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US-China trade talks extended to third day
Negotiations in Beijing aimed at easing trade dispute between the world's two largest economies that has roiled markets.



Face-to-face trade negotiations between China and the United States will be extended to an unscheduled third day, according to US officials.
This week's meetings in Beijing are the first direct talks since Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, agreed in December to a 90-day ceasefire in a trade war which has seen the two sides raise import tariffs on each other's goods and has roiled global financial markets.
Experts say it will take months for the world's two largest economies to resolve the causes of the dispute, which include disagreements over Beijing's handling of technology and intellectual property.
As the talks wound down late on Tuesday evening in the Chinese capital, there were signs of progress on issues including purchases of US farm and energy commodities and increased access to China's markets.
But people familiar with the negotiations said the two sides were further apart on Chinese structural reforms that the Trump administration is demanding in order to stop alleged theft and forced transfer of US technology and on how to hold Beijing to its promises.
"Talks with China are going very well!" Trump tweeted on Tuesday, without elaborating.
Steven Winberg, assistant secretary for fossil energy at the US Department of Energy, told reporters in Beijing that the talks, which began on Monday, had gone well.
"I confirm we're continuing tomorrow, yes," Winberg said, declining to answer further questions.

Companies feeling the pain


The trade war has seen Washington imposing tariff increases of up to 25 percent on $250bn of Chinese imports over complaints Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology. Beijing responded by imposing penalties on $110bn of US goods, slowing customs clearance for US companies and suspending issuing licenses in finance and other businesses.
The dispute weighed on economic growth and sparked volatility on global markets.
Trump is increasingly eager to reach an agreement to help lift the markets, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with internal White House deliberations. The S&P 500 Index has fallen about eight percent since the truce began.
A spokesperson for the US Trade Representative's office, which is leading the US negotiating team in Beijing, said talks would continue on Wednesday and "a statement will likely follow then".
If no deal is reached by March 2, Trump has said he will proceed with raising tariffs to 25 percent from 10 percent on $200bn worth of Chinese imports at a time when China's economy is slowing significantly.
In the meantime, companies in both countries are feeling pain from the effects of US tariffs and retaliation from China, which are starting to mount.
Last week, US tech giant Apple rattled global markets by taking the rare move of lowering its quarterly sales forecast, citing poor iPhone sales in China.


Signs of progress


In what is widely seen as a goodwill gesture, China on Tuesday issued long-awaited approvals for the import of five genetically modified crops, which could boost its purchases of US grains as farmers decide which crops to plant in the spring.On Monday, Chinese importers made another large purchase of US soybeans, their third in the past month.
Increased purchases by China of US soybeans, oil, liquefied natural gas and financial services are viewed as easier to achieve than major changes to China's industrial policies aimed at transferring US technology to Chinese firms."Overall the talks have been constructive. Our sense is that there's good progress on the purchase piece," one person familiar with the talks was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. The person added that it was more difficult to determine how to hold China to its commitments to better protect intellectual property.
Scott Kennedy, director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, said the two sides for the first time were discussing topics that matter most to the Trump administration. These include expanded Chinese purchases of US products, greater protections for US intellectual property, constraints on Chinese industrial policy, and enforcement and verification of follow-through by China."The minimum baseline for judging whether this week is a success is whether they can have an in-depth conversation on those areas," Kennedy told Reuters, adding that an announcement of another round of talks would be a positive outcome.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

名片；特征

Two thousand years ago, the Chinese calling card was lions, 1,000 years ago it was Chinese porcelain, 500 years ago it was tea leaves and now it’s local brands with their own intellectual property,” he said. “I believe Moutai is one of these.”

钓鱼
there are no big fish left to angle for

Peru's state-run hydrocarbons company Perupetro S.A. is responsible for promoting, negotiating, signing and overseeing contracts that contribute to hydrocarbons exploration and production activities in the country. The company was established in 1993 and it is also tasked with selling through third-parties hydrocarbons produced at areas under concession contracts. The company is wholly owned by FONAFE, a national fund for state companies financing. Perupetro is headquartered in Lima, and has regional offices in the cities of Tarapoto, Iquitos, Pucallpa, Talara and Cusco.

