Tag: struggles

McCarthy struggles to lock down votes for debt plan

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“This week, we will pass” the debt bill, McCarthy declared to reporters after a full day of meetings.
“We’re done negotiating,” added Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of GOP leadership, while projecting confidence that “the whole Republican conference is going to get on board.”
The GOP plan, which includes across-the-board spending cuts, stricter rules for social safety net programs and energy production incentives, has largely earned cheers across the conference despite zero expectations that it will become law. Republicans have nonetheless insisted that this week’s debt bill is their best chance to restart stagnant talks with President Joe Biden ahead of a deadline that could come as soon as June.
But with a small margin of error, and potential absences among the GOP ranks, they’ll need near-unanimity among his conference to avoid an embarrassing setback that would undercut Republican efforts to force Biden to come to the negotiating table.
Already, two Republicans went on record Tuesday night saying they’ll oppose the bill: Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.). And Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said he is a “lean no.“
Burchett, for his part, praised McCarthy but said that he hadn’t heard from the California Republican. Instead, he heard from his team who scheduled a meeting with the Tennessee Republican — but then skipped it.
“I’m not going flip a vote because of my ego, but … just don’t take me for granted dude,” Burchett said.
Underscoring the fluidity, Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) declined to say, after meeting with McCarthy, if he would support the GOP debt bill or how many of his members might defect.

“I don’t know what might change. I don’t know right now what might change and so I’m waiting to see,” he said.
Perry is amongst a group of conservatives who want to boost work requirements up to 30 hours per week — up from 20 hours in the current plan. Members of the Freedom Caucus are expected to discuss the debt plan during a meeting on Tuesday night.
Other conservatives, including Reps. Eli Crane (Ariz.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Biggs, have also urged McCarthy to go further in his opening bid, according to people familiar with their thinking and public statements.
Still, the largest contingent of Republicans rebelling against their leaders’ plan is pushing to roll back certain tax incentives — specifically for biodiesel — that threatens to hurt their home states’ bottom line. A group of those members, mostly from the Midwest, have demanded changes to the bill, with many telling leadership they remain undecided.
McCarthy met with two of those fence-sitters, Iowa Reps. Ashley Hinson and Randy Feenstra, early Tuesday afternoon and plans to meet with others later in the day. Both Feenstra and Hinson declined to say after their meetings if they would back the bill.
Additionally, two of the holdouts, Reps. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) and Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.), submitted amendments to strike the parts of the bill that would repeal tax credits for biodiesel and other renewable energy sources. Some members debated internally with their teams into Tuesday evening as to whether they could support either amendment and then vote yes on the final bill — even if the amendment were to fail, which it’s likely to do, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Several members appeared to be open to the option.
The most dug-in members on the ethanol issue include the entire Iowa House delegation — Feenstra, Hinson and Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn — along with Reps. Brad Finstad and Fischbach of Minnesota, Van Orden and Mark Alford of Missouri, according to three Republicans involved in the talks. Some members from Illinois, Nebraska and Indiana have also raised concerns, but they’re not considered major threats by GOP leaders at this point.
On the centrist side, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said Tuesday he’s a yes on the bill, but added: “There are some areas where we’re going to have to hold our nose. But we also know what we got to get something across the net.”
When asked about a potential Wednesday vote, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), a leadership ally, said: “Hard to tell when the stew gets done cooking,” but predicted the conference is in a “good spot” to vote this week. The House is scheduled to recess next week.
GOP leaders have continually projected confidence in their ability to keep their conference together, avoiding a repeat of January’s floor drama as McCarthy toiled through 15 ballots to win the top gavel.
“We’re gonna be good, we’re gonna pass it tomorrow,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon.
Leadership is taking the position that it’s this bill or nothing. One senior House Republican, familiar with the discussions, said Tuesday: “We got to present this as a binary choice, either you’re voting with Kevin or you’re voting against Kevin.”
On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said he wouldn’t be surprised if Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is forced to break the debt-limit stalemate between McCarthy and Biden. Whitehouse predicted that the minority leader might get involved once pressure intensifies from Republican donors over relieving the economic pain of a potential default.
“At the end of the day, something will occur in the Senate. I just don’t think the conditions for that have yet been set,” he said. “Mitch McConnell has brokered deadlocks before, and I think that remains a possibility.”
Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 26, 2023
A wartime NATO struggles to replace its chief

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It’s the rumor inflating the Brussels bubble: The EU’s top executive, Ursula von der Leyen, could be crossing town to run NATO.
The rationale makes sense. She has a good working relationship with Washington. She is a former defense minister. And as European Commission president, she has experience working with most NATO heads of government. Plus, if chosen, she would become the alliance’s first-ever female leader.
The conversation has crested in recent weeks, as people eye current NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s pending exit at the end of September.

