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Category: Politics

China’s health care system buckles under the strain of a spiraling Covid crisis

China’s health care system buckles under the strain of a spiraling Covid crisis

The New York Times reports: Slumped in wheelchairs and lying on gurneys, the sickened patients crowd every nook and cranny of the emergency department at the hospital in northern China. They cram into the narrow spaces between elevator doors. They surround an idle walk-through metal detector. And they line the walls of a corridor ringing with the sounds of coughing. China’s hospitals were already overcrowded, underfunded and inadequately staffed in the best of times. But now with Covid spreading freely…

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With record military incursions, China warns Taiwan and the U.S.

With record military incursions, China warns Taiwan and the U.S.

The New York Times reports: China sent a record number of military aircraft to menace self-ruled Taiwan in a large show of force to the Biden administration, signaling that Beijing wants to maintain pressure on Taiwan even as some tensions between the superpowers are easing. The swarm of Chinese fighter jets, maritime patrol planes and drones that buzzed the airspace near Taiwan in the 24-hour period leading to Monday morning demonstrated Beijing’s appetite for confrontation with the United States over…

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Ukraine: A battle over the future of Europe

Ukraine: A battle over the future of Europe

Andrew A. Michta writes: Today, Europe is at an inflection point because it remains wedded to “institutional thinking” that is increasingly divorced from hard-power realities on the ground. At the same time, the Continent’s political leaders sense that what happens in Ukraine — and, ultimately, where it ends up on Europe’s political map — will define the course of Europe’s evolution and, by extension, transatlantic relations. No matter what, one thing is certain, though: There will be real and enduring…

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Russia bans sales of oil to countries imposing price cap

Russia bans sales of oil to countries imposing price cap

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia on Tuesday banned the sale of its oil and petroleum products to countries that put a cap on their sales price, in a move that threatened more uncertainty ahead for global energy markets. The Kremlin’s action is an attempt to undermine a plan by the U.S. and its allies to bar the shipping, financing or insuring of seaborne Russian crude unless it is sold for $60 a barrel or less—a sanction leveled in response…

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Republicans see little resistance from the business lobby after ‘anti-woke’ attacks

Republicans see little resistance from the business lobby after ‘anti-woke’ attacks

Politico reports: Republican lawmakers are vowing to crack down on big investment managers pushing climate and social agendas. But the Wall Street giants are finding they have few defenders in Washington to help fend off the assault. The multitrillion-dollar asset managers — primarily BlackRock and its outspoken CEO Larry Fink, Vanguard and State Street — aren’t getting cover from major business trade groups whose members are divided on the issue. And they have no Republican allies, according to interviews with…

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GOP leadership remains silent over George Santos’s lies

GOP leadership remains silent over George Santos’s lies

The New York Times reports: House Republican leaders were silent on Tuesday after Representative-elect George Santos admitted to a laundry list of falsehoods about his background but still vowed to be seated in Congress. Mr. Santos acknowledged in a series of interviews on Monday that he lied about graduating from college and made misleading claims that he worked for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. He also acknowledged owing thousands of dollars in unpaid rent and denied committing a crime anywhere in…

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Self-described ‘proud American Jew,’ George Santos, now says he’s merely claimed to be ‘Jew-ish’

Self-described ‘proud American Jew,’ George Santos, now says he’s merely claimed to be ‘Jew-ish’

The Forward reports: Congressman-elect George Santos, a Republican from New York who reportedly lied about his Jewish heritage and has admitted he fabricated key details of his resume, said in an interview Monday evening that he never claimed to be Jewish. “I said I was ‘Jew-ish,’” Santos told The New York Post. However, in a position paper shared with Jewish and pro-Israel leaders during the campaign and obtained by the Forward, Santos called himself “a proud American Jew.” In the…

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‘A sea change’: Biden reverses decades of Chinese trade policy

‘A sea change’: Biden reverses decades of Chinese trade policy

Politico reports: After decades of U.S. efforts to engage China with the prospect of greater development through trade, the era of cooperation is coming to a screeching halt. The White House and Congress are quietly reshaping the American economic relationship with the world’s second-largest economic power, enacting a strategy to limit China’s technological development that breaks with decades of federal policy and represents the most aggressive American action yet to curtail Beijing’s economic and military rise. The new federal rules,…

