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Before Zhang Gaoli was engulfed in accusations that he had sexually assaulted a tennis champion, he seemed to embody the qualities that the Chinese Communist Party prizes in officials: austere, disciplined, and impeccably loyal to the leader of the day.
He had climbed steadily from running an oil refinery to a succession of leadership posts along China’s fast-growing coast, avoiding the scandals and controversy that felled other, flashily ambitious politicians. He became known, if for anything, for his monotone impersonality. On entering China’s top leadership, he invited people to search for anything amiss in his behavior.
“Stern, low-key, taciturn,” summed up one of the few profiles of him in the Chinese media. His interests, Xinhua news agency said, included books, chess and tennis.
Now the allegation from Peng Shuai, the professional tennis player, has cast Mr. Zhang’s private life under a blaze of international attention, making him a symbol of a political system that prizes secrecy and control over open accountability. The allegation raises questions about how far Chinese officials carry their declared ideals of clean-living integrity into their heavily guarded homes.
entrusted with overseeing China’s initial preparations for the 2022 Winter Olympics, which is now being overshadowed by the furor.
About three years ago, after stepping down, Mr. Zhang called the head of a tennis academy to summon Ms. Peng to play tennis with him at a party-owned hotel in Beijing, called the Kangming, that plays host to retired officials, according to her post.
Later that day, she said, he forced her to have sex in his home. They resumed a relationship, but he insisted it remain furtive. She had to switch cars to be able to enter the government compound where he lives in Beijing, she wrote. He warned her to tell no one, not even her mother.
With rarely a word or hair out of place, Mr. Zhang has seemed an unlikely protagonist for a scandal that has rippled around the world. He belongs to a generation of officials who rose after the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, taking on the self-effacing ethos of collective leadership under Hu Jintao, who preceded the country’s current leader, Xi Jinping.
faltered under debt and inflated expectations, but Mr. Zhang moved upward into the central leadership in 2012. He became executive vice premier: in effect, China’s deputy prime minister.
“I hope that all the party members, officials and members of the public in this city will continue to exercise strict oversight over me,” Mr. Zhang said in 2012 as he left Tianjin for Beijing.
negotiated oil deals with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and promoted Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative.
met with Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, as Mr. Bach was visiting the city.
It was Mr. Bach who on Sunday held a video call with Ms. Peng intended to reassure athletes and others worried about her disappearance in the days after her post appeared.
Earlier in Mr. Xi’s term, lurid reports about officials’ sexual misdeeds at times surfaced in state media, disclosures intended to signal that he was serious about purifying the party.
Mr. Xi’s priority now appears to be fending off any odor of scandal tainting the party’s top echelons. References to Ms. Peng’s account were nearly wiped off the internet inside China. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, suggested that the attention around Ms. Peng had become “malicious hype.” Official media have not shown or reported on Mr. Zhang since Ms. Peng went public; nor have they directly challenged her account.
“Even to deny her allegations would be to give them a level of credence that you couldn’t then roll back,” said Louisa Lim, a former journalist who long worked in China and the author of “The People’s Republic of Amnesia.”
When Mr. Zhang retired in 2018, he dropped from public view, as is the norm in Chinese politics. Retirement often comes with perks like high quality health care, housing and travel within China, but also some monitoring.
“Once you retire, your movements are reported to the party’s department of organization,” said Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California who studies the party.
In her post, Ms. Peng seemed to indicate that she and Mr. Zhang had recently had a disagreement, and that he had once again “disappeared” as he did before. She wrote, though, that she expected that her account would have little effect on Mr. Zhang’s eminence.
“With your intelligence and wits,” she wrote, “I am sure you will either deny it, or blame it on me, or you could simply play it cool.”
President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, pledged at a virtual summit to improve cooperation, but offered no breakthroughs after three and a half hours of talks.
In separate statements after the talks ended, each side emphasized the points of contention that mattered most: lists of mutual grievances that underscored the depth of the divisions between them.
Mr. Biden, the White House said, raised concerns about human rights abuses and China’s “unfair trade and economic policies.” Mr. Xi said that American support for Taiwan was “playing with fire,” and warned that dividing the world into alliances or blocs — a pillar of the new administration’s strategy for challenging China by teaming up with its neighbors — would “inevitably bring disaster to the world.”
In advance of the meeting, White House officials had signaled that there would be no concrete agreements or initiatives, or even an effort to put out a joint statement — usually a pre-negotiated statement on areas of agreement or projects to tackle together.
The two leaders nevertheless expressed a willingness to manage their differences in a way that avoided conflict between the world’s two largest powers. That alone could lower temperature of a relationship that has at times this year threatened to overheat.
“It seems to me we need to establish some common-sense guardrails,” Mr. Biden said, using a phrase his administration has often cited as a goal for a challenging relationship. Addressing Mr. Xi directly, he added: “We have a responsibility to the world, as well as to our people.”
Although the two leaders have spoken by telephone twice this year, the conference was intended to replicate the more thorough discussion of issues of previous summits between the United States and China — something that was not possible because health and political concerns have kept Mr. Xi from traveling since January 2020.
Both men were accompanied by a phalanx of senior aides — the Americans in the Roosevelt Room at the White House and the Chinese inside a chamber in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. In brief remarks at the beginning of the meeting, each struck a conciliatory tone, flagging areas of disagreement but also pledging to work together.
Mr. Biden, seated before two large screens, noted that the two have “spent an awful lot of time talking to each other” over the years, dating to when Mr. Biden was vice president and Mr. Xi was a rising power in the Chinese leadership. Mr. Xi said he was prepared to move relations “in a positive direction.”
“Although it’s not as good as a face-to-face meeting, I’m very happy to see my old friend,” Mr. Xi said.
Mr. Biden emphasized the need to keep “communication lines open,” according to a White House statement, as the two countries confront disagreements over issues like the future of Taiwan, the militarization of the South China Sea and China’s exploitation of vulnerabilities to bore deeply into the computer networks of American companies, especially defense contractors.
The call, which was initiated at Mr. Biden’s request, reflected his administration’s deep concern that the chances of keeping conflict at bay may be diminishing. Mr. Biden has repeatedly suggested that it should be possible to avoid active military engagement with China, even as the United States engages in vigorous competition with Beijing and continues to confront the Chinese leadership on several significant issues.
The statements hinted at some discussion of “strategic” issues, a phrase that appeared to encompass the nuclear strategies of both nations, but American officials declined to detail those discussions. Some issues that had been the source of speculation before the summit did not come up, including disputes over visas and an invitation to attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which begin in February.
Reporting and research by Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger, Claire Fu and Li You.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, urged the United States not to test his country’s resolve on the question of Taiwan, an island democracy Beijing claims is part of its territory.
“We are patient and are willing to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification with the utmost sincerity,” Mr. Xi told President Biden, according to a readout on the meeting released by Chinese state media. “But China will have to take resolute measures if the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces provoke, compel or even cross the red line.”
In vivid language that has come to define Beijing’s strident rhetoric, Mr. Xi criticized politicians in the United States who he said sought to use the island’s status as leverage over Beijing — a trend he described as dangerous. “It is playing with fire, and if you play with fire, you will get burned,” the Chinese readout cited Mr. Xi as saying.
No issue between the United States and China is more contentious than the fate of Taiwan, which functions as an independent nation in all but official recognition by most of the world.
The People’s Republic of China has claimed Taiwan since the defeated Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek retreated there in 1949, but in recent months Beijing has grown increasingly vocal in criticizing U.S. efforts to strengthen the island’s democracy and its military defenses.
Beijing’s assertive language is often coupled with displays of its growing military prowess. It has menaced Taiwan with military exercises simulating an amphibious assault and air patrols that have swept through the island’s air defense identification zone. Many military analysts, including some in the Pentagon, believe that the maneuvers by an increasingly well-equipped Chinese military could be a prelude to an invasion.
The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has warned China that its military operations and threats are dangerous. The United States, which withdrew its official recognition of Taiwan as a condition of re-establishing relations with China in 1979, has responded by stepping up diplomatic efforts to bolster President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan.
That has included visits by officials and lawmakers, as well as weapon sales.
China says those efforts stoke popular sentiment in Taiwan to formally declare independence, which Beijing has warned would lead to war. Wariness in China intensified when President Biden answered a question at a televised town hall last month by declaring, imprecisely, that the United States was committed to Taiwan’s defense in the case of an attack.
It was unclear whether President Biden and Mr. Xi directly discussed the question of how the United States would respond, militarily, should Beijing attack Taiwan.The White House’s readout about the virtual meeting only described President Biden as affirming the United States’ position on Taiwan. The statement used longstanding language that acknowledges but does not recognize Beijing’s claim on Taiwan while indicating Beijing should do nothing to change the status quo.
Beijing is likely to be skeptical of the Biden administration’s intentions. “China’s view is that the United States plays rhetorical games on the Taiwan issue, saying that there is one China and that it does not support Taiwan independence, while it makes actual deals with Taiwan,” said Wu Xinbo, director of the center for American studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. “I think this is still a major divergence point in bilateral relations.”
Reporting and research by Steven Lee Myers and Li You.
From China’s perspective, the virtual meeting itself amounts to a vindication of its strategy to wait out the new administration.
After the tumult of the Trump years, China’s leaders hoped to reset the relationship with the United States when President Biden took office in January. When that didn’t happen, officials seemed surprised, then angry.
Senior officials lashed out as Mr. Biden’s national security team challenged China on a variety of issues — from Taiwan to the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where the State Department has declared a genocide of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities is underway. In a speech in Beijing in July celebrating 100 years of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, warned: “The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us. Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
What Beijing did not do was compromise on any of its policy and behaviors that have stoked exactly those divisions, including menacing military patrols and exercises around Taiwan. Instead, it squeezed concessions out of the United States.
Those included the release in September of Meng Wanzhou, an executive of the telecommunications giant Huawei who had been detained in Canada in 2018 on an American arrest warrant. Beijing, infuriated by the detention at the time, retaliated by essentially taking two Canadians hostage.
China continues to warn the United States of its red lines, especially over the fate of Taiwan, but the tone of various public statements has mellowed considerably. That is also in China’s interest heading into the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February and the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party in November.
“I think that both countries want to bring down the temperature,” said Ali Wyne, an analyst focused on U.S.-China relations with the Eurasia Group, a consultancy based in Washington. “They both recognize that threshold between intensifying competition and unconstrained rivalry is tenuous.”
— Steven Lee Myers
President Biden and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, made no apparent progress on trade issues at their virtual summit, but they struck a hopeful note about the potential for future deals.
Some of the differences were on display in the accounts the two sides released after the meeting. Mr. Biden repeated U.S. calls for China to live up to its agreement early last year to import more American goods, a senior administration official said. An official Chinese statement did not mention the agreement publicly, but it said Mr. Xi described the bilateral trade relationship as “mutually beneficial” while calling for trade not to be politicized.
There was no announcement of multi-billion-dollar commercial purchases of American products of the sort that Donald J. Trump, the former president, had sought from China. Trade officials from both sides would hold more talks, the senior administration official said.
The softer tone of the rhetoric on both sides in recent weeks and at the virtual summit has nonetheless inspired some optimism, particularly in China, on economic issues.
“I think gradually trade disputes will be resolved,” said Chen Dingding, a professor of international relations at Jinan University in Guangzhou. “We’ll see some concrete measures very soon.”
Wide differences between the two countries remain, including about the commitments the two sides made in striking their trade war truce early last year. That truce, dubbed the Phase 1 trade agreement, called for China to buy $380 billion worth of American goods by the end of 2021. But based on China’s purchases through September of this year, the country is on track to buy only three-fifths of that, according to data compiled by the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
China has bought large quantities of American corn, pork and other farm goods, but far fewer manufactured goods and far less fossil fuels than were called for by the Phase 1 agreement. That is partly because China has not placed large orders lately for Boeing jets, as air travel slowed during the pandemic. China has also been cautious about signing long-term agreements to buy American natural gas.
China is reportedly close to allowing Boeing 737 Max jets to return to its skies after crashes about three years ago in Ethiopia and Indonesia. The Federal Aviation Administration approved the plane late last year, and it has since been widely used elsewhere without incident.
China’s statement did not mention jetliners, but did say that Mr. Xi had called for closer cooperation on natural gas, although there were no details.
There have also been some hints of compromise on the American side. Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, announced last month that the Biden administration would restart a Trump-era procedure for excluding a few specific products from tariffs. The exemptions are for products that American companies can prove that they genuinely need and cannot readily purchase elsewhere.
China was allowed to retain some tariffs on U.S. goods under the Phase 1 agreement, but has already issued exemptions for most of its tariffs.
Mr. Biden’s economic deputies are traveling elsewhere in Asia this week, strengthening ties to counterbalance the Chinese relationship. Ms. Tai and Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo are touring the region, meeting with economic officials in Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and India.
— Keith Bradsher
When President Biden connected with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on a video call late Monday, each did so from two of the best-known rooms in their respective country’s statecraft.
Despite the physical distance from which the two talked, the choice of setting underscored the importance of the meeting and the attention to diplomatic protocol, even in an era of Zoom calls and coronavirus.
President Biden called from the Roosevelt Room, a famed meeting area in the White House, which President Nixon in 1969 renamed for Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. Today, the room is frequently used to announce nominations and as a preparatory room for delegations before meeting the president.
Mr. Xi dialed in from the East Hall in China’s Great Hall of the People, a room featuring a large mural of a mountain landscape with a poem from Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China. That room is perhaps best known as the place where new members of the country’s Politburo Standing Committee are announced. The Great Hall of the People is a cavernous structure of ornate rooms built alongside Tiananmen Square in Beijing; it is where the Chinese Communist Party and China’s government stage their most important meetings.
In a video broadcast before the meeting, Kang Hui, an anchor for China’s state television broadcaster, pointed out that the East Hall has been the site of many high-profile state visits, and more recently has been the staging ground for Mr. Xi to virtually connect in meetings with other leaders and major conferences.
With strict protocols and lengthy quarantines in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19 across China’s borders, Mr. Xi has not left the country in almost two years.
— Paul Mozur and Elsie Chen
During the summit, President Biden was candid about his concerns about the state of human rights in China, administration officials said.
Xi Jinping, China’s most authoritarian leader in decades, has been accused of overseeing a widespread rollback of individual freedoms across the country. According to the official readout from the Chinese government, he defended Beijing’s political model and said that while China was willing to discuss human rights, it would not be lectured by outsiders. “We do not approve of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs through human rights issues,” he told Mr. Biden.
China has drawn scrutiny from Western democracies over its crackdown in Xinjiang, where the authorities have rounded up and detained Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in large numbers, and in Hong Kong, where a harsh national security law has undone many of the city’s democratic traditions.
The Biden administration has stuck by the Trump administration’s accusations of genocide in Xinjiang, and more recently, also raised concerns over the fate of Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist whose family and friends say is critically ill in prison. Ms. Zhang is being held for documenting the chaos of the early days of the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan.
President Biden has worked quickly to enlist allies to join his campaign to pressure China on issues such as human rights and trade. The U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said this year that Beijing was routinely undercutting Hong Kong’s autonomy, and that the Biden administration would push back against what he described as coercion from China.
Mr. Xi has previously dismissed what Beijing sees as sanctimonious preaching.
When the United States imposed sanctions on Chinese officials over Hong Kong and Xinjiang, Beijing retaliated with its own penalties. Beijing has also responded to the recriminations with its own criticisms. Chinese diplomats and state media hit out at the United States over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It remains to be seen how firmly Mr. Biden will push Mr. Xi on human rights. In the first face-to-face meeting of American and Chinese officials of Biden’s administration in Alaska, the raising of such issues led to mutual denunciations, setting the tone for a testy relationship.
— Paul Mozur
Climate policy is the rare area where the United States and China at least appear to be on the same page. At the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow this month, the two countries — the biggest polluting nations — signed a surprise pact to do more to cut emissions this decade.
During the summit on Monday, they reiterated their commitment to the issue, with the United States in its readout saying that the “two leaders discussed the existential nature of the climate crisis to the world.”
But much remains unclear about how the two governments will work together. The Glasgow pact was short on specifics, including any commitment from China on when it will start reducing the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases it generates by burning coal, gas and oil. Beijing has said only that it will do so by 2030.
China’s top leader Xi Jinping said climate policy could become a “new highlight” of cooperation with the United States, according to China’s statement on the summit. But Mr. Xi also reiterated Beijing’s position that China, as the world’s largest developing nation, had different responsibilities to uphold when it came to climate change than the developed countries that pumped out more carbon dioxide over the past century.
China’s mighty manufacturing sector makes it the planet’s No. 1 emitter, responsible for around a quarter of all global emissions. It is also the reason Beijing’s leaders cannot dial back emissions easily or quickly.
Electricity demand is still growing rapidly in China. And the world still depends on Chinese factories to produce electronics, toys, exercise equipment and much else.
Mr. Xi has announced steps to reduce China’s use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. But the country still has extensive plans for building coal-fired power plants and for mining more coal, a need that has been highlighted by recent power shortages caused partly by a lack of coal. China already digs up and burns more of the fuel than the rest of the world.