Yet according to those inside NATO and at the Commission, the murmurings are more wish-casting than hints of a pending job switch. There is no evidence von der Leyen is interested in the role, and those in Brussels don’t expect her to quit before her first presidential term ends in 2024.
The chatter is similar to the rumblings around Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a long-serving leader who checks every box but insists he doesn’t want the job.
The speculation illustrates how much Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed NATO — and who can lead it. The war has put a new spotlight on the alliance, making the job more politically sensitive and high-profile than in the past. And allies are suddenly much more cautious about who they want on the podium speaking for them.
In short, the chatter seems to be people manifesting their ideal candidates and testing ideas rather than engaging in a real negotiation.
“The more names, the clearer there is no candidate,” said one senior European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal alliance dynamics.
A second senior European diplomat agreed: “There is a lot of backroom gossip,” this person said, “but no clear field at this stage.”
The (very) short list
The next NATO chief, officials say, needs to be a European who can work closely with whoever is in the White House.
But that’s not all. The next NATO chief needs to be someone who backs Ukraine but is not so hawkish that it spooks countries worried about provoking Russia. And the person has to have stature — likely a former head of state or government — who can get unanimous support from 31 capitals and, most importantly, the U.S.
There are several obstacles to Usula von der Leyen’s candidacy | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
That’s not a long list.
Von der Leyen is on it, but there are several obstacles to her candidacy.
The first is simply timing. If Stoltenberg leaves office in the fall as scheduled, his replacement would come into the office a year before von der Leyen’s term at the Commission ends in late 2024. She may even seek another five-year term.
“I don’t think she will move anywhere before the end of her mandate,” said one senior Commission official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Speculation is rife that the current NATO chief may be asked to stay on, at least for a little while longer, to allow for a candidate such as von der Leyen to come in at a later stage.
“If Stoltenberg is prolonged until next summer, Ursula von der Leyen’s candidature would look logical,” said a third senior European diplomat.
But in an interview with POLITICO last week, Stoltenberg appeared keen to go home. The NATO chief has been in the job for over eight years, the second-longest tenure in the alliance’s seven-decade history.
Asked about gossip that he may stay on, the secretary-general shot back sarcastically: “First of all, there are many more questions in the world that are extremely more important than that.”
“My plan is to go back to Norway,” he added, “I have been here for now a long time.”
The alliance is divided on the matter. Some countries — particularly those outside the EU — would prefer a quick decision to avoid running into the EU’s own 2024 elections. The fear, a fourth European diplomat said, is that NATO becomes a “consolation prize in the broader European politics” as leaders haggle over who will run the EU’s main institutions.
Another challenge for von der Leyen would be Germany’s track record on defense spending — and her own record as Germany’s defense minister.
A decade ago, NATO countries pledged to move toward spending 2 percent of their economic output on defense by 2024. But Germany, despite being Europe’s largest economy, has consistently missed the mark, even after announcing a €100 billion fund last year to modernize its military.
From the German government’s perspective, keeping von der Leyen at the helm of the Commission might be a bigger priority than NATO | Kenzo Tribuillard/AFP via Getty Images
Additionally, some observers say von der Leyen bears some responsibility for the relatively poor state of Germany’s defenses.
From the German government’s perspective, keeping von der Leyen at the helm of the Commission might also be a bigger priority than NATO — even if she comes from the current center-right opposition. The EU executive is arguably more powerful than the NATO chief within Europe, pushing policies that affect nearly every corner of life.
Predictably, the Commission is officially dismissive of any speculation.
“The president is not a candidate for the job” of NATO secretary-general, a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO on Monday. “And she has no comment on the speculation.”
Who else can do it?
As with von der Leyen, it is unclear if some other names floated are actually available.
Dutch Prime Minister Rutte has dismissed speculation about a NATO role, telling reporters in January that he wanted to “leave politics altogether and do something completely different.”
A spokesperson for the prime minister reiterated this week that the his view has not changed.
Insiders, however, say the Dutch leader shouldn’t be counted out. In office since 2010, Rutte has significant experience working with leaders across the alliance and promotes a tight transatlantic bond.
The Netherlands is also relatively muscular on defense — it has been one of Europe’s largest donors to Ukraine — but not quite as hawkish as countries on the eastern flank.
“Rutte’s name keeps popping up,” said the second senior European diplomat, “but no movement on this beyond gossip.”
Others occasionally mentioned as possible candidates are Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and to a lesser extent British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová.
But despite the gossip, officials acknowledge many of these names are not politically feasible at this stage.
Kallas, for instance, is perceived as too hawkish. And conversely, Canada and some southern European countries are viewed within the alliance as laggards on defense investment. Then there’s the fact that some capitals would oppose a non-EU candidate, complicating a Wallace candidacy.
As a result, a senior figure from a northern or western EU country appears the most likely profile for a successful candidate. Yet for now, who that person would be remains murky. Officials do have a deadline, though: the annual NATO summit in July.
“Either a new secretary general will be announced,” said a fifth senior European diplomat, “or the mandate of Jens Stoltenberg will be prolonged.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 4, 2023
Didn’t have family support: Mrunal Thakur on career struggles

