by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Beijing : China on Thursday said it hoped that US President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to Beijing would help boost bilateral relations.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry formally announced Trump’s visit next week, along with some details of his agenda, as part of the President’s Asia tour from November 4 to 14, reports Efe news.
Trump will arrive in Beijing on November 8 and the following day he is expected to be a busy one in the Great Hall of the People, seat of the legislative and ceremonial activities of the Chinese government.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump will participate in a welcoming ceremony there, attend business and bilateral meetings and finally appear jointly before the press.
The two leaders will discuss bilateral relations and international issues, said ministry spokesperson Lu Kang.
He said China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results during Trump’s visit in order to inject new and strong impetus into the development of bilateral ties.
Trump’s first official visit to China will conclude on November 10, after which he will travel to Vietnam to participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World

Janet Yellen
Washington : The US Federal Reserve has left its benchmark interest rates unchanged amid speculation about President Donald Trump’s appointment of next Fed Chair.
The US labor market “has continued to strengthen” and economic activity “has been rising at a solid rate” despite hurricane-related disruptions, the Fed’s policy-making committee said in a statement released on Wednesday, after its two-day meeting, Xinhua news agency reported.
Citing past experiences, the central bank said the hurricanes, which hit the Gulf Coast in late August and September, are “unlikely to materially alter the course of the national economy over the medium term.”
The US economy grew at an annual rate of 3 per cent in the third quarter of the year, slightly lower than the 3.1 percent in the previous quarter, the Commerce Department reported last week.
In view of realized and expected labor market conditions and inflation, the central bank decided to maintain its target range for the federal funds rate at 1 to 1.25 per cent.
The Fed’s decision comes one day before Trump plans to announce his pick for the next leader of the central bank.
“I’ll be announcing tomorrow the new head of the Federal Reserve… I think you’ll be extremely impressed by this person,” Trump said on Wednesday at the Cabinet meeting.
Trump has recently finished interviews of five candidates for the next Fed Chair, including current Fed governor Jerome Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires next February.
Multiple US media outlets reported Trump is most likely to nominate Powell, a Republican and former US Treasury official, for the post.
If Trump does nominate him, Powell is likely to continue Yellen’s gradual and cautious approach to tightening monetary policy.
“If Trump nominates Powell to replace Yellen it will imply continuity in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate and the balance sheet policy, at least for a time,” said Lewis Alexander, US chief economist at Nomura.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World

Hillary Clinton
London : WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has confirmed that a data analytics company that worked for US President Donald Trumps election campaign had contacted him over Hillary Clinton’s private emails while she was secretary of state, media reports said.
“I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica (prior to November last year]) and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks,” the Guardian quoted Assange’s tweet on Wednesday night.
He did not elaborate on the content of the request.
Assange’s statement followed a report in the Daily Beast that Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix made contact with the WikiLeaks founder about the possible release of 33,000 of Clinton’s missing emails.
The Daily Beast report said: “Nix, who heads Cambridge Analytica, told a third party that he reached out to Assange about his firm somehow helping the WikiLeaks founder release Clinton’s missing emails, according to two sources familiar with a Congressional investigation into interactions between Trump associates and the Kremlin.
“Those sources also relayed that, according to Nix’s email, Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn’t want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own. If the claims Nix made in that email are true, this would be the closest known connection between Trump’s campaign and Assange,” it added.
CNN, citing two unnamed sources, said Nix wrote to several people including Trump mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, explaining that he had emailed Assange seeking access to the Clinton emails to turn them into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee.
Cambridge Analytica was hired in the summer of 2016 as part of the Trump campaign’s three-pronged data operation, which was led by Brad Parscale and overseen by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
No one from the Trump campaign was copied on the email, the sources told CNN.
The 33,000 emails deleted from Clinton’s private server have never materialised.
In July 2016, Trump called on Russia to find the emails.
WikiLeaks had published emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta just hours after the release of a potentially campaign-ending Access Hollywood tape in which Trump could be heard boasting about groping women, reports the Guardian.
Assange has denied receiving help from Russian hackers.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Less than one-third of Americans support US President Donald Trump’s tax cut plan, a poll released by market and public opinion research groups showed.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, of the adults who said they had heard of the tax reform, 28 per cent said they support it, while 41 per cent oppose it and another 31 per cent said they do not know, Xinhua reported.
A budget resolution approved by the US Senate last week would add up to 1.5 trillion USD in fiscal deficit during the next decade, paving the way for Trump’s tax cut plan.
The Trump administration, along with congressional Republicans, last month released a unified framework for tax reform, which will cut tax rates for businesses and individuals but lacks details about how to consolidate the fiscal position in face of big tax cuts.
The US national debt is ballooning at over 20 trillion dollars, which is more than the country’s’s annual GDP.
Independent analysts believe Trump’s tax cut plan would leave the debt even larger, while some Republicans are of the view the tax cut could be offset by stronger economic growth that would generate more tax revenue.
According to the poll, more than two-thirds of registered voters said reducing the US federal budget deficit is more important than cutting taxes for the wealthy or for corporations.
US House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday said that House Republicans will unveil the long-awaited tax reform legislation next week and pass the bill by the Thanksgiving week.
The poll, conducted online in all 50 US states, found that only 15 per cent of registered voters said the Republicans in Congress should prioritize tax reform over other issues.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Tehran : Iran’s Petroleum Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said that global oil markets have remained unfazed by the recent remarks of US President Donald Trump against Iran’s international 2015 nuclear deal, internationally known as JCPOA, Press TV reported on Sunday.
“The oil market did not hear Trump’s remarks,” Zanganeh said, adding that “If Trump’s threats had been materialized, there should have been a rapid rise in prices of oil.”
However, “there have been no significant changes over the past week,” he was quoted as saying.
In the meantime, Iranian senior lawmaker Hossein Naqavi Hosseini said that Trump’s anti-JCPOA stance, should have increased oil prices to as high as $65 per barrel. “However, Trump’s remarks failed to produce any major impact.”
The JCPOA was reached between Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, plus Germany, in July 2015. Under the deal, Iran agreed to halt its nuclear weapon programme in exchange for economic aid and lifting of international sanctions.
However, on October 13, US President Donald Trump called for decertifying the agreement, alleging Iran had committed “multiple violations”.
—IANS