AFP USA

US Senator Steve Daines on Saturday met China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng, who “firmly” criticised Washington’s economic policy while appealing for dialogue in talks with the staunch supporter of Republican President Donald Trump.He, responsible for economic matters, adopted a warm and welcoming tone in greeting the 62-year-old lawmaker and his wife, underlining the two countries can become “friends” despite trade tensions.The visit by Daines, who will meet Sunday with Premier Li Qiang, is seen as a way to ease strained relations during a burgeoning trade war launched by Trump.Daines said while in Beijing he would raise trade and the smuggling of fentanyl — a drug which has ravaged the US — with raw materials sourced from China.The lawmaker, who represents the state of Montana and worked for years in China, was praised by He for his knowledge of the country.”China firmly opposes the politicisation, weaponisation and instrumentalisation of economic and trade issues, and is willing to engage in candid dialogue with the United States on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefits,” said the vice premier, according to state news agency Xinhua. “China and the United States have many common interests and broad space for cooperation,” he added.”The two sides can become partners and friends to achieve mutual success and common prosperity for the benefit of both countries and the world.”The top official also said Daines would meet Sunday with China’s premier.Daines said his arrival in Beijing came “at a time when we have important issues to discuss between our two countries”. “I’ve always believed in having constructive dialogue and that has been the nature of all my visits to China over the course of many years,” he said.- Trump’s trade war -Since retaking office in January, Trump has unleashed a barrage of tariffs on major US trading partners, including China, Canada and Mexico, citing trade imbalances and their failure to stop illegal immigration and flows of deadly fentanyl.Beijing has announced retaliatory measures, imposing levies of 10 and 15 percent on several US farm products, including soybeans, pork and chicken.”The Senator voiced President Trump’s ongoing call for China to stop the flow of fentanyl precursors from China and expressed hope that further high level talks between the United States and China will take place in the near future,” the US embassy in China wrote on X.Beijing has repeatedly said that it is fully cooperating with US authorities on the matter and has called on Washington to adopt stricter drugs legislation.Ahead of his China visit, Daines told Fox News he would also address the yawning trade imbalance between the world’s two largest economies.Trump said this week that his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping would visit the United States soon. Beijing has not yet confirmed the trip.

Republican Senator Steve Daines will meet Premier Li Qiang on Sunday, a senior Chinese official announced as the strong supporter of US President Donald Trump visits Beijing.The 62-year-old lawmaker has vowed to raise trade tensions and fentanyl smuggling during talks with Chinese officials.His visit comes against a burgeoning trade war and is seen as a way to ease bilateral tensions, which are already high over their tech rivalry and Taiwan.Daines, who represents the state of Montana, has considerable experience in China where he previously worked for Procter & Gamble. On Saturday he met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing, who praised him for his knowledge of the country.”Tomorrow Premier Li Qiang will meet with you and he will talk to you about what is happening in China and China’s broad policies,” said vice premier He, according to an official translation of his remarks.Daines responded by saying: “On this visit of course, we’re at a time when we have important issues to discuss between our two countries. “I’ve always believed in having constructive dialogue and that has been the nature of all my visits to China over the course of many years.”Since retaking office in January, Trump has unleashed a barrage of tariffs on major US trading partners, including China, Canada and Mexico, citing trade imbalances and their failure to stop illegal immigration and flows of deadly fentanyl.Beijing has announced retaliatory measures, imposing levies of 10 and 15 percent on several US farm products, including soybeans, pork and chicken.”The Senator voiced President Trump’s ongoing call for China to stop the flow of fentanyl precursors from China and expressed hope that further high level talks between the United States and China will take place in the near future,” the US embassy in China wrote on X.Beijing has repeatedly said that it is fully cooperating with US authorities on the matter and has called on Washington to adopt stricter drugs legislation.Ahead of his China visit, Daines told Fox News he would also address the yawning trade imbalance between the world’s two largest economies.Trump said this week that his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping would visit the United States soon. Beijing has not yet confirmed the trip.

