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Big races in Arizona are still undeclared while the vote count continues
Arizona's largest county on Friday will begin releasing the results of ballots dropped off at polling places on Election Day, providing clues about whether Republicans can overtake Democrats in critical races for U.S. Senate and governor.
With half a million ballots remaining to be counted statewide, Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters would need to win more than 60% of them to defeat Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly. In the race for governor, Republican Kari Lake would need to win just over half to overtake Democrat Katie Hobbs.
By Friday night, Kelly led Masters by more than 5 percentage points, while Hobbs was ahead of Lake by more than 1 point.
Republicans including Lake, who are convinced the remaining ballots strongly favor them, have been pressuring election officials in Maricopa County, which includes the majority of Arizona voters, to speed up the count. County Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates, a Republican, said the team is working as fast as it can, but it takes time to follow the detailed steps required under Arizona law.
“We’re doing things the right way. We’re not doing anything wrong at all,” Gates told reporters at the county elections office Friday. “That someone from here would suggest that we are doing something wrong, that’s frustrating.”
Also read: Democrats are losing ground in Arizona's Senate and governor elections
County officials have said they were inundated with far more early ballots dropped off on Election Day than they’ve ever before had to process. Voters delivered 292,000 early ballots on Election Day, an increase of 70% over the previous record from 2020.
Counting those ballots is time-consuming because officials have to verify that each one came from a legitimate voter, a process that couldn't begin until Wednesday.
Gates said that Maricopa County will release results from 80,000 ballots Friday evening and that more than half will be from the crucial group of early ballots received on Election Day. The report will also include fewer than 10,000 ballots received before Tuesday and “a good amount” of the roughly 17,000 ballots cast at vote centers on Tuesday, which could not be counted immediately because of a printing issue.
The Tucson area’s Pima County also had a sizable chunk of votes left to count. Together, the state’s two urban counties account for 90% of the remaining ballots, according to data from the secretary of state.
Also read: GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
Either party could clinch control of the U.S. Senate by winning Arizona and either the outstanding Nevada Senate contest, which remained too early to call Friday, or next month's runoff in Georgia.
Democrats think it's possible that the remaining ballots in Arizona are much less favorable to the GOP and will allow some or all of their candidates to maintain their leads.
By Friday afternoon, Democrats led the secretary of state contest by 5 points and the attorney general race by just under 1 point. In two of the state's uncalled House contests, the candidates were separated by 2 points or less. In a third, Democratic incumbent Greg Stanton had a much more comfortable lead of 14 points.
Global food import costs near record $2 trillion, hurting poorest
The food import costs are on course to rise to near record $2 trillion this year, around $128.6 billion more than predicted in June, as countries are facing ballooning costs for staples, the UN food agency said Friday.
Many economically vulnerable countries, with weak economic forecasts and high debt-to-GDP ratio, are paying more while receiving less food, heaping pressure on the world's poorest.
The low-income countries' food import shipments are expected to shrink by 10 percent as their food import costs for the year are expected to remain little changed, pointing to growing accessibility issues.
Read: Australia to send millions to Bangladesh, Myanmar for food, shelter
"These are alarming signs from a food security perspective, indicating importers are finding it difficult to finance rising international costs," the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in its twice-yearly Food Outlook report.
In addition to beverages and basic foods like cereals and meat, the FAO's food import costs cover a larger range of items, from fruit and vegetables to seafood, chocolate, tea, and spices.
World food prices jumped to record highs in March after the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, the latter a key grains and oilseeds producer.
Although the UN-mediated Black Sea Grain Initiative, starting July this year, guaranteed safe sea passage to ships carrying food grains in the conflict-prone region, it was unable to significantly cut food prices in the global market.
Read: Currency depreciations risk intensifying global food, energy crisis: World Bank
Food imports will rise by $180 billion, or 10 percent, above the previous year's record high, with high- and upper middle-income countries accounting for the majority of the increase.
As the purchasing power of countries that import goods is reduced by rising prices and a stronger dollar, the rate of that bill's increase will slow, lowering volumes.
Also, import costs for agricultural inputs such as fertilisers, fuel and seeds are expected to rise 48 percent to a record $424 billion from 2021, forcing some countries to buy and use less.
Higher bills and a stronger dollar will cut input applications, threatening both productivity and food security into next year, the FAO said. "This will inevitably lead to lower productivity, lower domestic food availability and negative repercussions for global agricultural output and food security in 2023."
Russia says Kherson city withdrawal complete
Russia said its troops finished withdrawing Friday from the western bank of the river that divides Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, allowing Ukrainian forces to move cautiously toward reclaiming the country’s only Russian-occupied provincial capital in what would be a major victory.
In a statement carried by Russian state news agencies, Russia’s Defense Ministry said the withdrawal was completed at 5 a.m. and not a single unit of military equipment was left behind. The retreat, which came two months after Russian forces withdrew from eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, represents another huge setback for Moscow in its 8 1/2-month war in Ukraine.
Reports emerged of residents hoisting Ukrainian flags in places the Russians pulled out of, including the city of Kherson. A Ukrainian regional official, Serhii Khlan, said he heard the flags were “appearing en masse all over the place.” He disputed the Russian claim that retreating forces took all their equipment with them, saying he was told “a lot” of hardware got left behind.