China confirms birth of gene-edited babies, blames scientist He Jiankui for breaking rules

Official Xinhua news agency says preliminary investigations revealed that scientist had acted on his own and forged review papers

The Chinese authorities are holding scientist He Jiankui wholly responsible for creating the world’s first gene-edited babies.
He had announced their birth in November, after which the authorities announced an investigation into the matter.
A team of investigators told the official Xinhua news agency on Monday that a preliminary investigation had concluded that He had “organised a project team that included foreign staff, which intentionally avoided surveillance and used technology of uncertain safety and effectiveness to perform human embryo gene-editing activity with the purpose of reproduction, which is officially banned in the country”.
Between March 2017 and November 2018, He forged ethical review papers and recruited eight couples to participate in his experiment, resulting in two pregnancies.
  
One of the mothers gave birth to twins nicknamed “Lulu” and “Nana”, the investigators said. Another woman is still carrying a gene-edited fetus.
They also said that He, his staff and organisations related to his project would be punished according to laws and regulations.
The Guangdong government will keep the twins under medical observation.
The government decision was welcomed by the scientific community.
A biologist, who asked not to be identified, said: “This is a result I’m happy to see,” he said. ”This should be the way. There needs to be protection of the babies too.”
He said he had also researched gene-editing but all experiments were done on lab rats only.In an interview with Beijing Youth Daily on Sunday, Shao Feng, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and deputy director of the National Institute of Biological Sciences, said the whole incident would need to be investigated thoroughly.
“If I were to handle the matter, I would never tell [the twins] they’ve been gene-edited and allow them to live their lives like normal people,” he said. “I think that’s for the best.”An expert in the field, Shao is worried about potential health risks the children will face as well as the incident’s effect on the human race.


“Once the gate of gene-editing is wide open, the human race will be finished,” he said. “The technology is strong but the terrifying fact is that anyone slightly trained in a lab can perform it.”He has not been seen in public since he announced the births at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong in November. Some media reports have claimed he is being kept under house arrest or even detained by police.
A spokeswoman at the Shenzhen-based Southern University of Science and Technology, He’s employer, has previously dismissed talk of detention as rumours.He has faced a wave of condemnation from China’s scientific community and health officials have insisted they knew nothing of his experiments.  
China’s Ministry of Science and Technology has ordered research institutes to suspend all of He’s scientific projects.An investigation into He’s work found that the ethics review committee at the Harmonicare Women and Children’s Hospital, which the scientist said had approved his research, was not registered with the city’s health authorities.

The hospital had earlier denied any involvement with the project.Last month the Shenzhen authorities announced they would issue draft guidelines for the ethical review of biomedical research involving humans.
Internet users flooded social media with comments on the news of investigations into He’s work. “This professor is not worthy of being in education, he has the evil ambitions of a terrorist in disaster movies,” one wrote on Weib.“I knew he’d end up in ruins, and this will affect the Chinese scientific community,” another wrote.
It is unclear what punishments He faces or what the consequences would be for the babies and the pregnant volunteers, if any.

glance 辉矿类，硫化矿类
copper glance    辉铜矿
glance coal    辉煤（或光亮煤，无烟煤）

Canada’s ambassador to China backs Meng’s chances of fighting extradition to the U.S.


Wed., Jan. 23, 2019


In a series of surprisingly frank comments, McCallum revealed new details about the strain on Canada-China relations, his opinion that Meng has “quite good” legal arguments against extradition, and the allied pressure Canada faces to ban Huawei.

Canada's ambassador to China, John McCallum, waits to brief members of the Foreign Affairs committee regarding China in Ottawa on Jan. 18, 2019. On Jan. 23, 2019, McCallum said when China’s Foreign Ministry summoned him after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, the meeting was “very hostile.”
Canada's ambassador to China, John McCallum, waits to brief members of the Foreign Affairs committee regarding China in Ottawa on Jan. 18, 2019. On Jan. 23, 2019, McCallum said when China’s Foreign Ministry summoned him after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, the meeting was “very hostile.”  (SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Speaking Tuesday to mostly Chinese-language media in his former riding, McCallum expressed his hope that if the U.S. cuts a deal with China and drops Meng’s extradition, that China would release two detained Canadians.