The United States said Friday it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country.President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations.The order affects around 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the United States under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden and expanded in January the following year.They will lose their legal protection 30 days after the Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal Register, which is scheduled Tuesday.That means immigrants sponsored by the program “must depart the United States” by April 24 unless they have secured another immigration status allowing them to remain in the country, the order says.Welcome.US, which supports people seeking refuge in the United States, urged those affected by the move to “immediately” seek advice from an immigration lawyer.The Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) program, announced in January 2023, allowed entry to the United States for two years for up to 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries, which have grim human rights records.Biden touted the plan as a “safe and humane” way to ease pressure on the crowded US-Mexico border.But the Department of Homeland Security stressed Friday that the scheme was “temporary.””Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status, nor does it constitute an admission to the United States,” it said in the order.- ‘Chaos’ -Nicolette Glazer, an immigration lawyer in California, said the order would affect the “vast majority” of the half a million immigrants who entered the United States under the CHNV scheme.”Only 75,000 affirmative asylum applications were filed, so the vast majority of the CHNV parolees will find themselves without status, work permits, and subject to removal,” she posted on X.”The chaos will be unreal”.Karen Tumlin, director of immigrant rights group Justice Action Center, said the Trump administration was “breaking a commitment the federal government made to the hundreds of thousands” of immigrants and their sponsors in the United States.”Suddenly revoking the lawful status of hundreds of thousands of CHNV humanitarian parole recipients is going to cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country,” she said in a statement.Trump last weekend invoked rare wartime legislation to fly more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador, which has offered to imprison migrants and even US citizens at a discount.More than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country over the last decade as the oil-rich country’s economy implodes under leftist leader Nicolas Maduro, a bugbear of Washington who has faced major sanctions.

US President Donald Trump on Friday denied signing a proclamation invoking a 200-year-old law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members who were sent to prison in El Salvador.His downplaying of his role in the affair came just hours after a federal judge called Trump’s use of the law “incredibly troublesome.”Last weekend Trump invoked the rare wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport 238 men his administration alleged were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and send them to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.In a statement at the time, the White House press secretary wrote that Trump “signed a Proclamation Invoking the Alien Enemies Act” and the document additionally appears in the Federal Register with Trump’s signature on it.But on Friday, Trump suggested his secretary of state had more to do with the matter, telling reporters: “I don’t know when it was signed because I didn’t sign it. Other people handled it.””Marco Rubio has done a great job and he wanted them out and we go along with that,” Trump said.Earlier in the day a federal judge said that Trump’s use of the little-known law to deport the alleged gang members was “incredibly troublesome.”At a hearing on Friday, James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court in Washington, questioned the legality of using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to summarily send the Venezuelan migrants to the prison in El Salvador.”The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” Boasberg said.He noted that the only previous uses of the AEA were “in the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, when there was no question there was a declaration of war and who the enemy was.”- Troublemaker and agitator -Last weekend Boasberg issued an emergency order against deportation of the Venezuelans and said two flights already in the air needed to turn around.The Justice Department has claimed the planes were in international airspace when the judge issued his written order directing them to return and his jurisdiction no longer applied.The episode earned Trump’s ire and the Republican president called on Tuesday for Boasberg’s impeachment, branding the judge a “troublemaker and agitator.”Those remarks by Trump drew a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit against the deportations along with other rights groups, noted that even during World War II “people got hearings.””It was not this summary removal,” Gelernt said.”You have to be able to contest,” he said. “Otherwise anyone could be taken off the street.”Attorneys for several of the deported Venezuelans have said their clients were not members of the Tren de Aragua gang, had committed no crimes and were targeted only because of their tattoos.Boasberg meanwhile said at Friday’s hearing that “the government’s not being terribly cooperative at this point but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order.”- ‘A bad group’ -Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday before denying signing the proclamation, Trump defended the deportations under the AEA, which was last used during World War II to intern Japanese residents.”I was told that they went through a very strong vetting process,” Trump said. “This was a bad group… killers, murderers and people that were really bad with the worst records you’ve ever seen.”The New York Times reported meanwhile that nearly the entire civil rights branch of the Department of Homeland Security was fired on Friday.The department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was responsible for oversight of the administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