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Hyderabad: Mrunal Thakur, the talented actress who rose to fame in the hit TV show Kumkum Bhagya as Bulbul, has come a long way in her career. However, the road was not easy for her, as she had to overcome her family’s initial reservations about working in the entertainment industry. Mrunal, on the other hand, proved her mettle as an actress and won the hearts of the audience through hard work and perseverance.
Mrunal Thakur expressed her gratitude to her family in a recent interview in Rising India Summit which was held in New Delhi she spoke about her upbringing during a time when the concept of ‘One India, One Cinema’ was non-existent. She said, “I want to thank my family. Because initially I didn’t have their support since they were scared of what was going to happen, they had reservations about the entertainment industry, whether I’ll get good roles or not. But to begin with, when I started my career with television, I felt a sense of familiarity and belongingness. And then I made my debut in Marathi cinema.”
Mrunal’s family was skeptical of the entertainment industry at first, but after meeting the cast and crew of her films, they were proud of her She continued, “Since I am a Maharashtrian and when my family met up with the crew and the team, when they got to know about the subjects of the film, they felt very proud. And then Love Sonia happened. Prior to the release of the film when it was doing the rounds of the film festival circuits, the kind of comments that were pouring in said, ‘Mrunal, you’re the next Smita Patil. And for me Smita Patil is a Goddess. “

She further added “I worship her and I’ve carefully studied all her films. So this is a very big compliment especially for a Marathi girl. Now my family says that, ‘Mrunal, we are proud of you. There is no looking back. Just keep one thing in mind that whatever film you choose to become part of, make sure that the audience learns something out of it. It should start a conversation once the end credits roll’. It’s my small effort as an actor to make this society a better place to live in.”
Mrunal’s family is now proud of her, and they encourage her to choose films that teach the audience something and spark a discussion after the credits roll. As an actor, Mrunal considers it her responsibility to make society a better place to live.
Mrunal is set to appear in Vardhan Ketkar’s murder mystery Gumraah, alongside Aditya Roy Kapur, Ronit Roy, Vedika Pinto, Deepak Kalra, and Mohit Anand. The film is set to be released on April 7th and is expected to provide audiences with an exciting experience.
Mrunal’s journey as an actress is inspirational, and her commitment to her craft shines through in her performances. She has demonjstrated that hard work and perseverance can overcome any obstacle and lead to success. Her story shows that anything is possible if you believe in yourself and your dreams.

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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 2, 2023
Congress struggles to unify on TikTok

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But key senators are now suggesting they’re ambivalent about RESTRICT. A right-wing backlash to the legislation is building. And top Republicans in the House are claiming the Senate bill goes too easy on TikTok — and are spreading misinformation about it in the process.
Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Thune said he expected the RESTRICT Act “could move very quickly” as long as it gets a prompt markup. “If we can get a markup in the Senate Commerce Committee, I think we can probably get it across the floor in the Senate,” he said.
But Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who has yet to officially endorse the bill, appears to be in no hurry. And after telling reporters earlier this month that she thought the RESTRICT Act was “a good idea,” on Thursday she appeared to backpedal slightly.
“I said it’s a start, saying that the Commerce secretary might play a larger role,” Cantwell said. The senator said she didn’t yet know if the breadth of the bill’s restrictions on Chinese and other foreign tech were cause for concern, and that her attention is for now focused on other topics.
“My primary concern is we need a data privacy bill,” Cantwell said.
While conservatives are generally the loudest supporters of a TikTok ban, this week saw a significant backlash to RESTRICT from right-of-center circles. The furor soon reached Fox News — on Wednesday, host Jesse Watters called RESTRICT “garbage” and suggested it would curtail personal freedoms.
Watters demanded an explanation from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a sponsor of RESTRICT who had joined him on the program. But Graham said he was unaware that he had signed onto the bill — and suggested that if it was as bad as Watters said, he may need to retool.
“The problem is real with China,” Graham said. “But the solution can be more damaging than the problem, that’s sort of what you’re telling me.” (On Thursday, Graham spokesperson Kevin Bishop told POLITICO that the senator still supports RESTRICT.)

