Biden, China’s Xi set to talk Taiwan, Russia during G-20 summit
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will meet Monday with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next week’s Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, a face-to-face meeting that comes amid increasingly strained U.S.-China relations, the White House announced Thursday.
It will be the first in-person meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies since Biden became president in January 2021 and comes weeks after Xi was awarded an unprecedented third five-year term as the Chinese Communist Party leader.
The White House has been working with Chinese officials over the last several weeks to arrange the meeting.
Biden on Wednesday told reporters that he intended to discuss with Xi growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over the selfruled island of Taiwan, trade policies, Beijing’s relationship with Russia and more.
“What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what each of our red lines are and understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States,” Biden said. “And determine whether or not they conflict with one another.”
Since becoming president, Biden has repeatedly taken China to task for human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, Beijing’s crackdowns on democracy activists in Hong Kong, coercive trade practices, military provocations against self-ruled Taiwan and differences over
Russia’s prosecution of its war against Ukraine.
Weeks before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president met with Xi in Beijing and the two issued a memorandum expressing hopes of a “no limits” relationship for their nations.
China has largely refrained from criticizing Russia’s war but thus far has held off on supplying Moscow with arms.
A man who authorities say participated in a ransomware campaign that extracted tens of millions of dollars from victims has been charged in the United States, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Mikhail Vasiliev, a dual national of Russia and Canada, was arrested Wednesday. He is in custody in Canada and is awaiting extradition to the U.S. on charges that accuse him of involvement in the Lockbit ransomware operation.
No lawyer for Vasiliev, 33, of Bradford, Ontario, was listed on the court docket.
He faces charges of conspiracy to intentionally damage protected computers and to transmit ransom demands.
Ransomware suspect:
President Joe Biden on Thursday nominated a new commissioner to steer the Internal Revenue Service forward as it gets a massive funding boost. The tax collection agency’s current commissioner ends his term this week.
Danny Werfel, who leads Boston Consulting Group’s global public sector practice, was nominated to replace Chuck Rettig, who had been nominated to lead the IRS by former President Donald Trump.
If confirmed by the
IRS nominee:
Senate, Werfel will be tasked with planning how to spend a funding boost for the agency of nearly $80 billion over the next 10 years that was approved by Congress in August. He will also have to navigate controversy surrounding the new funding, brought by Republicans who have distorted how the new law would reform the IRS and affect taxes for the middle class.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other Republican lawmakers have claimed without evidence that Democrats would build an army of 87,000 IRS agents to conduct hundreds of thousands of new audits for people making less than $75,000 per year. Those claims have been proven to be false.
Trump taxes: The House urged the Supreme Court on Thursday not to further delay a lawsuit by a committee that is seeking former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, saying that continuing to block access to
the files would undermine Congress’ constitutional authority.
Such a delay “would leave the committee and Congress as a whole little or no time to complete their legislative work during this Congress, which is quickly approaching its end,” Douglas Letter, the chief lawyer for the House, wrote in a brief.
The question before the Supreme Court — whether to extend a stay that is preventing the Treasury Department from giving the returns to the House Ways and Means Committee — carries strong political overtones. An extension could enable Trump to thwart congressional oversight by using the slow pace of litigation to run out the clock.
States are continuing to count the votes from Tuesday’s midterm election. But Republicans appear likely to take a majority of seats in the House when the new Congress is seated in January, in which case the request would almost certainly be dropped.
The Biden administration
also asked the Supreme Court on Thursday not to intervene further.
The case centers on the decision by Trump to break with modern precedent by presidential candidates and presidents by refusing to make public his tax returns.
Brazilian vote: A muchawaited report from the Brazilian military highlighted flaws in the country’s electoral systems and proposed improvements, but it did not substantiate claims of fraud from some of President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters, who continue to protest his Oct. 30 defeat.
Many political analysts said Wednesday’s report should curtail any serious attempt to discredit the electoral process. The report says an analysis of vote tallies from 501 machines found no inconsistencies in any of them, with a confidence level of 95%.
Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated Bolsonaro in a tight election.
Migrants in peril: A deal for
Europe to help asylum-seekers was breaking apart Thursday in a French-Italian feud over a ship floating in the Mediterranean with its passengers and crew desperate for land.
The crew of the Ocean Viking had been trying to dock since Italy’s hard-right government refused to take in people aboard last month. The centrist government of France said Thursday that it will take them but withdraw from a broader European Union mechanism for distributing migrants more evenly.
The announcement fueled a broader rise in tensions between the otherwise-friendly neighbors.
The fight could herald the end of a deal approved in June to reduce the pressure on Mediterranean nations that receive most of the refugees, generally from Africa, the Mideast, and South Asia.
The roughly 230 passengers aboard the ship include 57 children and are from Eritrea, Egypt, Syria, Bangladesh and Pakistan, among other nations.