Columbia University,  targeted by Donald Trump over student protests and alleged anti-Semitism from some demonstrators, unveiled a package of policies Friday in a bid to placate the president.Trump has targeted US universities that saw significant surges of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that followed the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas.The administration had demanded that the university deploys external oversight, but the school stopped short of that with its raft of measures, instead vowing to engage with outside academics on the issue.Columbia’s student movement has been at the forefront of protests that have exposed deep rifts over the war.Activists call them a show of support for the Palestinian people, while Trump condemns them as anti-Semitic, and says they must end.The president has cut $400 million in federal funding for Columbia — including research grants and other contracts — on the grounds that the institution has not adequately protected Jewish students from harassment.Columbia announced Friday “improvements to our disciplinary processes” as well as making it mandatory that protesters identify themselves when challenged — even if they wear masks, as many did during the height of the pro-Palestinian protests.It also announced the expansion of its security team, including the hiring of 36 officers empowered to remove or arrest those that break the prestigious Ivy League university’s rules.- ‘Combat discrimination’ -In the document titled “Advancing our work to combat discrimination, harassment and anti-Semitism at Columbia,” the university announced the creation of a new “Office of Institutional Equity” as well as updating its anti-discrimination and discriminatory harassment policy for students and groups.”The University’s approach and relevant policies will incorporate the definition of antisemitism recommended by Columbia’s Antisemitism Taskforce in August 2024,” the policy document said.As well as budget cuts to Columbia’s federal funds, with more threatened, immigration officers have targeted a leader of the pro-Palestinan protests, Mahmoud Khalil.Khalil, a US permanent resident with Palestinian roots and a graduate student at Columbia, was arrested by officers and has been held in Louisiana as he and his supporters fight his deportation on foreign policy grounds.Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, previously acknowledged the “critical moment for higher education” in a recent statement.Last week, the private university announced a battery of disciplinary measures — including suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions — aimed at student protesters who occupied a campus building last year.In a recent letter sent to Columbia, the Trump administration gave the university one week to agree to a series of drastic reforms if it wants to open negotiations to recover the $400 million.The letter demanded Columbia codify a definition of anti-Semitism that includes a focus on anti-Zionism, and insists the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies departments be put under “academic receivership.”Friday’s policy announcement did not use that language to describe the measures the university will take towards the departments of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies — but did announce a review of their work.

Lawyers and relatives of Venezuelans flown from the United States to a notorious jail in El Salvador believe the men were wrongly labelled gang members and terrorists because of their tattoos. Jhon Chacin, a professional tattoo artist, has images of “a flower, a watch, an owl, skulls” and family members’ names etched onto his skin.Last October, the 35-year-old was arrested at the Mexican border for entering the United States illegally.Then last weekend, after not hearing from him for several days, shocked family members spotted him in a video of shaved and chained prisoners at a maximum security prison in El Salvador.He was one of 238 men declared as a member of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua — a terrorist group under US law — and deported by US President Donald Trump.”He doesn’t have a criminal record, he’d never been arrested,” Chacin’s sister Yuliana, who lives in Texas, told AFP.She is convinced her brother was designated a gang member because of his body art.At the US detention center, before being deported, “ICE (immigration) agents told him he belonged to a criminal gang because he had a lot of tattoos.”In the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, family members of several other deportees denied their loved ones were criminals.Twenty-three-year-old Edwuar Hernandez Herrera, known to family and friends as Edward, left Venezuela in 2023.He made a fraught journey across the jungle-filled Darien Gap before reaching the United States, where he was detained.He has four tattoos — his mother and daughter’s names, an owl on his forearm and ears of corn on his chest, according to his mother Yarelis Herrera.”These tattoos do not make him a criminal,” she told AFP.Herrera’s friend Ringo Rincon, 39, has nine tattoos, including a watch showing the times his son and daughters were born, said his wife Roslyany Camano.- Due process -US authorities have provided little public evidence to support claims that all the deportees were members of Tren de Aragua (TdA).In a court filing, a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official admitted “many” of the expelled men had no criminal records, because “they have only been in the United States for a short period of time.”But Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin cited tattoos as evidence against 36-year-old professional soccer player Jerce Reyes Barrios.”He has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating TdA gang membership. His own social media indicates he is a member of the vicious TdA gang,” McLaughlin wrote on X.She insisted US intelligence assessments “go beyond a single tattoo.”Reyes Barrios’s lawyer, Linette Tobin, believes he was accused of gang membership for his tattoo of a crown atop a soccer ball — a variant on the logo of Real Madrid, his favorite team.In a letter posted on social media, Tobin said her client had sought asylum in the United States after being tortured for taking part in anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela.- ‘Strong vetting process’ -In September 2024, Texas authorities published a report listing tattoos it said were characteristic of Tren de Aragua membership, including crowns, stars and weapons.Yet Ronna Risquez, author of a book about Tren de Aragua, said tattoos are not known to be a signifier of gang allegiance in Venezuela — unlike heavily tattooed members of El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha.”Tren de Aragua has no identifying tattoo… some members of the gang are tattooed, others not,” she told AFP.Trump, who has previously linked tattoos with gang violence, on Friday insisted the men were a “bad group.””I was told that they went through a very strong vetting process, and that that will also be continuing in El Salvador,” he said.But if anyone was misidentified “we would certainly want to find out” Trump added. “We don’t want to make that kind of mistake.”Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said Thursday the government had hired a law firm in El Salvador to try and secure the migrants’ release.Some eight million Venezuelans are estimated to have fled the country’s economic meltdown and increasingly authoritarian rule in the past decade.An estimated 770,000 Venezuelans live in the United States — many under a protected status granted to citizens of dangerous countries, which Trump recently revoked.