Warner also had to defend the bill this week from accusations that it would undermine free speech and expand government surveillance. And while he has repeatedly suggested he’s talking with House GOP leadership on RESTRICT, a companion bill has yet to emerge in the lower chamber.
But other bills targeting TikTok are percolating in the House. That includes the DATA Act, a bill from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) that was marked up earlier this month, and the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act, legislation backed by new Select Committee on China Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.). And both of those Republicans claim the RESTRICT Act is weak tea.
“The Warner-Thune bill just doesn’t have a lot of teeth to it, and it keeps the algorithms in Beijing,” McCaul said last week. On Wednesday, Gallagher complained that the Senate bill “doesn’t actually ban TikTok.”
Strangely, both lawmakers also suggested that TikTok supports passage of RESTRICT. “The joke is that TikTok endorsed that bill,” McCaul said last week. Gallagher said Wednesday that he believed “TikTok has endorsed the RESTRICT Act,” suggesting that “should be a sign that that’s not the preferred approach.”
When asked on Thursday about the claim that the company has endorsed the Senate bill, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter replied with the ROFL, sobbing and straight face emojis. “Totally false,” she said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 31, 2023
Michigan State struggles with uncertain return to classes

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On Monday, Díaz-Muñoz and others are set to return to class. The university confirmed Friday in an email to students and staff that campus operations would resume, even as officials have faced pressure to delay the return. There will be no classes for the rest of the semester in Berkey Hall, where two students died, for the rest of the semester.
Díaz-Muñoz said the university offered to have another professor to teach through the end of the semester. While he has yet to make a final decision, his plan is to go back next week and teach.
“On one hand, I want to forget it all. But then on the other hand, I think I need to help my students pick up the pieces,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “I think I need to help my students build a sense of meaning.”
Some in the community, however, aren’t ready for the rapid return. The editorial board of The State News, the student newspaper, wrote Thursday that they wouldn’t attend class next week, either in person or online. More time was needed to heal, the students wrote.
In the days following the shooting, students across campus were seen packing their belongings to leave East Lansing with all activities shut down for 48 hours and no classes until at least Monday. A petition demanding hybrid or online options for students received over 20,000 signatures as of Saturday. Michigan State has about 50,000 students, including 19,000 who live on campus.
Díaz-Muñoz understands that some students won’t be ready to return, saying that some will still have “the fear of looking over their shoulder and looking out the window, at the doors.”
“There are some kids in my class that are graduating this semester. And they need this horrific nightmare to have a better ending than the way it ended on Monday,” Díaz-Muñoz said.
In an email sent out to faculty Friday, the university said that all students will be given a credit/no credit option this semester, which allows students to receive credit for all classes without it impacting their overall grade point average. The email, written by interim Provost Thomas Jeitschko, asked all teachers to “extend as much grace and flexibility as you are able with individual students, now and in the coming weeks.”

“We are encouraging empathy and patience and an atmosphere for all to recover at their own pace,” Interim President Teresa Woodruff said Thursday.
Four wounded students remain in critical condition at Sparrow Hospital, a hospital spokesman confirmed Saturday. One had been upgraded to stable condition on Thursday.
Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023. In 2022, there were more than 600 mass shootings in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The shootings at Michigan State happened Monday during evening classes at Berkey Hall and nearby at the MSU Union, a social hub where students can study, eat and relax. Students across the vast campus were ordered to shelter in place for four hours — “run, hide, fight” if necessary — while police hunted for Anthony McRae, 43, who eventually killed himself when confronted by police not far from his home in Lansing.
Police said he left a note with a possible motive but have not said what it was. He was the lone shooter and had no connection to the victims or to Michigan State as a student or employee, they said.
Díaz-Muñoz describes hearing “explosions” outside his class before a masked man appeared in the doorway of Room 114 and began open firing. Students hid behind desks and chairs before breaking windows to escape.
After “one to two minutes” of shooting, the gunman turned around and left, leaving behind “destruction and death in my classroom,” said Díaz-Muñoz.
For Díaz-Muñoz, the terror didn’t end as abruptly. The carnage that occurred in his classroom was “something you saw in a movie,” he said.
Díaz-Muñoz says he has taken prescription medication as a way to force himself to sleep, only emerging from his room “for a bowl of soup.”
The assistant professor said that he is sharing his story in hopes of bringing about gun reform.
“If the lawmakers and the senators saw what I saw, instead of hearing in the news one more statistic. If they had seen those girls and the pools of blood that I saw, the horror we lived, they would be shamed into action,” Díaz-Muñoz said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 19, 2023
Competitor or adversary? The west struggles to define its relationship with Beijing

