Alarmed by China’s success in wooing Pacific island nations, the Biden administration is proposing to spend billions from its federal budget to keep three of those countries in the US orbit. President Joe Biden’s spending plan, released on Thursday, includes more than $7.1bn in funding for the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. The money is included in the $63.1bn request for the state department and the US Agency for International Development. The White House said the payments were part of its strategy to “out-compete China” and strengthen America’s alliances and…
Tag: Joe Biden
Joe Biden to meet Olaf Scholz in effort to keep Ukraine strategies aligned
Joe Biden is due to meet the German chancellor as part of continuing efforts to keep the US and Europe aligned in their defence of Ukraine. It will be a working visit to the White House for Olaf Scholz, stripped of any pomp or protocol. No press conference has been planned for the meeting on Friday afternoon and the chancellor will reportedly not be bringing press with him. A senior administration official predicted it would be short but intense. “We’re expecting it to be a one-hour meeting or so,” the…
Competing US views on origins of Covid reveal deeper splits over China policy
The FBI chief, Chris Wray, has endorsed the theory that the Covid pandemic was the result of a laboratory leak in China, further sharpening an increasingly combative bilateral relationship. In making his intervention, Wray, who was appointed by Donald Trump, was also taking sides in an internal debate over Covid’s origins, which has become a proxy for a broader tussle between hawks and doves within the administration. The Biden White House has sought to strike a balance between confronting Beijing over what it sees as unacceptable behaviour and trying to…
Capitol Hill finds rare bipartisan cause in China – but it could pose problems
In the weeks since the US military shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have spoken passionately about the need to more effectively compete with Beijing. A resolution condemning China for the balloon incident passed the House in an unanimous vote of 419 to 0. Joe Biden has similarly expressed hope that efforts to strengthen America’s global competitiveness in response to a rising China can unite Democrats and Republicans in an era defined by bitter partisanship. “Today, we’re in the strongest position in decades…
Russia-Ukraine war live: China role as peacemaker ‘just not rational’, says Biden
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Biden promises Kyiv extra military aid as EU discusses ammunition
Joe Biden has promised further military aid for Ukraine worth $500m (£415m) during his unannounced visit to Kyiv, as EU foreign ministers met in Brussels to discuss ways to accelerate the provision of ammunition. The US president also said additional sanctions would be announced this week against Russia’s elite and companies trying to evade existing sanctions in order to “back the Russian war machine”. In a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Biden discussed the text of a resolution to be put to a vote at the UN on…
Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloon
A group of amateur balloon enthusiasts in Illinois might have solved the mystery of one of the unknown flying objects shot down by the US military last week, a saga that had captivated the nation. The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade says one of its hobby craft went “missing in action” over Alaska on 11 February, the same day a US F-22 jet downed an unidentified airborne entity not far away above Canada’s Yukon territory. In a blogpost, the group did not link the two events. But the trajectory of…
Joe Biden: Downed objects likely not linked to China’s spy balloon program – video
US president Joe Biden has said the three balloons which crossed into US airspace were likely not linked to China’s spy balloon program. ‘The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions, studying weather or conducting other scientific research,’ said Biden at a press conference on Thursday. The Guardian
Biden speaks on downed Chinese balloon and unidentified objects – live
From 55m ago Biden to speak about Chinese spy balloons Martin Pengelly An update from the White House: at 2pm, Joe Biden will deliver remarks about the Chinese spy balloons/UFOs shot down over the US – or as the White House statement puts it, “the United States’ response to recent aerial objects”. Republicans (and, to be fair, Democrats) have been pressuring the administration to say more. In the meanwhile, here’s what China said about US balloons earlier today: And here, in the interests of balance and/or reading about UFOs, is…
China has been spying on US and allies via balloon for years, White House says
China has been operating a high-altitude balloon program spying on the US and its allies for many years, the White House said on Monday as it answered questions about a series of mysterious objects shot down by the US military over an eight-day period in North American airspace. The surveillance program, according to John Kirby, the US national security council spokesperson, dated back to at least the administration of Donald Trump, which he said was oblivious to it. “It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect…