, prosecutors told the judge that they understood “through standby counsel that the defendant maintains his position that he ‘wants to merely sit passively during the trial, not oppose the prosecution and whatever the outcome, he would accept the outcome because he does not believe that this is a legitimate system.'”
The State Department in 2008 designated al-Shabab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, as a foreign terrorist organization. The militant group is an al-Qaida affiliate that has fought to establish an Islamic state in Somalia based on Shariah law.
If convicted, Abdullah faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison. His trial is expected to last three weeks.
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LOS ANGELES — Teri Garr, the quirky comedy actor who rose from background dancer in Elvis Presley movies to co-star of such favorites as Young Frankenstein and Tootsie, has died. She was 79.
Garr died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer said. Garr battled other health problems in recent years and underwent an operation in January 2007 to repair an aneurysm.
Admirers took to social media in her honor, with writer-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul saying: “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”
The actor, who was sometimes credited as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann during her long career, seemed destined for show business from her childhood.
Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comedian; her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began dance lessons at 6 and by 14 was dancing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies.
She was 16 when she joined the road company of West Side Story in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 she began appearing in bit parts in films.
She recalled in a 1988 interview how she won the West Side Story role. After being dropped from her first audition, she returned a day later in different clothes and was accepted.
From there, the blonde, statuesque Garr found steady work dancing in movies, and she appeared in the chorus of nine Presley films, including Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout and Clambake.
She also appeared on numerous television shows, including Star Trek, Dr. Kildare and Batman, and was a featured dancer on the rock ‘n’ roll music show Shindig, the rock concert performance T.A.M.I. and a cast member of The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.
Her big film break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in 1974’s Francis Ford Coppola thriller The Conversation. That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he would hire her for the role of Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in 1974’s Young Frankenstein — if she could speak with a German accent.
“Cher had this German woman, Renata, making wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once recalled.
The film established her as a talented comedy performer, with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael proclaiming her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen.”
Her big smile and off-center appeal helped land her roles in Oh God! opposite George Burns and John Denver, Mr. Mom (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and Tootsie in which she played the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange.
Although best known for comedy, Garr showed in such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion and The Escape Artist that she could handle drama equally well.
She had a flair for spontaneous humor, often playing David Letterman’s foil during guest appearances on NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman early in its run.
Her appearances became so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so convincing, that for a time rumors cropped up that they were romantically involved. Years later, Letterman credited those early appearances with helping make the show a hit.
It was also during those years that Garr began to feel something in her right leg. It began in 1983 and eventually spread to her right arm. By 1999 the symptoms had become so severe that she consulted a doctor. The diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.
For three years Garr didn’t reveal her illness.
“I was afraid that I wouldn’t get work,” she explained in a 2003 interview. “People hear MS and think, ‘Oh, my God, the person has two days to live.'”
After going public, she became a spokeswoman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, making humorous speeches to gatherings in the U.S. and Canada.
“You have to find your center and roll with the punches because that’s a hard thing to do: to have people pity you,” she said in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I’m OK is tiresome.”
She also continued to act, appearing on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Greetings From Tucson, Life With Bonnie and other TV shows. She also had a brief recurring role on Friends in the 1990s as Lisa Kudrow’s mother. After several failed romances, Garr married contractor John O’Neill in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, before divorcing in 1996.
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Washington — Resisting pressure from Beijing to publicly reject independence for Taiwan, the Biden administration underscores there is no change in its “one China” policy which takes no stand on the issue.
“We do not support Taiwan independence. We expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, free from coercion,” a senior administration official told VOA Tuesday, underscoring long-standing U.S. policy on the thorny issue. “We oppose unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.”
The confirmation followed reports that during their last in-person meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping asked U.S. President Joe Biden to change the language the administration uses when discussing its position on Taiwan independence.
On the sidelines of the APEC meeting near San Francisco last November, Xi reportedly told Biden he wants the U.S. to use language stating it “opposes” instead of “does not support” independence for Taiwan, the current phrase used in U.S. official statements.
The administration has been “consistent on our long-standing one China policy,” the official said. Under the policy, the U.S. acknowledges but does not endorse Beijing’s view that it has sovereignty over Taiwan. It considers Taiwan’s status as unsettled.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.