Khlan, who spoke to journalists from outside the city, said he heard that some Russian troops also were left behind and had dressed in civilian clothes, possibly with plans to engage in acts of sabotage.” He said their exact number was unclear.
The Kremlin remained defiant Friday, insisting the development in no way represented an embarrassment for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow continues to view the entire Kherson region as part of Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
He added that the Kremlin doesn’t regret holding festivities just over a month ago to celebrate the illegal annexation of Kherson and three other occupied or partially occupied regions of Ukraine. Despite abandoning their positions on the western bank, Russian forces still control about 70% of the Kherson region.
Shortly before the Russian announcement, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in the province as “difficult.” It reported Russian shelling of some of the villages and towns Ukrainian forces reclaimed in recent weeks during their counteroffensive in the Kherson region.
READ: Ukraine fears 'city of death' as Russia withdraws troops from Kherson
The General Staff of Ukraine’s army said the Russian forces also left looted homes, damaged power lines and mined roads in their wake. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak predicted Thursday the departing Russians would seek to turn Kherson into a “city of death” and would continue to shell it after relocating across the Dnieper River.
Ukrainian officials were wary of the Russian pullback announced this week, fearing their soldiers could get drawn into an ambush in Kherson city, which had a prewar population of 280,000. Military analysts also had predicted it would take Russia’s military at least a week to complete the troop withdrawal.
Without referencing events unfolding in Kherson, Zelenskyy said in a video message thanking U.S. military personnel on Veterans Day that that “victory will be ours.”
“Your example inspires Ukrainians today to fight back against Russian tyranny,” he said. “Special thanks to the many American veterans who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine and to the American people for the amazing support you have given Ukraine. With your help, we have stunned the world and are pushing Russian forces back.”
However, some quarters of the Ukrainian government barely disguised their glee at the pace of the Russian withdrawal.
“The Russian army leaves the battlefields in a triathlon mode: steeplechase, broad jumping, swimming,” Andriy Yermak, a senior presidential adviser, tweeted. Social media videos apparently filmed by soldiers on routes toward Kherson showed villagers hugging the Ukrainian troops.
Recapturing the city could provide Ukraine a strong position from which to expand its southern counteroffensive to other Russian-occupied areas, potentially including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
From its forces new positions on the eastern bank, however, the Kremlin could try to escalate the war, which U.S. assessments showed may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
A Russian S-300 missile strike overnight killed seven people in Mykolaiv, a city about 68 kilometers (42 miles) from Kherson’s regional capital, Zelenskyy’s office said Friday morning. Rescue crews sifted through the rubble of a five-story residential building in search of survivors.
READ: Russia-Ukraine War: US estimates 200,000 military deaths, injuries on both sides
Standing in front of what used to be his family’s apartment, Roman Mamontov, 16, awaited news about his missing mother.
Mamontov said he found “nothing there” when he opened an apartment door to look for his mother after the missile struck. Friday was her 34th birthday, the teenager said.
“My mind was blank at that moment. I thought it could not be true,” he said. “The cake she prepared for the celebration is still there.”
Zelenskyy called the missile strike “the terrorist state’s cynical response to our successes at the front.”
“Russia does not give up its despicable tactics. And we will not give up our struggle. The occupiers will be held to account for every crime against Ukraine and Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said.
The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t acknowledge striking a residential building in Mykolaiv, saying only that an ammunition depot was destroyed “in the area of the city.”
The president’s office said Russian drones, rockets and heavy artillery strikes across eight regions killed at least 14 civilians between Thursday morning and Friday morning.
The state of the key Antonivskiy Bridge that links the western and eastern banks of the Dnieper in the Kherson region remained unclear Friday. Russian media reports suggested the bridge was blown up following the Russian withdrawal; pro-Kremlin reporters posted footage of the bridge missing a large section.
But Sergei Yeliseyev, a Russian-installed official in the Kherson region, told the Interfax news agency that “the Antonivskiy Bridge hasn’t been blown up, it’s in the same condition.”
Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, described the retreat from Kherson as a “colossal failure” for Russia and said Russian military commanders should have pulled all their forces out of the city “weeks ago,” to put the Dnieper River between them and Ukraine’s advancing troops.
Hodges, speaking in a phone interview with The Associated Press, said he expected Ukrainian commanders would work to keep the pressure on Russia’s depleted forces in the weeks ahead, ahead of a possible future push next year for Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014.
Russia is “going to have a very difficult time over the next several months continuing to hold back a very confident Ukrainian military that has a strong wind in their back” in the wake of the offensive for Kherson, he said.
China reports 10,000 new virus cases, capital closes parks
Beijing closed city parks and imposed other restrictions as the country faces a new wave of COVID-19 cases, even as millions of people remained under lockdown Friday in the west and south of China.
The country reported 10,729 new cases on Friday, almost all of them testing positive while showing no symptoms. More than 5 million people were under lockdown Friday in the southern manufacturing hub Guangzhou and the western megacity Chongqing.