Although China has been racing to put up wind and solar projects, it has not been able to shift from coal toward natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide when burned, as quickly as the United States.
— Raymond Zhong
Lurking beneath the many tensions between Beijing and Washington is the question of whether the two countries are slipping into a Cold War, or something quite different.
One of the few areas of agreement between Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Biden is that letting relations devolve into Cold War behavior would be a mistake of historic proportions.During the talks, Mr. Xi implicitly criticized Mr. Biden’s efforts to shore up alliances of democratically minded countries to counter China, saying that “ideological demarcations” would “inevitably bring disaster to the world,” according to an official readout of his comments at the meeting. “The consequences of the Cold War are not far away,” the statement said.
Mr. Biden has insisted that the United States is not seeking a new Cold War. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week, “we have the choice not to do that.” The summit meeting between the two leaders is part of a White House effort to make sure that the right choices are made — and that accidents and misunderstandings do not propel either country in the wrong direction.
There are many reasons to argue that what is happening today is quite different from the Cold War. The amount of economic interchange, and entanglement, between the United States and China is huge; with the Soviet Union it was minuscule. Both sides would have a huge amount to lose from a Cold War; Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden both know that and have talked about the risks.
Other deep links — the mutual dependencies on technology, information and raw data that leaps the Pacific in milliseconds on American and Chinese-dominated networks — also never existed in the Cold War.
“The size and complexity of the trade relationship is underappreciated,” Mr. Biden’s top Asia adviser, Kurt M. Campbell, said in July as part of his argument of why this moment significantly differs from the Cold War of 40 years ago.
Still, with his repeated references this year to a generational struggle between “autocracy and democracy,” Mr. Biden has conjured the ideological edge of the 1950s and ’60s. And so has Mr. Xi at moments, with his talk about assuring that China is not dependent on the West for critical technologies, while also trying to make sure that the West is dependent on China.
Without question, the past several months have resounded with echoes of Cold War behavior: the Chinese air force running sorties in Taiwan’s air identification zone; Beijing expanding its space program, launching three more astronauts to its space station and accelerating its tests of hypersonic missiles meant to defeat U.S. defenses; and the release of a top Huawei executive for two Canadians and two Americans in what looked like a prisoner swap.
At the same time, the United States announced that it would provide nuclear submarine technology to Australia, with the prospect that its subs could pop up, undetected, along the Chinese coast. It did not escape Chinese commentators that the last time the United States shared that kind of technology was in 1958, when Britain adopted naval reactors as part of the effort to counter Russia’s expanding nuclear arsenal.
— David E. Sanger
That the summit was taking place virtually, not in person, was a concession to China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
The White House had hoped that he and President Biden would meet at the Group of 20 gathering in Rome last month, but Mr. Xi did not attend. He has not left China since Mr. Biden took office in January — in fact, not since January 2020, when the coronavirus was beginning to spread from China.
The ostensible reason for remaining home still seems to be Covid-19, but some experts have speculated that Mr. Xi could not afford to be away before an important political gathering that ended last week.
He used that forum to solidify his stature within the Communist Party, bolstering his case for what is widely expected to be a third five-year term as China’s paramount leader, beginning next year. With the coronavirus still a threat, it is conceivable that Mr. Xi might stay home until the party’s national congress next November.
That reflects more than just internal political machinations. It is in keeping with China’s increasing insularity, forged by a growing confidence — hubris, some might say — that the country under Mr. Xi’s leadership is the master of its own destiny, less dependent on the rest of the world for validation as its economic and military might solidifies.
Still, Mr. Xi’s absence has coincided with the withering of China’s international standing, with public sentiment in many countries turning against the country’s behavior at home and abroad. He faced sharp criticism for submitting a letter to the climate talks in Glasgow and for joining India in watering down the final statement to reduce pressure on cutting the use of coal.
— Steven Lee Myers
Ever since President Nixon stunned the United States in 1971 by announcing that he would travel to China, meetings between American and Chinese leaders have become milestones in a relationship fraught with hope.
In the five decades that have followed, the relationship between the two countries has lurched between cooperation and confrontation. In 1979, Mao Zedong’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, met President Carter in Washington to normalize diplomatic ties and end years of mutual hostility.
That was followed by meetings with Ronald Reagan in 1982 and George H.W. Bush in February 1989 — that one just months before Deng ordered a brutal military crackdown on student protests around Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Mr. Bush responded to the massacre by suspending all official contacts with the Chinese, but a month later surreptitiously dispatched his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to keep open channels with a country then allied with the United States’ efforts to contain its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union.
There was not another official visit until 1997, when President Clinton played host to Jiang Zemin, who emerged as the country’s leader after Deng’s death, which officials hoped would usher in a new era of openness.
After a while, meeting with Chinese leaders and senior officials became a goal in itself of American foreign policy. The idea was that regular meetings would entwine the Chinese economy with the world’s.
In 2006, President George W. Bush and Hu Jintao announced the creation of a strategic economic dialogue, where officials from both sides could meet regularly to resolve proliferating trade disputes.
When President Obama came to office, the strategic economic dialogue in 2009 became the strategic economic and security dialogue, reflecting emerging conflicts over China’s expansionism in the South China Sea.
A criticism of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations was that the Chinese smothered the Americans with talk, while doing as they pleased — whether cyberattacks, ormilitarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea.
U.S.-China summitry may have peaked in 2017. President Trump invited Xi Jinping to his Mar-a-Lago resort in April, where he informed him over “the most beautiful chocolate cake you’ve ever seen” that the United States had bombed Syria.
The two leaders met again that November, when Mr. Trump traveled to Beijing, becoming the first foreign leader to dine in the Forbidden City. “You’re a very special man,” he told Mr. Xi, banking on flattery to win over the Chinese leader. It didn’t.
— Steven Lee Myers
The long-smoldering clash between China and the United States over the future of technology hit a rare moment of accord in September, when the Justice Department helped broker a deal that led to the release of a senior executive at the Chinese telecom equipment maker, Huawei.
The two countries have been struggling to find any more common ground in that area.
President Biden has done little to roll back measures put in place under the Trump administration aimed at limiting China’s access to American technology. U.S. officials fear China will use American software and equipment to build government-supported rivals and develop tools to strengthen its surveillance state, including advanced computers, artificial intelligence and facial recognition systems.
Huawei itself remains a point of contention. American authorities helped secure the release of Meng Wanzhou, the Chinese executive who was detained in Canada. But they are still restricting Huawei’s accessto critical American semiconductors and software, crimping its business.
While parts of the Biden Administration have called for improving economic ties, many American lawmakers are pushing for even tougher measures on Chinese technology firms. Mr. Biden has invoked competition with China to help pass his infrastructure bill, which seeks to bolster American technology competitiveness.
On China’s side, the country’s drive for self-reliance will likely take precedence over taking steps to regain access to American technology. Beijing is unlikely to back away from its tough limits on the flow of data or free expression online. Those positions have effectively locked most major foreign internet firms out of China. One of the last, LinkedIn, said last month it would shut down there.
The trip began in Shanghai, where the couple, both former professors, joined a tour group of other retirees. They traveled through Gansu Province and Inner Mongolia, staying at a bed-and-breakfast and eating three times at the same lamb chop restaurant. Flying south to Xi’an, they dropped into a 1,300-year-old temple. Their fellow tour group members checked out an art museum, strolled through parks and visited friends.
Then, on Oct. 16, the day they had planned to visit the Terracotta Warriors, the couple tested positive for the coronavirus.
Since then, China has locked down a city of 4 million, as well as several smaller cities and parts of Beijing, to contain a fresh outbreak that has infected more than 240 people in at least 11 provinces and regions. The authorities have shuttered schools and tourist sites. Government websites have detailed every movement of the unlucky couple and their sprawling web of contacts, including what time they checked into hotels and on which floors of restaurants they sat.
The no-holds-barred response is emblematic of China’s “zero Covid” policy, which has served the country remarkably well: China has reported fewer than 5,000 deaths since the pandemic began. The scale of the new outbreak, while tiny compared to many other countries, is large for China.
Lynette Ong, a political scientist at the University of Toronto. “At a huge cost, though.”
at-times strident nationalism.
Other countries that adopted “zero Covid” policies were hailed as models of competent governance that prioritized saving lives over convenience and economic growth.
As the virus has dragged into its second year, and with the onset of the far more contagious Delta variant, countries are again reconsidering their strategies. Australia, which was home to the world’s longest lockdown, is scrapping quarantine requirements for vaccinated residents returning from overseas. New Zealand formally abandoned its quest for zero this month. Singapore is offering quarantine-free travel to vaccinated tourists from Germany, the United States, France and several other countries.
attacked viciously online as a lackey of foreigners. A former Chinese health minister called such a mindset reckless.
Zhang Jun, an urban studies scholar at the City University of Hong Kong.
In addition, though China has achieved a relatively high full inoculation rate, at 75 percent of its population, questions have emerged about the efficacy of its homegrown vaccines.
And, at least for now, the elimination strategy appears to enjoy public support. While residents in locked-down areas have complained about seemingly arbitrary or overly harsh restrictions on social media, travel is relatively unconstrained in areas without cases. Wealthy consumers have poured money into luxury goods and fancy cars since they’re not spendingon trips abroad.
reinstated them in September amid a spike in infections. (Still, the government is moving forward with travel lanes.)
But experts agree that the costs of expecting zero cases will hit eventually. China’s economic growth is slowing, and domestic travel during a weeklong holiday earlier this month fell below last year’s levels, as a cluster of new cases spooked tourists. Retail sales have proven fitful, recovering and ebbing with waves of the virus.
The country may also suffer diplomatically. Mr. Xi has not left China or received foreign visitors since early 2020, even as other world leaders prepare to gather in Rome for a Group of 20 summit and Glasgow for climate talks.
China’s hard-nosed approach is also trickling down to Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous territory and global financial hub. In trying to align their own Covid prevention policies with the mainland’s, Hong Kong’s leaders have introduced the world’s longest quarantine, ignoring escalating warnings from business leaders about an exodus of foreign firms.
said in a recent interview with Chinese media that once the country reached an 85 percent vaccination rate, “why shouldn’t we open up?”
Until then, those stranded by the lockdowns have been trying to make the best of their situations. State news outlets have reported that roughly 10,000 tourists are trapped in Ejin Banner, a region of Inner Mongolia, after the emergence of cases led to a lockdown. As consolation, the local tourism association has promised them free entry to three popular tourist attractions, redeemable within the next three years.
SEOUL — The signals are confusing. One day, North Korea is raising hopes for dialogue with South Korea, and the next, it is firing missiles or showing off the latest weaponry in its nuclear arsenal.
In the past week alone, North suggested the possibility of inter-Korean summit talks and said it would reopen communication hotlines with its neighbor. It also fired long-range cruise missiles, trotted out what it called its first hypersonic missile and, on Thursday, tested a new antiaircraft missile. Earlier in September, it launched ballistic missiles from a train rolled out of a mountain tunnel, on the same day that it called the South’s president, Moon Jae-in, “stupid.”
Once again, North Korea is turning to a well-honed, two-pronged strategy, designed to let it flex its military muscles without risking retaliation or nixing the chances for dialogue.
In the absence of talks with Washington, the missile tests reminded the world that North Korea is developing increasingly sophisticated weaponry capable of delivering nuclear warheads. But individually, these short-range or still-under-development missiles don’t amount to a direct threat to the United States.
met with then-President Donald J. Trump three times between 2018 and 2019, becoming the first North Korean leader to hold a summit with a sitting American president. But his diplomatic efforts failed to lift crippling sanctions the United Nations imposed on his impoverished country after its nuclear and I.C.B.M. tests. Soon the pandemic hit, further hamstringing the North’s economy.
American and South Korean officials had hoped that the North’s deepening economic troubles, caused by the double whammy of sanctions and the pandemic, would make North Korea more amenable to dialogue.
So far, Mr. Kim has proved them wrong.
Since his talks with Mr. Trump collapsed in early 2019, he has vowed to slog through the economic difficulties while expanding his nuclear arsenal, his country’s single best diplomatic leverage and deterrent against what it considers American threats to topple its government.By demonstrating his country’s growing military capabilities, Mr. Kim has also sought to legitimize his rule at a time when he has been able to deliver little on the economic front to his long-suffering people.
The antiaircraft missile test on Thursday indicated that the North is building a weapon similar to Russia’s S-400, one of the most potent air-defense systems in the world, according to Kim Dong-yub, an expert on North Korean weapons at the University of North Korean Studies.
The Biden administration has repeatedly urged North Korea to return to talks without preconditions. But Mr. Kim said he would not restart negotiations until he was convinced that Washington was ready to ease sanctions and its “hostile policy,” including the joint annual military exercises it conducts with South Korea.
an arms race in the region.
Mr. Kim can’t really attempt shocking provocations like the ones he conducted in 2017 — three I.C.B.M. tests and a nuclear test — that brought the Trump administration to the table. Such tests would sharply raise tensions, invite more U.N. sanctions and potentially invoke the ire of China by ruining the mood for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.
desperate to put his Korean Peninsula peace process, his signature foreign policy, back on track before his single, five-year term ends in May.
“It’s our government’s destiny” to pursue dialogue with the North, Mr. Moon told reporters last week, referring to his efforts to build peace through his three meetings with Mr. Kim in 2018 and his efforts to help arrange the summit meetings between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump.
This week, Mr. Kim also offered conciliatory words toward South Korea.
“We have neither aim nor reason to provoke South Korea and no idea to harm it,” he said.
North Korea was wooing South Korea while shunning talks with Washington, said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute in South Korea. Other analysts said North Korea was leaning on South Korea to help bring Washington to dialogue.
On Thursday, Sung Kim, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, met with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea and indicated that Washington would support humanitarian aid to North Korea as an incentive for dialogue.
Analysis doubted that it would be enough.
“I am not sure that the old way of providing humanitarian shipments as an incentive will work this time, given the North’s reluctance to accept outside help during the pandemic,” said Professor Yang of the University of North Korean Studies. “North Korea wants the United States to address more fundamental issues concerning its well-being. It wants clearer commitments from the United States to easing sanctions and guaranteeing its security.”
SEOUL — President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has a message for the United States: President Biden needs to engage now with North Korea.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Moon pushed the American leader to kick-start negotiations with the government of Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, after two years in which diplomatic progress stalled, even reversed. Denuclearization, the South Korean president said, was a “matter of survival” for his country.
He also urged the United States to cooperate with China on North Korea and other issues of global concern, including climate change. The deteriorating relations between the superpowers, he said, could undermine any negotiations over denuclearization.
“If tensions between the United States and China intensify, North Korea can take advantage of it and capitalize on it,” Mr. Moon said.
work to achieve denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula has since unraveled.
President Donald J. Trump left office without removing a single North Korean nuclear warhead. Mr. Kim has resumed weapons tests.
“He beat around the bush and failed to pull it through,” Mr. Moon said of Mr. Trump’s efforts on North Korea. “The most important starting point for both governments is to have the will for dialogue and to sit down face to face at an early date.”
Now in his final year in office, Mr. Moon is determined to start all over again — and knows he faces a very different leader in Mr. Biden.
annual threat assessment released last week, the United States’ director of national intelligence said Mr. Kim “believes that over time he will gain international acceptance and respect as a nuclear power.”
But Mr. Moon’s team argues that the phased approach is the most realistic, even if it is imperfect. As his administration sees it, North Korea would never give up its arsenal in one quick deal, lest the regime lose its only bargaining chip with Washington.
The key, Mr. Moon said, is for the United States and North Korea to work out a “mutually trusted road map.”
American negotiators under Mr. Trump never made it to that point. Both sides could not even agree on a first step for the North and what reward Washington would provide in return.
real-estate and other scandals. This month, angry voters delivered crushing defeats to his Democratic Party in the mayoral elections in South Korea’s two largest cities.
That is a sharp turn of fortune from the start of his administration, when Mr. Moon parlayed a hair-raising geopolitical crisis into a signature policy initiative.
“When I took office back in 2017, we were really concerned about the possibility of war breaking out once again on the Korean Peninsula,” he said.
Four days into his tenure, North Korea launched its Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile that it said could target Hawaii and Alaska. Then the North tested a hydrogen bomb and three intercontinental ballistic missiles. In response, Mr. Trump threatened “fire and fury,” as American Navy carrier groups steamed toward the peninsula.
there is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” When Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump met again in 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam, the negotiations went nowhere, and the men left without an agreement on how to move forward with the Singapore deal.
While Mr. Moon was careful to dole out praise for Mr. Trump, he also seemed frustrated by the former president’s erratic behavior and Twitter diplomacy. Mr. Trump canceled or downsized the annual joint military drills that the United States conducts with the South and demanded what Mr. Moon called an “excessive amount” to keep 28,500 American troops in South Korea.
strike a deal within 46 days of Mr. Biden’s inauguration was a “clear testament to the importance President Biden attaches to” the alliance.
Mr. Moon is hopeful about the progress the new American leader can make on North Korea, although any significant breakthrough may be unrealistic, given the deep mistrust between Washington and Pyongyang.
Mr. Biden said last month that he was “prepared for some form of diplomacy” with North Korea, but that “it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization.”
North Korea has offered ideas on a phased approach starting with the demolition of its only-known nuclear test site, followed by the dismantling of a rocket engine test facility and the nuclear complex in Yongbyon north of Pyongyang.
Mr. Moon said he believed such steps, if matched with American concessions, could lead to the removal of the North’s more prized assets, like I.C.B.M.s. In that scenario, he said, the move toward complete denuclearization becomes “irreversible.”
“This dialogue and diplomacy can lead to denuclearization,” he said. “If both sides learn from the failure in Hanoi and put their heads together for more realistic ideas, I am confident that they can find a solution.”


