Sri Lankan President kicks off a four-day state visit to China

Sri Lankan President kicks off a four-day state visit to China, demonstrating ‘Rubber-Rice’ friendship: expert

By 

Liu Caiyu

Published: Jan 15, 2025Sri Lanka's President Anura Kumara Dissanayake kicked off a four-day state visit to China on Tuesday, according to Sri Lanka local media Sunday Times. This marks the leader's first visit to China after taking office. 
Upon his arrival, the President was accorded a ceremonial welcome by the Chinese military, and he was formally received by Chen Xiaodong, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, the President's Media Division said.
During this state visit, Dissanayake is scheduled to participate in several key engagements, including field visits focused on technological and agricultural development, as well as initiatives aimed at poverty alleviation. The visit also includes high-level business meetings and discussions, Sunday Times reported on Tuesday.
China and Sri Lanka have long been each other's friend and close neighbor. Since our two countries established diplomatic ties in 1957, the bilateral relationship has stood the test of the changing international landscape, always maintained sound and steady growth, and set up a fine example of friendly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation between countries different in size, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun on January 10. 
China stands ready to work with Sri Lanka through the upcoming visit to carry forward our time-honored friendship, deepen political mutual trust, and expand high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and practical cooperation in various fields for continuous new progress in advancing the China-Sri Lanka strategic cooperative partnership featuring sincerity, mutual support and ever-lasting friendship as well as more benefits for the two peoples, Guo said. 
Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times that Dissanayake is seeking more development opportunities through his visit to China. 
China and Sri Lanka are promoting traditional cooperation in infrastructure construction and agriculture, but there is also great room for cooperation in tourism, port city development under the Belt and Road Initiative and fisheries, Qian said.
The agenda includes key focus areas such as technology, agriculture and poverty alleviation. President Dissanayake is also scheduled to visit strategic facilities and participate in high-level business forums aimed at enhancing economic collaboration and investment opportunities, according to a notice released by Sri Lanka's Presidential Office on Monday. 
Dissanayake's visit to China demonstrates a firm "Rubber-Rice" friendship between China and Sri Lanka, Liu Zongyi, director of the Center for South Asia Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 
Dissanayake's visit to China is being closely watched by Indian media. 
"After India, Sri Lanka's president heads to China for key diplomatic talks," according to a video segment on Indian TV station NDTV's website. 
During the visit of the Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to India in December 2024, some Indian media outlets diverted attention from India-Sri Lanka relations and instead sought to sow discord between China and Sri Lanka. 
Experts suggest that, as an independent sovereign state, maintaining its own interests is paramount for the Sri Lankan government, which is expected to continue a balanced diplomatic approach.⍐

South Korean investigators arrest impeached President Yoon

 

South Korean investigators arrest impeached President Yoon in insurrection probe

By Hyunsu Yim and Ju-min Park January 15, 2025

• Summary

• Yoon agrees to go with investigators to avoid "bloodshed"
• Yoon first sitting president to be arrested
• Arrest warrant refers to Yoon as "ringleader of insurrection"
• Tokyo monitoring events with "serious interest"
• U.S. says committed to working with South Korea

SEOUL, Jan 15 (Reuters) - South Korean authorities arrested impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday over insurrection allegations, with the embattled leader saying he agreed to comply with what he called an illegal probe to avoid "bloodshed".

His arrest, the first ever for an incumbent South Korean president, is the latest head-spinning development for one of Asia's most vibrant democracies even though the country has a history of prosecuting and imprisoning former leaders.

Since lawmakers voted to stand him down after his short-lived declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, Yoon has been holed up at his hillside residence, guarded by a small army of personal security that blocked a previous arrest attempt.

A defiant Yoon said he submitted himself for questioning to avoid any violence after more than 3,000 police officers marched on his residence to arrest him from the early hours of Wednesday.

"I decided to respond to the CIO's investigation - despite it being an illegal investigation - to prevent unsavoury bloodshed," Yoon said in a statement, referring to the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) that is heading the criminal probe.