With the bulk of Beijing’s 21 million people undergoing near daily testing, another 118 new cases were recorded in the sprawling city. Many city schools switched to online classes, hospitals restricted services and some shops and restaurants were shuttered, with their staff taken to quarantine. Videos on social media showed people in some areas protesting or fighting with police and health workers.
“It has become normal, just like eating and sleeping," said food service worker Yang Zheng, 39. “I think what it impacts most is kids because they need to go to school.”
Demands for testing every 24 to 48 hours are “troublesome,” said Ying Yiyang, who works in marketing.
“My life is for sure not comparable to what it was three years ago," said Ying. Family visits outside of Beijing can be difficult if the smartphone app that virtually all Chinese are required to display does not green-light travel back to the capital, Ying said.
“I just stay in Beijing,” Ying said.
Read more: Biden to meet China's Xi on Monday for Taiwan, Russia talks
Numerous villages on the capital's outskirts that are home to blue-collar workers whose labor keeps the city running were under lockdown. Many live in dormitory communities, which taxi and ride-sharing drivers said they were avoiding so as not to be placed in quarantine themselves.
Lockdowns in Guangzhou and elsewhere were due to end by Sunday, but authorities have repeatedly extended such restrictions with no explanation.
Chinese leaders had promised Thursday to respond to public frustration over its severe “zero-COVID” strategy that has confined millions to their homes and severely disrupted the economy.
The government said Friday it was reducing the amount of time incoming passengers would be required to undergo quarantine. The U.S. Embassy this week renewed its advisement for citizens to avoid travel to and within China unless absolutely necessary.
Incoming passengers will only be quarantined for five days, rather than the previous seven, at a designated location, followed by three days of isolation at their place of residence, according to a notice from the State Council, China's Cabinet.
It wasn’t immediately clear when and where the rules would take effect and whether they would apply to foreigners and Chinese citizens alike.
Relaxed standards would also be applied to foreign businesspeople and athletes, in what appeared to be a gradual move toward normalization.
Airlines will no longer be threatened with a two-week-long suspension of flights if five or more passengers tested positive, the regulations said, potentially providing a major expansion of seats on such flights that have shrunk in numbers and soared in price since restrictions were imposed in 2020.
Those flying to China will only need to show a single negative test for the virus within 48 hours of traveling, the rules said. Formerly, two tests within that time period were were required.
“Zero-COVID” has kept China’s infection rate relatively low but weighs on the economy and has disrupted life by shutting schools, factories and shops, or sealing neighborhoods without warning. With the new surge in cases, a growing number of areas are shutting down businesses and imposing curbs on movement. In order to enter office buildings, shopping malls and other public places, people are required to show a negative result from a virus test taken as often as once a day.
With economic growth weakening again after rebounding to 3.9% over a year earlier in the three months ending in September, forecasters had been expecting bolder steps toward reopening the country, whose borders remain largely closed.
Read more: China launches Covid-19 vaccine inhaled through mouth
President and ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is expected to make a rare trip abroad next week, but has given little indication of backing off on a policy the party has closely associated with social stability and the avowed superiority of his policies.
That has been maintained by its seven-person Politburo Standing Committee, which was named in October at a party congress that also expanded Xi’s political dominance by appointing him to a third five-year term as leader. It is packed with his loyalists, including the former party chief of Shanghai, who enforced a draconian lockdown that sparked food shortages, shut factories and confined millions to their homes for two months or more.
People from cities with a single case in the past week are barred from visiting Beijing, while travelers from abroad are required to be quarantined in a hotel for seven to 10 days — if they are able to navigate the timely and opaque process of acquiring a visa.
Business groups say that discourages foreign executives from visiting, which has prompted companies to shift investment plans to other countries. Visits from U.S. officials and lawmakers charged with maintaining the crucial trading relations amid tensions over tariffs, Taiwan and human rights have come to a virtual standstill.
Last week, access to part of the central city of Zhengzhou, home to the world’s biggest iPhone factory, was suspended after residents tested positive for the virus. Thousands of workers jumped fences and hiked along highways to escape the factory run by Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group. Many said coworkers who fell ill received no help and working conditions were unsafe.
Also last week, people posted outraged comments on social media after a 3-year-old boy, whose compound in the northwest was under quarantine, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. His father complained that guards who were enforcing the closure refused to help and tried to stop him as he rushed his son to a hospital.
Despite such complaints, Chinese citizens have little say in policy making under the one-party authoritarian system that maintains rigid controls over media and public demonstrations.
Speculation on when measures will be eased has centered on whether the government is willing to import or domestically produce more effective vaccines, with the elderly population left particularly vulnerable.
That could come as soon as next spring, when a new slate of officials are due to be named under Xi's continuing leadership. Or, restrictions could persist much longer if the government continues to reject the notion of living to learn with a relatively low level of cases that cause far fewer hospitalizations and deaths than when the pandemic was at its height.
In Egypt, host of COP27, a small step toward green energy
From a distance, the endless landscape of solar panels stretching toward the horizon can easily be mistaken for crops nearing harvest. But here in the desert in southern Egypt, workers have been cultivating another precious commodity: electricity.
After the sun strikes the photovoltaic solar panels, a thermal charge generates electricity that runs to four government-owned power stations distributing power across Egypt's national grid.