- Can two routers be connected to one modem?
- Does having 2 routers increase Internet speed?
- How do I extend my WiFi signal to another building 400 feet away?
- What is the difference between repeater and access point?
- Should I use a second router?
- Do I need a second modem for a second router?
- How can I extend my WiFi with another router?
- How do I use a second router as a repeater?
- What is the best way to extend my WiFi at home?
- How do I set up a second router?
Can two routers be connected to one modem?
Home wireless routers can be connected using Ethernet cable in the same way as wired routers are connected.
Connecting two home routers over wireless is also possible, but in most configurations, the second router can only function as a wireless access point instead of a router..
Does having 2 routers increase Internet speed?
Will Adding a Router Increase Speed? Network bandwidth is much the same as a plumbing system. … If your Wi-Fi is slow, adding a second router can improve data flow if your Wi-Fi was slow, but it won’t help if your internet service was slow too. There are three components to a Wi-Fi network that all work together.
How do I extend my WiFi signal to another building 400 feet away?
How To Extend WiFi Range Outside (In Your Home)Choose the right location for your router or access point. … Stay away from repeaters. … Use the right equipment. … Employ a unified management system. … Configure your equipment properly. … Choose cable, when possible. … Opt for outdoor access points. … Mind the gap with a wireless bridge.More items…•
What is the difference between repeater and access point?
Access point is a device connected with cable (Cat5) to your main router/modem/internet, and serving clients wirelessly. Repeater is a wireless network device that repeats wireless signals to extend range without being connected with cable to either your router/modem, or your clients.
Should I use a second router?
You definitely need a second wireless device. But, if any of your devices can be connected by wire, I would use that. … Configure the second router as “access point” and place it in such a position that I can also use wires to connect devices that have an Ethernet port (the Xbox, any desktop, etc).
Do I need a second modem for a second router?
Internet doesn’t come to your house via an Ethernet cable, so you need some piece inbetween anyway. This is normally your cable modem, and they come with routers (separate or in one device) to enable multiple devices in your house to connect at the same time. So a router is needed – but only one router.
How can I extend my WiFi with another router?
You can easily extend your Wi-Fi network with additional networking hardware like Wi-Fi repeaters and Wireless Access Points. The other inexpensive option is that you get hold of an old wireless router, one that is longer in use, and connect it to your existing (main) router using an Ethernet (Cat5) cable.
How do I use a second router as a repeater?
How to Turn an Old Router into a Wi-Fi ExtenderFind a Compatible Router. If you have an old router sitting around, check with the manual to make sure the device can be converted into an extender or a repeater, and get specific instructions. … Update Firmware and Reset Preferences. … Set a Static Address. … Repeat for 5GHz.
What is the best way to extend my WiFi at home?
Jump to…Select a Good Place for Your Router.Keep Your Router Updated.Get a Stronger Antenna.Cut Off WiFi Leeches.Buy a WiFi Repeater/ Booster/ Extender.Switch to a Different WiFi Channel.Control Bandwidth-Hungry Applications and Clients.Use the Latest WiFi Technologies.More items…
How do I set up a second router?
First router: Connect the Internet (or WAN) port to your modem. Second router: Connect one of the other ports (not Internet or WAN) to the same port on the back of the first router. If your ports on your routers are WAN, 1, 2, 3, 4, then connect the first and second router together in port 1.


