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Biden hails ‘real progress’ after four hours of talks with China’s Xi

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During their four-hour-long meeting, Biden and Xi also took a walk in the gardens at the Filoli Estate (pic Aljazeera)

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have concluded more than four hours of talks with a commitment to stabilise strained bilateral ties and restore some military-to-military communications.

The two leaders met on Wednesday for the first time in a year at Fioli Estate, a country retreat about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of San Francisco.

After a handshake and smiles, they sat down for talks that lasted more than two hours.  Next was a working lunch with key officials, followed by a stroll around the manicured gardens.

Writing on social media site X, Biden said he valued the conversation he had with Xi.  “I think it’s paramount that we understand each other clearly, leader to leader,” Biden wrote. “There are critical global challenges that demand our joint leadership. And today, we made real progress.”

It was the two leaders’ first face-to-face meeting in a year and it coincided with the annual summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) a short drive away in San Francisco.

“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” Xi told Biden.

Officials on both sides of the Pacific set expectations low ahead of the meeting, given longstanding disagreements over issues from Taiwan to the South China Sea, the Israel – Hamas war, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, North Korea and human rights.

In the event, they reached an agreement to reopen military contacts that were cut after then-House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own, in August 2022.

A US official told reporters there was significant back and forth between the two leaders over Taiwan, with Biden chiding China over its massive military build-up around the island, and asking it to respect the territory’s electoral process. Presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for January, with William Lai, the current vice president and a man Beijing has labelled a “separatist” leading opinion polls.

Xi, meanwhile, stressed the island was part of China.

“The US side should  stop arming Taiwan, and support China’s peaceful reunification,” Xi told Biden, according to China’s Foreign Ministry. “China will realise reunification, and this is unstoppable.”

Cooperation between the US and China, which make up the world’s two largest economies, remains vital for progress on global issues such as climate change. But both sides have expressed mounting frustration with the other, disagreeing over issues such as technology and global politics.

Washington has accused China of offering Russia an economic lifeline as Moscow continues its war in Ukaraine.

The two sides have also differed on the Middle East, where China has called for a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas. The US, meanwhile, has thrown its support behind Israel and used its position on the United Nations Security Council to veto calls for a ceasefire.

Military contacts

After the meeting ended, a senior US official told the Associated Press news agency that the military communication agreements would mean that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would be able to meet his Chinese counterpart once one has been appointed.

Beijing is currently without a defence minister after Li Shangfu, who was under US sanctions and had rebuffed attempts at contact, was fired without explanation last month. He had disappeared from public view two months earlier.

The door will also open for contacts at more junior levels, including allowing the Hawaii-based commander of US Pacific forces to engage with counterpart theatre commanders, the official added. The agreement is also expected to mean more operational engagements between ship drivers and others in each country.

Xi said after the meeting that the resumption of high-level military dialogues was made on the basis of equity and respect, according to a statement released by China Central Television, the state broadcaster.

The talks also led to an agreement to cooperate on tackling the source of fentanyl, the highly addictive synthetic opioid that has become a leading cause of drug overdoses in the US.

Under the agreement, China will go directly after specific companies that produce the chemicals used to make the drug, a senior US official told reporters.

Biden also called on Xi to use his influence with Iran to make it clear that Tehran and its proxies should avoid provocative action that could spread the Israel-Hamas conflict across the Middle East.

During the exchange, Biden did most of the talking and Xi mostly listened, according to the US official. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has assured the US that the Chinese have communicated concerns to Iran on the matter.

The US president also raised concerns about the status of US citizens that Washington believes are wrongly detained in China and human rights.

Before the meeting, both countries backed a new renewable energy target and said they would work to reduce methane and plastic pollution, a renewl of climate coorporation that was also a casualty of Pelosi’s Taiwan visit.

(Aljazeera)



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Dozens kidnapped by rifle-wielding men in northwest Nigeria village

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Armed men have abducted dozens of women and children in northwestern Nigeria, the latest in a spate of kidnappings that have plagued the region.

