After school shooting, Biden says US can’t ‘accept this as normal’
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US trade deficit widest in two years: govt
The US trade deficit in July expanded to its largest since mid-2022, according to government data released Wednesday, as imports rose more quickly than exports.
Overall, the trade gap widened to $78.8 billion, from a revised $73.0 billion in June, the Department of Commerce said.
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De-facto US envoy warns Taiwan is not China’s only target
The new de-facto US ambassador to Taiwan said Wednesday that the democratic island is “not the only target” of China’s “intimidation and coercion”, with more countries cooperating with Washington to “avoid war.”
China claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory and has said it will never renounce the use of force to bring the island under its control.
Beijing has upped military and political pressure on Taiwan in recent years, and conducted military drills in May around the island days after the inauguration of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.
“Taiwan is not the only target of PRC efforts to use intimidation and coercion to change the status quo,” Raymond Greene said in his first news conference as director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto US embassy.
“More and more countries are realising the importance of cooperating with the United States and other like-minded partners to preserve the rules-based international system.”
US efforts to build alliances in the region “are not meant to prepare for war but to prevent it”, Greene added.
China’s campaign of confrontation has also extended to remote reefs in Southeast Asia and far-flung Japanese islands.
Beijing has deployed military and coast guard vessels to press its claims to almost the entire South China Sea, despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
Taiwan — separated from mainland China by the narrow 180-kilometre (110-mile) Taiwan Strait — has its own government, military and currency.
As China has increased pressures around the island, Taiwan has sought to strengthen ties with friendly countries while ramping up military purchases from the United States, its key ally.
Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but has remained Taiwan’s biggest arms supplier, sparking repeated condemnations from China.
Greene also said that the United States would not “rule out” weapons co-production with Taiwan in the future.
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US fines ratings agencies for ‘significant’ recordkeeping failures
The US market regulator charged and fined six major ratings agencies on Tuesday, including Moody’s, S&P and Fitch, over what it called “significant recordkeeping failures.”
The six agencies were fined a total of more than $49 million “for significant failures by the firms and their personnel to maintain and preserve electronic communications,” the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said in a statement.
The biggest civil penalties were handed out to the three major US ratings agencies, with Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings both agreeing to pay a $20 million civil penalty, while Fitch Ratings agreed to pay $8 million.
The three other agencies fined were HR Ratings de Mexico, A.M. Best Rating Services, and Demotech, who agreed to pay much smaller fines.
All the firms acknowledged that their conduct “violated recordkeeping provisions of the federal securities laws,” the SEC said.
“In today’s actions, the Commission once again makes clear that there are tangible benefits to firms that make significant efforts to comply and otherwise cooperate with the staff’s investigations,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, the deputy director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.
All six agencies have now “begun implementing improvements to their compliance policies,” the SEC said.
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Trump says witholding ‘surprise’ plan to end Ukraine war
Donald Trump said Tuesday he has plans that are “guaranteed” to end the deadly war in Ukraine, but will only reveal them if he wins the US presidential election in November.
The former US president and current Republican nominee is locked in a neck-and-neck race with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“If I win, as president elect, I’ll have a deal made, guaranteed. That’s a war that shouldn’t have happened,” Trump said on the Lex Fridman podcast released Tuesday.
“I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia, And I have a certain idea — maybe not a plan, but an idea — for China,” he added.
“But I can’t give you those plans, because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them, they’ll be very unsuccessful. You know, part of it’s surprise, right?”
The comments echo the move by Trump loyalists in Congress earlier this year, when they tanked a bipartisan immigration plan reportedly because they did not want the Biden-Harris administration to earn credit on one of the 2024 election’s biggest issues.
Kyiv and Moscow are bogged down in a war that began in early 2022, when Russian troops poured across the border into Ukraine.
Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died, and the West has slapped punitive economic sanctions on Moscow over its invasion.
Trump has faced criticism for repeatedly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the podcast, he said the Ukraine crisis could spiral into “a third world war,” and that several global hot spots are boiling because “America has no leadership.”
Harris for her part has called out Trump’s public praise of Putin, telling the Democratic National Convention last month that “I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators” and that as president she would “stand strong with Ukraine.”
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US condemns ‘unjustified’ arrest warrant for Venezuela opposition candidate: White House
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UAE pardons 57 Bangladeshi protesters
The UAE has pardoned 57 locally based Bangladeshis who were jailed for protesting against the now-toppled government in their home country, state media said Tuesday.
UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan “ordered a pardon for the Bangladeshi nationals involved in… protests and disturbances across several emirates”, the official Emirati news agency WAM reported.
“The decision includes cancelling the sentences of those convicted and arranging for their deportation,” it added.
The oil-rich Gulf state bans unauthorised protests and prohibits criticism of rulers or speech that is deemed to create or encourage social unrest.
The Bangladeshis were convicted for participating in protests supporting student-led demonstrations in Bangladesh that toppled long-time leader Sheikh Hasina.
More than 450 people were killed in Bangladesh – many by police fire – during the weeks leading up to Hasina’s ousting last month, as crowds stormed her official residence in Dhaka.
In July, an Emirati court sentenced three Bangladeshis to life in prison, 53 others to 10 years in prison and one to 11 years. At the time of the trial, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the “abusively fast” process raised “serious concerns about fairness and due process”.
The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, is populated mostly by expatriates, many of them South Asians who work as labourers.
Bangladeshis form the third largest group of foreigners in the country after Pakistanis and Indians, according to the UAE foreign ministry.
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Man detained after major church fire in northern France
A man was taken into police custody after a major fire broke out at a 19th-century church in northern France, causing its bell tower to collapse, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
A massive fire broke out in the historic Church of the Immaculate Conception in the northern town of Saint-Omer early Monday. No one was injured but the church steeple collapsed.
Video footage showed the flames ravaging the steeple of the church in the darkness.
The public prosecutor’s office said that a suspect had been taken into custody on Monday evening.
The man, who was born in 1985, has been known to authorities “for similar acts” in the past, Saint-Omer public prosecutor Mehdi Benbouzid told AFP on Tuesday.
The man, who had been living in a hostel before the incident, was being interviewed on Tuesday morning.
The investigation pointed to “traces of forced entry” into the church, where a stained-glass window had been broken, said Benbouzid.
The public prosecutor was considering a criminal charge of “destruction of property by dangerous means” because of the religious nature of the property.
Thanks to the efforts of 120 firefighters the fire had been contained by Monday morning, according to the prefecture. More than 50 residents living nearby were evacuated as a precaution, officials said.
Government ministers including Culture Minister Rachida Dati expressed “solidarity” with the residents of Saint-Omer.
The church, which features neo-Gothic furnishings, was unveiled in 1859. It was restored and reopened in 2018.
In July, a fire broke out in the spire of the mediaeval cathedral in the northern French city of Rouen during renovation work. No major damage was reported.
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Venezuelan prosecutors seek arrest of opposition presidential candidate: official
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Russia’s August advances in Ukraine biggest since October 2022
Russia advanced on 477 square kilometres (184 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in August, Moscow’s biggest monthly increase since October 2022, according to data supplied by the Institute for the Study of War and analysed by AFP.
The Ukrainian army, for its part, made rapid gains in early August in Russia after a surprise incursion into the border region of Kursk, gaining more than 1,100 square kilometres in two weeks.
But this new front has been solidifying to between 1,150 and 1,300 square kilometres of advances over the past 15 days, according to the data on claimed and confirmed troop movements.
In August, Russian troops advanced 15 square kilometres per day in Ukraine, mainly in the eastern region of Donetsk.
Most of the gains were toward the logistical hub of Pokrovsk, and as of late Sunday the army had come to within less than seven kilometres (4.4 miles) of the city.
The last time that Moscow took as much territory in a month was in October 2022, in response to a major Ukrainian counteroffensive around the northeastern city of Kharkiv, at a time the front line was much more mobile.
Since the beginning of 2024, Moscow has resumed its push into Ukrainian territory, gaining 1,730 square kilometres, three times more than in 2023, when its gains were wiped out by Ukrainian counteroffensives.
But over the past months Kyiv’s troops have struggled to counterattack on their own territory.
Ukrainian forces have won more territory than they lost to the Russians on only eight days so far in 2024, and then usually only several square kilometres.
Russia occupied 66,266 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory as of September 1.
Along with the Crimea Peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and zones of eastern Ukraine already under control of pro-Russian separatists before the 2022 invasion, the advances confirmed or claimed by Moscow cover 18 percent of Ukraine’s 2013 size.
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