text:
Fact :: I just wanted to draw the night I did this doodle – before getting into my new project more. I literally willed this drawing into existence + whatever happened, happened. Feeling a similar momentum for what’s next ⭐ Can’t wait to see how things naturally unfold. Discover or re-discover your W I L L 🔥
Fact :: I just discovered the crayon emoji, and used it for the first time on my Instagram account @maieutic.arts 🤗Also, I feel like this random doodle looks like an explosion of crayons. So! It will, naturally, be added to my Color Me Magic page on my website – free coloring pages to print at home! Enjoy 💕
Fact :: I really wanted to draw this differently, but I am finishing up the watercolor on it anyways. “In Hinduism, the Peacock is associated with Lakshmi who represents patience, kindness and luck.”
Fact :: I did this drawing the same night as Art | I | Fact No. 24… and I was extra amazed to hear how it happened IRL after catching up with my bestie Vanessa Lamorte. She spent the night on Shoshone land at the Sekhmet Temple in Nevada. There was so much that came through our sharing – always so rich. Love you lady!! Can’t wait to see how all the things start moving even more 😘 This drawing was also added to my free coloring page section, Color Me Magic! Enjoy 💕
Fact :: I have solar retinopathy from looking at the sun for too long during an eclipse as a kid. I remember where I was standing during this eclipse, on a lawn of the elementary school grounds… with my class + teacher. The sky was blue. I took off the glasses and thought I ought to be able to look at everything here, on Earth. Why not?
This past week the dots in my central vision transformed into a triangle (a symbol for fire, when equal + upright). I had a migraine from weather changes, and the ocular fun has yet to fully rescind. Naturally, I accidentally created this doodle… and by ‘accidentally’ I mean completely unintentionally. The simple matchstick actually looks like an eye with eyelashes when turned on its side. The sun got me – fire + eyes.
Fact :: I will be uploading more Color Me Magic pages to my website – free coloring pages to print at home! For some reason, this doodle makes me think of a double helix or chakras… what do you see?
Fact :: I never know where I am going with these drawings, but ever since I found my carnelian necklace – wrapped by my friend Sunshine (her birth name, seriously) – I’ve just wanted to draw more. In this random art, it looks like the Earth + Moon are hanging out as a sunflower. Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars wanted to join for some reason… which I am sure I will learn about “why” in some random way tomorrow. 😂
Fact :: After tracing around a candle holder to start, I thought this six-sided thing would about Saturn. Why would I decide that?! I mean, Saturn has a hexagonal thing happening at its core, but not all six-sided things are connected to Saturn. For some reason, I wanted to add some snakes to it, and they ended up being Caduceus snakes, related to Hermes + healing/medicine. I need to read this book, Saturn Run, by John Sandford ASAP.
Fact :: I did this random doodle art the same night as Art | I | Fact No. 19. It didn’t look like anything to me until the following morning after seeing Kali the destroyer had taken down and/or broken roughly 6 ornaments. So, I guess my unconscious was trying to tell me something?
Fact :: I decided to take my own medicine given to a client and just BE while doing something today. My mind usually falls into this balancing act easily + naturally when I draw or paint or create without a presupposed purpose. After I felt like ten to fifteen minutes was up with this doodle, I saw the fire symbol embedded in a flower. Perfect for moving from Sun in Sagittarius to Sun in Capricorn + Solstice!

