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Biden Cuts Asian Trip Short To Deal With Republicans On Debt And Budget

Biden Cuts Asian Trip Short To Deal With Republicans On Debt And Budget

Washington (AFP) - President Joe Biden's departure Wednesday to the G7 in Japan was meant to launch a geostrategic masterclass on rallying the world's democracies against China. Instead, he will limp into an abruptly truncated journey facing concerns that the US debt ceiling row is about to tear up the global economy.

Biden arrives Thursday in Hiroshima, one of the two cities hit by US atomic bombs in 1945 -- a closing chapter to World War II and the start of an era of US leadership across the Pacific that Beijing now seeks to supplant.

He will meet leaders from the rest of the G7 club -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan -- that has been so crucial in the US-led drive to enforce unprecedented economic sanctions on China-ally Russia for invading Ukraine.

However, visits next week to Papua New Guinea and to a Sydney summit of the Quad, comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States, were canceled so that Biden can rush back Sunday and negotiate with Republican opponents on the debt ceiling.

For a president who often warns that democracies are in an existential fight to prove their viability against the world's autocracies, it's a sobering moment.

"It's extraordinarily hard... to go to the G7 and talk about economic unity against Russia, economic unity against China, when the dysfunction is coming from inside the house," Josh Lipsky, at the Atlantic Council, said.

Biden downplayed the reshuffling of his schedule, saying, "the nature of the presidency is addressing many critical matters all at once."

But Evan Feigenbaum, a former US diplomat with the Carnegie Endowment, was brutal.

"It's tough to 'compete with China' in the Pacific when you're busy sinking your own boat," he tweeted. "How do we think we look to the rest of the world?"

Candidate Biden Enters Furnace

For Biden, 80, the trip and the debt ceiling mess come at a crucial time. He has just launched his re-election campaign and Americans wary about his age are watching how he copes in the furnace of the presidency at home and abroad.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden can multi-task.

"He can travel overseas, and manage our foreign policy and our defense policy and look after our national security commitments in an important region like the Indo-Pacific, and also work with congressional leaders to do the right thing -- raise the debt ceiling, avoid default so that the United States credibility here at home and overseas is preserved," Kirby said.

The risks over the debt ceiling, however, are so huge -- global market panic would be just the beginning of the fallout from a default -- that Biden may spend much of his time trying to reassure fellow world leaders on the state of the US economy, rather than planning how to manage China.

Biden doesn't know whether the increasingly hard-right Republican Party will allow an increase to the debt in time to prevent default. And he also doesn't know whether the left of his own Democratic party will forgive him for the compromises he may have to make to save the situation.

Quad Consolation Prizes

Canceling the Papua New Guinea and Australia stops is a bitter pill for a president who has reinvigorated US diplomacy after the isolationist Trump years.

The Quad, an informal grouping of large democracies interested in restraining aggressive Chinese economic and military expansion across the Pacific, is one of Biden's priorities.

The White House was quick to point out that Biden will already be meeting in Japan on the sidelines of the G7 with his other Quad counterparts.

And a consolation prize for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was extended in the form of an invitation to a state visit at the White House. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is already booked in for a state visit this June.

But Washington is likely to rue the missed opportunity in Papua New Guinea, where Biden would have been the first serving US president to visit. The symbolism, at a time when remote Pacific island territories and countries have become chess pieces in the geostrategic contest with China, would have been powerful

Lachlan Murdoch Suing Tiny Australian News Site Over 'Defamation'

Lachlan Murdoch Suing Tiny Australian News Site Over 'Defamation'

Sydney (AFP) - A high-stakes defamation battle between News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch and small Australian news outlet Crikey will go to trial beginning March 27 in Sydney.

Rupert Murdoch's eldest son -- who is also chief executive of Fox News parent Fox Corporation -- is suing Crikey over an opinion piece that linked his family's media empire to the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.

The media scion's lawyers claimed their client was defamed over a dozen times in the article, which accused "the Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators" of being "unindicted co-conspirators" in the Capitol riot.

On Friday, Murdoch's barrister -- top defamation litigator Sue Chrysanthou -- pushed in the preliminary hearing for the earliest possible trial date, arguing Crikey had been "directing ridicule and hatred" towards her client.

Crikey was "publicly claiming martyrdom", she told the largely administrative case management hearing, pointing to the outlet running billboard advertisements about the case and fundraising online for its defense.

In the past month, Crikey's GoFundMe campaign has raised nearly S$333,000, and garnered support from two former Australian Prime Ministers, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull.

"Lachlan Murdoch owns boats that are worth more than Crikey," Turnbull commented alongside his $3,400 donation.

