30/04/2020
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he believes China’s handling of the coronavirus is proof that Beijing “will do anything they can” to make him lose his re-election bid in November.
In an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office, Trump talked tough on China and said he was looking at different options in terms of consequences for Beijing over the virus. “I can do a lot,” he said.
Trump has been heaping blame on China for a global pandemic that has killed at least 60,000 people in the United States according to a Reuters tally, and thrown the U.S. economy into a deep recession, putting in jeopardy his hopes for another four-year term.
The Republican president, often accused of not acting early enough to prepare the United States for the spread of the virus, said he believed China should have been more active in letting the world know about the coronavirus much sooner.
Asked whether he was considering the use of tariffs or even debt write-offs for China, Trump would not offer specifics. “There are many things I can do,” he said. “We’re looking for what happened.”
“China will do anything they can to have me lose this race,” said Trump. He said he believes Beijing wants his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, to win the race to ease the pressure Trump has placed on China over trade and other issues.
“They’re constantly using public relations to try to make it like they’re innocent parties,” he said of Chinese officials.
He said the trade deal that he concluded with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at reducing chronic U.S. trade deficits with China had been “upset very badly” by the economic fallout from the virus.
A senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that an informal “truce” in the war of words that Trump and Xi essentially agreed to in a phone call in late March now appeared to be over.
The two leaders had promised that their governments would do everything possible to cooperate to contain the coronavirus. In recent days, Washington and Beijing have traded increasingly bitter recriminations over the origin of the virus and the response to it.
However, Trump and his top aides, while stepping up their anti-China rhetoric, have stopped short of directly criticizing Xi, who the U.S. president has repeatedly called his “friend.”
Trump also said South Korea has agreed to pay the United States more money for a defense cooperation agreement but would not be drawn out on how much.
“We can make a deal. They want to make a deal,” Trump said. “They’ve agreed to pay a lot of money. They’re paying a lot more money than they did when I got here” in January 2017.
The United States stations roughly 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, rather than a peace treaty.
Trump is leading a triage effort to try to keep the U.S. economy afloat through stimulus payments to individuals and companies while nudging state governors to carefully reopen their states as new infections decline.
Trump sounded wistful about the strong economy that he had enjoyed compared with now, when millions of people have lost their jobs and GDP is faltering.
“We were rocking before this happened. We had the greatest economy in history,” he said.
He said he is happy with the way many governors are operating under the strain of the virus but said some need to improve. He would not name names.
Trump’s handling of the virus has come under scrutiny. Forty-three percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll from April 27-28.
But there was some good coronavirus news, as Gilead Sciences Inc said its experimental antiviral drug remdesivir was showing progress in treating virus victims.
Trump has also seeking an accelerated timetable on development of a vaccine.
“I think things are moving along very nicely,” he said.
At the end of the half-hour interview, Trump offered lighthearted remarks about a newly released Navy video purportedly showing an unidentified flying object.
“I just wonder if it’s real,” he said. “That’s a hell of a video.”
Source: Reuters
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19/10/2019
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to sweep two state polls next week, the first since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landslide win in a parliamentary election in May, a leading pollster said.
The BJP is set to comfortably win elections in the western state of Maharashtra and the northern state of Haryana, leaving the main opposition Congress party trailing, according to a survey by polling agency CVoter released on Friday.
CVoter estimates that a BJP-led alliance in Maharashtra will pick up 194 of the 288 seats on offer. In Haryana, the party is predicted to win 83 of the state’s 90 seats, leaving just three for Congress.
Voting in the elections will be held on Monday with the results expected to be announced on Thursday.
Several Congress party officials conceded they had all but given up hope of posing a serious challenge to Modi and the BJP.
In particular, the resignation of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in July, after weeks of drama following the loss to the BJP in the general election, has sown internal confusion, triggering infighting and exits, two party officials in New Delhi said.
“It’s going to be a rout, and it will deflate morale even further,” one of the officials said, referring to the state elections. “It’s like a slow-moving disaster.”
They requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media.
Pranav Jha, the secretary in charge of Congress’s communication department, said the party was undergoing a period of “cleansing and churning” and remained committed to taking on the BJP.
“The people of India…can see through the diversionary drama of the ruling party, and realise that jobs, economy and issues of farmers can only be put on track by the Congress party,” Jha told Reuters.
Modi, analysts say, has moved decisively, including withdrawing special rights for Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state, and consolidating the BJP’s hold over India’s Hindu-majority electorate.
INFIGHTING, INDIFFERENCE
In Maharashtra, one of India’s most industrialised states which includes Mumbai, two Congress officials said the top leadership’s relative indifference and infighting had hurt their already weak campaign.
Congress’s state wing had asked for Gandhi, his mother and current party chief Sonia Gandhi, and his charismatic sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to join the campaign, one of the two officials said.
But only Rahul Gandhi came and spoke at a handful of rallies.