It's part of the country's push to increase renewable energy production. With near-perpetual sunshine and windy Red Sea coastlines, experts say Egypt is well-positioned to go green.
Read more: COP27: Bangladesh wants developed countries to deliver on $100 billion promise
Yet it is also a developing country and like many others faces obstacles in making the switch. Much of its infrastructure depends on fossil fuels to power the nation of some 104 million people.
The solar panel farm — Egypt's flagship project named Benban, after a local village — puts it at the African continent's forefront when it comes to renewable energy. But questions remain over Egypt’s long-term green energy strategy, and whether there are enough incentives for the cash-strapped government to supply 42% of the country's electricity from renewable resources by 2035, as it has announced.
Karim el-Gendy, an expert at Chatham House who specializes in urban sustainability and climate policy, says Egypt has failed to meet its goal of having 20% of its electricity sourced from renewables by 2022. The current figure is now closer to 10%, according to according to the International Energy Agency.
There's less demand for solar energy, partly due to the influx of natural gas, thanks to new discoveries located in Egypt's section of the Mediterranean Sea.
“We have seen less interest in the past couple of years in integrated renewable energy projects in Egypt, both in terms of solar, in the south, and wind,” he said.
As host of this year’s global climate summit, known as COP27 and now underway in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt has said it will pressure other nations to implement climate promises made at previous conferences. Egypt is not bound by any carbon emissions cap, but it has vowed to mitigate and curb its emission rises across key polluting sectors, such as electricity and transport.
Its use of natural gas has also helped, allowing Egypt to move away from burning coal and oil, much dirtier industries — but nevertheless, gas is still a fossil fuel.
The government has revealed few details on how it will implement or finance the 2035 vision. Foreign investment will likely play a big part, as countries in Europe look south for solar power. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has allotted $10 billion of funding for over 150 projects across Egypt, with Benban claimed as one of its major successes.
The sprawling farm is designed to grow as demand for solar energy increases.
‘‘It offers great potential for us and other investors,’’ said Faisal Eissa, general manager for Egypt at Lekela, a Dutch company that has invested in Benban.
Read more: COP27: Bangladesh prioritises realisation of green climate fund, Environment Minister tells UNB
Egypt’s New and Renewable Energy Authority claims Benban has already reduced the country's annual greenhouse emission output. But there is still a long way to go. In 2020, renewables accounted for 6% of Egypt’s energy consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, with petroleum products accounting for 36% and natural gas for 57%. Coal accounted for just 1%.
Egypt may also have less of an incentive to invest in renewables as it grapples with domestic challenges, including an economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, Russia's war in Ukraine and a years-long government crackdown on dissent. Last month, Cairo reached a preliminary deal with the International Monetary Fund that would allow access to a $3 billion loan.
Effects of climate change are already being felt in the Nile River Delta, where rising seas have brought on creeping salt that eats away roots and cakes farms, devastating the livelihoods of Egyptian farmers.
The Arab world’s most populous country accounts for only 0.6% of global carbon dioxide emissions. But it faces high levels of urban pollution. Most of the population lives in densely packed neighborhoods along the fertile banks of the Nile and its northern delta. Here, car fumes and mass transport running on diesel clog the streets. Egyptians’ exposure to air pollution is, on average, 13 times higher than the World Health Organization’s recommended guidelines. It was responsible for 90,559 premature deaths in 2019, according to statistics gathered by the United Nations.
The country's congested capital city of Cairo is the second top source of greenhouse gas emissions, after the giant offshore Zohr gas field, according to the Climate TRACE.
The remaining 90% of Egypt's land is uninhabitable desert. By better utilizing the vast expanse and coastlines, the Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Agency said the North African country could generate over half of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
It's a different way of viewing the country's sun-scorched landscape.
“People here have started to look at the sun as a source of power," said Ahmed Mustafa, who runs one of the area's many new logistics companies that work alongside Benban's developers and engineers, supplying them with equipment.
For the locals, the solar farm has been transformative. Thousands worked at the site when it was under construction, and many stayed as technicians and cleaners once it became fully functional.
Ultimately, the development of more wind and solar capabilities will come down to what makes business sense for the government, despite its expressions of good intent, according to el-Gendy.
‘’The need to expand its renewable sector all depends on Egypt’s commercial interests,’’ he said.
Biden to meet China's Xi on Monday for Taiwan, Russia talks
President Joe Biden will meet Monday with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next week’s Group of 20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, a face-to-face meeting that comes amid increasingly strained U.S.-China relations, the White House announced Thursday.
It will be the first in-person meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies since Biden became president in January 2021 and comes weeks after Xi was awarded a norm-breaking third, five-year term as the Chinese Communist Party leader during the party’s national congress.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement the leaders will meet to “discuss efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between” the two countries and to "responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”
The White House has been working with Chinese officials over the last several weeks to arrange the meeting. Biden on Wednesday told reporters that he intended to discuss with Xi growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over the self-ruled island of Taiwan, trade policies, Beijing’s relationship with Russia and more.
“What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what each of our red lines are and understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States,” Biden said. “And determine whether or not they conflict with one another.”