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If you want to solve a problem, it helps to be able to define it, but when it comes to a problem like China, western leaders have been struggling to find the right words.
Liz Truss sought to designate China as a “threat” to Britain, but did not stay prime minister long enough for that to become established policy. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, has opted for the less combative “systemic challenge” but he is under pressure from backbench MPs to follow Truss’s path and call Beijing a “strategic threat”.
Sunak has made clear he does not want the UK to be out of step with its allies on the issue, most importantly the US. In Washington, meanwhile, China designation is a delicate and evolving art.
The delicacy was apparent when a Chinese balloon sailed over the continental US earlier this month. The US declared the high-altitude airship and its payload to be designed for spying and shot it down once it was safely over the Atlantic. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, cancelled a long-planned trip to Beijing to address bilateral tensions, but at the same time stressed that channels of communication would be kept open and that the US remained keen on a meeting when conditions allowed. Blinken may meet his counterpart, Wang Yi, as soon as this week, at the Munich security conference.
The theme of US-China policy towards the end of the Trump administration was an all-encompassing decoupling, in which China was presented in mostly adversarial terms. Joe Biden has preferred to talk about “stiff competition”. His administration’s national defence strategy paper deemed Russia to be an “acute threat” while China was portrayed as the US’s only long-term “competitor”. In recent weeks, the official catchphrase for Beijing has been the slightly nebulous “pacing challenge”, suggesting the US is the world’s constant frontrunner with China ever closer to its shoulder.
The problem with categorising China is that there are multiple aspects to its global role as it expands its presence on the world stage. For that reason, Democratic senator Chris Murphy has warned against digging up old cold war rhetoric.
“You can’t use the terminology that we used for our conflict with the Soviet Union for our conflict with China,” Murphy told Foreign Policy. “It is apples and oranges. We had virtually no trade relationship with the Soviet Union. Our most vital trade relationship is with China. So I do worry about a bunch of Cold Warriors and Cold War enthusiasts thinking that you can run a competition with China like you ran a competition with the Soviet Union. It’s not the same thing.”
Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 11 January 2023. Beijing has cultivated relationships with African countries. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
With this in mind, Blinken has adopted a Swiss army penknife multi-tooled approach that is “competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be.”