But it was his comments on the merits of the U.S. case — which has not yet been fully presented with supporting documents to Canada’s Justice Department — that stunned many observers.

“I think she has quite good arguments on her side,” McCallum said. “One, political involvement by comments from Donald Trump in her case; two, there’s an extraterritorial aspect to her case; and three, there’s the issue of Iran sanctions, which are involved in her case, and Canada does not sign onto these Iran sanctions.”

Trudeau did not say he agreed with McCallum, but refused to publicly criticize him for breaking with the government’s practice of not commenting on a case before the court.

“I think part of the strength of our justice system is that people get to mount their own defence and I know she (Meng) will do that,” said Trudeau in Saskatchewan Wednesday.

Senior Canadian officials, who spoke to the Star on condition they not be named, said the ambassador’s comments were not part of any strategic plan

The case is tied up with a looming high-stakes decision on whether to ban Huawei from participating in Canada’s 5G network. McCallum said Canada has not yet made a decision but admitted there’s “pressure” to ban it.

“Other members of what we call the Five Eyes — United States, Australia, U.K., New Zealand — have said no to Huawei, or at least U.K., one of their big companies has. So there’s pressure on Canada to say no,” McCallum said.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said in an interview with CBC’s Power and Politics that “if I were prime minister, I would fire John McCallum.” He said it would show the government “fiercely” values the independence of Canadian courts, and will not stand for interference from anyone, including government officials.

McCallum revealed China’s leader is furious about Meng and suggested other Chinese officials have taken “the lead” from him.

After the RCMP arrested Meng on a U.S. extradition request, Chinese state security officials arrested Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. A growing chorus of allies, diplomats and scholars have demanded their release.

“What I do know is that President Xi Jinping was very angry about this,” said McCallum. “And I don’t know exactly why. Maybe it is because Huawei is a national flagship company of China ... or there may be other reasons that I don’t know.”

McCallum said when the foreign ministry summoned him to formally object and demand Meng’s release, the meeting was “very hostile.”

“I am sorry that this incident, this difficult incident, arose. It was a total surprise for everybody in Canada,” he said. “But it happened, and we have to deal with it.”

Scheer suggested that McCallum’s news conference was a deliberate strategy by the Liberals to undercut the prosecution case against Meng.

“We can’t on the one hand go and defend our actions to the Chinese government by saying these decisions made by arms-length, independent security officials ... if then on the other hand the government is using our ambassador to China to interfere in the process to obtain a desired outcome,” said Scheer.

Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole said McCallum’s observations “potentially jeopardize the extradition process.” By providing a list of defence arguments before it even gets before the courts, O’Toole said McCallum was trying to “actually scuttle” or avoid the political decision on extradition that would have to eventually be made by the justice minister.

McCallum described three possible outcomes in the Meng affair: that she is extradited, released by a Canadian court, or that the U.S. makes “some kind of a deal with China, and part of the deal would be that they would no longer seek her extradition.

“And we would hope, if the U.S. made such a deal, part of the deal would also be to release the two Canadians … but that is more under the control of the United States than it is under the control of Canada.”

The U.S. wants Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei, to face fraud charges, according to arguments at her bail hearing. It accuses her of misleading multinational banks about Huawei’s ties to a company doing business in Iran, putting them at risk of violating U.S. sanctions.

starve the beast

Limit or reduce government expenditure by cutting taxes.

Donald Trump in Vietnam for summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

US President Donald Trump has arrived in Vietnam ahead of his second summit with North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

Air Force One landed at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport hours after Mr Kim reached the Vietnamese capital by train and car.

The summit, which is due to take place on Wednesday and Thursday, follows a historic first round of talks in Singapore last year.

The two leaders are expected to discuss progress towards ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

Ceremonial guards had lined a red carpet laid out for Mr Kim as he arrived at Dong Dang border station on Tuesday morning. He was then driven to Hanoi, where heavy security and flag-waving crowds were waiting for him.