A Very Public Fight

The legal scuffle over the opinion piece burst into international headlines last month, when Crikey ran an advertisement in The New York Times daring Murdoch to sue.

The often pugilistic website said it welcomed the opportunity to "test this important issue of freedom of public interest journalism in a courtroom".

Murdoch filed his lawsuit the next day.

The tussle pits an upstart website, with subscriber numbers in the low tens of thousands, against one of the world's largest media empires.

Defamation expert David Rolph from the University of Sydney told AFP that Murdoch's case could be the first test of recent attempts to reform Australia's notoriously tough defamation laws.

Australia has gained a reputation as "the defamation capital of the world" after a slew of lawsuits launched by high-profile figures, including actors and politicians.

Crikey's defense, filed with the Federal Court Tuesday, denied it defamed Murdoch and flagged it would lean on two new defenses created by the reforms.

"One is a serious harm threshold... the plaintiff now has to prove that they not only suffered some harm to reputation, but that it was serious harm to reputation," Rolph explained.

Crikey will also seek to argue that the opinion piece, by writer Bernard Keane, was in the public interest.

"I suppose the difficulty here is that defense is entirely untested. This will be a test case of that," Rolph said.

'Fundamental Public Importance'

In a statement issued Thursday, Crikey chief executive Will Hayward said his company was fighting the case because "there is an issue of fundamental public importance at stake".

"We think it is important in an open, well-functioning society that the rich and powerful can be critiqued."

While Murdoch has stayed quiet since launching the case, his statement of claim accused Crikey of using the legal saga to drive subscriptions.

He has asked the court to permanently ban Crikey from publishing anything suggesting he "illegally conspired with Donald Trump" around the events of January 6.

The case will be heard by Justice Wigney, who has overseen several closely-watched defamation trials -- including actor Geoffrey Rush's successful suit against another Australian media outlet.

Wigney said Friday that before the trial begins, he would seek to have the parties enter mediation where "cool commercial minds may prevail".

Biden: No Change To U.S. "Strategic Ambiguity" On Taiwan Defense

Biden: No Change To U.S. "Strategic Ambiguity" On Taiwan Defense

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Sakura Murakami

TOKYO (Reuters) -- President Joe Biden on Tuesday said there was no change to a U.S. policy of "strategic ambiguity" on Taiwan, a day after he appeared to stretch the limits of the U.S. line on the island by saying he would be willing to use force to defend it.

The issue of Taiwan looms over a meeting in Tokyo of leaders of the Quad grouping of the United States, Japan, Australia and India, who have stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China.

While Washington is required by law to provide self-ruled Taiwan with the means to defend itself, it has long followed a policy of "strategic ambiguity" on whether it would intervene militarily to protect it in the event of a Chinese attack - a convention Biden had appeared to break with on Monday.

On Tuesday, Biden, asked if there had been any change to the U.S. policy on Taiwan, responded: "No."

"The policy has not changed at all. I stated that when I made my statement yesterday," he said after a round of talks with his Quad colleagues.

China considers Taiwan an inalienable part of its territory and says it is the most sensitive and important issue in its relationship with Washington.

Biden's Monday comment, when he volunteered U.S. military support for Taiwan, was the latest in a series of apparently off-the-cuff assertions that suggest his personal inclination is to defend it.

Some critics have said he has misspoken on the issue, or made a gaffe, and his muddying of the issue risked accelerating China's desire to act, without carrying the muscle of a formal security guarantee.

But other policy analysts have suggested that given Biden's extensive foreign policy experience, and the context in which he made the remarks, next to Japan's prime minister and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, suggested he didn't misspeak.

Taiwan was not an official item on the Quad agenda and Biden spoke more about Ukraine, condemning Russia's invasion as a global issue.

"Russia's assault of Ukraine only heightens the importance of those goals of fundamental principles of international order, territorial integrity and sovereignty. International law, human rights must always be defended regardless of where they're violated in the world," he said.

Biden said the United States would stand with its "close democratic partners" to push for a free and open Indo-Pacific.

'Ambitious Action'

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida echoed Biden's condemnation of Russia, saying its invasion "shakes the foundation of international order" and was a direct challenge to the principles of the United Nations.

"We should not allow similar things to happen in the Indo-Pacific region," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not mention Ukraine, Russia or China in his opening remarks.

India has frustrated the United States with what it regards as a lack of support for U.S.-led sanctions on Russia and condemnation of its invasion.

Though India has developed close U.S. ties in recent years and is a vital part of the Quad grouping aimed at pushing back against China, it also has a long-standing relationship with Russia, which remains a major supplier of its defense equipment and oil supplies.