Washington is acutely aware that it has been complacent in its competition with China for global clout, having assumed that better US technology and its democratic model would win the day, only to find that African countries and other parts of the global south were sitting on their hands when the US called for support in the UN general assembly. Last year an old Pacific ally, Solomon Islands, signed a security pact with Beijing, denying entry to a US Coast Guard cutter not long after.
The Biden administration now plans to beef up its diplomatic presence in the Pacific, reopening some shuttered missions. It has set up a “China house” in the state department to coordinate analysis and help counter China’s message around the world. On Wednesday, the deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, summed up the new US approach as Washington takes on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the contest for hearts and minds in emerging economies.
“It is not to say that the PRC can’t invest or that you should toss them out,” Sherman said at the Brookings Institution. Instead, she said the message will be: “Have your eyes wide open”.
“Understand what you’re getting, understand what rules apply, what the norms are. Give us a chance, see what we have to offer. Let us compete and help you develop as a country in the ways that you choose,” Sherman said.
As for collaboration with China, she said there was little choice other than to work with Beijing to address the climate emergency.
There is no doubt that we cannot meet the climate challenge without engagement with the PRC
US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman
“There is no doubt that we cannot meet the climate challenge without engagement with the PRC,” Sherman said. “It’s just not possible because we are both such large emitters and historic emitters.”
At the same time, there are plenty of fields in which the US and China are adversaries. The balloon affair has just added another layer to a constant, escalating intelligence struggle between the two powers, in which Beijing has scored some remarkable successes in recent years, stealing designs for the F-35 fighter jet for example. Chinese hackers also stole the personal details of 22 million federal workers – current, former and prospective.
Fears of China’s technological capabilities led Biden to introduce draconian export restrictions on semiconductors in October of last year, in an effort to strangle China’s microchip sector. It came close to an economic declaration of war, but Republicans in Congress are still trying to depict him as “soft on China”, calling on him to ban the TikTok app as a threat to national security. Some red states are considering bans on Chinese nationals buying land.
It is in the military arena of course where the stakes are the highest and the risks of a competitive relationship becoming adversarial are greatest. Last week, the Pentagon informed Congress that China now had more missile silos than the US. It was an eye-catching claim, though most of the silos are empty and the US retains a substantial superiority in submarine and airborne launchers. China is estimated by the Federation of American Scientists to have 350 nuclear warheads. Even if that number tripled, as the Pentagon predicts it will, it will still be less than a fifth of the US stockpile.
China’s long-term threat will depend ultimately on whether it is developing its military clout simply to deter or to attack, across the Taiwan Strait in particular. At the end of January, the head of US Air Mobility Command, Gen Mike Minihan, told other officers that his “gut” told him the US and China would be at war by 2025. It was an estimate quickly disowned by the rest of the Pentagon leadership, who shied away from such expressions of inevitability.
US officials say that Xi Jinping is watching Russia’s military debacle in Ukraine with concern and maybe recalibrating his options. Opinions differ within the administration on how seriously Xi takes his pledge to reunite China, another reason it has wavered over the right terminology.
There is agreement for now however that repeatedly deeming China to be a threat risks making matters worse, shaping policy in such a way that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
West struggles to deliver on Zelenskyy’s defense wish list

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BRUSSELS — With Ukraine’s partners racing to send more weapons to Kyiv amid an emerging Russian offensive, fulfilling Ukrainian requests is becoming trickier.
Ukraine is still waiting for promised deliveries of modern tanks. Combat jets, though much discussed, are mired in the throes of government hesitation.
On top of that, Kyiv is using thousands of rounds of ammunition per day — and Western production simply can’t keep up.