Yoon's motorcade was later seen leaving his residence in an upscale area known as Seoul's Beverly Hills. It arrived at the investigators' office but was quickly surrounded by security and moved to the back of the building, where Yoon slipped in, evading the waiting media.

Authorities now have 48 hours to question Yoon after which they must seek a warrant to detain him for up to 20 days or release him.

 Impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol

Yoon's lawyers have said the arrest warrant is illegal because it was issued by a court in the wrong jurisdiction and the team set up to investigate him had no legal mandate to do so. A warrant to search Yoon at his residence, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, referred to Yoon as "ringleader of insurrection".

Yoon's declaration of martial law shocked South Koreans, rattled Asia's fourth largest economy and ushered in an unprecedented period of political turmoil in one of Washington's key security partners in the region. Lawmakers voted to impeach him and remove him from duties shortly after on Dec. 14.

Separate to the criminal investigation, the Constitutional Court is deliberating whether to uphold his impeachment by parliament and permanently remove him from office or restore his presidential powers.

The United States remains committed to working with the government in Seoul and appreciates all its efforts and citizens "to act in accordance with the Constitution", a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said in statement.

The top government spokesperson in neighbouring Japan, Yoshimasa Hayashi, told a daily news briefing that Tokyo was following developments in South Korea "with particular and serious interest".

YOON SUPPORTERS

The latest arrest attempt that began before dawn gripped the nation with hundreds of thousands glued to live feeds showing bus loads of police arriving near the presidential residence, pushing past Yoon supporters and then walking towards the gates of the compound carrying ladders and wire cutters.

As local news broadcasters reported that Yoon's detention was imminent, some minor scuffles broke out between pro-Yoon protesters and police near the residence, according to a Reuters witness at the scene.

Throngs of those protesters gathered in sub-zero temperatures, some wrapped in foil blankets and others waving flags bearing "Stop the Steal" slogans referring to Yoon's unsubstantiated claims of election fraud - one of the reasons he gave to justify his short-lived martial law declaration.

Some of Yoon's supporters have drawn parallels with his plight and that of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who also claimed voter fraud contributed to his election defeat in 2020 but recovered to make a stunning political comeback.

"It is very sad to see our country falling apart," said Kim Woo-sub, a 70-year-old retiree protesting Yoon's arrest outside his residence on Wednesday.

"I still have high expectations for Trump to support our president. Election fraud is something they have in common but also the U.S. needs South Korea to fight China," he said.

Despite polls showing a majority of South Koreans disapprove of Yoon's martial law declaration and support his impeachment, the political standoff has given oxygen to his supporters and his People Power Party (PPP) has seen a revival in recent weeks.

Support for the PPP stood at 40.8% in the latest Realmeter poll released on Monday, while the main opposition Democratic Party's support stood at 42.2%, within a margin of error and down from a gap of 10.8% from last week, the poll said.⍐

Donald Trump: சட்டம் தண்டிக்காது விட்ட குற்றவாளி-அறிக்கை

Trump avoids punishment at hush-money sentencing

By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen January 11, 2025

NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will not go to jail or face any other punishment for his criminal conviction stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, a judge ruled on Friday but said Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration would not erase the jury verdict.

Justice Juan Merchan's sentencing of Trump, 78, to unconditional discharge places a judgment of guilt on his record and closes a case that had loomed over Trump's bid to retake the White House.

Trump will be the first president to take office with a felony criminal conviction.

Merchan said he was imposing the sentence sparing Trump jail, a fine or probation because the U.S. Constitution shields presidents from criminal prosecution. But he said the protections afforded to the office "do not reduce the seriousness of a crime or justify its commission in any way."

"The considerable, indeed extraordinary, legal protection afforded by the office of the chief executive is a factor that overrides all others," Merchan said. "Despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is the power to erase jury verdicts."