Mr Kim is thought to be travelling with his sister Kim Yo-jong and one of his key negotiators, former General Kim Yong-chol, both familiar faces from the previous summit with Mr Trump.

Why did Mr Kim take a train to Vietnam?


The journey from Pyongyang to Vietnam took more than two days and traversed about 4,000 km (2,485 miles). Had Mr Kim chosen to fly to Vietnam he would have got there in a matter of hours.

As Mr Kim's train passed through China, roads were closed and train stations shut down. Chinese social media was abuzz with road closures, traffic congestion and delayed trains.

Vietnam's Dong Dang station was also closed to the public ahead of his arrival on Tuesday morning. He is now being driven around 170km (105mi) to Hanoi by car.

It's little surprise that Mr Kim chose to take the train as this is how his grandfather, North Korea's first leader Kim ll-sung, travelled when he went to Vietnam and Eastern Europe.

That alone would have made it a highly symbolic move for the younger Mr Kim.

Mr Kim's private green and yellow train has 21 bulletproof carriages and is luxurious, with plush pink leather sofas and conference rooms so the journey would not have been uncomfortable.

What will Trump and Kim do in Vietnam?
Unlike the North Korean leader, Mr Trump travelled to Hanoi by plane. The presidential airliner Air Force One left Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, landing in the Vietnamese capital on Tuesday night local time.

Details of their schedule are only just becoming clear. Mr Trump will meet Mr Kim for a brief one-on-one conversation on Wednesday evening and then they will have dinner together with their advisers, according to White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. On Thursday, the leaders will meet for a series of back-and-forth meetings.

Why are they meeting again?
The Hanoi meeting is expected to build on the groundwork of what was achieved at the Singapore summit last June.

That meeting produced a vaguely worded agreement, with both leaders agreeing to work towards denuclearisation - though it was never made clear what this would entail.

However, little diplomatic progress was made following the summit.

This time round, both leaders will be very conscious that expectations will be high for an outcome that demonstrates tangible signs of progress.

However, Mr Trump appeared to be managing expectations ahead of the summit, saying he was in "no rush" to press for North Korea's denuclearisation.

"I don't want to rush anybody. I just don't want testing. As long as there's no testing, we're happy," he said.

Washington had previously said that North Korea had to unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons before there could be any sanctions relief.

Why Vietnam?
It's an ideal location for many reasons. It has diplomatic relations with both the US and North Korea, despite once having been enemies with the US - and could be used by the US as an example of two countries working together and setting aside their past grievances.

Ideologically, both Vietnam and North Korea are communist countries - though Vietnam has rapidly developed since and become one of the fastest growing economies in Asia, all while the party there retains absolute power.

讲话摘译：关于委内瑞拉国家腐败和人道主义危机听证会的讲话


迈克尔∙G∙科扎克

民主、人权和劳工局高级官员

美洲国家组织

华盛顿DC

2019年3月1日

在“美洲大厅”这里，我们的目标是和平。并且和平是我们在委内瑞拉的目标。但是上周六，尼古拉斯·马杜罗命令武装罪犯在委内瑞拉边境袭击他自己的人民，当时他们在寻求获得迫切需要的人道主义援助。他命令该国曾经引以为傲的安全部队来援助和教唆这一罪行。

美国将继续调查、起诉、并制裁掠夺他们自己人民的官员。其他国家也在进行类似的努力。我在政府的这些年见过严重贪腐的例子，但从没见过这种规模。

Excerpt: Remarks for Hearings on State Corruption and the Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela


Remarks
Michael G. Kozak
Senior Bureau Official, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The Organization of American States

Washington, DC

March 1, 2019

Here in the Hall of the Americas, our objective is peace. And peace is our objective in Venezuela. But this past Saturday Nicolas Maduro ordered armed criminals to attack his own people at Venezuela’s borders as they sought to receive desperately needed humanitarian aid. And he ordered the country’s once proud security forces to aid and abet this criminality.

The United States will continue to investigate, prosecute, and sanction officials who rob their own people. Other countries are undertaking similar efforts. I have seen examples of gross corruption during my years in government, but never anything of this scale.