As members of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group gather in Brussels on Tuesday to coordinate arms assistance to Ukraine, they face pressure to expedite delivery and provide even more advanced capabilities to Ukrainian forces.
“We have received good signals,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address following visits to London, Paris and Brussels.
“This applies both to long-range missiles and tanks, and to the next level of our cooperation — combat aircraft,” he said, however adding, “We still need to work on this.”
And while most of Ukraine’s partners are committed to responding to Zelenskyy’s stump tour with expanded support as the conflict threatens to escalate, Western governments will have to overcome political and practical hurdles.
“It is clear that we are in a race of logistics,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday. “Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield.”
Existing and future supply of weapons to Ukraine will both be on the table when the defense group — made up of about 50 countries and popularly known at the Ramstein format — meets at NATO headquarters.
NATO allies will also hold a meeting of defense ministers directly afterward to hear the latest assessment from Ukrainian counterparts and discuss the alliance’s future defense challenges.
Ukrainian officials will use the session, which would typically be held at the U.S. base in Ramstein, Germany, to share their latest needs with Western officials — from air defense to ground logistics — while it will also be a venue for Kyiv’s supporters to check in on implementation of earlier pledges and availabilities in the near future.
The aim of the session, said a senior European diplomat, is “to step up military support as much as needed — not only commitments, but actual speedy deliverables is of particular significance.”
“Tanks are needed not on paper but in the battlefield,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of discussions.
Ammo, ammo, ammo
One of the most pressing issues on the table in Brussels this week is how to keep the weapons already sent to Ukraine firing.
“Of course it is important to discuss new systems, but the most urgent need is to ensure that all the systems which are already there, or have been pledged, are delivered and work as they should,” Stoltenberg said.
During meetings with EU heads on Thursday, Zelenskyy and his team provided each leader with an individualized list requesting weapons and equipment based on the country’s known stocks and capabilities.
But there was one common theme.
“The first thing on the list was, everywhere, the ammunition,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said.
“If you have the equipment and you don’t have the ammunition, then it’s no use,” the Estonian leader told reporters on Friday.
And while Ukraine is in dire need of vast amounts of ammo to keep fighting, Western countries’ own stocks are running low.
“It’s a very real concern,” said Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe. “None of us, including the United States, is producing enough ammunition right now,” he said in a phone interview on Sunday.
Munitions will also be top of mind at the session of NATO defense ministers on Wednesday, who will discuss boosting production of weapons, ammunition and equipment, along with future defense spending targets for alliance members.
Boosting stockpiles and production, Stoltenberg emphasized on Monday, “requires more defense expenditure by NATO allies.”
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty images
And while the NATO chief said some progress has been made on work with industry on plans to boost stockpile targets, some current and former officials have expressed frustration about the pace of work.
Kallas last week raised the idea of joint EU purchases to help spur production and hasten deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, although it’s not clear whether this plan would enjoy sufficient support within the bloc — and how fast it could have an impact.
Hodges thinks companies need a clearer demand signal from governments. “We need industry to do more,” he said.
But he noted, “These are not charities … they are commercial businesses, and so you have to have an order with money before they start making it.”
Jets fight fails to take off (for now)
Fighter jets are a priority ask for Ukrainian officials, although Western governments seem not yet ready to make concrete commitments.
Numerous countries have expressed openness to eventually providing Ukraine with jets, indicating that the matter is no longer a red line. Regardless, hesitation remains.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg | Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images
The U.K. has gone the furthest so far, announcing that it will train Ukrainian pilots on fighter jets. But when it comes to actually providing aircraft, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace cautioned that “this is not a simple case of towing an aircraft to the border.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda, meanwhile, said sending F-16 aircraft would be a “very serious decision” which is “not easy to take,” arguing that his country does not have enough jets itself.
For some potential donors, the jets debate revolves around both timing and utility.
“The essential question is: What do they want to do with planes? It’s not clear,” said one French diplomat, who was unauthorized to speak publicly. “Do they think that with 50 or 100 fighter jets, they can retake the Donbas?” the diplomat said.
The diplomat said there is no point in training Ukrainians on Western jets now. “It’ll take over six months to train them, so it doesn’t respond to their immediate imperatives.”
But, the diplomat added, “maybe some countries should give them MiGs, planes that they can actually fly.”
Slovakia is in fact moving closer to sending MiG-29 jets to Ukraine.
“We want to do it,” said a Slovak official who was not at liberty to disclose their identity. “But we must work out the details on how,” the official said, adding that a domestic process and talks with Ukraine still need to take place.
No big jet announcements are expected at the Tuesday meeting, though the issue is likely to be discussed.
Where are the tanks?
And while Western governments have already — with great fanfare — struck a deal to provide Ukraine with modern tanks, questions over actual deliveries will also likely come up at Tuesday’s meeting.
Germany’s leadership in particular has stressed it’s time for countries that supported the idea of sending tanks to live up to their rhetoric.
“Germany is making a very central contribution to ensuring that we provide rapid support, as we have done in the past,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last week.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is shown an anti-aircraft gun tank Gepard | Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images
“We are striving to ensure that many others who have come forward in the past now follow up on this finger-pointing with practical action,” he went on. Germany’s goal is for Ukraine to receive tanks by the end of March, and training has already begun.
Along with tanks, another pending request that Ukrainian officials will likely bring up this week is long-range missiles.
Hodges, who has been advocating for the West to give Ukraine the weapons it would need to retake Crimea, said he believes long-range precision weapons are the key. “That’s how you defeat mass with precision.”
Any such weapon, he argued, “has got to be at the top of the list.”
Clea Caulcutt contributed reporting from Paris and Hans von der Buchard contributed from Berlin.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 8, 2023
Santos forgoes his committees as House GOP struggles to boot Omar

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Santos’ move drew immediate praise from his home-state GOP colleagues, several of whom have already called for his resignation amid the growing controversy over his misstatements about his past.
“I think it’s obvious it’s the right decision,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who toppled House Democrats’ former campaign chief in a swing-district midterm triumph two months ago.
Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) echoed that sentiment: “As I said, I think he should resign and focus on his defense. But, do welcome this decision.”
Santos declined to comment to POLITICO when asked about the move, just upon exiting the weekly closed-door meeting. He replied: “I don’t know.”
And there appeared to be some uncertainty on Tuesday about whether Santos — who faces multiple investigations on the federal, state and local levels into potential false statements about his background — would try to return to his committees.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said Tuesday morning that Santos had apologized and described his move as a temporary recusal, after which “he’ll come back” to the panels he’d not yet been seated on.
“It sounded to me like it’s temporary,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), who chairs the Small Business Committee. “I think, until there’s a level of what he thinks the issues that he’s a distraction from are over.”
Despite the multiple probes Santos is currently dealing with, Williams said he didn’t sense the move stemmed from looming legal issues.