Read more: Biden, Trump to make final appeals ahead of crucial midterms
The White House sought to downplay expectations for the meeting, telling reporters there was no joint communique or deliverables anticipated from the sit-down.
“I don’t think you should look at this meeting as one in which there’s going to be specific deliverables announced," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. "Rather the two leaders are going to give direction to their teams to work on a number of areas, both areas where we have differences and areas where we can work together.”
Biden and Xi traveled together in the U.S. and China in 2011 and 2012 when both leaders were serving as their respective countries' vice presidents, and they have held five phone or video calls since Biden became president in January 2021. But the U.S.-China relationship has become far more complicated since those getting-to-know-you talks in Washington and on the Tibetan plateau a decade ago.
As president, Biden has repeatedly taken China to task for human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, Beijing’s crackdowns on democracy activists in Hong Kong, coercive trade practices, military provocations against self-ruled Taiwan and differences over Russia’s prosecution of its war against Ukraine.
Weeks before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president met with Xi in Beijing and the two issued a memorandum expressing hopes of a “no limits” relationship for their nations.
China has largely refrained from criticizing Russia’s war but thus far has held off on supplying Moscow with arms.
Read more: Amidst recession fears, Biden has to convince Americans job gains mean better days ahead
“I don’t think there’s a lot of respect that China has for Russia or Putin,” Biden said Wednesday. “And in fact, they’ve been sort of keeping the distance a little bit.”
The leaders were also expected to address U.S. frustrations that Beijing has not used its influence to press North Korea to pull back from conducting provocative missile tests and to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Biden was set to discuss threats from North Korea with the leaders of South Korea and Japan a day before sitting down with Xi.
Sullivan said Biden would meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol on Sunday on the margins of the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, where North Korea's saber rattling is expected to be the focus of talks.
Xi’s government has criticized the Biden administration’s posture toward Taiwan — which Beijing looks eventually to unify with the communist mainland — as undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Chinese president also has suggested that Washington wants to stifle Beijing’s growing clout as it tries to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy.
Tensions over Taiwan have grown since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.
Biden said that he’s “not willing to make any fundamental concessions” about the United States’ Taiwan doctrine.
Under its “One China” policy, the United States recognizes the government in Beijing while allowing for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. It takes a stance of “strategic ambiguity” toward the defense of Taiwan — leaving open the question of whether it would respond militarily were the island attacked.
Asked about the anticipated meeting, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a Thursday news briefing that China was looking for “win-win cooperation with the U.S.” while reiterating Beijing’s concerns about the U.S. stance on Taiwan.
“The U.S. needs to stop obscuring, hollowing out and distorting the One China principle, abide by the basic norms in international relations, including respecting other countries’ sovereignty, territorial integrity and noninterference in other countries’ internal affairs,” he said.
Biden caused a stir in Asia in May when at a news conference in Tokyo, said “yes” when asked if he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if China invaded. The White House and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were quick to clarify that there was no change in U.S. policy.
Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step U.S. leaders say they don’t support. Pelosi is the highest-ranking elected American official to visit since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997.
Xi has stayed close to home throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic, where he has enforced a “zero-COVID” policy that has resulted in mass lockdowns that have roiled the global supply chains.
He made his first trip outside China since start of the pandemic in September with a stop in Kazakhstan and then onto Uzbekistan to take part in the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Putin and other leaders of the Central Asian security group.
U.S. officials were eager to see how Xi approaches the meeting after being newly empowered with a third term and consolidating his position as the unquestioned leader of the state, saying they would wait to assess whether that made him more or less likely to seek out areas of cooperation with the U.S.
They emphasized that party congress results reinforced the importance of direct engagement with Xi, rather than lower level officials whom they’ve found unable or unwilling to speak for the Chinese leader.
Sullivan says it “remains to be seen” what impact Xi's cementing another five years as Communist Party leader will have on his approach to the U.S.-China relationship.
Ukraine fears 'city of death' as Russia withdraws troops from Kherson
Russia said it began withdrawing troops from the strategic Ukrainian city of Kherson on Thursday, in a potential turning point in the grinding war, but a Ukrainian official warned that Russian land mines could render it a “city of death.”
Kyiv acknowledged Moscow’s forces had no choice but to flee Kherson but remained cautious, fearing an ambush. With Ukrainian officials tight-lipped about their assessments of the situation and reporters not present, it was difficult to know what was happening in the industrial port city, from which tens of thousands have fled in recent weeks and where remaining residents are afraid to leave their homes.
A forced pullout from Kherson — the only provincial capital Moscow had captured — would mark one of Russia’s worst setbacks, recalling their forces’ abandonment of attempts to take the national capital, Kyiv, in the early days of the war. Recapturing Kherson could provide Ukraine a launching pad for supplies and troops to try and win back other lost territory in the south, including Crimea, which Moscow illegally seized in 2014.
Already, Ukrainian forces seem to be scoring more battlefield successes in the region. The armed forces commander-in-chief, Valeriy Zaluzhny, said that since Oct. 1 Kyiv’s forces have advanced 36.5 kms (22.7 miles) and retaken 41 settlements in the Kherson region — which the Kremlin has illegally annexed. That included 12 just on Wednesday.