domain: hobby


text:
Sunday morning. Obama's travels / produced by Mary Lou Teel, Kay M. Lim and Robert Hendrin. Sunday journal :
This segment of Sunday Morning is about President Obama's international relations and diplomatic missions.
|Other Authors:||, ,|
New York, NY :
Columbia Broadcasting System,

domain: politics


text:
How to set text colors?
For each post style you can create a set of colors (Color set) that will be used for the main text and various link statuses:
- Regular link — a regular link in the text;
- Hovered link — a link that has been hovered by the cursor;
- Visited link — a link that has been visited.
How to set background colors?
You can select several background colors for your post style. These background colors can then be used for both general and individual grids/columns/paragraphs.
How many text and background colors can a post style have?
As many as you want. Usually several additional contrast colors (dark if the main one is light) and several accent colors are specified.
Which font color will be displayed by default in every new post?
The main color will be highlighted with a blue outline in the left menu. It is always displayed first in the Style Manager. To specify the main color, click the first circle in the line (or paste HEX code)

domain: design


The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine said Friday that Russian fighter jets and radar stations are being moved near Ukraine’s eastern border.
“[Russian Federation] continue to concentrate army units at the border, with radar stations and MiG-31 fighter jets,” Ukraine said via Twitter on Wednesday.
The combat planes have been deployed to Millerovo airfield, The Aviationist reported Wednesday. The military website said that the move may indicate that Russia plans to control the airspace over Luhansk Oblast.
Ukrainian officials also said that Russian tanks have been seen crossing the border, The Aviationist reported.


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Not only due to the fact that Kinexon enables highly precise position and movement tracking, the Kinexon system also tracks positions indoors. Since GPS-based monitors only work outdoors, gaining insightful data has been difficult for enclosed training facilities and sports like ice hockey or basketball. As one representative of the NCAA put it: “This is the solution we have waited for!”
The Kinexon Anchors serve as “satellites” that are positioned around the field, rink, or court in order to span a space, in which positions can be measured. Anchors send and receive signals from the athletes’ sensors and pass the movement information (timestamp, signal strength) to the base.
The Kinexon-Base is the “heart” of the sensor network. It functions as a server that receives raw data from the anchors and turns it into insightful athlete data analyses and statistics about performance & tactics. From here data is sent to coach's tablets, iPads, or phones which can be accessed in real time for instant relevant training or game data.
The Kinexon Sensors are attached to the athletes‘ shoulders and send signals to the anchors around the playing field. Being smaller than a matchbox and only weighing 15g, athletes do not even notice wearing them.
- Unique RF technology guarantees cm-accurate position data and high update rates.
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Hands Across the Hills: Conversation leads to collaboration
LEVERETT — The nation’s political divide may have widened, but the bond between Kentuckians and Leverett residents who met for the third time last weekend to bridge differences has deepened, members of the group said.
The Hands Across the Hills project, begun after the 2016 election to understand why “red state” and “blue state” voters saw things differently, brought seven Letcher County, Ky. residents six hours northward in a van to repeat a visit the group had here in October 2017.
“It’s been a transformative experience, understanding the complexities that people experience,” said Annie Jane Cotten, one of the three Kentuckians who are relatively new to the group. “There was a deep heart opening, knowing that these folks actually see us as complex. There’s a growing recognition that none of our communities are monolithic. That’s a false narrative that’s being fed to us.”
The third multi-day gathering for “dialogue sessions” between the groups “started as a reconciliation, but it’s turned into more of a collaboration,” said Ben Fink of Letcher County. “We started as people from two places looking to better understand each other. We’re now united in looking to work with others to better understand each other.”
The contrast between Leverett, where President Donald Trump won 14.4 percent of the 2016 vote, compared to 80 percent in Letcher County, is obvious to the participants. So are the income disparities.
But discussion facilitator Paula Green, of Leverett, an originator of the project, said, “Despite the political differences, there’s very little personal daylight between us. We’re not here to change each other; we’re here to learn from each other and accept the differences and acting on the commonalities.”
Over the past two years, the groups — several of whose Kentucky members were unable to make the five-day trip — have learned not to focus on what Green called “hot-button issues” like gun control, abortion or Trump, but to focus on shared cultural and personal values.
“We talk about politics, we talk about religion, we talk about class,” Green said. “We’re just not here to convert each other, we’re here to understand each other.”
One of the weekend’s closed sessions, she said, focused on “the elephants in the room,” including Trump, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, gun control and climate change, but she said the bottom-line core issue in eastern Kentucky’s coal country is the dire economy.
For most of the two-hour public forum Sunday that culminated the weekend, attracting about 200 people to the Leverett Elementary School auditorium, participants discussed what had changed over two years. When audience members asked questions on cards about their views of Trump and McConnell, Rachel Sexton, who is new to Hands Across the Hills, said she opposed Trump — unlike her father and grandfather, who have worked in the coal mines — adding that his “words, and the hate … breaks my heart.” As someone studying to become a special education teacher, watching Trump mock a reporter with a disability “spoke to me, but then when I asked my dad about it, he said, ‘Yes, that is serious, that is bad. But if I don’t have food to put on the table, and I don’t have money to pay the electric bill, then I’m not even going to see the news or hear these things he’s saying about these people.”
Herb Smith, a documentary filmmaker, pointed back to Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“There were all these promises about what he was going to do, putting coal miners back to work, and it just hasn’t happened,” he said. “And it’s real disheartening in a way to have these hopes elevated and then, as a country, we haven’t actually seen what was promised. To some degree, we knew it was bunk. When it becomes what we feared, we’re justifiably saddened. There’s a saying about raising hopes and then the sense of despair is deeper than if you never raised them.”
But Letcher County employee Mike Gover told the gathering, “When you just hear an answer, making a judgment based on the answer, it’s so much more complex than that.
“We (just) spent three really intense long days of some pretty heated stuff, trying to understand, ‘How can you believe that and I believe this?’” he continued. “‘How can you look at that same guy and think he’s OK, and you look at him thinking he’s the spawn of Satan?’ It’s a little too complex to answer.”
Unlike the 2017 visit, participants this time began more comfortably and less anxious with one another, trusting themselves to go deeper at trying to understand their differences.
“One of the things that’s changed for me,” said Kentuckian Gwen Johnson, “is when something’s going on in the news, I kind of check in with the folks up here to see what they’re thinking. And before, I didn’t think they cared about what was going on down home. And I found that they do indeed care. … We never at all thought that any other part of the country cared about the things that were being done to the folks down home.”
The 14 Massachusetts and seven Kentucky people present decided to continue working on specific projects, including choosing representatives from each group to speak about their work at local libraries, schools and clubs, creating a teen exchange as well as an oral history project in their communities and adapting a Letcher County model to create a “culture hub” in Leverett.
For anyone who thinks Hands Across the Hills is about whitewashing the stark political chasm in America, Leverett resident Kip Fonsh — who remains intensely angry about Trump’s election — emphasized it’s been “a hard journey to get to this stage today. What I want to ask is, ‘What are you going to do? Are you just going to go home and forget about this, or are your going to … find some way to join with your neighbor, with someone who lives in another part of the country, and have a dialogue about your differences?’ ... Otherwise, I think we’ve wasted our time.”
Recently retired, Richie Davis was a writer and editor for more than 40 years at the Greenfield Recorder. His email is firstname.lastname@example.org.
Top Photo: Hands Across the Hills participants Sarah Pirtle, Ben Fink, Gwen Johnson, Pat Fiero and Jim Perkins sing at Sunday’s public forum in Leverett Elementary School’s auditorium as other group members from Kentucky and Leverett look on. For the Recorder/RICHIE DAVIS
Bottom Photo: Letha Dollarhyde, of Letcher County, Ky., makes a point as other Hands Across the Hills participants listen at Sunday’s public forum in Leverett. For the Recorder/RICHIE DAVIS