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Democrats, feeling new strength, plan to go on offense on voting rights

Democrats, feeling new strength, plan to go on offense on voting rights

The New York Times reports: For the last two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections. Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating…

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George Santos admits to lying about college and work history

George Santos admits to lying about college and work history

The New York Times reports: Representative-elect George Santos admitted on Monday to misleading voters about his professional experience and educational history, confirming some of the key findings of a New York Times investigation that found he likely misrepresented his background to voters. Mr. Santos, a Republican who was elected in November to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, ended a week of near silence, giving interviews to two conservative-owned media outlets, The New York Post and WABC-AM…

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Putin wants fealty, and he’s found it in Africa

Putin wants fealty, and he’s found it in Africa

The New York Times reports: In early March, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its third week, a Russian diplomat nearly 3,000 miles away in the Central African Republic paid an unusual visit to the head of this country’s top court. His message was blunt: The country’s pro-Kremlin president must remain in office, indefinitely. To do this, the diplomat, Yevgeny Migunov, the second secretary at the Russian Embassy, argued that the court should abolish the constitutional restriction limiting a president…

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How citizen spies foiled Putin’s grand plan for one Ukrainian city

How citizen spies foiled Putin’s grand plan for one Ukrainian city

The New York Times reports: On a foggy morning a few months ago, Valentyn Dmytrovych Yermolenko, an aging Ukrainian fisherman with a bad back and horrible knees, puttered down a narrow channel off the Dnipro River, his inflatable dinghy cutting through the mist. His city, Kherson, had been taken over by the Russian Army, and on the floor of his boat, concealed under a fishing net in a black plastic tub, Mr. Yermolenko had hidden three disassembled automatic rifles. As…

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Putin, isolated and distrustful, leans on handful of hardline advisers

Putin, isolated and distrustful, leans on handful of hardline advisers

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russian troops were losing the battle for Lyman, a small city in eastern Ukraine, in late September when a call came in for the commanding officer on the front line, over an encrypted line from Moscow. It was Vladimir Putin, ordering them not to retreat. The president seemed to have limited understanding of the reality of the situation, according to current and former U.S. and European officials and a former senior Russian intelligence officer briefed…

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Tucker Carlson’s rage at Zelensky caps a year of getting things wrong

Tucker Carlson’s rage at Zelensky caps a year of getting things wrong

Greg Sargent writes: After Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a rousing speech to U.S. lawmakers this week, Tucker Carlson unleashed a diatribe that put schoolyard sadists everywhere to shame. “No one’s ever addressed the United States Congress in a sweatshirt before,” he seethed, slamming Zelensky as a “strip club” manager whose presence was “humiliating” to “the greatest country on Earth.” Carlson’s attack on the Ukrainian president, whose olive green garb was meant to dramatize his country’s wartime plight, has sparked outrage because…

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Inside the monumental, stop-start effort to arm Ukraine

Inside the monumental, stop-start effort to arm Ukraine

The Washington Post reports: Virtually every day, a line of 18-wheel trucks loaded with weapons or ammunition pulls up to a sprawling warehouse here nestled near an asphalt runway stretching nearly two miles. Drawn from U.S. military depots around the country, the lethal cargo is unloaded onto pallets that will be packed aboard cargo planes bound for Europe, the next stop on its journey to the front lines in Ukraine. The constant tempo has evolved from choppy beginnings into precision…

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Leaked notes from Chinese health officials estimate 250 million Covid-19 infections in December

Leaked notes from Chinese health officials estimate 250 million Covid-19 infections in December

CNN reports: Almost 250 million people in China may have caught Covid-19 in the first 20 days of December, according to an internal estimate from the nation’s top health officials, Bloomberg News and the Financial Times reported Friday. If correct, the estimate – which CNN cannot independently confirm – would account for roughly 18% of China’s 1.4 billion people and represent the largest Covid-19 outbreak to date globally. The figures cited were presented during an internal meeting of China’s National…

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