As Russian troops withdraw, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, warned they had laid mines throughout Kherson, saying they wanted to turn it into a “city of death” and would shell it from the positions across the Dnieper River where they are consolidating forces.
Read: Russia-Ukraine War: US estimates 200,000 military deaths, injuries on both sides
From these new positions, the Kremlin could try to escalate the conflict — which U.S. assessments showed may have already left tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead or wounded.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Thursday a “maneuver of units of the Russian group” to the Dnieper River’s eastern bank, also known as its left bank. The defense minister on Wednesday ordered a troop withdrawal from the city and nearby areas after his top general in Ukraine reported that the loss of supply routes had made defense “futile.”
Some Western observers, including the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, believe the Kremlin’s forces have been forced to pull out but that a full withdrawal could take time.
On Thursday, Ukrainian officials appeared to soften their skepticism. Zaluzhny said that “the enemy had no other choice but to resort to fleeing,” because Kyiv’s army has destroyed supply systems and disrupted Russia’s military command in the area. Still, he said the Ukrainian military could not confirm that Russian forces were indeed withdrawing.
Alexander Khara, of the Kyiv-based think tank Center for Defense Strategies, echoed those concerns, saying he remains fearful that Russian forces could destroy a dam upriver from Kherson and flood approaches to the city. The former Ukrainian diplomat also warned of booby traps and other possible dangers retreating Russians left behind.
“I would be surprised if the Russians had not set up something, some surprises for Ukraine,” Khara said.
Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at international affairs think-tank Chatham House, said the cautious response from Ukraine explains “why, until Ukrainians are in the city, they don’t want to declare that they have it (in) control.”
A resident said Kherson was deserted Thursday and that explosions could be heard from around Antonivskyi Bridge — a key Dnieper River crossing that Ukrainian forces have repeatedly bombarded.
Read: Russia claims to have left the captured city, but Ukraine is dubious.
“Life in the city seems to have stopped. Everyone has disappeared somewhere and no one knows what will happen next,” said Konstantin, who insisted that his last name be withheld for security reasons.
Russian flags have disappeared from the city’s administrative buildings, and there is no sign of the Russian military personnel who earlier moved into the apartments of evacuated residents, he said.
Ukrainian officials have been cautious throughout the war in declaring any victories against a Russian force that at least initially outgunned and outmanned them.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was careful in his assessment. He spoke Thursday to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his office said they agreed “it was right to continue to exercise caution until the Ukrainian flag was raised over the city.”
Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a day earlier that he believed a retreat was underway, but that Russia had amassed 20,000 to 30,000 troops in Kherson and that a full withdrawal could take several weeks.
One analyst noted that the Ukrainian army has been systematically destroying bridges and roads, making a quick transfer of Russian troops across the river impossible.
“The main question is whether the Ukrainians will give the Russians the opportunity to calmly withdraw, or fire at them during the crossing to the left bank,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said. “The personnel can be taken out on boats, but the equipment needs to be taken out only on barges and pontoons, and this is very easily shelled by the Ukrainian army.”
In other developments:
Read: As winter approaches, Ukraine struggles with power outage
— A Kremlin spokesman said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not attend the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia next week, avoiding a possible confrontation with the United States and its allies over his war in Ukraine.
— The head of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Thursday that three civilians had been killed in the region and 12 wounded in the last 24 hours. Writing on Telegram, the official also reported that law enforcement officers found the bodies of five people killed during the Russian occupation of the town of Yarova, which Ukraine retook on Sept. 19.
— Russian forces overnight pounded the city of Nikopol and nearby areas, Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. The shelling wounded a 80-year-old woman and damaged 10 residential buildings, a gas station, a gas pipeline and a power line. The neighboring Zaporizhzhia region was also shelled Thursday, according to deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
Democrats hold small but shrinking lead in key Arizona races
Arizona Democrats maintained small but dwindling leads over their Republican rivals in the races for U.S. Senate and governor, contests that could determine control of the Senate and the rules for the 2024 election in a crucial battleground state.
The races remained too early to call two days after the election, with some 600,000 ballots left to count, about a quarter of the total cast.
Protracted vote counts have for years been a staple of elections in Arizona, where the overwhelming majority of votes are cast by mail and many people wait until the last minute to return them. But as Arizona has morphed from a GOP stronghold to a competitive battleground, the delays have increasingly become a source of national anxiety for partisans on both sides.
Read more: GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
After opening big leads early on election night, when only mail ballots returned early were reported, Democrats have seen their leads dwindled as more Republican ballots have been counted. On Thursday morning, Democrats led in the races of Senate, governor and secretary of state, while the race for attorney general was essentially tied. It could take several days before it's clear who won some of the closer contests.
With Republicans still in the hunt, it remained unclear whether the stronger-than-expected showing for Democrats in much of the U.S. would extend to Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold that became a battleground during Donald Trump's presidency.
The GOP nominated a slate of candidates who earned Trump's endorsement after falsely claiming his loss to President Joe Biden was tainted.
