US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made an upbeat show of unity on Thursday as they held their first joint public event since Harris replaced the president as the Democratic Party’s candidate in November’s US presidential election.
Chants of “Thank you, Joe” rang out from the audience at a community college in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington.
Biden announced a major deal to reduce medication prices for retirees on social welfare programs.
Photo: AFP
However, the biggest star was Biden’s vice president, who has surprised many by uniting the Democratic Party and surging in the polls against former US president Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, since her abrupt entry into the White House race.
“She can make one hell of a president,” Biden said of Harris.
Shortly after the joint appearance, Trump delivered rambling and often angry remarks from his New Jersey golf club, before taking questions from a handful of journalists.
Harris has a “very strong communist lean” and would mean the “death of the American dream,” he said.
The real-estate billionaire and scandal-engulfed former president has struggled to pivot his campaign since Biden dropped out on July 21 amid Democratic concerns that he lacked the stamina at 81 to do the job.
Until then, Trump was rising steadily in the polls, in large part on his message that Biden was losing his mental acuity — a charge that gained currency when the president badly flubbed a televised presidential debate against his predecessor.
At his golf club event, the 78-year-old Trump began by reading lengthy statements from a binder notebook.
Ostensibly scheduled to attack Harris on inflation, with household products piled high on a table next to him, he almost immediately veered off into a series of complaints about the media and insults at Harris, who he said is “not smart.”
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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