text:
It is unfortunately all too common these days that more and more Americans find themselves being uprooted from their homes. They are upside down in a mortgage-owing more than the house is worth. Upside Down is the story of how one man got himself into this situation and how, through diligence, hard work, and finding the right people, got himself out. Whether you find yourself upside down or want to avoid getting there, you'll find Upside Down an informative and enjoyable read.
|Product dimensions:||5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.24(d)|
About the Author
Bob Wartinger was interested in real estate for a number of years before deciding to invest in a new house. He writes of the challenges he encountered and his learnings from the process. As a trusted advisor, with a corporate career as a senior executive, and a world champion in competitive sports, he is frequently invited to speak internationally on a range of topics, including business strategizing and organizational behavior, conflict resolution and effective survey/feedback, marketing psychology, and safety in boat racing-which has been his life-long passion. He has been featured and interviewed by the BBC, Discovery Channel, CNN, History Channel, NBC affiliates, The New York Times, Aviation Week, and a number of other periodicals. He reads avidly, travels globally, and appreciates leisurely discussions with his family and friends. Bob writes on a variety of topics and resides in the Pacific Northwest.

domain: literature


text: Like Chowee, I lurk on the forums a bit, and only have posted a handful of times before. I've started a couple of Civ4 and Civ5 GOTMs, but never finished one. Really excited about this game though. It was a pretty eventful first 100 turns. I settled one SE of the starting position to try to take advantage of the river to our north, and I was going to try for rapid expansion. Picked River Goddess pantheon, thinking ahead, to get a free amenity in all the excellent river locations that I saw around the start. I was going to try to expand rapidly, had a second city out by around T20 (I don't remember exactly when), had just turned out a settler for my third city, and was about to build one for the fourth, when France warrior-rushed Rome. I had skimped on my defenses to push out more cities rapidly, and that ended up costing me Rome. Right around that time I finished Political Philosophy, so I adopted Oligarchy, took the Agoge policy, pushed out a bunch of units, and took Rome back. Then, I upgraded my new warriors to Legions, pushed on to Paris, and took that too. I was going to take Catherine's second and final city, but I was suffering from -2 war weariness and was behind where I wanted to be on city infrastructure, so I let that go. The sack of Rome really hurt my tech advancement and my infrastructure, as I had started district production to lock in cheaper district costs, but hadn't finished any at the time Rome got hit. In the past I would have quit and started a new game, but I think I'm in an ok position for having lost and retaken my capitol. Have 6 cities now, and focusing on developing infrastructure, primarily commercial districts. I haven't yet unlocked industrial zones, nor the tier 2 governments, but I would guess I'll get to those in the next 20 turns or so. During my defense of Rome I was surprised to see that I could not buy Ancient Walls, which I had unlocked and would have saved the city. It doesn't seem that I can buy them in any of my cities, actually.

domain: geography


Early on that grim and overcast Thursday morning, Freddie Lorenzen nudged the wall a second time, his Mercury Cyclone leaving a streak of red and white paint on the harsh concrete barrier in the No. 2 Turn. But there was no apparent damage and shortly before 10:30 he was back on the track again, scrubbing in a new set of tires and checking the Mercury's final chassis adjustments before the afternoon qualifying session, the first that would determine starting positions for Darlington's 22nd annual Southern 500 four days later. There was a smile on his golden face; his car was running smoothly and he was confident that he would qualify well. Perhaps, even, in the pole position. In the pits, car owner Glen Wood carefully noted the speeds, and after half a dozen laps he waved Lorenzen in.
Either Lorenzen did not see the signal or he ignored it. The next time Lorenzen came through the fourth turn, still with no intention of pitting, the Mercury started to broadside toward the outer retaining wall. Mechanic Richie Barsz heard the signs of trouble long before the crash. "I could hear his engine go whuuup, whuuup, whuup as he worked the throttle," Barsz said. "He was working it right up until the time he hit." Had Lorenzen skidded on a spot of oil in the turn? Was he trying a new line through the corner? It is difficult to say for sure, and Lorenzen does not remember now. Still, the test of a race driver is his reaction in a crisis, and on this count Lorenzen passed.
He hit the cement wall a tremendous blow. Both right-side wheels and then the left front wheel briefly climbed the wall before the wounded car slammed back on the track and set out on an angled, straight-line journey of 150 yards to its destruction against the inside pit wall. Surprisingly, the first impact neither knocked out Lorenzen nor did it kill his engine. In those agonizing seconds before the big crash, he kept the throttle to the floor and cranked the steering wheel hard right in an effort to spin the car away from the wall. It was what any driver would have done, but Lorenzen did not know, could not know, that his steering had been shattered by the initial impact and that he was totally out of control.
The car hit the pit wall at almost 170 mph. It was a near head-on crash, and the impact blasted a 16-foot hole in the thick concrete barrier and sent a grenade blast of cement shrapnel—plus the car's left-front-wheel assembly—sailing through the pits. Here is where Lorenzen, and a lot of other people in the pits, got lucky. The Mercury took off like a plane, clipped a pair of aluminum light posts, then sheared a wooden telephone pole in half roughly six feet off the ground. The car did a barrel roll and finally landed inside its own burst of smoke and steam, right side up in the middle of the track, pointed back toward the fourth turn. Had the poles not been there, Lorenzen and car would have sailed into a group of Goodyear tire busters who were working not 50 feet away.
The first to reach Lorenzen were three drivers and two Goodyear employees. They quickly put out an oil fire, then removed Lorenzen from his broken machine and waited for the ambulance. The driver was unconscious and the blood glistened on the left side of his face and neck.
By early afternoon word came from the hospital that Lorenzen would be all right—a severely dislocated left ankle, a probable concussion, several lacerations and one deep gash on the left side of his neck that would forever mar his cleft-chin profile. But considering the fact that he should have been dead, the report was good, and in the quiet garage area one could almost feel the flow of relief.
It had been a bad accident, one of the worst in the history of a track whose races are remembered by the accidents they spawn. It certainly ended the comeback and very nearly the career of the driver who was once the Golden Boy of the Southern speedways, a nervous, intense combination of lead foot and cool thinker whose domination of Grand National racing in the early-and mid-1960s was awesome. Lorenzen had retired in 1967 after winning 21 major races, though never the Southern 500, a record that lasted until 1970. He retired because of an ulcer nurtured by his intensity.
At the time of his big crash, just before last year's Southern 500, Lorenzen's comeback was more than a year old. It had been anything but successful: little things kept going wrong with his STP-sponsored Plymouth, and good racing luck, that intangible combination of skill and self-made opportunity so much a part of his earlier success, now seemed to have deserted him. He had not won a single race, and when the opportunity came to drive the Glen Wood Mercury, far and away the best-prepared car on the Grand National circuit, Lorenzen made the switch eagerly.
On that first day of practice, Lorenzen had told a friend, bluntly, "I've got the best crew, the best car and no excuses. This race will tell whether I've still got it." Indeed, his exuberance was a surprise to those who remembered him from his ulcer days. Even when he slapped the wall the first time, a gentle tap in Turn Two, he shrugged his shoulders and said briskly, "You can't run here until you hit the wall one time at least. Now we're ready to go."
Walter D. (Red) Tyler wakes at six o'clock Sunday morning. He will not sleep again until well past midnight on Monday, being sustained during those 42 hours by equal parts of pills and Southern cooking. "Give me four soft-scrambled eggs, some country ham and a quart of milk and I'll be all right," he says. Tyler is a friendly man of ruddy, freckled complexion who runs a plywood business in Florence, just 12 miles southeast of Darlington. He also is a vice-president of the Darlington raceway and for the last 15 years he has been more or less responsible for keeping a semblance of order in the Darlington infield the night before the race. He and John Hatchell.


