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Kamala Harris’ visit to the Philippines sends China a message of US intent | CNN

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Kamala Harris’ visit to the Philippines sends China a message of US intent | CNN



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A Philippine archipelago identified for tropical holidays will grow to be the main target of political consideration this week when Vice President Kamala Harris turns into the very best rating US official to go to its fundamental island.

Palawan is dwelling to dive resorts in addition to a Philippine army base that Harris will go to on Tuesday, in response to a senior administration official, placing her on the sting of the South China Sea, the place China has been constructing army bases – some on islands claimed by the Philippines – in one of the vital outward indicators of its ambitions within the Pacific.

Harris met with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Monday, with the companions anticipated to debate 21 new tasks funded by the US, together with extra protection websites across the Philippines in places but to be revealed – a sign to Beijing that Washington is forging tighter ties with Manila.

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The tasks are a part of the Enhanced Protection Cooperation Settlement (EDCA) between the 2 international locations, which permits US troops to make use of agreed places within the Philippines for safety workouts and joint army coaching, the White Home stated in an announcement.

However US-Philippine protection ties run even deeper.

The nation was dwelling to 2 of the US army’s largest abroad installations, Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, which had been transferred to Philippine management within the Nineteen Nineties. A mutual protection treaty signed in 1951 stays in pressure, stipulating that each side would assist defend one another if both had been attacked by a 3rd occasion.

Talking to reporters Monday, Harris reaffirmed Washington’s “unwavering” dedication to the pact. “We should reiterate all the time that we stand with you in protection of guidelines and norms, (within the South China Sea),” Harris stated, including that any assault on Philippine vessels within the South China Sea would invoke mutual US protection commitments.

Sitting beside Harris, Marcos Jr. advised reporters: “I’ve stated many occasions, I don’t see a future for the Philippines that doesn’t embody the US, and that has come from the very lengthy relationship with the US.”

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Ties between the 2 international locations had frayed below former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who sought nearer relations with China throughout his six years in energy.

Gregory Poling, a maritime safety professional at Washington’s Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research, stated the US and the Philippines are shifting on from these “tough years.”

Poling stated Harris’ go to sends a powerful message of assist to the Philippines with out essentially threatening Beijing since Harris will probably be visiting Palawan, which is near the South China Sea however not one of many contested islands.

“The profit that the US within the Philippines will see in sending a message that ‘We stand collectively within the South China Sea’ far outweighs any modest frustration that it’s going to trigger in Beijing,” Poling stated.

Palawan is famend as a scuba diving and island-hopping getaway, however it’s also dwelling to the Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa, the middle of the Philippine army command in control of defending and patrolling its waters across the Spratly Islands.

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The Spratly Islands lie within the southern portion of the 1.3 million-square-mile waterway – virtually all of which China claims as its sovereign territory primarily based on its interpretation of historic maps.

In line with the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, the Philippines occupies 9 options within the Spratly chain whereas China occupies seven. However Beijing, which calls the island chain the Nanshas, has constructed up and fortified a lot of its claims within the chain, together with constructing army bases on locations like Subi Reef, Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross Reef.

In distinction, solely one of many Philippine-controlled options even has a runway, Thitu Reef.

Different neighbors surrounding the resource-rich waterway additionally lay declare to elements of the realm, together with Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

In 2016, a tribunal in The Hague dominated in favor of the Philippines in a maritime dispute, concluding China has no authorized foundation to assert historic rights to the majority of the South China Sea.

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Regardless of the ruling, Duterte tried to forge nearer ties with Beijing and made plans to cooperate on oil and gasoline exploration within the South China Sea, a transfer which divided Filipinos over the legitimacy of enabling China’s ambitions within the disputed territory.

Nevertheless, the exploration offers had been formally terminated in June 2022 as a result of constitutional challenges and issues about Philippine sovereignty, former Overseas Minister Teddy Locsin Jr. stated earlier than leaving workplace below Duterte.

Since taking workplace in June, Marcos Jr. has sought to reset ties with the US and restart amicable communications with China, each on financial and safety points.

On the sidelines of the APEC assembly final Thursday, Marcos Jr. and Chinese language chief Xi Jinping each agreed that maritime points “don’t outline the totality of Philippines-China relations,” in response to the Philippine press secretary.

“Our international coverage refuses to fall into the entice of a Chilly Warfare mindset. Ours is an impartial international coverage guided by our nationwide curiosity and dedication to peace,” stated Marcos Jr.

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As a protection ally to Washington and a competing claimant over Beijing’s sweeping territorial claims over the South China Sea, the Philippines is essential to each Washington’s technique within the area and China’s geopolitical rise.

Rommel Banlaoi, president of the Philippine Affiliation for Chinese language Research, stated Marcos Jr.’s huge activity is to strengthen and modernize the nation’s protection system – with the assistance of the US – whereas establishing amicable dialogue with China to bolster financial ties with its largest commerce associate.

