Los Angeles, Nov 18: Four people were shot dead and six others wounded while watching a football game in the backyard of a central California home on Sunday, police said.
"Three people died on scene," deputy Fresno police chief Michael Reed told reporters.
"One was critical and... succumbed to his injuries" after being rushed to a hospital, he added.
Washington, May 30: President Donald Trump said Friday he would strip several of Hong Kong's special privileges with the United States and bar some Chinese students from US universities in anger over Beijing's bid to exert control in the financial hub.
In a day of concerted action, the United States and Britain also raised alarm at the UN Security Council over a controversial new security law for Hong Kong, angering Beijing which said the issue had no place at the world body.
In a White House appearance that Trump had teased for a day, the US president attacked China over its treatment of the former British colony, saying it was "diminishing the city's longstanding and proud status."
"This is a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, the people of China and indeed the people of the world," Trump said.
Trump also said he was terminating the US relationship with the World Health Organization, which he has accused of pro-China bias in its management of the coronavirus crisis.
But Trump was light on specifics and notably avoided personal criticism of President Xi Jinping, with whom he has boasted of having a friendship even as the two powers feud over a rising range of issues.
"I am directing my administration to begin the process of eliminating policy that gives Hong Kong different and special treatment," Trump said.
"This will affect the full range of agreements, from our extradition treaty to our export controls on dual-use technologies and more, with few exceptions," he said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday informed Congress that the Trump administration would no longer consider Hong Kong to be separate under US law, but it was up to Trump to spell out the consequences.
China this week pressed ahead on a law that would ban subversion and other perceived offenses against its rule in Hong Kong, which was rocked by months of massive pro-democracy protests last year.
US restricts students
In one move that could have long-reaching consequences, Trump issued an order to ban graduate students from US universities who are connected to China's military.
"For years, the government of China has conducted elicit espionage to steal our industrial secrets, of which there are many," Trump said.
Hawkish Republicans have been clamoring to kick out Chinese students enrolled in sensitive fields. The FBI in February said it was investigating 1,000 cases of Chinese economic espionage and technological theft.
But any move to deter students is unwelcome for US universities, which rely increasingly on tuition from foreigners and have already been hit hard by the COVID-19 shutdown.
China has been the top source of foreign students to the United States for the past decade with nearly 370,000 Chinese at US universities, although Trump's order will not directly affect undergraduates.
Critics say Trump has been eager to fan outrage about China to deflect attention from his own handling of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States, the highest number of deaths of any country.
Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, called Trump's announcement "just pathetic."
Eliot Engel, a Democrat who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, noted that Trump treaded lightly on Hong Kong during last year's protests as he sought a trade deal with Xi.
"Now, the president wants to shift the blame for his failures onto China, so he's doing the right thing for the wrong reason," Engel said.
Trump's order could also trigger retaliation. China in March expelled US journalists after the Trump administration tightened visa rules for staff at Chinese state media.
Clash at UN
The United States and Britain earlier in the day urged China to reconsider the Hong Kong law during talks at the UN Security Council, where China wields a veto -- making any formal session, let alone action against Beijing, impossible.
The Western allies raised Hong Kong in an informal, closed-door videoconference where China cannot block the agenda.
They said China was violating an international commitment as the 1984 handover agreement with Britain, in which Beijing promised to maintain the financial hub's separate system until at least 2047, was registered with the United Nations.
"The United States is resolute, and calls upon all UN members states to join us in demanding that the PRC immediately reverse course and honor its international legal commitments to this institution and to the Hong Kong people," said US Ambassador Kelly Craft, referring to the People's Republic of China.
China demanded that the United States and Britain "immediately stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs," saying the law did not fall under the Security Council's mandate.
"Any attempt to use Hong Kong to interfere in China's internal matters is doomed to fail," warned a statement from China's UN mission.
"There was no consensus, no formal discussion in the Security Council, and the US and the UK's move came to nothing," it said.
Beijing, June 30: China said on Tuesday it was concerned about India’s decision to ban Chinese mobile apps such as Bytedance’s TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat and was making checks to verify the situation.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters during a daily briefing that (the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of) India has a responsibility to uphold the rights of Chinese businesses.
India on Monday banned 59, mostly Chinese, mobile apps in its strongest move yet targeting China in the online space since a border crisis erupted between the two countries this month.
The apps are “prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the defence of India, the security of state and public order", the ministry of information technology said in a statement, which came two weeks after 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in a violent clash on the India-China border in Ladakh.