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Hi everyone! There's a new challenge starting on TOMIC today and we have a lovely theme that incorporates a great sketch to follow from Tina, a photo of Magnolia Ink as inspiration and the use of yellow. I hope you can join us and be in with the chance of a gorgeous prize from Magnolia.
I made a gift box and used yellow patterned paper and yellow plain card to make it up. On top is a small easel card die cut with a spellbinders postage stamp die from the same card and papers and that's where I've added the sketch part of the challenge. Some of my layers are ribbon and jute mesh. Tilda with bird cage is coloured with distress ink markers and watercolour markers and I've added flowers, ribbon, pearl pen dots to decorate.

domain: artistic


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Somebody needs to break the news to the Republican candidates looking to unseat President Barack Obama that the conservative tide that swept the nation in 2010 has receded. Denying public employees the right to bargain collectively and calling for strict limits on the reproductive rights of women won't necessarily play well in 2012.
At least it didn't on Tuesday, when voters in several telltale states went to the polls for local elections. Most encouraging for Democrats was the overwhelming defeat of Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich's law limiting the collective bargaining rights of some 350,000 government workers.
The outcome is especially noteworthy because Ohio, with its 18 electoral votes, is such a critical swing state in presidential elections. Recent polls show President Obama has been gaining ground there (suggesting he would capture at least 50 percent of the vote no matter whom the GOP nominates from the current field) despite the state's economic woes.
It's obvious that Ohio voters respect the employment rights of their firefighters, police and teachers even as such public workers are vilified by the GOP. Whatever anti-government furor motivated the attacks on worker rights in Wisconsin by a tea party-inspired Republican governor and state legislature is clearly not catching on elsewhere.
In Mississippi, the lopsided defeat of the "personhood" amendment, the proposal to treat a fertilized egg as a human being, was instructive as well. Even in a state as conservative and anti-abortion as Mississippi, voters recognize it's possible for government intervention in one's personal life to go too far.
The law not only sought to ban abortion in all circumstances — including incest, rape and a threat to the mother's life — but it would likely have prohibited cancer treatment for pregnant women, in-vitro fertilizations and even some common forms of birth control. Yet the GOP field is standing to the right of the Deep South as the various White House aspirants didn't seem to have much problem with the measure prior to this week. Even alleged moderate Mitt Romney has said that as governor he would have signed legislation that defines life as beginning at conception.
Indeed, the one constant in Republican debates so far is how the candidates stumble all over each other to define themselves as more conservative than the rest of the pack. That may still be what's necessary to win primary elections in Iowa and South Carolina, but it's unlikely to play particularly well with the broader electorate, which — surprise — includes a lot of people with far more moderate views.
The day was hardly a slam-dunk for Democrats, of course, with the GOP making gains in Virginia. But the donkeys are clearly no longer on the run, with re-election victories in Kentucky and West Virginia's gubernatorial races, a noteworthy outcome for Maryland's Martin O'Malley, the current chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.
None of which is to suggest that the tide has turned so far that Mr. Obama faces a cake walk in 2012, or even should be favored to win re-election, not with so many Americans unemployed and discouraged by the economy. Rather, what appears to be happening is that voters are reverting closer to the norm — a distaste for extremist views.
That should be a lesson not only for presidential candidates but for those in Congress who are negotiating to reduce the nation's deficit. Continued gridlock won't play well with voters whose ire will likely be aimed at the side least willing to give ground. And at the moment, that would be the GOP, whose elected leaders recently offered to "raise" taxes but only under a plan that uses almost all of the resulting revenue to finance a tax cut for the rich.
The tactic amounts to a phony compromise, and Americans are not so gullible. As long as Republican leaders refuse to consider raising taxes (whether on the rich or otherwise), there's no hope of meaningful debt reduction — a point made not just by Democrats but by every significant (or at least intellectually honest) budget analysis of the past two years.
The GOP field still has time to moderate itself, of course. The candidates might take a cue from Governor Kasich, who has promised to "take a deep breath" and reflect on "what happened here." But that would require a willingness to listen more attentively and consider issues more judiciously than most have demonstrated in the past.
Instead, expect the candidates to charge forward and eventually suggest that the problem was someone or something wasn't conservative enough. Just as the Democrats neglected to heed the change in political tidal forces in 2010, the Republicans risk failing to recognize the moment when they were left high and dry by voters.

domain: sociology


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Seafood exporters will be required to comply with new food standards regulations from next year. Companies that export fish and other aquaculture products intended for human consumption to the EU must complete an Export Health Certificate (EHC) from January 15, 2022.
Kate Higgins, Nicola Sturgeon’s special advisor on rural affairs, food, islands and transportation, posted the reminder on Twitter.
She wrote: ‘Brexit continues to give our hard-pressed exporters but as a responsible government @Scotsgov is working hard to help them get the message out about the changes and give them time to prepare.
“If you are exporting farmed or caught seafood, please follow the link and share as well.”
The changes mean that seafood must be certified by the EHC rather than a competent food certification officer.
The measures were due to go into effect in August, but have been postponed until the new year.
The UK finally left EU chains in early 2021 and is now being treated as a third country by the bloc.
The EU passed a strong new animal health law in March 2016 and requires countries outside the EU, which seek to do business in the European market, to follow its rules on animal products.
The UK and the EU signed a trade and cooperation agreement on December 24, 2020, and the deal reduced EU fishing quotas in UK waters by 25% over the next five years.
READ MORE: Brexit LIVE: ‘Action imminent! Â»French fishermen separate from the EU
Paris has repeatedly threatened sanctions against the UK, but backed down earlier this month and agreed to continue talks.
But Olivier Lepretre, president of the organization which represents the interests of fishermen in northern France, warned “that action is imminent”.
Meanwhile, StÃ©phane Fournier, one of dozens of fishermen awaiting a license, has warned British ports and access to EU markets could be denied.
He said: âAll cross-Channel traffic (and) all freight in all ports in France will be blocked.
“Britain wants access to the European market? They should give us the licenses. Otherwise, we will cut them off.”
Downing Street confirmed this afternoon that the UK’s position has not changed.
A spokesperson for the prime minister said: “We will provide additional licenses when the required evidence is provided, we are not negotiating to change this approach.”
Speaking Monday evening, French Europe Minister ClÃ©ment Beaune said he wanted a “constructive solution” but insisted that Paris had “all options on the table”.

domain: economics


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All Saints, Argentine tango, dance lessons, live music, Meetup, milonga, practica, Princeton, VivaTango
We’ve straightened out our heads, our calendars and our Popsicle stick collection. Viva is tonight at 9:15 at SPC.
Lesley Mitchell wraps up her milonga series with a review of the material covered so far. To that she will add some variations and show us how to make sequences of the steps we already know. We told you that you’d be doing a milonga if you stuck with it. There’s just one thing left to do. Boogie on down to SPC tonight and learn how to do a milonga with finesse.
Speaking of finesse, we’ve definitely got some in store for you on Saturday at our Milonga Magnolia. It starts with award winning Bandoneonist, Emmanuel Trifilio, from the legendary Cafe Tortoni in Buenos Aires.
It includes a Raw Beginners’ Lesson by Lou Becerra of CJDS. And then there’s food by Nelly. You know it’s going to be good. That’s 8 o’clock Saturday at All Saints Church.
Kim Scharp said:
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Government and Opposition have to examine the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2018 clause by clause to ensure citizens are not labelled as international "bad boys" because of their religious affiliation, Caroni Central MP Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie said today.
The bill has to "be dissected" so parliamentarians could fully understand its implications for citizens, Tewarie told reporters at a sports caravan hosted by the Chaguanas Borough Corporation and the Civil Affairs Unit of the US Embassy at Enterprise Recreation Ground, Enterprise.
Debate on the report of the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2018 in the House of Representatives was adjourned last Wednesday to consider amendments to the bill.
“The bill has many good aspects of it because it brought Government and Opposition together to try and thrash out the contentious issues but there are also some remaining things that we need to interrogate, to question, to dissect...in a world that is fast changing and in which terrorism is a big issue,” he said.
“And terrorism has also become an issue in TT because of international links and because of the capacity of some organisations in TT not only to connect with international terrorist organisations but also to prepare in TT by training.”
“So we have to look at all of those things but we also have to protect innocent citizens and you have to make sure that you don’t surrender to international law and thinking in such way that your citizens become the bad boys in the world simply because you have an Islamic community or because you have a Muslim community.”
He said the debate would continue after the bill was examined clause by clause.


