Good morning.
The US and China are heading towards inevitable conflict if Washington does not change its approach, China’s new foreign minister has said in a fiery press conference in which he defended his country’s strengthening relationship with Russia.
In his first media appearance as foreign minister, held on Tuesday on the sidelines of the “two sessions” political gathering, Qin Gang outlined China’s foreign policy agenda for the coming years, presenting China and its relationship with Russia as a beacon of strength and stability, and the US and its allies as a source of tension and conflict.
Qin said the US side claimed that it wanted to outcompete China but did not seek conflict “but in reality, the US side’s so-called competition is all-out containment and suppression, a zero-sum game where you die and I live.
“If the US does not hit the brakes but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrail can prevent derailing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation.”
What did Qin say about Russia? “With China and Russia working together, the world will have a driving force,” he said. “The more unstable the world becomes the more imperative it is for China and Russia to steadily advance their relations.”
Why does Qin think relations with the US have deteriorated? Qin blamed the US for the worsening relations, specifically citing the balloon incident, as well as tensions over Taiwan and the Ukraine war. He said the conflict in Ukraine seems to have been driven by “an invisible hand … using the Ukraine crisis to serve certain geopolitical agendas”, pushing for the protraction and escalation of the conflict.
Fox News hit with fresh federal election complaint over Trump camp collusion
A US Federal Election Commission complaint over the collusion of Fox News with the Trump campaign in 2020 could be the first of many, the complainant said, amid continued fallout from dramatic court filings in Dominion Voter Systems’ $1.6bn defamation suit against the network.
Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog, filed its FEC complaint last week, over the revelation that Rupert Murdoch personally gave Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, confidential information about a Biden campaign ad.
A progressive political action committee, End Citizens United, also filed a complaint. As defined by the Harvard Law Review, FEC “campaign finance restrictions do not apply to costs associated with producing news”.
Media Matters alleges that “press exemption” does not apply to Murdoch’s decision to give the Biden ad to Kushner.
What does the complaint say? Saying the move was “diametrically opposed to Fox Corporation’s regular press activity. Fox Corporation, through Murdoch, appears to have engaged in the exact type of campaign activity to which the commission has repeatedly affirmed the press exemption does not apply. Therefore, Fox Corporation cannot try to exploit the press exemption to avoid the consequences of making an illegal corporate in-kind contribution.”
Anti-trans rhetoric takes center stage at CPAC amid hostile Republican efforts
There was a joke about the suspected Chinese spy balloon’s preferred pronouns; claims that Democrats believe there are “millions” of genders and a menacing call for “transgenderism” to be “eradicated”.
From the main stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), far-right activists, members of Congress and the former president of the US waged an aggressive assault on transgender rights last week, raising the issue in speeches and unrelated panel discussions, often under the guise of protecting children.
Headlining the conference on Saturday, Donald Trump drew some of the wildest applause of his more than 90-minute address when he pledged to stop the “chemical castration and sexual mutilization [sic]” of children if re-elected in 2024 while endorsing a national ban on transgender medical treatment for young people.
A day earlier, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, one of Trump’s staunchest allies, rallied attenders with a speech devoted to the issue, unveiling her plan to reintroduce a bill that would criminalize doctors for providing gender-affirming care to a minor.
What do leading medical organizations say? The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others, consider gender-affirming care to be medically necessary and potentially lifesaving for children and adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Are laws being changed? In state legislatures across the country, Republican lawmakers are pursuing a barrage of new restrictions related to transgender youth’s medical care, sports participation and bathroom use. So far this year, anti-trans legislation has been proposed in 39 states, including 112 measures that focus on medical care restriction and 82 that pertain to education-related issues, according to the website Track Trans Legislation.
In other news …
A public college in Idaho is coming under pressure to explain why it has removed from an upcoming exhibition in its Center for Arts & History several artworks dealing with reproductive health and abortion. Scarlet Kim of the ACLU said that the removal of works of art silenced the voices of women.
Ukraine has started online talks with partners on extending the Black Sea grain initiative, a senior Ukrainian government source said on Tuesday. The source said Ukraine had not held discussions with Russia, which blockaded Ukrainian Black Sea ports after its invasion last year.
Over the past 11 months, someone created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts – perhaps hundreds of thousands of them – to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump. Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump’s critics.
The Biden administration is under pressure to block a visit by Israel’s extremist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, over his call to “wipe out” a Palestinian town that was the target of an attack by Jewish settlers. More than 100 Jewish American leaders signed a statement opposing the visit.
Stat of the day: revealed – 1,000 super-emitting methane leaks risk triggering climate tipping points
More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars. Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions. Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.
Don’t miss this: French philosopher urges people to rebel – by making friends
Building your life around close friendships rather than family or romance is a joyous and necessary act of rebellion, and governments should put in place “friendship ministries” to radically rethink the way society is organised, a key French philosopher has argued. Geoffroy De Lagasnerie’s manifesto for friendship, 3 Une Aspiration au Dehors, published this week, questions society’s “authoritarian” insistence on prioritising romantic relationships. De Lagasnerie told France Inter radio: “The book stemmed from a form of sadness and melancholy at how life is organised socially … the idea that life should happen in cycles: youth, studies, form a relationship, move in together, sleep in the same bed, have children … Those are institutional roles but a lot of people feel at odds with that type of life and have other aspirations.”
… Or this: ‘She had to hide’ – the secret history of the first Asian woman nominated for a best actress Oscar
Magazine writers did not know what to make of Merle Oberon when she took Hollywood by storm in the 1930s. One writer described her as “bizarre, bewildering, and different”, while others marveled at her “delicate” oval face, “eloquent” emerald eyes, “bright red lips” and “alabaster” skin. Though her 1936 best actress Oscar nomination for the coming of age drama The Dark Angel affirmed her place in a league with Katharine Hepburn and the eventual winner, Bette Davis, it was only later that the world discovered Oberon was a south Asian woman passing for white. Oberon carefully hid her true identity to evade certain racial persecution and took that secret to her grave.
Climate check: meat, dairy and rice production will bust 1.5C climate target, shows study
Emissions from the food system alone will drive the world past 1.5C of global heating, unless high-methane foods are tackled. Climate-heating emissions from food production, dominated by meat, dairy and rice, will by themselves break the key international target of 1.5C if left unchecked, a detailed study has shown. The analysis estimated that if today’s level of food emissions continued, they would result in at least 0.7C of global heating by the end of the century, on top of the 1C rise already seen. This means emissions from food alone, ignoring the huge impact of fossil fuels, would push the world past the 1.5C limit. “Methane has this really dominant role in driving the warming associated with the food systems,” said Catherine Ivanovich, at Columbia University in the US, who led the research.
Last Thing: Mississippi: 15-year-old with master’s degree prepares to attend law school
A 15-year-old Mississippi boy is reportedly preparing to start law school later this year and has the chance to become one of the youngest people ever to obtain a juris doctorate. James “Jimmy” Chilimigras took the law school entrance exam last year when he was just 14 and scored a 174, the highest tally in his home state, Alabama and Louisiana, according to a report from the news station WLOX. Jimmy, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from the online, non-profit Western Governors University, told WLOX he is giving himself until May to choose which law school he will attend. Jimmy’s parents, John and Erin Chilimigras said they realized early that their son was highly intelligent as he spoke in full sentences when he was only two years old.
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