Trump pleaded not guilty and has vowed to appeal the guilty verdict. Appearing with his lawyer on TV screens beamed to the courtroom with two American flags in the background, Trump called the case an unsuccessful attempt to thwart his re-election campaign.

"This has been a very terrible experience," Trump said before sentencing, wearing a red tie with white stripes.

"I'm totally innocent, I did nothing wrong," he said.

Trump did not testify during the six-week trial last year but has repeatedly disparaged Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, in public statements.

Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor with Bragg's office, said at the hearing Trump had engaged in a "coordinated campaign" to undermine the legitimacy of the case and "purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions."

He said prosecutors supported the unconditional discharge sentence.

"The verdict in this case was unanimous and decisive, and it must be respected," Steinglass said.

Now that he has been sentenced, Trump is free to pursue the appeal, a process which could take years and play out while he is serving a four-year term as president.

"Now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax," Trump wrote in a social media post after the hearing on Friday.

Trump fought tooth and nail to avoid the spectacle of being compelled to appear before a state-level judge so close to when he is due to be sworn into office. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a last-minute bid by Trump to halt it.

Merchan closed the half-hour hearing by saying: "Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you assume your second term in office."

A $130,000 PAYMENT

The six-week trial last year played out against the extraordinary backdrop of Trump's successful campaign to retake the White House.

Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump, a Republican, in March 2023 with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump, who denied it.

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.

The Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts on May 30. Prosecutors argued that despite the tawdry nature of the allegations, the case was about an attempt to corrupt the 2016 election.

Critics of the businessman-turned politician cited the charges and other legal entanglements he faced to bolster their contention that he was unfit for public office.

Trump flipped the script. He argued the case - along with three other criminal indictments and civil lawsuits accusing him of fraud, defamation and sexual abuse - was an effort by opponents to weaponize the justice system against him and harm his reelection campaign. He frequently lashed out at prosecutors and witnesses, and Merchan ultimately fined Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order.

As recently as Jan. 3, Trump called the judge a "radical partisan" in a post on his Truth Social platform.

A POLITICAL MIXED BAG

The hush money case was widely viewed as less serious than the three other criminal cases Trump faced, in which he was accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and retaining classified documents after leaving the White House. Trump pleaded not guilty in all cases.

But Bragg's case was the only one to reach trial in the face of an onslaught of challenges from Trump's lawyers. After Trump's Nov. 5 election victory, federal prosecutors backed off their two cases due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

The remaining state case, brought in Georgia over efforts to reverse the 2020 election results in that state, is in limbo after a court in December disqualified the lead prosecutor on the case.

The hush money case was a mixed bag politically. Contributions to Trump's campaign surged after he was indicted in March 2023, likely helping him vanquish his rivals for the Republican nomination. During the trial, polling showed a majority of voters took the charges seriously, and his standing among Republicans slipped after the guilty verdict.

But the case quickly faded from the headlines, particularly after President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance led him to drop out with Vice President Kamala Harris replacing him on the Democratic ticket, and after a gunman's bullet came inches from killing Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Merchan initially scheduled the sentencing for July 11, but pushed it back multiple times at Trump's request. In agreeing in September to defer the sentencing until after the election, the judge wrote that he was wary of being perceived as placing his thumb on the scales.

Falsification of business records is punishable by up to four years in prison. While Trump would have been unlikely to get jail time due to his advanced age and lack of a criminal history, legal experts said it was not impossible, especially given his gag order violations.

Trump's victory and looming inauguration made a sentence of jail or probation even less practical.⍐

பொங்குக விவசாய இயக்கம்!

கடற்தொழிலாளர், நிலத்தொழிலாளர், பெருந்தோட்டத் தொழிலாளர்,

பொது விவசாய சங்கமாக அணிதிரள்க!

US tightens its grip on AI chip flows across the globe

By Karen Freifeld January 13, 2025

A line chart titled "The Magnificent Seven" that compares the performance of the seven highest-valued stocks so far this year.