Today's Music Video Monday is coming at you from multiple angles.
Memphis folk rocker Mark Edgar Stuart shot the video for his new song "Mad at Love" on top of Petit Jean Mountain. "It was a special place to me as a child growing up in Arkansas," he says.
Director Jonathan Thomason used a vintage 8 mm film camera to shoot Stuart, matching footage that Stuart says is from "... some old home movies that my mom had hidden away in a drawer for nearly 60 years, but had never seen it 'till now. Seeing my late father and grandmother alive and so young was pretty amazing. The easy chair was a tribute to my father and an image carried over from my first video 'Remote Control.' I wanted both videos to have a common thread even though the song subjects are different."


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PRESS RELEASE – The Guam Basketball Confederation announced this week the appointment of Seve Susuico as Guam’s first ever Director dedicated to 3×3 Basketball.
According to GBC President, EJ Calvo, “Seve is the most decorated 3X3 player in Guam today. He will share his passion and experience for the sport with young players and help drive our plans for the 3X3 game forward.”
The newly appointed 3X3 Director, Susuico, stated “The 3X3 game is important for the GBC in that it will give our players more opportunities to compete internationally. 3X3 is extremely fast paced and exciting, and we feel we have the skills to compete with the worlds best.”
GBC has already expressed interest to both ISA and IIAAG leagues to introduce 3X3 Basketball as a Middle School and High School sport. GBC also hopes to announce 3X3 Tournaments for adults, as well as younger players wishing to return to basketball competition before the years end.
According to Susuico, “My experience with 3X3 has been a fruitful one. Form my first 3X3 event in 2012 in Athens, Greece… to wining the 1st ever gold medal for 3X3 in the Pacific Games last year in Samoa, I have seen the progression of the sport and feel that Guam has yet to reach our full potential.”
GPS Sports Calendar

domain: news


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Labor precarity and unionism in Chile : new directions and strategies of workers in a context of labor precarity (1975-2010)
This research seeks to explain changes in labor relations, the emergence of new forms of employment and its effects on unionism in the period between 1975 and 2010 in Chile. This research take into account the changes in the world of work, especially the phenomenon of labor precariousness, and the trajectories and emerging union strategies in this process. In this current rant, between labor precariousness and organization of union actors (stakeholders), we seek to relate the transformation of the labor conditions and the union activity in Chile. We assert that there is an adaptive heterogeneity and limited diversification of union strategies in the context of labor precariousness in Chile, which is possible to prove and verify through the experience of union leaders from different companies and productive sectors of the country, and the tendencies in indicators and labor statistics. It is in this current tension between labor precarity and organization of union actors (stakeholders) that our principal research questions arise: How has the process of labor precarity modified, altered or rearranged union activity? Are new union strategies emerging in the context of labor precarity? Are we in a process of synchronization of labor precarity tendencies and the transformation of the world of work with new core problems for unions? In this study we assert that there is an adaptive heterogeneity and limited diversification of union strategies occurring in the context of labor precarity in Chile, which is possible to prove and verify based on the experience of union leaders from different companies and productive sectors of the country. Although a series of studies confirms the phenomenon of labor precarity in different contexts (such as productive sectors, occupations, gender, etc.), there is no research linking the transformation of working conditions, the regulatory framework, the occupational structure and impacts on the adjustments of union strategies in Chile. In order to contextualize this debate, in the first part of this research we analyze a theoretical construction of labor precariousness, from the Latin American experience, problematizing its emergency in a productive, spatial and temporary context, in relation to an industrialized Europe, where the discussion of labor precariousness originally emerges.


5 Drivers for 1 Spot: The Battle at Phoenix
By Matteo Marcheschi
Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick have won the two races in the Round of Eight so far, cementing their positions in the Championship Four at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Martin Truex Jr. has locked himself into that group by points. That means only one spot remains to compete for the championship at Homestead, and five drivers could take it: Brad Keselowski (+19 above fifth), Denny Hamlin (-19 below fourth), Ryan Blaney (-22), Jimmie Johnson (-49), and Chase Elliott (-51).
Each driver can make the Championship Four with a win at Phoenix, and even Brad Keselowski will want a victory to guarantee himself to advance, although he has the best shot at advancing on points.
Jimmie Johnson is the strongest at Phoenix, among the five drivers. He has an average finish of just better than ninth, four wins, and 15 top five finishes in 28 starts. In the midst of his worst career year, though, with an average finish outside the top 15 and only four top five finishes (one in the playoffs), it will take a miracle from Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus to take victory at Phoenix.
Chase Elliott has only three starts at Phoenix, but has shown speed there. Two of his finishes at the Arizona facility have been inside the top ten, and he led 106 laps on the way to a twelfth place finish there in the spring of this season. Elliott has never won a Cup race, so it’s now or never for the second-year driver.
Denny Hamlin has a win at Phoenix and ten top five finishes in 24 tries at the Desert Mile. He has never failed to finish a race there, and has led over 400 laps in nine different races, including his first start there in 2005. Hamlin has been very strong there, and has a pair of wins and 15 top five finishes this season, but will need a win to secure his place in the Championship Four.
Ryan Blaney, like Elliott, has only three starts at Phoenix, with an average finish just inside the top 15. Unlike Elliott, Blaney has a win this season, and has proven, if only in flashes, that he can perform under pressure. Blaney, though, hasn’t quite been consistent enough to be a confident pick to move on to the Championship Round. With only four top five finishes on the season, it’s hard to believe he can pull a win out of his hat this weekend. Anything can happen, though, and it just might.
Brad Keselowski doesn’t need to win at Phoenix, and that’s good for him, because he has the worst average finish at the track of any of the five competing for the final spot, at 14th. Keselowski is winless at the track in 16 starts there, and has top ten finishes in only half his attempts. Keselowski, though, has three wins so far this season, including one in the Round of 12 at Talladega, and has 15 top five finishes. A decent finish will get him into the Championship Four to compete for his second Cup Series championship, but he’ll need to stay out of trouble for 312 laps at Phoenix first.
These five drivers are set to battle it out for the final spot in the Championship Four this Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, then it will be on to Homestead-Miami Speedway for the final showdown to decide who wins it all on the afternoon of Sunday, November 19.


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Yemeni president returns to Aden after 6-month exile
ADEN, YemenSep 22, 2015 - 12:00 am GMT+3
Sep 22, 2015 12:00 am
Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi landed in Aden on Tuesday, airport sources said, returning to the southern port city for the first time since he escaped to Saudi Arabia as Houthi fighters closed in six months ago.
A government source said Hadi would spend the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday in Aden and then fly to New York to deliver a speech at the United Nations. Last week, Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and seven ministers returned to Aden to take up residence in the city.
An alliance of Arab states - mostly Yemen's wealthy Arabian Peninsula neighbours - intervened in the impoverished country's civil war in March with the aim of restoring Hadi, and have helped drive the Iranian-allied Houthi forces back from Aden.
Gulf ground troops are now trying to push into Houthi strongholds in northern Yemen and in Sanaa, which the group seized a year ago. So far, they appear to have made few gains.
Alliance warplanes bombed two houses in the capital Sanaa on Tuesday, killing at least 20 people, medics said
The air attack came a day after similar raids killed around 50 people. "Two missiles hit the two houses in the Asbahi district in southern Sanaa, destroying them, killing 20 people and wounding others," a medic at the scene said.
Saba, the Houthi-controlled state news agency, said 236 people have been killed in air strikes over the last four days. Medics reached by Reuters estimated the death toll was lower for some of the incidents mentioned in the report.
A spokesman for the Saudi Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that two Saudi soldiers strayed into enemy territory in Yemen and are presumed to be in the hands of the Houthis.
"Two soldiers from the Saudi forces are missing after they lost their way inside Yemeni territory and the evidence points to them being alive and detained by the Houthi militias," Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri said in a statement.
About the author
Research Associate at Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University


Memorial service for Kobe and Gianna Bryant
Some people who attended Kobe Bryant’s memorial service at the Staples Center on Monday tried to sell their commemorative merchandise on eBay, and the company is not happy about it, according to TMZ.
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KOBE BRYANT NIKE ITEMS SELL OUT: COMPANY
The online marketplace has gone as far as to remove all memorial-related items from its site, including shirts, pins and printed programs. One extra-large shirt reportedly sold for $2,025.
FOX Business reached out to eBay to confirm whether the sale has actually gone through but did not immediately hear back at the time of publication.
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However, eBay did tell TMZ the company has a policy in place that prohibits sales related to “human tragedy or suffering.”


|Scott Northern Wake Campus
|Southern Wake Campus
Building RT1 - 332MB
The SNWC Military and Veterans Resources Center has a new name, Veterans Zone, and is open for modified access starting July 6. Microsoft Bookings will be used for available seating/reservations in the SNWC Veterans Computer Lab, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Mondays through Fridays.
Please email Marilyn Terrill, Dean, Veterans Programs, [email protected], if you need assistance.
Veterans Zones are spaces for our Student Veterans and their family members to connect in a safe environment and interact in a unique academic and social setting. A variety of services are available at the Veterans Zones including a computer lab and activity center, as well as representatives from Veterans Upward Bound, NC Serves, and Student Veterans of America (SVA).
We are proud to serve our veterans and are thankful for their many sacrifices.
This seal does not imply endorsement by the Department of Defense or any branch of military service.