A federal judge said Friday that President Donald Trump’s use of a more than 200-year-old wartime law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members from the United States was “incredibly troublesome.”James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court in Washington, ordered a temporary suspension of the deportation flights last weekend in a move that put the court on a collision course with the administration.At a hearing on Friday, Boasberg questioned the legality of using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to summarily send the more than 200 Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador last weekend.”The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” Boasberg said.He noted that the only previous uses of the AEA were “in the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, when there was no question there was a declaration of war and who the enemy was.”Boasberg’s order halting the deportation flights earned Trump’s ire and the Republican president called on Tuesday for his impeachment, branding the judge a “troublemaker and agitator.”Trump’s remarks drew a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit against the deportations along with other rights groups, noted during the court session that even during World War II “people got hearings.””It was not this summary removal,” Gelernt said.”You have to be able to contest,” he said. “Otherwise anyone could be taken off the street.”Boasberg issued an emergency order on Saturday against the deportation of the Venezuelans as they sought legal recourse and said two flights already in the air needed to turn around.The Justice Department has claimed the planes were in international airspace when the judge issued his written order directing them to return and his jurisdiction no longer applied.”The government’s not being terribly cooperative at this point but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order,” Boasberg said at Friday’s hearing.Attorneys for several of the deported Venezuelans have said their clients were not members of the Tren de Aragua gang, had committed no crimes and were targeted for deportation only because of their tattoos.- ‘A bad group’ -Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump defended the deportations under the AEA, which was last used during World War II to intern Japanese residents.”I was told that they went through a very strong vetting process,” Trump said. “This was a bad group.. killers, murderers, and people that were really bad with the worst records you’ve ever seen.”The New York Times reported meanwhile that nearly the entire civil rights branch of the Department of Homeland Security was fired on Friday.The department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was responsible for oversight of the administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

The United States is importing Turkish and South Korean eggs to ease an avian flu-fueled supply crunch that has pushed up prices across the country, Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary confirmed Friday.Brooke Rollins told reporters in Washington that imports from Turkey and South Korea had already begun and that the White House was also in talks with other countries about temporarily importing their eggs. “We are talking in the hundreds of millions of eggs for the short term,” she added. The cost of eggs has skyrocketed due to multiple bird flu outbreaks in the United States, forcing farmers to cull at least 30 million birds and sharply constraining supply. Egg prices became a rallying point for Trump in last year’s presidential election campaign as he sought to capitalize on voters’ frustrations with the rising cost of essential items during his predecessor Joe Biden’s presidency.After returning to office in January, Trump tasked Rollins with the job of boosting the supply of eggs, and bringing down prices. In the weeks since, producers in several countries have reported American interest in their produce, with the Polish and Lithuanian poultry associations telling AFP that they had been approached by US diplomatic staff on the hunt for fresh eggs. “There is a shortage of eggs in many countries,” Katarzyna Gawronska, director of Poland’s National Chamber of Poultry and Feed Producers, said recently. “The key question would be what financial conditions would be offered by the Americans.” The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently noted that wholesale egg prices have fallen by almost 50 percent since late February, which suggests that consumer prices could soon start to fall.”The downward trend underscores the effectiveness of USDA’s approach,” the agency said in a statement.Speaking to reporters on Friday, Rollins said that the imports of eggs would stop once US poultry farmers were able to ramp up supply.”When our chicken populations are repopulated and we’ve got a full egg laying industry going again — hopefully in a couple of months — we then shift back to our internal egg layers and moving those eggs out onto the shelf,” she said.

Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity on Friday expressed its interest in buying TikTok, which faces a deadline to divest from its Chinese owner or be banned in the United States.Perplexity in a blog post laid out a vision for integrating its AI-powered internet search capabilities with the popular video-snippet sharing app.”Combining Perplexity’s answer engine with TikTok’s extensive video library would allow us to build the best search experience in the world,” the San Francisco-based firm reasoned.”Perplexity is singularly positioned to rebuild the TikTok algorithm without creating a monopoly, combining world-class technical capabilities with Little Tech independence.”President Donald Trump earlier this month said the United States was in talks with four groups interested in acquiring TikTok, with the Chinese-owned app facing an uncertain future in the country. A US law has ordered TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or be banned in the United States.”We’re dealing with four different groups. And a lot of people want it, and it’s up to me,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “All four are good,” he added, without naming them.The law banning TikTok took effect on January 19 over concerns that the Chinese government could exploit the video-sharing platform to spy on Americans or covertly influence US public opinion.During his first stint in the White House, Trump similarly attempted to ban TikTok in the United States on national security concerns.TikTok temporarily shut down in the United States and disappeared from app stores as the deadline for the law approached, to the dismay of millions of users.Trump suspended its implementation for two-and-a-half months after beginning his second term in January, seeking a solution with Beijing.TikTok subsequently restored service in the United States and returned to the Apple and Google app stores in February.Although TikTok does not appear overly motivated regarding the sale of the app, potential buyers include an initiative called “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” launched by real estate and sports tycoon Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative.Others in the running are Microsoft, Oracle and a group that includes Internet personality MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson.”Any acquisition by a consortium of investors could in effect keep ByteDance in control of the algorithm, while any acquisition by a competitor would likely create a monopoly in the short form video and information space,” Perplexity contended in the post.”All of society benefits when content feeds are liberated from the manipulations of foreign governments and globalist monopolists.”Perplexity said it would build infrastructure for TikTok at datacenters in the United States and maintain it with US oversight.The AI startup also proposed rebuilding TikTok’s winning algorithm “from the ground up”, making the app’s “For You” recommendation feed open-source.Perplexity also vowed to enable TikTok users to cross-reference information as they watch videos to check their veracity.

President Donald Trump said Friday that Elon Musk should not be allowed to see top secret US plans for any war with China, in a rare admission that his billionaire ally’s business links raised potential conflicts of interest.Trump strongly denied media reports that the world’s richest man, who is now leading the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), would receive a classified Pentagon briefing on its war strategy.Tesla and Space X boss Musk has major business interests in China but also has huge US defense contracts, while his status as an unelected advisor to Trump has raised concerns about his influence.”I don’t want to show it to anybody. You’re talking about a potential war with China,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.”Certainly you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much… Elon has businesses in China and he would be susceptible perhaps to that.”Trump, who was unveiling a contract for Boeing to build the next-generation F-47 fighter jet, described Musk as a “patriot” and hailed his efforts to slash back the US federal government, including the Defense Department.Musk was at the Pentagon on Friday, but Trump attacked reports, first published in the New York Times, about the visit. “They really are the enemy of the people,” Trump said of the Times, which reported Musk was to receive a briefing in a secure room dubbed “The Tank” on maritime tactics and targeting plans.The paper said the briefing was called off after it was publicized.- ‘Amazing visit’ -The United States increasingly sees China as its biggest rival and tensions have soared since Trump’s inauguration as the world’s two largest economies hit each other with tariffs.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hailed the “amazing visit” by Musk to the Pentagon.”I look forward to continuing our work together,” Hegseth said on X. Musk joined the chorus of criticism of the Times, labeling it “pure propaganda” on his social media platform X.”I’ve been to the Pentagon many times over many years. Not my first time in the building,” he wrote.Musk has long-standing business ties to China, however.His automaker Tesla produces some of its electric vehicles at a huge so-called gigafactory in Shanghai and is trying to compete with fast-growing Chinese manufacturers.The entrepreneur has become a cult figure in China and has fostered ties with its leadership. He has also suggested the self-ruled island of Taiwan should become part of China.In the United States, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Musk has no conflicts of interest, even as Musk leads a harsh overhaul of US government agencies that in some cases his companies have dealings with.Musk’s SpaceX has US government defense contracts worth billions of dollars, including for launching rockets and for the use of the Starlink satellite service.Trump has recently further blurred the line by promoting Tesla cars after attacks by vandals over Musk’s links to the White House. Trump suggested Friday that such vandals could be deported to prisons in El Salvador.Democrats have meanwhile blasted Trump for handing administration policy to Musk despite him undergoing no background checks and heading companies with government contracts.