India abstained in U.N. Security Council votes on Russia's invasion, though it did raise concerns about some killings of Ukrainian civilians.

New Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his goals were aligned with the priorities of the Quad, telling his fellow leaders he wanted them all to lead on climate change.

"The region is looking to us to work with them and to lead by example," he said.

"That's why my government will take ambitious action on climate change and increase our support to partners in the region as they work to address it, including with new finance."

China has been extending its influence in the Pacific where island nations face some of the most direct risks from rising seas.

On India's stand on Ukraine, a U.S. official said Biden, who is due to hold bilateral talks with Modi later on Tuesday, would seek out commonalities, emphasizing the importance of a face-to-face meeting.

"It's true with all the members of Quad there are some differences, the question is how they're addressed and how they're managed," the official said in a briefing to reporters before the talks.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Sakura Murakami, David Dolan, Chang-Ran Kim, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Krishna Das; writing by Trevor Hunnicutt and Elaine Lies; editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)


Omicron's March Sparks Urgent Global Calls For Vaccinations

Omicron's March Sparks Urgent Global Calls For Vaccinations

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's political leaders were set to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday as cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant broke infection records and forced countries around to world to double down on vaccinations, just days before Christmas.

Authorities globally have imposed new restrictions and stepped up inoculation efforts as Omicron emerges as the dominant strain of the virus, upending imminent reopening plans that many governments hoped would herald the start of a post-pandemic era in 2022.

Singapore will freeze all new ticket sales for flights and buses under its programme for quarantine-free travel into the city-state from Dec. 23 to Jan. 20, the government said on Wednesday, citing risk from the fast-spreading Omicron.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday promised half a billion free rapid COVID-19 tests and warned the quarter of American adults who are unvaccinated that their choices could spell the "difference between life and death."

In response to the surge in cases, Asia-Pacific countries are also looking to shorten the time between second vaccination shots and boosters. However, wary of public lockdown fatigue, there is reluctance to return to the strict curbs imposed during the spread of the Delta variant earlier this year.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday urged leaders of the country's states to reopen hundreds of vaccination hubs to accelerate the rollout of booster shots after they were shut down as demand slowed when double-dose rates in people above 16 years topped 80 percent.

"That's a very important part of today's discussion," Morrison said ahead of a snap meeting of national Cabinet on Wednesday, which includes of federal and state leaders.

He said decisions about bringing forward the vaccination scheduled would depend on expert advice.

Australia on Wednesday reported more than 5,000 daily infections for the first time during the pandemic, eclipsing the previous high of around 4,600 a day earlier, with the bulk of cases in its most populous states of New South Wales and Victoria.

Despite the Omicron surge, Morrison on Tuesday ruled out lockdowns and insisted that limiting the spread of the virus comes down to personal responsibility.

There was also resistance to new lockdowns in South Korea, where authorities announced restrictions on gatherings and operating times for restaurants, cafes and bars.

While polls still show wide support for South Korea's fresh curbs, some of its strictest yet, many small businesses have complained that restrictions leave them overstaffed and overstocked, having prepared for a holiday season under looser rules.

Small business and restaurant associations issued statements protesting the decision and calling for compensation, with one of the groups vowing to stage a demonstration on Wednesday.

New Urgency

Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization's European head, on Tuesday warned of a "storm" that Omicron would bring, "pushing already stretched health systems further to the brink."

Germany, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands and South Korea are among countries that have reimposed partial or full lockdowns or other social distancing measures in recent days.

Portugal ordered nightclubs and bars to close and told people to work from home for at least two weeks from Saturday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would not introduce new COVID-19 curbs in England before Christmas, but the situation remained extremely difficult and the government might need to act afterwards.

Governments have stepped up vaccination and treatment efforts with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration set to authorise COVID-19 treatment pills from Pfizer Inc and Merck , Bloomberg News reported.

Israel will offer a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to people older than 60.

For now, financial markets have taken Omicron's spread in their stride, having reclaimed some of the heavy losses made after virus headlines earlier this week.

Policymakers are, however, scrambling to address the economic hit that might come from new outbreaks with Britain announcing 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) of extra support for businesses hit hardest by Omicron.

With much still not known about the severity of Omicron infections, businesses are also worried about a swathe of cancellations affecting big-ticket events in the new year.

North America's National Hockey League will not send its players to compete in the men's ice hockey tournament at the Beijing Winter Olympics due to COVID-19 concerns, ESPN reported on Tuesday.

That would not only affect league players in the U.S. and Canadian ice hockey teams, but also those in the Olympic squads of Sweden, Finland and Germany

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney, Josh Smith in Seoul; Writing by Sam Holmes; Editing by Michael Perry)