Tag: United States

World Bank Projects Weak Global Growth Amid Rising Interest Rates

Media Library
world bank projects weak global growth amid rising interest rates

The World Bank said on Tuesday that the global economy remained in a “precarious state” and warned of sluggish growth this year and next as rising interest rates slow consumer spending and business investment, and threaten the stability of the financial system. The bank’s tepid forecasts in its latest Global Economic Prospects report highlight the predicament that global policymakers face as they try to corral stubborn inflation by raising interest rates while grappling with the aftermath of the pandemic and continuing supply chain disruptions stemming from the war in Ukraine.…

Fareed Zakaria on Where Russia’s War in Ukraine Stands — and Much More

Media Library
fareed zakaria on where russias war in ukraine stands and much more

[MUSIC PLAYING] ezra klein Russia invaded Ukraine 15 months ago. For a time following the invasion, it was all the world could talk about. It’s all the show could talk about. And now, as happens with a lot of stories huge at the outset, now the Russia-Ukraine war is treated as one news story — I mean, a major one — but one news story among many. But it’s still more than that. It’s a kind of hyper story. There is the conflict itself, which matters enormously. And then there’s…

China Crosses Milestone With C919 Flight but Has Long Way to Go

Media Library
china crosses milestone with c919 flight but has long way to go

Millions of flights take off and land in China every year, almost all of them using planes made by Boeing and Airbus, the world’s two leading aircraft manufacturers. For years, China has been working to change that and, this week, it celebrated a milestone in that quest: the first commercial flight of a large passenger jet made in China. The C919 jet, made by Comac, a Chinese state-run aerospace manufacturer, flew about 130 passengers from Shanghai to Beijing for China Eastern Airlines on Sunday, according to Chinese state media. It…

Russia Denounces West Over Drone Strike on Moscow

Media Library
russia denounces west over drone strike on moscow

A day after a drone strike on Moscow, Kremlin officials jumped on the refusal of Ukrainian allies to denounce the attack as proof that Russia’s real war was with the West. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said Russia “would have preferred to hear at least some words of condemnation” from Western capitals. “We will calmly and deliberately think how to deal with this,” he said. While none of Ukraine’s allies went so far as to endorse the drone attack, Britain’s foreign secretary said on Tuesday that Kyiv had “the…

Europe Frets U.S. Battery Factory Subsidies Will Hurt, Not Help

Media Library
europe frets u s battery factory subsidies will hurt not help

European leaders complained for years that the United States was not doing enough to fight climate change. Now that the Biden administration has devoted hundreds of billions of dollars to that cause, many Europeans are complaining that the United States is going about it the wrong way. That new critique is born of a deep fear in Germany, France, Britain and other European countries that Washington’s approach will hurt the allies it ought to be working with, luring away much of the new investments in electric car and battery factories not already…

Australia Tries to Break Its Dependence on China for Lithium Mining

Media Library
australia tries to break its dependence on china for lithium mining

Deep in rural Western Australia, Pilbara Minerals’ vast processing plant looms above the red dirt, quivering as tons of a lithium ore slurry move through its pipes. The plant turns the ore from a nearby quarry into spodumene, a greenish crystalline powder that is about 6 percent lithium and sells for about $5,700 a ton. From there, the spodumene is shipped to China, where it is further refined so it can be used in the batteries that power goods like cellphones and electric cars. Australia mines about 53 percent of…

China Escalates U.S. Tech War With Micron Ban

Media Library
china escalates u s tech war with micron ban

When cutting foreign technology companies from Chinese supply chains, Beijing has long chosen to work obliquely or even secretly. Regulators would give executives back-room lectures, weigh them down with excessive red tape or hit them with occasional office raids. Rarely did the government tell a firm outright it was no longer welcome. But that is what it signaled to Micron Technology in a late-night announcement on Sunday. The Chinese government banned companies that handle critical information from purchasing microchips made by the Boise, Idaho-based Micron. The company’s chips, which are…

China Bans Some Chip Sales of Micron, the US Company

Media Library
china bans some chip sales of micron the us company

Beijing on Sunday told Chinese companies that deal with critical information to stop purchasing products from Micron Technology, the U.S.-based manufacturer of memory chips used in phones, computers and other electronics. Many analysts viewed the move as retaliation for Washington’s efforts to cut off China’s access to high-end chips. In a statement on its official social media site, the Cyberspace Administration of China said that in a cybersecurity review it had found that the chip maker’s products posed “relatively serious cybersecurity problems.” The problems could “seriously endanger the supply chain…

G7 Countries Borrow China’s Economic Strategy

Media Library
g7 countries borrow chinas economic strategy

Midway through his face-to-face meeting with President Biden in Indonesia last fall, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, offered an unsolicited warning. Mr. Biden had in the preceding months signed a series of laws aimed at supercharging America’s industrial capacity and imposed new limits on the export of technology to China, in hopes of dominating the race for advanced energy technologies that could help fight climate change. For months, he and his aides had worked to recruit allied countries to impose their own restrictions on sending technology to China. The effort echoed…

China Sentences a U.S. Citizen to Life in Prison for Espionage

Media Library
china sentences a u s citizen to life in prison for espionage

A Chinese court said it sentenced a 78-year-old American citizen to life in prison on Monday on unspecified charges of spying, the latest in a wave of espionage cases the authorities have pursued amid growing wariness of foreign influence in the country. The Intermediate People’s Court in the southeastern city of Suzhou said in a short statement that it pronounced John Shing-Wan Leung guilty of espionage and sentenced him. It said that Mr. Leung was arrested in April 2021 by state security officials, but provided no details about the charges…