China Calls on U.S. to 'Clarify' Rumor of Alleged Biological Weapons – Newstrends
Connect with us

International

China Calls on U.S. to ‘Clarify’ Rumor of Alleged Biological Weapons

Published

on

Getty Images Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian urged American leaders to provide "thorough clarification" regarding the nation's biological military activities.

Following Russia’s claims that the U.S. is financing biological weapons labs in Ukraine—an allegation the U.S. calls “disinformation”—China is adding more fuel to the fire by repeating the same talking points and calling on the U.S. to prove the rumors are false.

In Chinese state-run media, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged American leaders to provide “thorough clarification” regarding any biological military activities.

“This will help restore the international community’s confidence in the U.S. fulfillment of its international obligations and strengthen global biosecurity,” the spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said.

The United Nations has said it is not aware of any biological weapons programs in Ukraine.

“There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States—not near Russia’s border or anywhere,” said UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

The U.S. has always claimed to be “open and transparent,” the Foreign Ministry said. “If the concerns are truly ‘disinformation,’ why doesn’t the United States release detailed materials to prove its innocence?”

Zhao claims that the U.S. spent $200 million funding bio-labs and questioned what kind of research was being conducted.

READ ALSO:

The U.S. has partnered with Ukraine through the Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP), part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) initiative that aims to “support peaceful and safe biological detection and diagnostic capabilities and to reduce the threats posed by pathogens,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The Ukraine Embassy says the BTRP is designed to counter outbreaks of the world’s most dangerous infections.

Through the BTRP, the U.S. has invested approximately $200 million in Ukraine since 2005, supporting over 40 Ukrainian labs, health facilities and diagnostic sites, according to the DOD.

“DoD’s CTR Program began its biological work with Ukraine to reduce the risk posed by the former Soviet Union’s illegal biological weapons program, which left Soviet successor states with unsecured biological materials after the fall of the USSR,” the DOD states in a fact sheet about the CTR program.

The DOD claims it has partnered with many countries for its CTR program, stating even working within Russian-owned laboratories until 2014.

Zhao questioned why U.S. officials refuse to open the Ukrainian labs for independent research by international experts. He then accused the U.S. of being self-contradictory, saying the nation “points fingers” at other countries stating noncompliance but then refuses to verify its own actions.

“This is typical double standard. Moreover, given the credibility of the United States, it is very difficult for it to win the trust of the international community,” Zhao said.

READ ALSO:

The U.S. Department of State says Russia and China’s conspiracy theories are only attempting to justify Moscow’s hostility towards Ukraine.

“The Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine,” said U.S. Department of State spokesperson Ned Price. “We have also seen PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials echo these conspiracy theories.”

However, U.S. officials say given Russia’s history of falsely accusing other nations of the same violations it commits, they suspect Russia may be planning to use chemical or biological agents against the Ukrainian people.

“Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very crimes that Russia itself is perpetrating,” Price continued. “These tactics are an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attacks on Ukraine. We fully expect Russia to continue to double down on these sorts of claims with further unfounded allegations.”

Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Department of State and the Chinese Embassy for comment.

NEWSWEEK

International

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

Published

on

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

Officials from Canada, Mexico and China have warned US President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to impose sweeping tariffs on America’s three largest trading partners could upend the economies of all four countries.

“To one tariff will follow another in response and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said.

Trump vowed on Monday night to introduce 25% tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% on goods coming from China. He said the duties were a bid to clamp down on drugs and illegal immigration.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he spoke to Trump in the hours after the announcement and planned to hold a meeting with Canada’s provincial leaders on Wednesday to discuss a response.

A spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington DC told the BBC: “No-one will win a trade war or a tariff war.”

The international pushback came a day after Trump announced his plans for his first day in office, on 20 January, in a post on his social media website, Truth Social.

Trudeau said his country was prepared to work with the US in “constructive ways”.

“This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and that’s what we’ll do,” Trudeau told reporters.

In a phone call with Trump, Trudeau said the pair discussed trade and border security, with the prime minister pointing out that the number of migrants crossing the Canadian border was much smaller compared with the US-Mexico border.

READ ALSO:

Trump’s team declined to confirm the phone call.

But Trump spokesman Steven Cheung added that world leaders had sought to “develop stronger relationships” with Trump “because he represents global peace and stability”.

Mexico’s President Sheinbaum told reporters on Tuesday that neither threats nor tariffs would solve the “migration phenomenon” or drug consumption in the US.

Reading from a letter that she said she would send to Trump, Sheinbaum also warned that Mexico would retaliate by imposing its own taxes on US imports, which would “put common enterprises at risk”.

She said Mexico had taken steps to tackle illegal migration into the US and that “caravans of migrants no longer reach the border”.

The issue of drugs, she added, “is a problem of public health and consumption in your country’s society”.