“I’ve seen members do that before, usually when they were under some sort of legal question or something like that — just step back on their own. If they don’t do it, we quite often do it ourselves,” House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said, adding that Santos “deserves some credit for doing it” before any internal move that may have been made against him.
The small business panel had not yet named its Republican members as of Tuesday. A panel spokesperson attributed the delay on Monday to reasons other than Santos.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 31, 2023
Chattisgarh: A weakened BJP struggles to find face to counter Baghel

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Raipur: As the state gears up for assembly elections, BJP happens to be in a difficult situation to put forth its Chief Ministerial face. The party appears to be the weakest in Chhattisgarh.
The state was ruled by BJP for a decade and a half, but in the last election, the party was completely wiped out. Now BJP is working up all strategies to return to power. While major changes have been introduced in the organisation, the system is being strengthened at the grassroots as well. Additionally, there is also an eye on the internal tussle of the Congress.
The BJP has failed to build a movement against the ruling Congress in Chhattisgarh, which was once the hallmark of the BJP. At the district level, there is are protests and agitations, but that is absent at the state level where the party is not able to succeed in creating a campaign, which in turn could create an atmosphere against the Congress in general public’s mind.
Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel is not only announcing schemes for every section, but is also implementing them. After coming to power, Congress has taken steps towards strengthening its position by announcing farm loan waiver, campaigning to strengthen the rural economy and now assuring unemployment allowance in the election year.
The biggest challenge for the BJP in the state is to come up with a representation. Although the BJP government in the state has been under the leadership of Dr Raman Singh for a decade and a half, the picture of who will be the next Chief Minister is still unclear.
It is not clear whether the BJP will make a tribal or a non-tribal the CM. On the other hand, the Congress has already played the backward class card through Bhupesh Baghel, and is leaving no stone unturned to woo the Scheduled Tribes as well.
Political analysts believe that the path to power is not easy for BJP in Chhattisgarh because the organisation is not strong enough to challenge the Congress and the Bhupesh Baghel government. Besides, there is no clarity on who will be the next Chief Minister from BJP. Consequently, veteran leaders of the party are not seen active on the ground. On the other hand, the Congress is doing everything to build inroads and win the hearts of public.
Congress holds 71 of the state’s 90 assembly seats, while the BJP has 14 MLAs. Apart from this, Chhattisgarh Congress has three and Bahujan Samaj Party has two MLAs. Not only this, Congress is in control of all the 14 urban bodies of the state.

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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 29, 2023
‘Cause am Muslim’: Uorfi Javed struggles to find house in Mumbai

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Mumbai: Everyone dreams of owning an apartment in Mumbai. We have seen various people come from across India to this dream city to make their dreams come true. Few achieve success while others keep struggling. During their struggling period most people find it difficult to pay the rent of flats but once settled in Mumbai, it is not a big deal to pay the high rent of the flat. But the shocking news is that actress Uorfi Javed is finding it tough to find an apartment for her in Mumbai and she revealed the reason on her Twitter.
Be it a dress made out of broken glass, safety pins, or aluminium foil, television actress and social media star Uorfi Javed (Urfi) is almost always in the headlines for her unique fashion sense.
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday, Uorfi wrote that she is finding it difficult to rent an apartment in Mumbai. She said that both Hindu and Muslim owners are saying ‘no’ to renting the apartment to her. Her tweet reads, “Muslim owners don’t want to rent me a house because of the way I dress, Hindi owners don’t want to rent me cause I’m Muslim. Some owners have an issue with the political threats I get. Finding a rental apartment in Mumbai is so tuff.”
Muslim owners don’t want to rent me house cause of the way I dress, Hindi owners don’t want to rent me cause I’m Muslim. Some owners have an issue with the political threats I get . Finding a rental apartment in mumbai is so tuff
— Uorfi (@uorfi_) January 24, 2023
As Uorfi is usually surrounded by controversies and various politicians and activists had also lodged complaints against her for her dressing sense. She was even accused of promoting nudity earlier by a BJP leader.
On the professional front, Uorfi was last seen in the dating reality show Splitsvilla. She was also a contestant in one of the seasons of the TV reality show Bigg Boss.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 25, 2023