Among them former television news anchor Kari Lake was about half a point behind Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in the race for governor, a contest that centered heavily on Lake's baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election. The Republican candidate for attorney general also trailed narrowly.
Democrats had more comfortable 5-point margins in the races for U.S. Senate and secretary of state, but with so many ballots outstanding, the races were too early to call.
In the race for attorney general, Republican Abraham Hamadeh took the lead from Democrat Kris Mayes.
Officials in Maricopa County, the state's most populous, said about 17,000 ballots were affected by a printing mishap that prevented vote-counters from reading some ballots, a problem that slowed voting in some locations and infuriated Republicans who were counting on strong Election Day turnout. County officials said all ballots will be counted but gave no timeline for doing so.
The cause remains a mystery. The two top officials on the county board of supervisors, both Republicans, said in a statement Wednesday night that they used the same printers, settings and paper thickness during the August primary and pre-election testing, when there were no widespread issues.
Read more: Election takeaways: No sweep for the Republicans after all
“There is no perfect election. Yesterday was not a perfect election,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the board of supervisors, told reporters earlier in the day. “We will learn from it and do better.”
Lake repeated her pledge to immediately call lawmakers into special session upon being sworn in to make massive changes to Arizona election laws. She wants to significantly reduce early and mail voting, options chosen by at least 8 in 10 Arizona voters, and to count all ballots by hand, which election administrators say would be extremely time consuming.
Ballots can have dozens of races on them. Maricopa County has more than 50 judges on the ballot, on top of state and local races and 10 ballot measures.
“We’re going to go back to small precincts where it’s easier to detect problems and easier to fix them and it’ll be easier to hand count votes as well,” Lake told Fox News host Tucker Carlson Wednesday night. “These are some of the things I’d like to see happen. I’ll work with the Legislature.”
A political urban-rural divide was evident among Arizona voters.
Democrats Katie Hobbs and Sen. Mark Kelly each drew support from nearly two-thirds of urban voters, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,200 voters in Arizona.
Suburban voters split about evenly between the two Democratic candidates and their GOP rivals, Kari Lake and Blake Masters. Small town and rural voters were more likely to favor Lake and Masters.
In the Senate race, suburban men and women were divided in their candidate preferences. Suburban men clearly favored Masters, suburban women Kelly.
In the race for governor, suburban men overwhelmingly backed Lake, while suburban women slightly favored Hobbs.
Meanwhile, Republicans who control the three-member board of supervisors in southeastern Arizona’s GOP-heavy Cochise County voted Wednesday to appeal a judge’s decision that blocked them from hand-counting all the ballots, which are also being tabulated by machines.
The efforts to hand-count ballots in the county and elsewhere across the nation are driven by unfounded concerns among some Republicans that problems with vote-counting machines or voter fraud led to Trump’s 2020 defeat.
A judge said the plan ran afoul of state election law that limits hand counts to a small sample of ballots, a process meant to confirm the machine count was accurate.
Russia-Ukraine War: US estimates 200,000 military deaths, injuries on both sides
According to the senior-most US general, Mark Milley, the Russia-Ukraine war has claimed the lives of or injured 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
The US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman also said that 40,000 or so civilians perished as a result of being involved in the fight, the BBC reports.
The estimations are the highest a Western official has yet provided.
He, however, said that indications that Kyiv was prepared to resume discussions with Moscow provided “an opening” for dialogue.
Read more: Russia to withdraw from key city of Kherson
Ukraine has recently indicated a willingness to engage in some dialogue with Moscow after withdrew a demand that negotiations stop until Vladimir Putin was ousted from office.
Gen Milley said that in order for any negotiations to be fruitful, Russia and Ukraine would need to “mutually recognise” that a triumph “is maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means”.
The US general, who serves as President Joe Biden’s top military advisor, claimed that the number of casualties could persuade Moscow and Kyiv to discuss during the coming winter, when fighting may slack off due to the cold.
The BBC report quoted Gen Milley as saying “You’re looking at well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded,” adding, “Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side.”
Read more: Kyiv prepares for worst winter with no heat, water or power
Both Russia and Ukraine closely guard the number of casualties.
Only 5,937 soldiers had died in total since the conflict began, according to Moscow’s most recent report, which was released in September. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed allegations of a substantially higher death toll.
There has been a great deal of human suffering, according to Gen Milley. He added that since Russia’s incursion began on February 24, there have been between 15 and 30 million new refugees.
Over 7 million refugees from Ukraine have been registered by the UN in countries all around Europe, including Russia. The number excludes those who were compelled to leave their homes but are still in Ukraine, nevertheless.
Read more: Russia rejoins key deal on wartime Ukrainian grain exports
Moscow declared on Wednesday (November 09, 2022) that its troops would begin to leave Kherson, a crucial city in the south and the only sizable city to be taken by Russian forces.
While “early evidence” showed that a retreat had started, Gen Milley noted that Russia had gathered between 20 and 30,000 troops in the city and that the withdrawal may take several weeks.
Musk says some 'dumb things' might happen, tries to reassure advertisers on Twitter
Elon Musk sought to reassure big companies that advertise on Twitter on Wednesday that his chaotic takeover of the social media platform won’t harm their brands, acknowledging that some “dumb things” might happen on his way to creating what he says will be a better, safer user experience.