Sheinbaum, who took office last month, noted that US car manufacturers produce some of their parts in Mexico and Canada.

“If tariffs go up, who will it hurt? General Motors,” she said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, told the BBC that “China-US economic and trade co-operation is mutually beneficial in nature”.

He denied that China allows chemicals used in the manufacture of illegal drugs – including fentanyl – to be smuggled to the US.

“China has responded to US request for verifying clues on certain cases and taken action,” Liu said.

“All these prove that the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”

President Joe Biden has left in place the tariffs on China that Trump introduced in his first term, and added a few more of his own.

Currently, a majority of what the two countries sell to each other is subject to tariffs – 66.4% of US imports from China and 58.3% of Chinese imports from the US.

Speaking in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Trudeau told lawmakers that “the idea of going to war with the United States isn’t what anyone wants”.

He called on them to not “panic”, and to work together.

“That is the work we will do seriously, methodically. But without freaking out,” he said.

The leaders of Canadian provinces suggested that they would impose their own tariffs on the US.

“The things we sell to the United States are the things they really need,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday. “We sell them oil, we sell them electricity, we sell them critical minerals and metals.”

America’s northern neighbour accounted for some $437bn (£347bn) of US imports in 2022, and was the largest market for US exports in the same year, according to US data.

Canada sends about 75% of its total exports to the US.

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said on Monday the proposed tariff would be “devastating to workers and jobs in both Canada and the US”.

“To compare us to Mexico is the most insulting thing I’ve ever heard,” said Ford.

Ford was echoed by the premiers of Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, while a post on the X account of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith acknowledged that Trump had “valid concerns related to illegal activities at our shared border”.

The Canadian dollar, the Loonie, has plunged in value since Trump vowed to impose tariffs on Canadian imports come January.

The Canadian dollar dipped below 71 US cents, the lowest level the Loonie has fallen to since May 2020, when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian goods during his first stint as US president. The Mexican peso fell to its lowest value this year, around 4.8 cents.

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

BBC

Continue Reading

International

Relief as Israel agrees to ceasefire with Lebanon 

Published

on

Relief as Israel agrees to ceasefire with Lebanon 

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will bring a US-brokered proposal for a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon to his government for approval as soon as Tuesday evening.

He said in a televised address that he would put “a ceasefire outline” to ministers “this evening”.

He however did not say how long the truce would last, noting “the length of the ceasefire depends on what happens in Lebanon”.

But it later learnt that the ceasefire would is for 60 days.

During the period, Hezbollah fighters are expected to retreat 40 kilometres from Israel’s border, with Israeli ground forces withdrawing from Lebanese territory.

“If Hezbollah violates the agreement and attempts to rearm, we will strike,” Netanyahu warned.

Key Israel backer the United States has led ceasefire efforts for Lebanon alongside France.

US President Joe Biden is optimistic the deal will lead to a “permanent cessation of hostilities”.

Biden added that the US would lead another push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“In full coordination with the United States, we are maintaining full military freedom of action,” Netanyahu said, outlining the seven-front war Israel says it faces in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

Even as Netanyahu spoke about the ceasefire, the Israeli military carried out multiple strikes on heart of Beirut while the army said some 15 projectiles had entered Israeli airspace from Lebanon.

Demonstrators raise placards and Israeli flags during a protest in front of the Israeli Defence Ministry in the coastal city Tel Aviv on November 26, 2024, against a possible ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. – Israel’s security cabinet has started discussing a proposed ceasefire deal in its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Israeli official confirmed to AFP on November 26. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP)

The war in Lebanon escalated after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah, which said it was acting in support of Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.

The war has killed at least 3,823 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.

On the Israeli side, the hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.

Netanyahu said the ceasefire would allow Israel to focus on “the Iranian threat” and ramp up its fight against Hamas in Gaza.

“With Hezbollah out of the picture, Hamas is left on its own,” he said.

“We will increase our pressure on Hamas and that will help us in our sacred mission of releasing our hostages.”

During last year’s Hamas attack, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army has declared dead.

Continue Reading

International

Israeli strikes pound central Beirut, suburbs

Published

on

Israeli strikes pound central Beirut, suburbs

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes pounded a densely-populated part of the Lebanese capital and its southern suburbs on Tuesday, hours ahead of an anticipated announcement of a ceasefire ending hostilities between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

A strike on Beirut hit the Noueiri district with no evacuation warning and killed at least one person, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a preliminary toll.

READ ALSO:

Minutes later, at least 10 Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs. They began approximately 30 minutes after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for 20 locations in the area, the largest such warning yet.

As the strikes were under way, Israel’s military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the air force was conducting a “widespread attack” on Hezbollah targets across the city.

 

Israeli strikes pound central Beirut, suburbs

ARAB NEWS

Continue Reading

Trending