The companies have been invited to offer clarifications before a government panel, which will decide whether the ban can be removed or will stay.
The move also came ahead of military and diplomatic talks between India and China scheduled this week.
Feb 26: Looking out over the world’s largest cricket stadium, the seats jammed with more than 100,000 people, India’s prime minister heaped praise on his American visitor.
“The leadership of President Trump has served humanity,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday, highlighting Trump’s fight against terrorism and calling his 36-hour visit to India a watershed in India-U.S. relations.
The crowds cheered. Trump beamed.
“The ties between India and the U.S. are no longer just any other partnership,” Modi said. “It is a far greater and closer relationship.”
India, it seems, loves Donald Trump. It seemed obvious from the thousands who turned out to wave as his motorcade snaked through the city of Ahmedabad, and from the tens of thousands who filled the city’s new stadium. It seemed obvious from the hug that Modi gave Trump after he descended from Air Force One, and from the hundreds of billboards proclaiming Trump’s visit.
But it’s not so simple.
Because while Trump is genuinely popular in India, his clamorous and carefully choreographed welcome was also about Asian geopolitics, China’s growing power and a masterful Indian politician who gave his American visitor exactly what he wanted.
Modi “is doing this not necessarily because he loves Trump,” said Tanvi Madan, the director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “It’s very much about Trump as the leader of the U.S. and recognizing what it is that Trump himself likes.”
Trump likes crowds — big crowds — and the foot soldiers of India’s political parties have long known how to corral enough people to make any politician look popular. In a city like Ahmedabad, the capital of Modi’s home state of Gujarat and the center of his power base, it wouldn’t take much effort to fill a cavernous sports stadium. It was more surprising that a handful of seats remained empty, and that some in the stands had left even before Trump had finished his speech.
For India, good relations with the U.S. are deeply important: They signal that India is a serious global player, an issue that has long been important to New Delhi, and help cement an alliance that both nations see as a counterweight to China’s rise.
“For both countries, their biggest rival is China,” said John Echeverri-Gent, a professor at the University of Virginia whose research often focuses on India. “China is rapidly expanding its presence in the Indian Ocean, which India has long considered its backyard and its exclusive realm for security concerns.”
“It’s very clearly a major concern for both India and the United States,” he said.
Trump isn’t the first U.S. president that Modi has courted. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama was the first American chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade, a powerful symbolic gesture. Obama also got a Modi hug, and the media in both countries were soon writing about the two leaders’ “bromance.”
Trump is popular in India, even if some of that is simply because he’s the U.S. president. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll showed that 56% of Indians had confidence in Trump’s abilities in world affairs, one of only a handful of countries where he has that level of approval. But Obama was also popular: Before he left office, he had 58% approval in world affairs among Indians.
The Pew poll also indicated that Trump’s support was higher among supporters of Modi’s Hindu nationalist party.
That’s not surprising. Both men have fired up their nationalist bases with anti-Muslim rhetoric and government policies, from Trump’s travel bans to Modi’s crackdown in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.
And Trump’s Indian support is far from universal. Protests against his trip roiled cities from New Delhi to Hyderabad to the far northeastern city of Gauhati, although those demonstrations were mostly overshadowed by protests over a new Indian citizenship law that Modi backs.
Modi, who is widely popular in India, has faced weeks of protests over the law, which provides fast track naturalization for some foreign-born religious minorities — but not Muslims. While Trump talked about ties with India on Tuesday, Hindus and Muslims fought in violent clashes that left at least 10 people dead over two days.
In some ways, Modi and Trump are powerful echoes of each other.
They have overlapping political styles. Both are populists who see themselves as brash, rule-breaking outsiders who disdain their countries’ traditional elites. Both are seen by their critics as having authoritarian leanings. Both surround themselves with officials who rarely question their decisions.
But are they friends?
Trump says yes. “Really, we feel very strongly about each other,” he said at a New Delhi press briefing.
But many observers aren’t so sure.
“The question is how much of this is real chemistry, as opposed to what I’d call planned chemistry” orchestrated for diplomatic reasons, said Madan. “It’s so hard to know if you’re not in the room.”
Certainly, Modi understands America’s importance to India. While the two countries continue to bicker about trade issues, the prime minister organized a welcome that impressed even India’s news media, which have watched countless choreographed mass political rallies.
“There is no other country for whose leader India would hold such an event, and for which an Indian prime minister would lavish such rhetoric,” the Hindustan Times said in an editorial.
“The spectacle and the sound were worth a thousand agreements.”
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