“Philippine President Marcos seems open to the concept of pursuing pragmatic cooperation within the South China Sea, whereas not surrendering its long-standing place in the case of the territorial points within the South China Sea,” Banlaoi stated.

Throughout her journey to the Philippines, Harris is predicted to make numerous different bulletins together with tighter US cooperation with Manila on clear power, cybersecurity, communication and agriculture.

The offers present US intent within the Pacific area, however one South China Sea professional stated Harris’ journey to the army base dangers aggravating Beijing to the potential detriment of the Philippines.

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Anna Malindog-Uy, vp of the Asian Century Philippines Strategic Research Institute (ACPSSI), views the go to as “fairly a provocative, rabble-rousing, and inflammatory act.”

“It is going to put my nation, the Philippines, in a precarious and awkward scenario vis-à-vis Beijing,” she stated.

“I don’t see this as useful to my nation. It’s akin to upsetting Beijing on the expense of my nation, and I don’t suppose that is one thing enlightened and nationalist Filipinos will probably be blissful about.”

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Trump names Treasury adviser from first term to chair economic panel

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Trump names Treasury adviser from first term to chair economic panel

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Donald Trump has tapped Stephen Miran, an economist who served during his first term, to chair his Council of Economic Advisers.

With the nomination, the president-elect is seeking to elevate to a White House economic post not only a critic of Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell but one who has accused the Biden administration of manipulating the economy and “usurping” the central bank’s role.

“Steve will work with the rest of my Economic Team to deliver a Great Economic Boom that lifts up all Americans,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday.

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Miran was a senior adviser for economic policy at the Treasury department in the first Trump administration.

Currently a senior strategist at hedge fund Hudson Bay Capital Management, he said he was honoured. “I look forward to working to help implement the President’s policy agenda to create a booming, noninflationary economy that brings prosperity to all Americans!” he posted on X.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers is a three-person group that advises the president on economic policy.

Trump has threatened US trading partners, vowing to impose sweeping tariffs, including 25 per cent levies on goods from Mexico and Canada and 10 per cent on China’s imports, on his first day in office.

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to impose blanket levies of 20 per cent on all US imports, as well as tariffs of 60 per cent on those from China, suggesting his second-term policies could be more protectionist and disruptive to the global economy and markets than his first.

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The president-elect has also pledged to renew tax cuts he enacted during his first spell in the White House.

Earlier this year, Miran co-wrote a paper accusing Biden’s Treasury department of manipulating the economy during the election, arguing the government’s dependence on short-term debt amounted to “stealth quantitative easing and impedes the Fed’s ability to fight inflation.

“By adjusting the maturity profile of its debt issuance, Treasury is dynamically managing financial conditions and, through them, the economy, usurping core functions of the Federal Reserve”, he wrote with economist Nouriel Roubini.

“We dub this novel tool ‘activist Treasury issuance,’ or ATI. By manipulating the amount of interest-rate risk owned by investors, ATI works through the same channels as the Fed’s quantitative easing programs.”

In FT Alphaville last year, Miran co-authored a piece warning against the perils of a two-tier bond market, which “would impair Treasuries’ ability to serve as risk-free collateral underpinning the global financial system” and bring to the US the chaos of a defaulting emerging economy.

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Miran has also hit out at Powell for urging more aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus in October 2020, about a month before that year’s election, to aid the economic recovery amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Powell was wrong politically and economically when he urged Congress to ‘go big’ on fiscal stimulus in October of 2020, on the eve of a Presidential election, suggesting that voters favour Democrats’ $3 trillion proposals over Republicans’ $500 billion”, Miran wrote on X in September. “We know what happened next.”

Miran must be confirmed by the US Senate.

Last month, Trump named Kevin Hassett as chair of the National Economic Council.

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Review by Senate Democrats finds more unreported luxury trips by Clarence Thomas

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Review by Senate Democrats finds more unreported luxury trips by Clarence Thomas

The Supreme Court is pictured on Oct. 7 in Washington, D.C.

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WASHINGTON — A nearly two-year investigation by Democratic senators of Supreme Court ethics details more luxury travel by Justice Clarence Thomas and urges Congress to establish a way to enforce a new code of conduct.

Any movement on the issue appears unlikely as Republicans prepare to take control of the Senate in January, underscoring the hurdles in imposing restrictions on a separate branch of government even as public confidence in the court has fallen to record lows.

The 93-page report released Saturday by the Democratic majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee found additional travel taken in 2021 by Thomas but not reported on his annual financial disclosure form: a private jet flight to New York’s Adirondacks in July and jet and yacht trip to New York City sponsored by billionaire Harlan Crow in October, one of more than two dozen times detailed in the report that Thomas took luxury travel and gifts from wealthy benefactors.

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The court adopted its first code of ethics in 2023, but it leaves compliance to each of the nine justices.

“The highest court in the land can’t have the lowest ethical standards,” the committee chairman, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, said in a statement. He has long called for an enforceable code of ethics.