Beijing’s push for stronger language is not new. Ahead of the Biden-Xi meeting last year, VOA reported that Foreign Minister Wang Yi also made the request in his meetings with U.S. counterparts.
The Chinese have been asking for this shift, and in some instances falsely asserting that the U.S. position is to oppose Taiwanese independence, said Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“I find it unlikely that the United States will take this advice without some substantial concession from China on its own position about Taiwan,” Cooper told VOA. “I doubt this will get any traction in Washington unless it is part of a longer-term conversation about de-escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait.”
Biden and Xi likely to meet again in person next month in South America, where both are expected to attend an APEC meeting in Lima, Peru, and a G-20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It will likely be Biden’s last meeting with the Chinese leader before leaving office in January.
“It will probably be an opportunity for the two leaders to say goodbye and for their teams to wrap up a couple of loose ends, perhaps including an announcement or two on people-to-people issues,” said Cooper.
Beijing is no doubt gearing up for a change in U.S. administration ahead of the election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Both have vowed to be tough on China, with Trump saying he would impose “150% to 200%” tariffs on China if it sought to blockade Taiwan.
Flared tensions
Cross-strait tensions have flared many times in recent years. On Sunday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said Chinese warplanes and warships carried out another “combat patrol” near the island, following Beijing’s threat to respond with countermeasures to a $2 billion arms sale by the United States.
The administration announced it approved the package last week, which includes its first delivery of three National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, advanced weapons that have been battle-tested in Ukraine.
Despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, the U.S. is Taiwan’s strongest unofficial ally and Washington is legally bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taipei with the means to defend itself.
China “strongly condemns” the sale. “We will take resolute countermeasures and take all measures necessary to firmly defend national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson.
VOA’s Nike Ching contributed to this story.
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NAIROBI, KENYA — Some companies are coming up with creative ways of making electric vehicles a more realistic option in power-challenged areas of Africa.
Countries in Africa have been slow adopters of battery-powered vehicles because finding reliable sources of electricity is a challenge in many places.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies described Africa as “the most energy-deficient continent in the world” and said that any progress made in electricity access in the last five years has been reversed by the pandemic and population growth.
Onesmus Otieno, for one, regrets trading in his diesel-powered motor bike for an electric one. He earns his living making deliveries and ferrying passengers around Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, with his bike.
The two-wheeled taxis popularly known as “boda boda” in Swahili are commonly used in Kenya and throughout Africa. Kenyan authorities recently introduced the electric bikes to phase out diesel ones. Otieno is among the few riders who adopted them, but he said finding a place to charge his bike has been a headache.
Sometimes the battery dies while he is carrying a customer, he said, while a charging station is far away. So, he has to end that trip and cancel other requests.
To address the problem, Chinese company Beijing Sebo created a mobile application that allows users of EVs to request a charge through the app. Then, charging equipment is brought to the user’s location.
Lin Lin, general manager for overseas business of Beijing Sebo, said because the company produces the equipment, it can control costs.
“We can deploy the product … in any country they need, and they don’t need to build or fix charging stations,” Lin said. “We can move to the location of the user, and we can bring electricity to electric vehicles.”
Lin said the mobile charging vans use electricity generated from solid waste and can charge up to five cars at one time for about $7 per vehicle — less for a motorbike.
Countries in Africa have been slow to adopt electric vehicles because there is a lack of infrastructure to support the technology, analysts say. The cost of EVs is another barrier, said clean energy expert Ajay Mathur.
”Yes, the capital cost is more,” Mathur said. “The first cost is more, but you recover it in about six years or so. We are at the beginning of the revolution.”
Electric motor bike maker Spiro offers a battery-swapping service in several countries to address the lack of EV infrastructure.
But studies show that for many African countries, access to reliable and affordable electricity remains a challenge. There are frequent power cuts, outages and voltage fluctuations in several regions.
Companies such as Beijing Sebo and Spiro are finding ways around the lack of power in Africa.
”We want to solve the problem of charging anxiety anywhere you are,” Lin said.
This story originated in VOA’s Mandarin Service.
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Для учнів 4, 9 та 11 класів не відновлюватимуть Державну підсумкову атестацію (ДПА)
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За даними слідства, лікар Одеської обласної клінічної лікарні залучив інших лікарів і посадовців МСЕК до сприяння в уникненні мобілізації
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