Police said the incident took place on Sunday in the village of Kafin Dawa in Zamfara State. Residents reported men carrying assault rifles going door to door, kidnapping people.

“We found out that they kidnapped more than 50 women, including married women and girls,” said Hassan Ya’u, a resident who managed to escape but had his younger sister kidnapped.

“The entire village was gripped by fear as gunshots echoed throughout the operation,” said another resident cited by Nigeria’s Daily Trust news site, which reported 43 people were kidnapped.

Zamfara police said they have deployed additional security forces to the area.

Kidnapping for ransom by armed men, known locally as bandits, is rife in northwest Nigeria due to high levels of poverty, unemployment and the proliferation of illegal firearms.

In March this year, gunmen abducted more than 130 students in the northwestern town of Kuriga for ransom.

The students were freed “unharmed” several weeks later after intensive “backchannel” negotiations, the government said at the time.

Abductions from Nigerian schools were first carried out by the armed group Boko Haram, which seized 276 students from a girls’ school in Chibok in northeastern Borno State in 2014. Some of the girls were never released, with most of them forcefully married to the fighters.

In another mass kidnapping in July 2021, armed men took more than 150 students in a raid. The students were reunited months later with their families after they reportedly paid ransoms.

At least 1,400 children have been abducted since 2014.

[Aljazeera]

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Champion cyclist pleads guilty over wife’s car death

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Melissa Hoskins raced for Australia at two Olympics [BBC]

Former world champion cyclist Rohan Dennis has pleaded guilty over a car incident in Australia which killed his wife, fellow Olympian Melissa Hoskins.

Hoskins died in hospital on 30 December 2023, after being struck by a vehicle being driven by Dennis outside their home in Adelaide.

The 34-year-old was initially charged with dangerous driving causing death and driving without due care, but on Tuesday he admitted a lesser charge – one aggravated count of creating the likelihood of harm.

Dennis – who has two children with Hoskins – will be sentenced at a later date.

Few details are known about the circumstances leading up to Hoskins’s death.

However, Dennis’s guilty plea means he has admitted to driving a car when Hoskins was in close proximity, knowing that act was likely to cause harm or being recklessly indifferent to whether it would.

“There was no intention of Mr Dennis to harm his wife and this charge does not charge him with responsibility for her death,” the retired athlete’s lawyer told the court.

Hoskins was a world champion in the team pursuit in 2015 and a two-time Olympian, and her death triggered a wave of tributes from around the world.

She and Dennis married in 2018.

Dennis retired at the end of the 2023 season after a career in which he won stages at the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana.

A multiple world champion on both road and track, he won road time trial bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, having won team pursuit silver at London 2012. He also won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2022.

[BBC]

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Dominican Republic records largest cocaine seizure

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Authorities in the Dominican Republican say cocaine discovered in the country’s largest-ever seizure was headed to Europe.

Hidden in a banana shipment, officials found 9,500kg of the drug at a port in the capital, Santo Domingo.

The cocaine was hidden in 320 bags with an estimated street value of $250 million (£196 million).

At least 10 people linked to the port are under investigation with early investigations showing the bananas had arrived from Guatemala, according to the National Drug Control Directorate.

Communications chief Carlos Denvers said: “Many unknown individuals tried to transfer the drugs to another container that would be shipped on a vessel to Belgium.”

The haul far exceeds the 2,580kg seizure made by Dominican authorities at the same port in 2006.

Monitoring agencies have reported that the Caribbean is resurfacing as a major drug trafficking route from Colombia to Europe.

A report last year found the use of cocaine is increasing in several western European countries including the UK, Belgium, France and Spain.

Europe accounted for 21% of the world’s cocaine users in 2020, according to a United Nations report

Evidence suggests use of the drug is bringing dire health consequences, with recent data showing drug-poisoning deaths in England and Wales hit the highest level in 30 years, fuelled by a 30% rise in fatalities involving cocaine.

[BBC]

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