China and the US should join forces to tackle climate change, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Saturday, pushing for greater co-operation on big issues during a trip aimed at improving their strained relationship.
“Climate change is at the top of the list of global challenges, and the United States and China must work together to address this existential threat,” Ms Yellen said at a meeting on sustainable finance in Beijing, according to a text of her prepared remarks.
Despite increasingly adversarial relations between China and the US, Ms Yellen has often said that the two nations, as the world’s two largest economies, have a duty to co-operate on major global challenges including environmental issues and debt distress in poorer nations.
“As the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases and the largest investors in renewable energy, we have both a joint responsibility – and ability – to lead the way,” Ms Yellen said at the gathering attended by Chinese and international climate experts.
Her comments come at the beginning of her second day of meetings in Beijing, in a trip largely aimed at re-establishing communication channels between the two geopolitical rivals.
Ms Yellen also said the US and China should communicate “directly” on specific economic concerns to strengthen ties.
"Amid a complicated global economic outlook, there is a pressing need for the two largest economies to closely communicate and exchange views on our responses to various challenges," Ms Yellen told Vice Premier He Lifeng on Saturday.
"This communication can help both sides more fully understand the global economic outlook and make better decisions to strengthen our economies."
Despite recent tensions, "we set a record for bilateral trade in 2022 suggests there is ample room for our firms to engage in trade and investment," she said.
She also addressed debt distress in emerging markets and developing countries and said: "We have a duty to both our own countries and to other countries to co-operate."
Ms Yellen also met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Friday, which the Treasury official said was a high-level discussion about the broader US-China relationship. Her meeting with Mr He is more likely to touch on specific concerns by both sides, the official said.
In a report on Friday evening, the official Xinhua News Agency said Mr Li identified mutual benefit as the essence of US-China relations and that he called for more communication and strengthening consensus on bilateral economic issues.
The two sides should have candid, deep and pragmatic talks, Xinhua reported the premier as saying.
In Beijing, Ms Yellen is seeking to explain to her counterparts the US strategy she outlined in April that is geared towards defending and securing US national security without trying to hold China back economically.
The task is particularly tricky as the US and China remain locked in a tit-for-tat trade war that warmed up last year with US export controls on semiconductors and chipmaking equipment.
The Biden administration is preparing an executive order curbing US outbound investment in China, which could come as soon as July and cover certain investments in sensitive technologies including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping’s government imposed controls on two critical minerals used in advanced technologies days before Ms Yellen’s arrival.
Earlier on Friday, she told a meeting of US businesspeople operating in China she was “concerned” by those curbs.
Ms Yellen’s message to Chinese officials is that competition between the two countries is not a “winner-take-all” situation and both sides should manage their rivalry with a set of fair rules.
Treasury officials have downplayed expectations of any major breakthroughs during the trip, saying instead it is aimed at building longer-term communication channels with the Chinese government’s new economic team.
US-China engagement now is a shadow of what it once was. Ms Yellen at one point would meet China’s equivalent every six months through the Strategic Economic Dialogue, but such forums became defunct in the Donald Trump administration, which used import tariffs against China.
While the Treasury official said restoring this dialogue was not specifically discussed in Ms Yellen’s meeting so far, the talks with Mr He could touch on how the two sides can set up frameworks to communicate appropriately.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Normal People
Sally Rooney, Faber & Faber
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
ETFs explained
Exhchange traded funds are bought and sold like shares, but operate as index-tracking funds, passively following their chosen indices, such as the S&P 500, FTSE 100 and the FTSE All World, plus a vast range of smaller exchanges and commodities, such as gold, silver, copper sugar, coffee and oil.
ETFs have zero upfront fees and annual charges as low as 0.07 per cent a year, which means you get to keep more of your returns, as actively managed funds can charge as much as 1.5 per cent a year.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five biggest providers BlackRock’s iShares range, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors SPDR ETFs, Deutsche Bank AWM X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
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MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-finals, second leg:
Liverpool (0) v Barcelona (3), Tuesday, 11pm UAE
Game is on BeIN Sports
Cryopreservation: A timeline
- Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
- Ovarian tissue surgically removed
- Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
- Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
- Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months
Janet Yellen's Firsts
- In 2014, she became the first woman to lead the US Federal Reserve
- In 1999, she became the first female chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
PROFILE BOX
Company name: Overwrite.ai
Founder: Ayman Alashkar
Started: Established in 2020
Based: Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai
Sector: PropTech
Initial investment: Self-funded by founder
Funding stage: Seed funding, in talks with angel investors
The%20new%20Turing%20Test
%3Cp%3EThe%20Coffee%20Test%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cem%3EA%20machine%20is%20required%20to%20enter%20an%20average%20American%20home%20and%20figure%20out%20how%20to%20make%20coffee%3A%20find%20the%20coffee%20machine%2C%20find%20the%20coffee%2C%20add%20water%2C%20find%20a%20mug%20and%20brew%20the%20coffee%20by%20pushing%20the%20proper%20buttons.%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EProposed%20by%20Steve%20Wozniak%2C%20Apple%20co-founder%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