The latest erratic move on the minds of major advertisers — that the company depends on for revenue — was Musk’s decision to abolish a new “official” label on high-profile Twitter accounts just hours after introducing it.
Twitter began adding gray labels to prominent accounts Wednesday, including brands like Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple, to indicate that they are authentic. A few hours later, the labels started disappearing.
“Apart from being an aesthetic nightmare when looking at the Twitter feed, it was simply another way of creating a two-class system,” the billionaire Tesla CEO told advertisers in an hour-long conversation broadcast live on Twitter. “It wasn’t addressing the core problem.”
Musk’s comments were his most expansive about Twitter’s future since he closed a $44 billion deal to buy the company late last month, dismissed its top executives almost immediately and, on Friday, fired roughly half of its workforce. Major brands including General Motors, United Airlines, General Mills and others have temporarily halted buying ads on the platform as they watch whether Musk’s plans to loosen its guardrails against hate speech will lead to a rise in online toxicity.
Scores of companies big and small made their presence known among the more than 100,000 Twitter Space listeners by signing in with their brand Twitter accounts. The brand accounts for companies including banks Deutsche Bank, TD Ameritrade, gas company Chevron, automaker Nissan, airline Air Canada and many others appeared. Car brand Audi, which has paused Twitter ads, was there, as was retailer R.E.I., which said after the call its ads were still paused.
Musk said he’s still planning a “content moderation council” representing diverse viewpoints that will tackle inappropriate content and reassure advertisers, but it would take “a few months” to put together. He said it will be advisory and “not a command council.”
Lou Paskalis, longtime marketing and media executive and former Bank of America head of global media, said the briefing raised questions that will likely leave Fortune 500 advertisers uneasy.
The biggest concern for big advertisers is brand safety and risk avoidance, he said. And Musk seems uninterested in reining in his Twitter persona that can be divisive — such as his tweet ahead of the election advising Americans to vote Republican.
“To come out like Elon did ... and say ‘vote Republican since there’s a Democrat in the White House’ — I don’t know what marketer wants to go near that,” he said.
One solution could be to hire a CEO to run the company and create stability while Musk continues to be his “Chief Twit” persona, Paskalis said.
Read more: Elon Musk takes over Twitter: what to expect?
Musk had earlier threatened by tweet a “thermonuclear name & shame” on advertisers that quit Twitter. But he took a more measured approach Wednesday, asking them to “give it a minute and kind of see how things are evolving.”
“The best way to understand what’s going on with Twitter is use Twitter,” he told the group, which was represented mostly by the head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association.
However, the confusion on Twitter continued Wednesday. The rollout hours earlier of the “official” labels appeared arbitrary, with some politicians, news outlets and well-known personalities getting the label and others not. In some cases, whether users could see an account’s “official” label appeared to depend on what country they were in.
Then the labels started disappearing.
YouTube personality and author John Green got the label but his younger brother and “vlogging” partner Hank Green didn’t make the cut. Then John Green’s label was gone. Another popular YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, who posts videos on technology, tweeted he got the label, then tweeted again that it disappeared.
“I just killed it,” Musk responded, though at first it wasn’t clear if he was referring specifically to Brownlee’s label or the entire project.
The site’s current system of using “blue checks” to confirm an account’s authenticity will soon go away for those who don’t pay a monthly fee. The checkmarks will be available for anyone willing to pay a $7.99-a-month subscription, which will also include some bonus features, such as fewer ads and the ability to have tweets given greater visibility than those coming from non-subscribers.
The platform’s current verification system has been in place since 2009 and was created to ensure high-profile and public-facing accounts are who they say they are.
Read more: Elon Musk says will ban impersonators on Twitter
Experts have expressed concern that making the checkmark available to anyone for a fee could lead to impersonations and the spreading of misinformation and scams.
The gray label — a color that tends to blend into the background whether you use light or dark mode to scroll Twitter — was an apparent compromise.
Esther Crawford, a Twitter employee who has been working on the verification overhaul, had said Tuesday on Twitter that the “official” label would be added to “select accounts” when the new system launches.
“Not all previously verified accounts will get the ‘Official’ label and the label is not available for purchase,” said Crawford.
But after the labels started disappearing Wednesday, she again took to Twitter to say “there are no sacred cows in product at Twitter anymore.”
“Elon is willing to try lots of things — many will fail, some will succeed,” she said.
There are about 423,000 verified accounts under the outgoing system. Many of those belong to celebrities, businesses and politicians.
But a large chunk of verified accounts belong to individual journalists, some with tiny followings at local newspapers and news sites around the world. The idea was to verify reporters so their identities couldn’t be used to push false information on Twitter.
Read more: Musk says Twitter blue tick being revamped
Musk, who often bristles at critical news coverage, pushed back against that use of the tool Wednesday, saying he wanted to elevate “citizen journalism” and the “voice of the people” over publications he suggested had too much influence in defining the “Western narrative.” Journalism professionals generally consider Musk’s concept of elevating “citizen journalists” dangerous because it ignores the need for standards, including fact-checking, that responsible news organizations enforce.