• Summary
• 
  

• New US controls on AI chips go beyond China, set export quotas for about 120 countries
• Exports to 18 allies including Japan, Britain, the Netherlands exempt from new rules
• Regulations aim to bolster US AI leadership

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. government said on Monday it would further restrict artificial intelligence chip and technology exports, divvying up the world to keep advanced computing power in the United States and among its allies while finding more ways to block China's access.

The new regulations will cap the number of AI chips that can be exported to most countries and allow unlimited access to U.S. AI technology for America's closest allies, while also maintaining a block on exports to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Unveiled in the final days of outgoing President Joe Biden's administration, the lengthy new rules go beyond China and are aimed at helping the United States maintain its dominant status in AI by controlling it around the world.

"The U.S. leads AI now - both AI development and AI chip design, and it's critical that we keep it that way," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

The regulations cap a four-year Biden administration effort to hobble China's access to advanced chips that can enhance its military capabilities and seek to maintain U.S. leadership in AI by closing loopholes and adding new guard rails to control the flow of chips and global development of AI.

While it is unclear how President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration will enforce the new rules, the two administrations share similar views on the competitive threat from China. The regulation is set to take effect 120 days from publication, giving the Trump administration time to weigh in.

New limits will be placed on advanced graphics processing units (GPUs), which are used to power data centers needed to train AI models. Most are made by Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, while Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab also sells AI chips. Nvidia shares were down about 5% while AMD shares were down about 1% in morning trading.

Major cloud service providers such as Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab will be able to seek global authorizations to build data centers.

Once approved, the cloud providers would no longer need export licenses for AI chips, allowing them to build data centers in countries that cannot import enough chips because of the U.S.-imposed quotas.

Shares of all three companies were down about 1%.

To obtain a stamp of approval, authorized companies must abide by stringent conditions and restrictions, including security requirements, reporting demands and a plan or track record of respecting human rights.

Until now, the Biden administration had imposed sweeping restrictions on China's access to advanced chips and the equipment to produce them, updating the controls annually to tighten restrictions and capture countries at risk of diverting the technology to China.

NVIDIA FEARS 'OVERREACH'

Because the rules alter the landscape for AI chips and data centers around the world, powerful industry voices criticized the plan even before it was published.

Nvidia on Monday called the rules "sweeping overreach" and said the White House would be clamping down on "technology that is already available in mainstream gaming PCs and consumer hardware." Data center provider Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab argued earlier this month that the rules would hand "most of the global AI and GPU market to our Chinese competitors."

The restrictions do not apply to gaming chips.

The rules impose worldwide licensing requirements on advanced chips, with exceptions, and also set controls for what are known as "model weights" of the most advanced "closed-weight" AI models. Model weights help determine decision making in machine learning, and are generally the most valuable elements of an AI model.

The regulation divides the world into three tiers. About 18 countries, including Japan, Britain, South Korea and the Netherlands, will essentially be exempt from the rules. Some 120 other countries, including Singapore, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, will face country caps. And arms-embargoed countries like Russia, China and Iran will be barred from receiving the technology altogether.

In addition, U.S.-headquartered providers likely to receive global authorizations such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft will be allowed to deploy only 50% of their total AI computing power outside the United States, no more than 25% outside of the Tier 1 countries and no more than 7% in a single non-Tier 1 country.

"How effective the rule ends up being in the next 10 to 15 years is now up to the incoming team," said Meghan Harris, a national security official during the first Trump administration. "They are well aware that ensuring a dominant domestic industry is a core element of competition with China."

China's Commerce Ministry said in response to the new rules that China will take necessary measures to safeguard its "legitimate rights and interests".

AI has the potential to increase access to healthcare, education and food, among other benefits, but also can help develop biological and other weapons, support cyberattacks and assist with surveillance and other human rights abuses.

"The U.S. has to be prepared for rapid increases in AI's capability in the coming years, which could have transformative impact on the economy and on our national security," U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.