“Senior leaders from BJP have covered every district. They have been visiting Maharashtra for the last two months to build momentum,” said one Congress official, who is contesting the upcoming poll.
“There wasn’t any concrete effort from Congress leaders in New Delhi to give energy to our cadre,” he said.
The list of recent resignations from the party include Ashok Tanwar, Congress’s former chief in Haryana who quit earlier this month and is now campaigning against his old party.
“The state of affairs in the Congress party is so dire that the decision makers can’t win an election themselves, while the soldiers on ground who stay in touch with the masses are neglected,” Tanwar wrote in his resignation letter.
The situation has even riled Congress allies. Two leaders from the Nationalist Congress Party, which is in alliance with the Congress in Maharashtra, said their partner was slack.
“It looks like Congress is not very serious about the state elections,” one of the leaders said. “Congress is not in the picture. Congress leaders are not attacking the ruling party the way we expected.”
In New Delhi, Congress officials said there was a sense of inertia at the party headquarters, without any understanding of who will become president after Sonia Gandhi, who is only holding charge temporarily.
“Without a clear leadership, nothing is going to change,” one of the officials said, “If it continues like this, the party will fade away.”
Source:Reuters
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02/07/2019
SHANGHAI, July 1 (Xinhua) — As Shanghai starts mandatory garbage sorting on Monday, games and toys that explore fun ways to spread garbage sorting knowhow are gaining popularity among young people.
A 15-second video of a VR game went viral on Chinese social media in the past few days. In the video, players wearing VR equipment could see four different types of trash cans in front of them, and they threw different types of garbage appearing in front of them into the corresponding buckets to score.
This garbage sorting VR game debuted at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai last week. Although this is not the only VR game in the venue, visitors lined up around the booth to explore the game because of its garbage sorting theme.
“As a Shanghai resident, I am in great need of this game. Maybe I won’t need to check how to categorize each garbage on my phone while going through all my garbage every day if I play this game more often,” said Zhou Zhou, a young Shanghai resident. Although the game has not launched officially, Zhou said she was very much looking forward to it.
Some social media users have recently complained about the difficulties in sorting different types of garbage in Shanghai.
Wu Xia, founder and CEO of VitrellaCore, the company that created the game, said the purpose of this VR game is to provide an interesting method for learning garbage sorting.
“It’s simple and easy to understand. Residents can practice garbage sorting knowledge without actually going through the rubbish, and it is also a more effective method than paper materials when training garbage sorting volunteers,” Wu Said.
GARBAGE SORTING NO CHILD’S PLAY
Shanghai is widely promoting a mandatory garbage sorting system, which requires residents to throw away garbage at a fixed time and place. There is a designated garbage disposal site for every 300-500 households, where volunteers carefully check whether household waste is accurately classified.
The city enacted a set of regulations on household garbage sorting and recycling from Monday, which requires residents to sort household garbage into four kinds: dry refuse, wet trash, recyclable waste and hazardous waste. Individuals who fail to sort garbage may be fined up to 200 yuan (about 29 U.S. dollars).
Wu said many streets and neighborhoods in Shanghai have expressed their willingness to cooperate, and the company hopes to launch VR games in more places for residents to experience for free.
“GARBAGE SORTING IS FUN”
On Taobao, an e-commerce platform under Alibaba, the sales volume of a garbage sorting toy increased by nearly 300 pieces on Sunday. This set of toys consists of four miniature sorting bins, with cards representing various types of garbage.
Most of the buyers of this toy are from Shanghai, and the toy is almost out of stock due to strong sales, according to the shop’s customer service representative.
One residential community called Jiayou in Shanghai’s Jiading District ordered several toys for its residents. “We hope to raise children’s interest in garbage sorting,” said Xing Minxia, secretary of the Jiayou Community branch of the Communist Party of China.
“Most garbage sorting volunteers are retired people, while young people are less involved. These innovative ways can win young people’s hearts and make them feel that garbage sorting is fun instead of a burden,” said Mao Qing, director of a community cultural activity center in Changning District.
Residents of this community have recently been keen on a mobile game called “Race Against Time.” In 45 seconds, players are required to move a trash bin of a specific category to accurately catch the garbage belonging to this category. Players who pass the game can participate in a lucky draw.
Fan Weicheng, deputy director of Shanghai Oriental Publicity and Education Service Center that developed the game, said about 21,000 people have played it since they launched the game in early June.
“We often see the elderly gathering around the garbage sorting knowledge boards in residential communities, but young people are hardly ever there,” Fan said. “We hope to involve more young people through mobile games.”
The garbage sorting VR game will be launched on the Steam platform and China’s Tencent WeGame platform in August this year, according to Wu.
“There will be more types of garbage and more gameplay at that time, but the core of the game will always be to teach people about garbage sorting in a fun way,” Wu said.
Source: Xinhua
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