Republicans protested the subpoenas authorized for Crow and others as part of the investigation. No Republicans signed on to the final report, and no formal report from them was expected.

A spokesman for Crow said he voluntarily agreed to provide information for the investigation, which did not pinpoint any specific instances of undue influence. Crow said in a statement that Thomas and his wife Ginni had been unfairly maligned. “They are good and honorable people and no one should be treated this way,” he said.

Attorney Mark Paoletta, a longtime friend of Thomas who has been tapped for the incoming Trump administration, said the report was aimed at conservatives whose rulings Democrats disagreed with.

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“This entire investigation was never about ‘ethics’ but about trying to undermine the Supreme Court,” Paoletta said in a statement posted on X.

The court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Thomas has said he was not required to disclose the trips that he and his wife took with Crow because the big donor is a close friend of the family and disclosure of that type of travel was not previously required. The new ethics code does explicitly require it, and Thomas has since gone back and reported some travel.

The report traces back to Justice Antonin Scalia, saying he “established the practice” of accepting undisclosed gifts and hundreds of trips over his decades on the bench. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and retired Justice Stephen Breyer also took subsided trips but disclosed them on their annual forms, it said.

The investigation found that Thomas has accepted gifts and travel from wealthy benefactors worth more than $4.75 million by some estimates since his 1991 confirmation and failed to disclose much of it. “The number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” according to the report.

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It also detailed a 2008 luxury trip to Alaska taken by Justice Samuel Alito. He has said he was exempted from disclosing the trip under previous ethical rules.

Alito also declined calls to withdraw from cases involving Donald Trump or the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after flags associated with the riot were seen flying at two of Alito’s homes. Alito has said the flags were raised by this wife.

Thomas has ignored calls to step aside from cases involving Trump, too. Ginni Thomas supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that the Republican lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

The report also pointed to scrutiny of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade. Justices have also heard cases involving their book publishers, or involving companies in which justices owned stock.

Biden has been the most prominent Democrat calling for a binding code of conduct. Justice Elena Kaganhas publicly backed adopting an enforcement mechanism, though some ethics experts have said it could be legally tricky.

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Justice Neil Gorsuch recently cited the code when he recused himself from an environmental case. He had been facing calls to step aside because the outcome could stand to benefit a Colorado billionaire whom Gorsuch represented before becoming a judge.

The report also calls for changes in the Judicial Conference, the federal courts’ oversight body led by Chief Justice John Roberts, and further investigation by Congress.

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Sweden criticises China for refusing full access to vessel suspected of Baltic Sea cable sabotage

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Sweden criticises China for refusing full access to vessel suspected of Baltic Sea cable sabotage

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Sweden has sharply criticised China for refusing to allow the Nordic country’s main investigator on board a Chinese vessel suspected of severing two cables in the Baltic Sea.

The Yi Peng 3 sailed away from its mooring in international waters between Denmark and Sweden on Saturday, and appears to be heading for Egypt after Chinese investigators boarded the ship on Thursday.

The Chinese team had allowed representatives from Sweden, Germany, Finland and Denmark on board as observers, but did not permit access for Henrik Söderman, the Swedish public prosecutor, according to authorities in Stockholm.

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“It is something the government inherently takes seriously. It is remarkable that the ship leaves without the prosecutor being given the opportunity to inspect the vessel and question the crew within the framework of a Swedish criminal investigation,” foreign minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in comments provided to the Financial Times.

The Swedish government had put pressure on Chinese authorities for the bulk carrier to move from international waters into Swedish territory to allow a full investigation over the severing of Swedish-Lithuanian and Finnish-German data cables last month.

People close to the probe said the boarding of the vessel on Thursday had shown there was little doubt it was involved in the incident.

Yi Peng 3 belongs to Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, a company that owns only one other vessel and is based near the eastern Chinese port city of Ningbo. A representative of Ningbo Yipeng told the FT in November that “the government has asked the company to co-operate with the investigation”, but did not answer further questions.

There is a split among countries over the motivation behind the cutting of the cables. Some people close to the investigation said they believed it was bad seamanship that may have led to the Yi Peng 3’s anchor dragging along the seabed in the Baltic Sea.

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However, other governments have said privately that they suspect Russia was behind the damage and may have paid money to the ship’s crew.

The severing of the two cables was the second time in 13 months that a Chinese ship has damaged infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

The Newnew Polar Bear, a Chinese container ship, damaged a gas pipeline in October 2023 by dragging its anchor along the bottom of the Baltic Sea for a considerable distance during a storm. Officials reacted slowly to that incident, allowing the vessel to leave the region without stopping, something that they were keen to prevent in the case of the Yi Peng 3.

Nordic and Baltic officials are sceptical about the possibility of the same thing occurring twice in quick succession. “The Chinese must be truly dreadful captains if this keeps on happening innocently,” said one Baltic minister.

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